Friday, October 26, 2018

Our Top Picks for October 26, 2018

This week article selection includes an in depth interview of 2018 Physics Nobel Prize Laureate Dr. Strickland, where she discusses her scientific career in laser physics, the impact of being a Nobel Prize awardee and her opinion on women in sciences. 

This article reviews the reasons why the #MeTooSTEM movement can benefit Academia, who reports the second-highest rates of work-related sexual harassment after the military. The author includes conversations with female researchers and their personal experiences being harassed by fellow colleagues. 

Check out this article focusing on the discouragement young girls face when pursuing science careers and how this can be one of the reasons women are underrepresented in STEM. The author reviews possible solutions to change this dynamic. 

The gender pay gap is a problem women face all over the word. However, in this article the author analyzes the variations of the gap between the different states, and comes up with one (and only one) field where the gender pay gap favors women: wholesale!

Recently, the NIH has made an effort to include sex as an important biological variable, and requires both sexes to be included in clinical and preclinical studies in order to be considered for funding. Yet, one of the most common excuses to avoid including female subjects in preclinical research is the variability they supposedly introduce due to hormonal changes during their cycle. This article published in Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences shows  however that including female subjects does not significantly increase variability in the results and that in most cases, tracking of the female estrous cyclicity is not even necessary.

Finally, we have gathered three interesting resources for researchers in the early stages of their career. Researchers in the UK can apply to the SUSTAIN program, which enables female researchers to thrive in their independent research careers (deadline December 3, 2018).  A similar workshop, open to men and women (US citizenship or permanent residency required) is organized by the University of Michigan, where they encourage candidates from diverse backgrounds to apply (deadline February 3, 2019). For preparing both of these applications, use this gender-bias calculator that will give you a (probably surprising) feedback on how biased your letter of recommendation might be!

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