Balancing Out the Lab Bench?

Last year, a National Academies report argued that in order to maintain leadership status in science and engineering fields, the United States “must aggressively pursue the innovative capacity of all of its people—women and men.” The report, “Beyond Bias and Barriers,” focused on the lack of women in the upper echelons of science departments at top research universities, where only 15 percent of full professors in social, behavioral, and life sciences are women.

At a hearing before the House Science and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Science Education held after the release of the report, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala called for an intercollegiate organization like the NCAA to hold institutions accountable and eradicate barriers preventing women from reaching the top of their fields.

But what if cultural bias and institutional barriers don’t fully account for the disparities in the number of women and men in advanced research—particularly in the hard sciences? What if it was instead the case that women have the opportunity to pursue advanced careers in a full range of technical fields, but simply don’t want to in the same numbers as their male counter parts? That’s what John Tierney’s reporting suggests in his article today in the The New York Times’s Science Times. He quotes clinical psychologist Susan Pinker:

“Creating equal opportunities for women does not mean that they’ll choose what men choose in equal numbers…The freedom to act on one’s preferences can create a more exaggerated gender split in some fields.”

The discussion isn’t a general one over a lack of women in science. Indeed, the the ranks of women on scientific career paths have swelled:

In this debate, neither side doubts that women can excel in all fields of science. In fact, their growing presence in former male bastions of science is a chief argument against the need for federal intervention.

Despite supposed obstacles like “unconscious bias” and a shortage of role models and mentors, women now constitute about half of medical students, 60 percent of biology majors and 70 percent of psychology Ph.D.’s. They earn the majority of doctorates in both the life sciences and the social sciences. They remain a minority in the physical sciences and engineering.

Women represent approximately 45 percent of the postdocs in biomedical research at U.S. universities and research institutions, but a far smaller percentage of women hold the top level positions of professor or principal investigator, according to a National Institutes of Health Survey released last year. The survey found that “only 29 percent of the tenure-track principal investigators (PI) and 19 percent of tenured PIs—the NIH equivalent of assistant and full professors, respectively—are women.” Science went on to point out that in that decade that included the doubling of the NIH research budget, “the share of women among its 900 tenured investigators has barely budged,” inching upwards “from 18 percent to 19 percent.”

The new research featured in Tierney’s piece indicates that personality is a stronger indicator than gender of an individual’s career path into “inorganic” or physical sciences, which have a smaller proportion of women, or “organic” life sciences, which draw more women.

But experts who testified at the hearing last fall on the “Beyond Bias and Barriers” report did not confine their discussion to advancing women in scientific careers. As National Science Foundation Deptuty Director Kathie Olsen pointed out, fostering better environments for advancing women improves possibilities for other minorities and for men as well.

Women and minority researchers who are underrepresented at the top of scientific fields should, as Pinker points out, be there because they want to work in that field. Her research indicates that young women sometimes feel pressured to go into technical fields when they display aptitude in science and math at a young age. But the intense competition for PI and professor positions weeds out the uncommitted early. Barriers like a lack of access to childcare or family leave time should obviously come down. But it’s also worth remembering that there is evidence that diverse groups of workers have powers beyond the sum of their individual abilities.

According to Scott Page, Science Progress adviser and professor of Complex Systems, Political Science, and Economics at the University of Michigan, argues that diverse groups composed of people with different backgrounds have a larger collective pool of problem-solving skills. Less diverse groups, or presumably university departments and laboratories, may include many smart individuals with the same problems-solving methods, or heuristics. Page argues that investing in research alone will not unleash the full capabilities of the U.S. science and technology workforce. As he told the Times in an interview earlier this year, “Breakthroughs in science increasingly come from teams of bright, diverse people. That’s why interdisciplinary work is the biggest trend in scientific research.”

The conclusion begs the question: would a greater ratio of women to men in fields where they are underrepresented not just represent a victory for gender equity, but could it also unleash more bright ideas?

Tags: Diversity, STEM Education

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