It’s Not Pie! How Equity for Women in STEMM Can Benefit Everyone
Source: Photo by That's Her Business on Unsplash
With a short-term, ‘zero sum’ mindset, advances for women in STEMM can seem like hindrances for men. We disagree. Systemic changes that benefit women will improve working conditions for everyone at higher education and research institutions and improve the capacity of our institutions to meet pressing societal challenges.
By Janet G. Hering and Patricia A. Maurice
19 March 2024, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10784742
In her 2013 book Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg wrote that Warren Buffet had attributed his legendary success as an investor partly to “only competing with half of the population” [1] (i.e., to competing only with men not with both men and women). But Buffet has also written that competitive success of American business would require the full participation of women so that the entire range of talent in the population could be tapped. So which is it? Is women’s full participation a disadvantage or advantage for men?
The good news: gender diversity increases scientific innovation and (maybe) impact
Positive correlations between novelty and gender diversity have been shown in two large scale studies. A study of over 1 million U.S. doctoral dissertations considered the effect of diversity in fields of study [2], while a study of over 6 million medical research papers looked at the diversity of research teams [3]. In the second study, impact of the papers (as well as novelty) was also positively correlated with the gender diversity (and size) of the research team.
Although gender is obviously not the only kind of diversity, the roughly equal representation of men and women among doctoral students (even given some variation across STEMM fields) [4] offers a tremendous opportunity for higher education and research institutions (HERIs). Tapping into the benefits of gender diversity cannot be accomplished only through hiring practices but will need to address how women are pushed out of academia by its working environment, expectations, and incentives [5].
The harsh news: academic supply (PhDs) exceeds academic demand (professorships)
This is nothing new, but it is aggravated by the pronounced increase in doctoral degrees granted in OECD countries, which close to doubled from 1998 to 2017 [6]. In 2023, an OECD report recommended that doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars be provided with advice and preparation for non-academic careers and that an academic career progressing to a professorship should no longer be presented as the gold standard for success [6]. This report featured the finding from the PhD Career Hub at Ghent University [7] that “nine out of ten doctorate holders eventually build careers beyond academia.”
That male disappointment and dissatisfaction arising from this mismatch in supply and demand are displaced onto women as competitors reflects the waning of privilege previously enjoyed by men. It is not so long ago that, even in OECD countries, women were barred from many professions or had to resign their positions upon marriage. Even today, women’s authority and competence are often questioned and they face hostile responses to behavior that is considered admirable when exhibited by men [8]. In her profile [9], Carla Koretsky commented on abuse that she had received in her STEMM academic leadership position. This was echoed in a column by a Vice Chancellor of the University of Auckland, who also highlighted similar experiences of women in politics [10]. In addition, men have benefited professionally from the unpaid (or poorly paid) care work performed by women, which has allowed academic (and other) employers to demand a level of engagement that can hardly be met by anyone with caring responsibilities. Such privilege (i.e., special advantages or rights) is inherently incompatible with equity or equal rights. If one is used to privilege, equality might seem like oppression, but it’s not.
Male privilege also exacts costs. There is even a word in Japanese, karoshi, for death from overwork. Young men, especially new fathers, are increasingly unwilling to sacrifice time with their families to meet the excessive demands of employers. Work environments and flexible work arrangements that accommodate caring responsibilities could benefit all employees, regardless of gender.
A gender-neutral approach
Despite the characterization of particular behaviors and attitudes as typically masculine or feminine, it is always a trivial exercise to find exceptions and most people exhibit a range of these ‘typical’ traits. In her book x + y – A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender [11], Eugenia Cheng proposes an alternate characterization of traits as ingressive or congressive (see figure).
Cheng suggests that making such gender-neutral characterizations would allow us to ask what combinations of traits an institution needs to fulfill its mission. Although recognizing that this approach would not counter (deliberate) gender-based discrimination, Cheng suggests that it could mitigate polarization along gender lines.
Why change is needed
The HERI contributions to the advances in science and technology that have shaped modern life and improved human welfare are widely recognized. But these same advances are implicated in many of the most pressing challenges facing humanity today, including the climate and biodiversity crises. Many scientific organizations, including UNESCO, have called for greater HERI engagement for sustainability and specifically for transformation to support inter- and transdisciplinary research [12]. Such transformation is incompatible with traditional academic incentives and expectations, which have generated a “hyper-competitive, publish or perish, environment that is simply not attractive or not liveable for many” [6]. Full participation of women, who have been in the forefront of initiatives to transform HERI culture such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) [13], could help to broaden the discussion of academic excellence and the social responsibilities of HERIs.
Making HERIs into better places to work is ultimately good for everyone regardless of race, gender, age, economic status, etc. It’s not pie that has to be cut into more, ever-smaller slices. We need to broaden our perspective and lengthen our time horizon to create a more humane and socially responsible vision for HERIs.
Questions for further thought and discussion
· Have you experienced or observed resentment about limited professional opportunities in STEMM academics being attributed to perceived advantages of women?
· How do you experience (gender) diversity in your working environment?
· Have you ever discussed these issues in single- or mixed-gender groups?
Do you have questions or comments on this post? If so, contact us at: epistimiblog@gmail.com.
Notes and references cited
[1] Sandberg, S. (2013) Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Alfred A. Knopf, 228 pp.
[2] Hofstra, B., Kulkarni, V.V., Munoz-Najar Galvez, S., He, N., Jurafsky, D., and McFarland, D.A. (2020) The Diversity–Innovation Paradox in Science, Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 117(17): 9284-9291 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1915378117. This study extracted ‘novel conceptual links’ from dissertation abstracts (1977-2015) and also examined ‘impactful novelty’, defined as the uptake of new conceptual links in subsequent doctoral theses. The level of diversity in the field of study was used as the independent variable.
[3] Yang Y, Tian TY, Woodruff TK, Jones BF, Uzzi B. (2022) Gender-diverse teams produce more novel and higher-impact scientific ideas. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 119(36): e2200841119, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2200841119. This study assessed novelty of publications (based on unusual patterns in cited references) and their impact (the probability that the paper was in the top 5% of cited papers) for papers published between 2000 and 2019.
[4] European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (2021), She figures 2021 – Gender in research and innovation – Statistics and indicators, Publications Office, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/06090
[5] Wilcox, C. (2023) Women faculty feel ‘pushed’ from academia by poor workplace climate, Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.caredit.adl4899.
[6] OECD (2023), "Promoting diverse career pathways for doctoral and postdoctoral researchers", OECD Science, Technology and Industry Policy Papers, No. 158, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/dc21227a-en.
[7] https://www.ugent.be/en/careerhub
[8] Sieghart, M.A. (2021) The Authority Gap, Penguin Random House, 375 pp.
[10] Freshwater, D. (2023) “Female leaders need support – not the abuse they currently endure”, Times Higher Education, https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/female-leaders-need-support-not-abuse-they-currently-endure
[11] Eugenia Cheng (2020) x + y – A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender. Profile Books, 260 pp.
[12] UNESCO (2022) Knowledge-driven actions: transforming higher education for global sustainability, https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000380519.
[13] https://sfdora.org/