Our Picks for December 1, 2018

This week in Gender Bias...

Kathleen E. Grogan wrote an excellent summary for Nature Ecology & Evolution of the research on bias, mostly gender bias, in science. She calls for ALL scientists to take this data seriously and take steps to reduce bias in their fields. Here are some statistics from the piece that stood out to me, but I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

-"At the current rate of increase of 0.5% in female authors per year, we will not reach gender parity in last author position for at least 50 years in biology and molecular biology."
 -"Once published, manuscripts in high-impact journals with men in key author positions are more frequently cited (38.9 citations per paper) than papers with women in key author positions in those same journals (35.2 citations per paper)."
 -"Faculty, regardless of gender, race or discipline, are more likely to respond to requests from white male prospective graduate students than from any other category of gender or race, particularly in higher-paying disciplines and at private institutions."
 -"The proportion of female speakers at conferences in evolutionary biology is positively correlated with the proportion of female symposia organizers"
 -"Men are 15% more likely to share data when the request comes from another man."
 -"Studies suggest male STEM faculty evaluate research demonstrating gender bias as significantly lower in quality than female STEM faculty do."

If you read all of that and still thought, "well, bias against women is getting better! It's not so bad anymore -- how much can that actually matter?"... I have a fun site for you! This gender bias simulator shows how small amounts of bias can compound through career stages.

Looks kind of like biology fields to me...

And if you're now feeling like you want to do something about gender bias -- check out this list of tips for improving gender balance in the workforce written by Deana Fairchild from Women Who Code. Some of the tips are targeted at companies rather than academic departments, but the some of the ideas could be applied anywhere.

Other Articles of Interest

On Learning and Teaching Coding

With computational analysis becoming a greater part of most research fields, Olivia Guest argues that we should teach coding to students earlier in their careers. Coding just isn't taught in undergrad in female-dominated fields like psychology -- which perhaps has something to do with gender bias -- but also prevents the development of coding-confident women. Read this for a pep talk on (a) why you, too, can learn to code (if you don't already!) and (b) why you should teach that you all of your trainees! In the words of Olivia, "Saying that some people can’t learn to code is a ridiculous, pessimistic, and elitist argument that only results in gatekeeping."

#MeToo for MDs: Dealing with Harassment from Patients

27% of medical doctors face the complicated problem of being sexually harassed by patients. The American Association of Medical Colleges summarizes the problem and recommendations for addressing it.

Dare to Self Promote!

If you missed the session on self-promotion at SfN (moderated by our own Courtney Miller), you can read about it here!