Research Reveals Low Exposure of Excellent Work By Female Scientists

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at the University of Sheffield have found that high quality science by female academics is underrepresented in comparison to that of their male counterparts. The researchers analyzed the genders of invited speakers at the most prestigious gatherings of evolutionary biologists in Europe — six biannual congresses of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) and found that male speakers outnumbered women. Even in comparison to the numbers of women and men among world class scientists – from the world top ranked institutions for life sciences, and authors in the top-tier journals Nature and Science - women were still underrepresented among invited speakers."

Comments

How does it compare?

[Dexter Herbivore]

The researchers also found that women were underrepresented at the 2011 congress because men accepted invitations more often than women.

So it's not an ingrained sexism on the behalf of the congress, but according to the next quote based on biological differences:

The most demanding phase of a career in Biology, when it is important to communicate one’s findings, and to build networks with other scientists, coincides with the age at which women's fertility starts to decline, meaning it is their last chance to have a family - unlike men.

Re:How does it compare?

[ArsonSmith]

Yes, it has been shown that women tend to spend more time having and raising children rather than developing expertise in a career. It has also been found that Women who don't follow that biological plan typically do better than men it is just much more rare.

Re:How does it compare?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, the women themselves are fucking up their own chances of peer exposure. No wait, that came out wrong.

In other words, the women are exposing themselves to their husband instead of their peers. No wait, that came out wrong too.

Ah, fuck it.

Re:How does it compare?

[Dexter Herbivore]

I'm assuming (hoping) that your post was sarcastic in nature. My point was that the summary doesn't appear to match the article. The summary implies that less women are invited due to sexism, the article indicates that less women accept the invites and then provides a theory of why that's the case.

Re:How does it compare?

[jeffmeden]

Yes, it has been shown that women tend to spend more time having and raising children rather than developing expertise in a career. It has also been found that Women who don't follow that biological plan typically do better than men it is just much more rare.

Over one third of women (in the US at least) never have a single child, so the population is small but not what I would call "Rare".

Re:How does it compare?

[Bigbutt]

Actually it does in part. The first part says women are underrepresented in the recent shows. The second part that you quoted said that they _also_ found that in previous years women accepted less invitations than men.

I'd want to correlate it to something more along the lines the folks making the invitations looked at the previous accepts and declines or no answers, and declined to invite them again. So less women were invited this year because less women accepted in previous years.

Then they're trying to figure out why women didn't accept previously and theorized it was due to women wanting to have babies before it's too late.

Or at least that's how I read it.

[John]

Misleading title

[Laxori666]

The title makes it sound like they took excellent papers authored by men, and excellent papers of equivalent quality authored by women, and found that those papers authored by women, though they were of the same quality, did not have as much exposure. This would indeed be an interesting finding and would point to sexism in the sciences, as it would show that the same product (paper of a certain quality) was being treated differently solely because of the sex of the author. This of course assuming the measure of equivalent quality was a good one.

However it seems like all they did is "analyze" (read: count) the number of male and female speakers and found that there were less female speakers. From this they say women are "underrepresented". Hardly a sound conclusion. What if 20% of all scientists are women, and 80% are men? Then a fair (neither over- nor under-) representation would be 20% female speakers and 80% male speakers. Then you'd have to go see the reasons why there are less women scientists than male scientists, which can be many. The pregnancy thing mentioned in the article is likely a big one, at least.

Age-old dilemma

[Aaron B Lingwood]

If only female scientists would tell us their findings instead of expecting us to read their minds.

Sexual harassment rules complicate things

[Cassini2]

With a high-stakes career in academics, where one accusation could cause years of grief, the rule is that you never do anything with any university-connected female that could ever be misinterpreted as sexual.

You do not ask females to go out to dinner to discuss their research. You do not invite (pester) females to visit your university, repeatedly. You do not discuss an abstruse academic point in a bar until late. You do not go to the golf course with a female co-worker (married or unmarried). You do nothing that could ever be misinterpreted, which often means you do nothing at all. This applies even if you are at a conference where the only opportunity to discuss things is late at night, or over dinner, or in a hotel room, or in a bar.

On the other hand, with a male colleague, you find a common social activity and bond.

Over the course of 15 years, subtle effects like this make a huge difference in the quality of social relationships formed between researchers in a field. Good social relationships open the doors that make good professor's famous.