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https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/evolution-nursing

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https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/nhhc/american-nursing-an-introduction-to-the-past/

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https://healthpodcastnetwork.com/episodes/nurse-podcast-channel/amplify-nursing-explore-nursing-history-and-workforce-diversity-with-ravenne-aponte/

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https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/women-health-professionals-historical-issues

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https://edventures.com/blogs/stempower/the-past-present-and-future-of-women-in-stem

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Inspiring the next generation of female engineers | Debbie Sterling | TEDxPSU

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To be smart, the digital revolution will need to be inclusive

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Students talk about gender roles in STEM fields

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Why representation is so important in the STEM industry

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The Insanity of Exclusion in STEM | Natalie Robinson Bruner | TEDxABQED

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The Impact of Gender Stereotypes on the Self-Concept of Female Students in STEM Subjects with an Under-Representation of Females

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It’s possible to assume that women who study STEM topics with a low proportion of females have successfully overcome barriers in school and the family, making them less prone to stereotypic views, and influences. The present study focuses on these kinds of factors and analyzes to which degree family…

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Mind the Gap: Framing of Women’s Success and Representation in STEM Affects Women’s Math Performance under Threat - Sex Roles

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Interventions designed to combat the negative effects of stereotype threat have primarily taken an individual-based approach. The current study sought to expand upon these strategies by taking a group-based approach to reduce stereotype threat effects. Specifically, we investigated whether the succe…

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https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2014/10/women-stem

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https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/03/31/women-in-stem-how-to-inspire-young-girls_n_5055468.html

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Despite making up 46% of the overall UK workforce, government figures show that women hold just 15.5% of jobs in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) fields. In engineering, this figure drops - along with my jaw - to as low as 9%.

While there are more women graduating from university than men, they form just 12% of engineering and technology graduates. Move up the ranks into more senior roles and, surprise surprise, women are even more scarce. But why?

Speaking to the women who have fought tooth and nail to make up these small numbers, the factors contributing to the gender gap are achingly familiar.

Like the other industries explored in our Conversation Changers series - including food, comedy, politics - the problems boil down to two things: 1) society's attitude and the deeply-institutionalised assumption that women can't, and 2) infrastructure, which lacks the flexibility to accommodate women's needs, particularly motherhood.

But as impenetrable as STEM may seem, the 15.5% didn't emerge out of thin air. These women worked against the odds to get where they are today, and many are committed to helping other women.

We caught up with women working in each of the STEM industries to find out exactly what it's like working with the boys and find out how we can pave the way for the future female generations.

Our first discovery is that working in a male-dominated environment is far from easy. Many women report feeling "intimidated" or "lonely" as the minority at work. This is particularly true for female engineers working on site, which is a notoriously alpha-male environment.

Roma Agrawal, one of the only female engineers to work on The Shard project, told HuffPost UK Lifestyle about her experiences. "It can be uncomfortable on site - with Page 3 cut-outs from The Sun plastered on the walls and people staring because you're a woman."

"But you have to let it wash over you," she says. "Find confidence and earn respect by preparing well and knowing your stuff. I've worked hard, and can now walk on site without feeling intimidated."

It's not uncommon to feel like a small fish in a big pond, says science journalist Priya Shetty, but it's important that women stand their ground.

"In all-male meetings I feel like I need to work much harder to be heard - and quiet women very rarely get a look-in," she tells HuffPost UK Lifestyle. "Though it's a cliché, women often like to be accommodating in a work environment and many men, probably without thinking about it, take advantage of this."

In fact, sexism and even sexual harassment is a serious issue in science fields, says Priya. "I've lost count of the number of conferences where I've had senior male academics behaving unprofessionally - ranging from mildly lecherous to wildly inappropriate."

Priya says not only does it make life unpleasant for women in employment, but it actively discourages women from entering the industry in the first place.

As a result, she has joined forces with other leading ladies in her field, to not only expose but eradicate the issue.

"What I'd like to see is companies and universities incorporating some sort of sensitivity training to issues of gender discrimination in their institutional guidelines," she says. "It is now totally taboo to have any sort of discrimination on the basis of race or disability, and I want to see this happen for sexual discrimination too."

One area that will be high on the list is the attitude to motherhood and parenting. As the primary care givers many women find themselves unable to balance their family lives and career.

Elizabeth Rickard, engineer and mother-of-one, says that having her son 11 years ago risked putting the brakes on her career.

"I was well aware that the fathers in the office were criticised for taking on child care responsibilities or using flexitime to pick up their children from school," she says. "So I made the decision to leave and work full time for my own company. While this had some benefits, ultimately I missed out on the learning opportunities gained from interaction with colleagues."

Of course there are some advantages to being one of the only women in field.

"People will remember you," says Roma. "If there are 19 men and one woman in a client meeting, chances are the client will remember you and what you said. For this reason it's important to make sure you are well prepared and fully equipped to impress."

Women are even sought out for their unique approach to the industry.

Dr. Pippa Malmgrem, president and founder of financial firm Principalis Asset Management, believes that her feminine and relatable approach tone is key to her success. She is a regular on BBC's Newsnight, where she is invited to debate the world economy alongside Nobel Prize winners Joe Stiglitz and Paul Krugman.

"The BBC says that people have had enough of middle-aged white males using complex numbers and jargon," she says. "There seems to be a genuine demand for someone who can provide narrative of the world economy in a softer and more accessible voice."

"There is an opening here. We just need more women to step into the opportunity."

While there are certainly windows of opportunity to be seized, it is also important that steps are taken to get more and more women into STEM so that they are no longer the exception to the rule.

Many agree that mentoring is a key way of ensuring that women stay in STEM-related fields.

Roma says: "While women make up small numbers overall, we are committed to nurturing others. It's no co-incidence that 40% of STEM ambassadors are female."

The 30-year-old structural engineer believes that mentoring is key to increasing the number of women in STEM fields. She currently mentors three younger members of staff, two men and one woman.

"I think everyone can benefit from having a mentor, no matter what stage in their career," Roma tells HuffPost UK Lifestyle. "It's useful to have both an external and internal mentor to help clarify thoughts and mark out your own path."

But while female mentors can relate to specific gender-based struggles of younger women, male mentors are not to be sniffed at. With so many men in the field, their support and insight is invaluable.

Despite the lack of female mentors early in her career, Pippa benefitted hugely from the advice of her male mentors, particularly her father.

Equally she believes in the power of the 'anti-mentor'. By putting obstacles in your path, they inspire you to work hard to disprove them.

Recounting a poignant part of her life Pippa told HuffPost UK Lifestyle: "I told my college careers counsellor that I wanted a job like Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger - to travel the world meeting important people to address the most important issues of the day.

"Unable to picture a woman in such a grand role, she suggested I become an airline stewardess!"

While mentorship is vital for employees once their foot is in the door, many young women's hopes or interests are thwarted much earlier in life.

Part of the reason talent gets lost along the way is due to visibility of women in STEM.

So, in order to get young girls to pursue a career in STEM, it is important that women stand up and show them it is possible.

Barb Samardzich, vice president and chief operating officer of Ford of Europe, agrees: "Young women need to see people like themselves being successful in engineering roles to be able to vision having the same success or aspiration."

As a result of her pivotal role in the building of The Shard, Roma has made various television appearance. Recently she starred in M&S's leading ladies advertising campaign and she also featured on Channel 4's 'The Tallest Tower' to discuss The Shard project. As the only woman to appear on the documentary, she certainly caught people's attention.

"I was only on the show for 30 seconds," she says. "But even that's enough. People still contact me to find out more, saying 'My daughter wants your job'."

She adds: "Brian Cox made physics interesting and fun, we need women in STEM to do the same."

Pippa, who has made various television appearances, believes it is important for women to embrace this responsibility.

"I didn't seek to be a role model but I understand why some women sometimes see me as one," she says. "This is partly because, more often than not, I am the only woman on the stage."

But having visible role models is only half the battle. The real change needs to begins much earlier and closer to home, girls should be shown from a young age that STEM is accessible.

Lots of the women interviewed credited their parents for not only accepting their chosen paths, but encouraging and nurturing them. Allowing them to break the mould - and pursue non-traditional female interests.

Leena Gade, lead engineer with Audi's endurance racing team and the first female engineer to win the Le Mans 24 Hour, says she wouldn't have got to where she is today without her parents.

"My sisters and I showed an interest in science from an early age and my parents encouraged us," she says. "Because of this support we kept our interest and focused on getting a career... They found out about the career path I intended to take. "It really helped knowing I had family around me to help me and I thank them for that."

While they can encourage parents are also responsible for the messages their children consume. Women in STEM were unanimous in urging parents to ensure their upbringings are as gender neutral as possible.

More often than not toys prescribe rigid expectations for boys and girls, the former build and explore while the latter make house and fuss over appearance.

Belinda Parmar, CEO and founder of Lady Geek, says: "I have a daughter who is 6 years old. From an early age she is presented, by a range of sources, with the dilemma of if I'm not pretty, then what am I?"

She adds: "We need to stop defining girls by their looks and focus on what they can do and the impact they can and will have on the world."

These out-dated messages of have become the focus of recent media furore. Toy-manufacturers and publishing houses are catching on to the idea (slowly but surely, there are still some repeat offenders) and beginning to launch initiatives and products to help get more girls into STEM.

One such intiative is GoldieBlox, a toy designed to get girls into engineering. Similarly 'Poppet', a recently-launched tech-focussed UK magazine for girls aged 7-10, hopes for similar success.

Additionally, another issue is lack of understanding around what STEM-related fields actually entail. Many believe this can be easily rectified in school.

Barb says: "Engineering and manufacturing are still (wrongly, in most cases) perceived as not having moved on from the grime and grit of heavy industry from decades ago.

"In fact, in the auto industry, with its cutting-edge products, advanced design and engineering software, and technology-driven manufacturing processes, nothing could be further from the truth."

Delphine Ryan, who began an undergraduate degree in Aircraft Engineering at 33 after being a stay-at-home mum for most of her adult life, thinks more needs to be done to explain possible career paths to women and girls.

Now 38, she works for the Ministry Of Defence on their Defence Engineering & Science Group (DESG) graduate scheme. But her decision to pursue her chosen career in her mid-thirties was almost missed, she says.

"I thought that I would never become an engineer as it was too late," she says.

Young women need more transparency around STEM careers, so that they can make informed decisions about their future.

"The relevant subjects need to be talked up more, and more must be done to show all the careers and opportunities available in STEM and how to get started on this career path," says Delphine.

"If all young people had a clear understanding of the fields, then perhaps they would start to look at studying them further if they had an initial interest in any of them."

Ultimately, while there may be a long way to go. Things are changing and women in STEM are committed paving the way for younger generations of women.

"We need to show girls that anything is possible for anyone," says Leena.

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Why Do Women Hold Just 15.5% Of STEM Positions In The UK?

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Despite making up 46% of the overall UK workforce, government figures show that women hold just 15.5% of jobs in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) fields. In engineering, this figure drops - along with my jaw - to as low as 9%.

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https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/behavioral-competencies/global-and-cultural-effectiveness/pages/half-of-women-in-stem-have-experienced-workplace-inequity-report.aspx

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A majority of women working in science, technology, engineering or mathematical (STEM) fields say they have experienced workplace discrimination, according to new Pew Research Center findings.

STEM jobs include computer and mathematical jobs, architecture and engineering, life sciences, physical sciences, healthcare practitioners and technicians, and teachers at the K-12 or postsecondary level with a specialty in teaching STEM subjects.

While discrimination is not limited to STEM positions, "those in STEM stand out," the Pew report noted. Half of 1,225 women in STEM jobs said they have experienced one or more of eight forms of discrimination in the workplace because of their gender. By comparison, 19 percent of men in STEM occupations and 41 percent of women in non-STEM jobs reported experiencing this.

Findings are from Pew's analysis of the Census Bureau's American Community Survey and the 1990 and 2000 censuses, as well as a nationally representative survey conducted July 11 to Aug. 10, 2017, with 4,914 adults 18 years of age or older. The respondents included 1,119 men in STEM jobs and 1,225 women in STEM jobs. Among others surveyed, 2,358 people did not have a STEM job and 212 were not employed. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.

SHRM Online has compiled other recent stories on gender discrimination in STEM fields from the following reputable sources:

Isolation, Hostility and Other Challenges Force Women from STEM Careers

More than half of women who work in science, technology, engineering and mathematics quit their jobs because they feel unsupported and marginalized, according to speakers at the 2017 National Diversity Women's Business Leadership Conference held recently at National Harbor, Md.
(SHRM Online)

[ SHRM members-only toolkit: Staffing in Special Markets: Technology Professionals]

Is Netflix Cracking the Code for Women In Tech To Succeed?

According to recent research, 32 percent of women in technology quit their jobs after just one year- mostly because of a culture that is hostile and where women are marginalized and feel isolated. But the research also states that when the opposite happens, when women are fully engaged-such as at Netflix-the company benefits and so do the women. Tracy Wright, the company's director of global content operations, talked about its culture that encourages and supports professional growth for all of its employees.
()

The Tech Industry's Gender-Discrimination Problem

The dramatic imbalance in pay and power has created the conditions for abuse. More and more, women are pushing for change.
(The New Yorker)

Months After Sexual Harassment Allegations Rock Tech World, Not Much Has Changed

Many women in tech shared their stories of sexual harassment last year, from an investor exposing himself during a meeting to another kissing an entrepreneur without the entrepreneur's consent. But CNN reports that while there were initial changes, including the resignation of some investors and promises of company investigations and cracking down on inappropriate behavior, women said there have been few tangible changes made by people in power.
( CNN)

Women at Tech Companies Still Struggle to Reach C-Suite

Executive-level positions are particularly hard to come by at startups founded by men. U.S. tech startups have made little headway in getting women on boards of directors and in executive suites in recent years. This despite growing industry attention on women's underrepresentation in those arenas, according to Silicon Valley Bank's (SVB's) 2017 Women in Technology Leadership report( SHRM Online)

Tech's Gender Pay Gap Hits Younger Women Hardest

The salary database Comparably released a study in 2017 exploring the pay gap between men and women in the tech industry. Among its most interesting findings is that the gap is largest for women early in their careers, with women under 25 earning on average 29 percent less than men their age, while the gap drops to only 5 percent for workers over 50.
()

Was this article useful? SHRM offers thousands of tools, templates and other exclusive member benefits, including compliance updates, sample policies, HR expert advice, education discounts, a growing online member community and much more. and let SHRM help you work smarter.

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Half of Women in STEM Have Experienced Workplace Inequity, Report Reveals

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A majority of women working in science, technology, engineering or mathematical (STEM) fields say they have experienced workplace discrimination, according to new Pew Research Center findings. STEM jobs include computer and mathematical jobs, architecture and engineering, life sciences, physical sciences, healthcare practitioners and technicians, and teachers at the K-12 or postsecondary level with a specialty in teaching STEM subjects.

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK555386/

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The analysis draws substantially from the research paper by Drs. Michelle Rodrigues and Kathryn Clancy, which was commissioned for this study. The full research paper can be found online at: www.nap.edu/catalog/25585.

BARRIERS TO WOMEN'S PROGRESS

It is not true that women are underrepresented in STEMM because of innate weakness in these fields ( NASEM, 2007; Pawley, 2011). Rather, substantial research demonstrates that implicit and explicit biases discourage women from entering STEMM careers ( Cheryan et al., 2015; Lehmann et al., 2006; Master et al., 2016) or influence their decision to leave STEMM after beginning their careers ( Hunt, 2016). These factors include a spectrum of explicit and implicit biases, as well as structural and interpersonal interactions that impede women's progress ( Grogan, 2018; Urry, 2015). These are factors across the career life cycle:

External Opportunities and Rewards-lower frequency of speaking invitations ( Nittrouer et al., 2018); inequities in access to external funds ( Pohlhaus et al., 2011; Witteman et al., 2017), less likely to be on editorial boards and in editor positions (see, for example, Amrein et al., 2011; Cho et al., 2014; Clark and Horton, 2019; Ioannidou and Rosania, 2015)

While women in all fields face bias and discrimination, the way women experience these behaviors differs by discipline and career stage, leading to similarities or differences that create unique climates for women across the STEMM enterprise.

COMMON DYNAMICS ACROSS STEMM FIELDS

Gender Bias

Across the STEMM fields, women may experience implicit bias and structural barriers at every career stage, including at critical junctures such as consideration for graduate school admission, recruitment into a laboratory for graduate research, consideration for postdoctoral positions, recruitment to fill tenure-track faculty positions, and evaluation for promotion in rank ( Bronstein and Farnsworth, 1998; MacNell et al., 2014; Milkman et al., 2015; Moss-Racusin et al., 2012; Settles et al., 2006; Urry, 2015). These biases are often intensified for women of color, who encounter the double bind of race- and gender-based bias (see "Intersectionality and the Double Bind" section below).

In academic positions within STEMM, women are more likely to be appointed to teaching-focused positions, where they have less access to external funding or resources and to graduate students ( Hermanowicz, 2012; NASEM, 2018b). For faculty positions that focus primarily on scholarship, disparities in teaching evaluations, often rooted in implicit bias, disadvantage women, especially women of color, when being considered for tenure ( Jones et al., 2015a; Pittman, 2010; Reid, 2010b). Women are also less frequently invited to be colloquium speakers than men, particularly at prestigious universities ( Klein and Briggs, 2017).

With respect to publishing, women are less likely to receive authorship credit and more likely to experience harsher peer review; moreover, manuscripts with women listed as first or last authors are cited less frequently ( Bendels et al., 2018; Chawla, 2018; Murray et al., 2018; West et al., 2013). In contrast, men are more likely to receive first authorship or last authorship, and are more likely to be invited by journal editors to serve as reviewers ( Chawla, 2018; Lariviere et al., 2013; Murray et al., 2018). Compounding the disparity, all-male reviewing teams are more likely to reject papers from women ( Chawla, 2018; Murray et al., 2018).

Even within fields where women are well represented or overrepresented at lower ranks, they do not have equivalent representation at higher ranks ( Addessi et al., 2012; Carnes, 2008; Carr et al., 2017; Isbell et al., 2012; Sheltzer and Smith, 2014). The gendered divisions of labor that exist within academia may be responsible for this disparity. Women shoulder the burden of teaching, mentoring, and service ( Armstrong and Jovanovic, 2015; Hermanowicz, 2012; Kulis et al., 2002; Madge and Bee, 1999; Urry, 2015), particularly White women in male-dominated fields and minority women in all fields, who, as Johnson and Lucero (2003) describe, pay a "cultural tax," whereby they are expected to perform additional service work related to their identity ( Armstrong and Jovanovic, 2015). Furthermore, women are often marginalized in low-status jobs such as nontenure-track positions or unstable research associate positions dependent on soft money ( Kulis et al., 2002). Across a variety of fields, as women increase in representation, the status and compensation associated with these fields decreases ( Kulis et al., 2002; Reskin, 1988). Even as women rise to higher ranks, they themselves often contribute to the perpetuation of culturally ingrained biases-women are just as likely as men to evaluate female candidates negatively, and high proportions of White women and minorities exhibit gender biases in evaluating prospective students ( Milkman et al., 2015; Moss-Racusin et al., 2012).

Women faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges, and other Minority-Serving Institutions also experience the gender bias-related issues outlined in this report. With the exception of HBCUs, where roughly half of faculty are Black, the faculties in STEMM disciplines of Minority-Serving Institutions, including Tribal Colleges, Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions, have demographics that are similar to demographics of faculty in majority institutions ( NASEM, 2019a), with a majority of White faculty. Moreover, African American women faculty experience the same issues of bias, discrimination, and uncivil climate at HBCUs as they do at majority institutions ( Bonner, 2001).

Although negative biases are more frequently reported, absences of hiring biases and biases favoring women in academic sciences have been reported ( NRC, 2010; Williams and Ceci, 2015). According to the 2010 National Academies report Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics Faculty, female applicants generally fared better than their male counterparts in tenure-track applications to research-intensive universities ( NRC, 2010). In all six STEMM fields studied, the percentage of women increased-often substantially-from the applicant pool to interviews to job offers. In electrical engineering, for example, women comprised 11 percent of applicants for tenure-track positions, but 32 percent of those who received job offers. Additionally, a rigorous quantitative synthesis of the experimental literature on gender bias in job-related decisions such as evaluations of competence and hirability showed that, in general, men were preferred for male-dominated jobs, whereas no strong preference for either gender was found for female-dominated jobs ( Koch et al., 2015).

However, biases against hiring women still exist in some contexts, such as in hiring laboratory managers ( Moss-Racusin et al., 2012) and postdoctoral associates ( Eaton et al., 2019). These two contexts are notable because such hiring decisions are often made by individual principal investigators with little administrative oversight and formal monitoring.

Cultural Association Between Masculinity and STEMM

Traits such as assertiveness, confidence, boldness, risk-taking, independence, and self-promotion are valued, rewarded, and seen as standards in STEMM ( Diekman and Steinberg, 2013). Stereotypically "masculine traits" (e.g., assertiveness, ambition, and competitiveness) and "feminine traits" (e.g., warmth, supportiveness, and collegiality) are exhibited by both women and men and, importantly, individual men and women exhibit these traits on a spectrum ( Diekman and Goodfriend, 2006). However, many women have less experience with these masculine traits because they are often socialized to be more "other-focused" than their male counterparts ( Eagly and Mladinic, 1994; Eagly and Riger, 2014). When women do display these traits, they often encounter backlash in the form of social and economic sanctions ( Rudman, 1998; Williams and Tiedens, 2016). In addition to undermining the advancement of women in STEMM to positions of leadership, masculine values can signal to women that they do not belong in these fields in the first place ( Bian et al., 2017a).

There was ample evidence that male and female physicians practice medicine differently. Our findings suggest that those differences matter and are important to patient health. We need to understand why female physicians have lower mortality so that all patients can have the best possible outcomes, irrespective of the gender of their physician.

Further, cultural expectations and biases about which jobs and careers are held, or should be held, by women and men can limit men's opportunities in certain STEMM fields. Gender discrimination, biases, stereotypes, and microaggressions against men have been well documented, primarily in health fields, such as nursing and other health sciences, where men are not well represented. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, as of April 2017, only 333,530 of the 4 million nurses in the United States identified as male ( KFF, 2017). In a survey examining reasons for this lack of male participation in the field, respondents widely cited stereotypes as a top challenge. Other barriers cited included a lack of career support, few male nurse educators and mentors, a feeling of being unwelcome in the clinical setting, and sex-related bias in obstetric rotations ( Hart, 2004). Men have also reported experiencing microaggressions, particularly if they demonstrate an aptitude or interest in a STEMM field that is primary dominated by women, such as nursing. This can contribute to a lack of men pursuing careers in the field ( Hart, 2004).

Sexual Harassment

Women experience high rates of sexual harassment in science, engineering, and medical education and careers ( NASEM, 2018b). Sexual harassment consists of three forms: gender harassment (verbal and nonverbal behaviors that convey hostility, objectification, exclusion, or second-class status about members of one gender); unwanted sexual attention (unwelcome verbal or physical sexual advances, which can include assault); and sexual coercion (when favorable professional or educational treatment is conditioned on sexual activity) ( NASEM, 2018b).

Women commonly and disproportionately experience sexual harassment at multiple career levels. Surveys from a university system and a university with multiple campuses demonstrate that 20-50 percent of women students experience sexual harassment from faculty or staff, depending on their stage of education and field ( Krebs et al., 2016; Swartout, 2018). The best meta-analysis of surveys to date indicates that more than 50 percent of women employees (faculty and staff) in academia experience sexual harassment ( Ilies et al., 2003). Research shows that these numbers are far worse for women with intersecting marginalized identities ( Buchanan et al., 2008; Clancy et al., 2017; Cortina, 2004; Cortina et al., 1998; Konik and Cortina, 2008; Rabelo and Cortina, 2014). Although men can and do experience sexual harassment (APA Handbook of the Psychology of Women, 2018; Berdahl, 2007; Rabelo and Cortina, 2014), they do so at considerably lower rates ( Sexual Harassment in the Federal Workplace: Trends, Progress, Continuing Challenges, 1995; Ilies et al., 2003; Kabat-Farr and Cortina, 2014; Magley et al., 1999).

Of the three types of sexual harassment, gender harassment is the most common and can be as harmful as the other forms of sexual harassment ( NASEM, 2018b). Examples of gender harassing behavior include comments that denigrate women as a group or as individuals in gendered terms, and comments about women that are crude or sexist. Gender harassing behavior can also include visual behavior such as leaving porn or lewd images in group spaces. Gender harassment is often ambient, meaning it is "not clearly targeted at any individual or group of individuals" ( Parker, 2008) and can include behavior that extends beyond the direct target of the harassment ( Glomb et al., 1997). Gender harassment can include uncivil and disrespectful behavior sometimes described as "microaggressions" ( Sue et al., 2007) (discussed more in-depth below). Additionally, sexual harassment often takes place within environments in which incivility occurs ( Lim and Cortina, 2005).

A 2018 National Academies consensus study report concluded that the cumulative result of sexual harassment in academic sciences, engineering, and medicine is significant damage to research integrity and a costly loss of talent in these fields ( NASEM, 2018b). Research across workplace sectors shows that sexual harassment "undermines women's professional and educational attainment and mental and physical health," leading to negative career outcomes ( NASEM, 2018b). When women experience sexual harassment in the workplace, the professional outcomes include increases in job stress ( Barling and Cooper, 2008; Fitzgerald et al., 1997); declines in job satisfaction, performance, or productivity ( Bond et al., 2004; Cortina et al., 2002b; Fitzgerald, 1997; Glomb et al., 1999; Harned and Fitzgerald, 2002; Holland and Cortina, 2013; Lim and Cortina, 2005; Magley and Shupe, 2005; Morrow et al., 1994; Munson et al., 2000; Piotrkowski, 1998; Ragins and Scandura, 1995; Schneider, 1997), and withdrawal from the organization and disengagement from their work ( Barling et al., 2001; Cortina et al., 2002a; Culbertson and Rosenfeld, 1994; Fitzgerald et al., 1997; Glomb et al., 1999; Holland and Cortina, 2013; Lonsway et al., 2013; Schneider et al., 1997; U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, 1995; Wasti et al., 2000). When students experience sexual harassment, the educational outcomes include greater truancy, dropping courses, receiving lower grades, or dropping out ( Duffy et al., 2004; Fitzgerald, 1990; Lee et al., 1996; Reilly et al., 1986). As the 2018 Sexual Harassment of Women report ( NASEM, 2018b) concluded, sexual harassment is a significant factor influencing the recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in STEMM, and its persistence in the workplace and education environments is putting at risk the gains made in improving the representation of women in these fields.

Microaggressions

"Microaggressions" refer to "the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership. In many cases, these hidden messages may invalidate the group identity or experiential reality of target persons, demean them on a personal or group level, communicate they are lesser human beings, suggest they do not belong with the majority group, threaten and intimidate, or relegate them to inferior status and treatment" ( Sue, 2017). Though the gender harassing form of sexual harassment commonly overlaps with microaggressive behaviors ( Sue et al., 2007), microaggression is a broader form of discrimination that can extend beyond gender into race, identity, religion, and many other legally protected characteristics. Microaggressions can contribute to feelings of alienation, pressure to work twice as hard to receive recognition, and work environments in which one is under constant scrutiny and presumed incompetent ( Johnson et al., 2011; McGee, 2016; McGee et al., 2019; Ong et al., 2011). Importantly, microaggressions have devastating short- and long-term effects on both targets and bystanders ( Ruder et al., 2018; Torres et al., 2010; Wilkins-Yel et al., 2019; Yang and Wright, 2018).

One reason there may not be many studies on microaggressions in STEMM conexts is that use of the term "microaggression" to characterize these behaviors is considered by some researchers to be misleading. Micro implies insignificant, minor, or imperceptible; many behaviors that are categorized as "microaggressions" are actually overtly offensive and extremely damaging. Further, aggression is a term most commonly reserved for behavior that carries intent to harm ( Lilienfeld, 2017), which is not always the case with the behaviors included under the term "microaggressions"-as the definition above makes clear. An alternative term more commonly used in workplace aggression literature, and throughout the 2018 National Academies consensus study report on the Sexual Harassment of Women, is the term "incivility," which refers to "low-intensity deviant behavior with ambiguous intent to harm the target, in violation of workplace norms for mutual respect" ( Andersson and Pearson, 1999). Regardless of the term used-microaggressions or incivility-the behavior is harmful and a barrier to the progress of women and particularly women of color.

INTERSECTIONALITY AND THE DOUBLE BIND

Intersectionality can be defined as "the processes through which multiple social identities converge and ultimately shape individual and group experiences" ( McCall, 2005; Museus and Griffin, 2011). Structural intersectionality refers to the ways in which multiple social systems intersect to shape the experiences of individuals ( Crenshaw, 1991). Many employers, including those at educational institutions have adopted programs and the policies aimed at improving equity and diversity in STEMM without considering the complex, cumulative ways in which multiple intersecting identities influence outcomes of the interventions. For women of color in particular, multiple forms of discrimination, such as racism and sexism, intersect to shape their experiences.

Research demonstrates that programs aimed at improving the representation of women in STEMM have largely benefited White women and that intersecting identities can influence the efficacy of interventions to achieve gender equity. Ong et al. (2011) suggested that the absence of sustained efforts to serve and support women of color in STEMM may be "possibly due to the misguided idea that burgeoning efforts by the NSF [National Science Foundation] and other institutions aiming to serve women or minorities would, consequently, serve minority women." The authors further note that "history has borne out the reality that programs intended to serve women disproportionately benefit white women, and programs intended to serve minorities mainly benefit minority males" ( Ong et al., 2011).

In a groundbreaking paper relating to underrepresentation of women of color, Malcolm (1979) presented the problem as a "double bind," where women of color are excluded for biases related to both their gender and their race and ethnicity ( Malcom, 1979). In spite of the attention called to the double bind over 40 years ago, it remains a major issue for women in STEMM. As recently as 2019, in a study of postdoctoral hiring bias, researchers examined how perceptions of race and gender influence evaluation of postdoctoral candidates (n = 251) from eight large research universities. Professors were asked to read one of eight identical curricula vitae (CV) of a hypothetical doctoral graduate applying for a postdoctoral position, and rate them for competence, hirability, and likeability. The candidate's name on the CV was used to suggest race (e.g., Asian, Black, Latinx, and White) and gender (female or male). Physics faculty rated the CVs of Black women and Hispanic women lower than the CVs of women and men from any other racial/ethnic group ( Eaton et al., 2019). That said, gender gaps in STEMM can vary in unpredictable ways across racial and ethnic lines. Women with multiple marginalized group identities, such as women of color, can experience both advantages and disadvantages compared with those with a single subordinate group identity ( Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach, 2008). Black women may be overlooked or marginalized due to "intersectional invisibility"-a lack of visibility because they do not embody expectations of "women" or "Black people" ( Bell, 1992; Davis, 1981; Purdie-Vaughns and Eibach, 2008). But this invisibility can also protect racial minority women by making them less conspicuous targets of common biases and stereotypes ( Biernat and Sesko, 2013). Along the same lines, Black and Hispanic men often face negative stereotypes about tendencies for engaging in criminal or violent behavior; Black and Hispanic women encounter these stereotypes far less frequently ( Ghavami and Peplau, 2012). As well, in a study on callbacks for jobs, Mullainathan and Bertrand (2004) found that Black women were less disadvantaged than Black men-although there was a bias against Black relative to White applicants.

In addition to experiences of heightened bias, women of color in STEMM frequently experience isolation (i.e., experience a sense of invisibility or hypervisibility), macro- and microaggressions, and a sense of "not belonging" in STEMM ( Ong et al., 2011). Beyond feelings of isolation, there is evidence to indicate that both women of color and White women in STEMM have more limited social network supports than men, which can tangibly and negatively impact their career trajectory ( Collins and Steffen-Fluhr, 2019; Etzkowitz et al., 1994; Feeney and Bernal, 2010). In other words, women may not only feel isolated but, may actually be isolated.

Experiences of bias, isolation, microaggressions, and not belonging in STEMM can lead to "racial battle fatigue," a term coined by William Smith ( Smith et al., 2007). Racial battle fatigue is the "cumulative result of a natural race-related stress response to distressing mental and emotional conditions" that adversely affects the health and achievements of students and faculty of color ( Corbin et al., 2018; Smith et al., 2007). While this term was coined to describe the experiences of Black men in predominately White spaces, it has been since expanded to be inclusive of women of color in historically and predominantly White spaces, particularly for Black and Latina women ( Corbin et al., 2018; Franklin et al., 2014). Women of color also experience more harassment than White women, which manifests as both racial harassment and intensified forms of sexual harassment ( Berdahl and Moore, 2006; Buchanan and Fitzgerald, 2008).

Women of color may also contend with cumulative disadvantage, such as interest on debt, and disadvantages, such as lower salary and delayed promotion, which accrue over time. Those who differ from the norm experience a cycle of disadvantage-the further from the norm, the more cumulative the disadvantage ( Kachchaf et al., 2015). Kachchaf et al. (2015) report that women of color must work harder, including working extended hours, to fit the ideal worker norm despite having had fewer role models who have successfully managed these expectations, fewer culturally competent mentors, and less access to informal professional networks.

Women with Disabilities

People with disabilities are underrepresented in STEMM from K-12 through higher education and continuing within the workforce. Although individuals with disabilities report nearly identical interest in pursuing STEMM as those without disabilities (~25 percent) ( Thurston et al., 2017), far fewer persons with disabilities graduate with STEMM degrees ( NSF, 2017).

Beyond the barriers faced by women in STEMM in general, women with disabilities encounter unique obstacles related to their disabilities that may be responsible for their disproportionate underrepresentation in STEMM careers. These barriers may include lack of physical access to laboratory and classroom spaces, lack of equipment that can be used by persons with sensory and motor disabilities, a shortage of disabled role models in STEMM, and a higher likelihood of negative mentoring interactions ( Duerstock and Shingledecker, 2014). Teaching styles in undergraduate classrooms can also contribute to attrition; for example, large lecture-style courses, particularly when inclusive pedagogy is not prioritized, may serve as a "weeding" class for students with disabilities ( Moriarty, 2007).

Women with LGBTQIA Identities

Women who identify as LGBTQIA face significant barriers in STEMM, in part due to their intersectional identities-being both a woman and a sexual minority. What has been studied on this topic indicates that women who are LGBTQIA are particularly marginalized across STEMM fields, and that while some interventions and recruitment efforts have increased representation of this population, the reality is that the numbers are not improving, and, in some cases, are getting worse.

For example, Yoder and Mattheis (2016) conducted a survey of 1,427 individuals who identify as LGBTQIA working in STEM fields, known as the "Queer in STEM" survey. Participants completed a 58-item questionnaire to report their professional areas of expertise, levels of education, geographic location, and gender and sexual identities and rated their work and social communities as welcoming or hostile to queer identities. Almost one-half of participants identified as female (48 percent); 44 percent identified as male, 7 percent as transgender, 4 percent as androgynous, and 9 percent as genderqueer. LGBTQIA participants reported that they felt excluded from STEM workplaces and professional culture. Faculty level also appeared to be a factor in their comfort in being open to colleagues about their sexuality. The authors found that early-career academics (for example, postdoctoral researchers, medical residents, laboratory technicians, or managers) reported lower openness to colleagues than survey participants at later career stages (e.g., assistant, associate, and full professors, or emeritus/retired) ( Yoder and Mattheis, 2016).

Yoder and Mattheis's (2016) research suggests that better representation of women in STEMM is associated with greater inclusion of those who are stereotyped as not conforming to gender roles, in that LGBTQIA scientists working in STEMM fields with better representation of women were more likely to disclose their identities to their colleagues.

Regarding retention in STEM, Hughes et al. (2018), using national longitudinal survey data, examined whether students who identified as a sexual minority were more or less likely to persist after 4 years in STEM fields, as opposed to switching to a non-STEM program compared with their heterosexual peers. The authors found that LGBTQIA students were 9.54 percent less likely to be retained in STEM than their heterosexual peers. However, they also noted that this group was also far more likely to report participating in undergraduate research programs. In fact, LGBTQIA students were nearly 10 percentage points more likely to participate in undergraduate research than their heterosexual peers. This may indicate that LGBTQIA students are interested in participating in STEMM research at the undergraduate level, but are more likely than their non-LGBTQIA peers to leave these fields at later career stages ( Hughes, 2018).

While the committee identified few interventions targeted to LGBTQIA women in STEMM, preliminary research indicates that raising intersectional bias awareness in college classes can encourage positive changes in attitudes and beliefs ( Case and Lewis, 2012). It will be critical for future work to continue exploring how interventions impact this population, including individuals who identify as gender nonbinary.

Generally, the committee found few studies designed to examine and address the underrepresentation of LGBTQIA women in STEMM. More research is needed to understand the intersectional experiences of LGBTQIA women and practices that would be most effective to increase participation and retention of this group in STEMM.

International Women in STEMM in the United States

From 1996 to 2006, the number of doctorates awarded to temporary visa holders increased in every scientific discipline ( Figure 2-4). During this time, the number of female doctoral recipients also grew from 45 percent to 51 percent among U.S. citizens and permanent residents, and from 23 percent to 34 percent among temporary visa holders ( NSF, 2016). While the numbers vary by specific field, foreign-born women are anticipated to continue to join STEMM as students in the U.S. system at increasing rates.

Similarly, Tseng (2006) found that first-, second-, and third-generation immigrants who were European, African, Afro Caribbean, Asian, and Latin American entered STEM fields at similar rates, but in the second and third generation, students from each ethnic group showed a significant decrease in selecting STEM. The authors posit that, as the immigrant population becomes more assimilated into the U.S. education system, the likelihood that they will abandon the pursuit of STEMM-related subjects and careers increases ( Tseng, 2006). Generally, the lack of data on the experiences of Afro Caribbeans and Africans and other international students in U.S. STEMM fields highlights this as a critical research need.

DIFFERENCES ACROSS STEMM FIELDS

While many barriers to full and equitable participation are shared across all STEMM fields, their form varies with the history, culture, and context of disciplines. In disciplines where much of the work takes place outside traditional professional spaces-astronomical observatories where data collection takes place at night, remote field sites that require camping or extensive hiking, laboratory experiments that require daily attention, including weekends-incivilities, harassment, or assault can be more common ( Clancy et al., 2014; Nelson et al., 2017). The culture of these disciplines also matters. In physics, astrophysics, and planetary science, for example, invited speakers are often interrupted during their talks, whereas in the biological sciences such interruptions are atypical ( NASEM, 2018b). Biology and physics also have very different histories. As sociologist of science Joseph Hermanowicz (2009) writes, "Physicists possess a recognizable genealogy of immortals-the likes of Kepler, Newton and Einstein-who promote a sense of scientific heroism and define a 'model' career for those who follow."

One of the downstream effects of these cultural histories is that success in physics is presumed to hinge on innate brilliance, whereas in biology success is perceived to require effort and empathy ( Leslie et al., 2015). In those disciplines where successful practitioners are expected to have "raw, innate talent" women are less well represented, a phenomenon that led to the development of "the field specific abilities hypothesis" by Leslie et al. 2015.

In a nationwide survey of academics across STEM and the humanities, Leslie et al. (2015) found "evidence that the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis can account for the distribution of gender gaps across the entire academic spectrum." The authors found that negative stereotypes about women's innate aptitude in certain STEM (e.g., math, physics, computer science, engineering) and humanities fields (e.g., philosophy, economics) better explained their underrepresentation in these fields relative to other potential explanations, such as willingness to work long hours required in certain fields or selectivity of graduate programs (as evidenced by estimated percentage of graduate applicants admitted to the department each year and 2011-2012 Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores). In fact, fields that were more selective (according to these criteria), appeared to have had higher representation of women, although the difference was not statistically significant. Additionally, the authors found that the field-specific abilities belief hypothesis could explain the patterns of underrepresentation of African Americans across STEM and humanities fields; they did not, however, publish intersectional data on African American women specifically. The authors did directly confront the question of whether "women and African Americans [are] less likely to have the natural brilliance that some fields believe is required for top-level success?" and conclude that "the case has not been made that either group is less likely to possess innate intellectual talent (as opposed to facing stereotype threat, discrimination, and other such obstacles)." The authors' conclusion is supported by a detailed analysis in the 2007 National Academies report Beyond Bias and Barriers ( NASEM, 2007).

The "ideal worker norm" culture of effort and "hustle" in biology is not necessarily healthier than one that relies on assumptions of raw talent. Cultures of hustle encourage a work-life blurring, as well as the transgressing of other boundaries ( Clancy et al., 2014; NASEM, 2018b; Nelson et al., 2017). In the hustle culture, stereotypes about women who nurture, as well as actual responsibilities they may have for childcare or elder care, may violate the ideal worker norm expectations in certain STEMM fields. When professional boundaries are blurred, harassment and assault can be intentionally perpetrated in the name of collegiality or over-friendliness ( NASEM, 2018b; Wurth, 2018).

These features lead to variability in women's representation in STEMM disciplines and across educational and career stages. With the exception of biology and medicine, fields in which women are at parity at degree-granting stages, women are below parity in STEMM at all academic training and career stages. Although women are disproportionately underrepresented in computer science and engineering at all levels, women who pursue these fields have a high likelihood of persisting across the academic career trajectory, making up about 20 percent of bachelor's degree earners and professors. In contrast, in biology, physics, mathematics, and chemistry, attrition of women occurs at every additional step in the academic career pathway-from postdoctoral associate to assistant professor to associate professor to full professor ( Mangurian et al., 2018). In medicine, like biology, women are overrepresented; as of 2018 women outnumbered men among medical school students ( Mangurian et al., 2018). Notwithstanding their overrepresentation at early career stages, women remain underrepresented among senior leadership roles in medicine (see Figure 2-1). As of 2018, women accounted for only 18 percent of hospital chief executive officers and 16 percent of deans and department chairs ( Mangurian et al., 2018).

Dichotomies in Diversity Issues

The fields defined in the statement of task-physics, engineering, computer science, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and medicine-can be divided into two broad categories: those in which disparities in participation arise by the time students enter college and those in which underrepresentation occurs primarily at more senior career stages. Computer science, engineering, and physics are fields where women and girls are underrepresented relatively early on (before graduate school), and the life sciences and chemistry are fields in which barriers and biases prevent equal representation at the faculty level and block advancement into leadership positions. Mathematics and medicine do not fit cleanly into either of these categories, so the committee has separated them out into their own sections.

Computer Science, Engineering, and Physics

Computer Science

There is a widespread perception that girls and women are uninterested in computing and programming ( Fisher et al., 1997). This perception, however, is not supported by a large body of evidence. Research on cultural attitudes suggests that adolescent girls are bombarded with stereotypes that computer science is a masculine field ( Urry, 2015). Both girls and boys receive the message that computer science is a field ideal for "geeks" who are by archetype male, brilliant, socially awkward, isolated, and fond of science fiction; there are even physical elements of the archetype, including pale skin and myopia ( Beyer, 2014; Cheryan et al., 2015; Master et al., 2016; Rasmussen and Håpnes, 1991). Such stereotypes influence the decisions students make about programs of study and classes to take, particularly if they have not had early exposure to these disciplines ( Cheryan et al., 2017). For example, according to Nord et al. (2011), when computer science classes are offered in high schools, boys are more likely than girls to enroll. Such gender imbalances at the high school level lead to imbalances at the undergraduate level, an issue that first emerged 20 years ago ( Fisher et al., 1997; Master et al., 2016). Although stereotypical attitudes contributed to the perceptions of girls that they do not belong in computer science, interventions to alter classroom environments, such as including more examples of female scientists in wall art, can counter impacts of stereotypes ( Master et al., 2016). This finding suggests that interventions at the high school level may be effective in increasing the numbers of women who are interested in and prepared for computer science courses at the undergraduate level. However, the widespread male-dominated culture that prevails at the undergraduate level may still lead to departures of women from the field ( Fisher et al., 1997) (see Chapter 3 for further discussion). In fact, historical surges in computer science enrollment are often followed by decreases in representation of women, indicating that the culture of academic computer science during periods of growth may crowd out of the field.

The absolute number of underrepresented minorities in computer science has decreased over time. A longitudinal analysis (1960-2009) of the U.S. computing labor force found that diversity decreased during this period. Whereas White women were 69 percent less likely than White men to work in computing in 1980, by 2009 the odds against working in computing increased to 71 percent. Underrepresented minority women were also 71 percent less likely than White men to work in computing throughout the period.

Because the problem in computer science is often characterized as a "pipeline" problem ( Alper, 1993; Berryman, 1983; Ivie and Ray, 2005), only a few studies offer insight into broader cultural problems in that field. Women of color in computer science experience isolation and are marginalized beyond what White women experience ( Charleston et al., 2014; Ong et al., 2011). Women of color, particularly Black women, are challenged by their peers regarding their academic competence and credentials ( Charleston et al., 2014). Moreover, Black women in computer science are marginalized by both White women and Black men who prioritize gaining acceptance from the White men who hold cultural capital ( Charleston et al., 2014). For example, Charleston et al. (2014) noted that "despite sharing similar racial experiences, participants noted how Black men and women were not always valuable sources for social support or camaraderie. As one participant elaborated, 'Just cause there's another Black brother [in class] doesn't mean they want to work with you either.' In sum, participants felt that Black men placed a strong emphasis on developing relationships with White males, whereas Black women were less inclined to do so" ( Charleston et al., 2014).

Engineering

At the undergraduate level, the masculine context and social exclusion create barriers. Although male engineering students also reported a dearth of mentoring, a majority were able to obtain mentoring from upperclassmen, whereas, as described above, female students relied more on family members who were engineers. This pattern suggests that the likelihood of pursuing a career in engineering is higher for those with backgrounds that give them access to mentoring.

Women are also substantially underrepresented as engineering faculty and professionals ( Bejerano and Bartosh, 2015). In the same positions as men, female engineers make less money, receive less support for their research and ideas, and have fewer opportunities for advancement ( Bejerano and Bartosh, 2015; Hunt, 2016; Xu, 2008). Compared with other scientists in other STEMM fields, engineers are more likely to be employed in the field for which they were trained, but departures from the field are characterized by high rates of gender disparity ( Fouad and Santana, 2017; Hewlett et al., 2010; Hunt, 2016). Women who leave engineering careers cite three major factors: (1) gender disparities in pay in conjunction with difficult working conditions, (2) dissatisfaction with the ways their experience and skills are underutilized, and (3) lack of recognition or advancement opportunities ( Fouad and Santana, 2017). The gender disparities in pay and advancement opportunities point to patterns of underlying structural discrimination in hiring and promotion ( Hunt, 2016).

Women of color in engineering experience intensified marginalization relative to men ( Chanderbhan-Forde et al., 2012; Foor et al,, 2007; Ong et al., 2011; Tate and Linn, 2005). Black female students have few faculty role models with respect to both race and gender ( Chanderbhan-Forde et al., 2012). Like Black women in computer science, Black women in engineering are likely to experience marginalization from both White female and Black male peers ( Charleston et al., 2014). This intersectional status results in amplification of barriers to obtaining access to prerequisite education in high school as well as of messages of social exclusion at the undergraduate and graduate levels ( Chanderbhan-Forde et al., 2012; Foor et al., 2007; Ong, 2011). Minority women, particularly Black and Latina women, are told throughout their careers, by their peers, colleagues, and students, and by the ambient environment, either explicitly or implicitly, that they do not belong ( Foor et al., 2007). Because faculty and peers may be unwelcoming, minority women often seek social support from sources outside their discipline and create separate social and academic peer groups ( Cross et al., 2017; Mendenhall et al., 2018; Ong et al., 2011; Tate and Linn, 2005).

Physics

A 2020 report by the National Task Force to Elevate African American Representation in Physics and Astronomy (TEAM-UP), which examined the reasons for the persistent underrepresentation of African Americans in these fields ( AIP, 2020), offers additional insights. By conducting student and department chair surveys, interviews with students, site visits to five high-performing physics departments, and a review of the relevant literature, the task force identified five key factors responsible for the success or failure of African Americans in physics and astronomy:

The authors noted that the persistent underrepresentation of African Americans in these fields is due to "(1) the lack of supportive environments for these students in many departments, and (2) to the enormous financial challenges facing them individually, as well as the financial challenges faced by the programs that have consistently demonstrated the best practices in supporting their success" ( AIP, 2020).

The task force discussed a number of barriers that African Americans, including women, face in these fields, particularly as a result of their intersecting identities. These can include stereotypes about who is interested or capable of entering physics or astronomy. To reduce some of these factors, student peers can play an important role in improving a sense of belonging in physics by mitigating microaggressions, the imposter phenomenon, and stereotype threat. Retention in these fields is further improved by an increase in the number of faculty who get to know these students and support their success ( AIP, 2020) (see Chapter 3 for additional discussion of the important role faculty can play in instilling physics identity in African American physics students).

In physics careers, gender differences in salary emerge mid-career. For recent physics graduates, there were no gender differences in salary 1 year after graduation; however, men had salaries that were 10 percent higher than salaries of women 10-15 years after graduating with a physics doctorate. Also, compared with men, women reported that their careers progressed more slowly and that they received fewer career resources and opportunities. In addition, women were more likely to make career compromises for family reasons ( Porter and Ivie, 2019).

Biology and Chemistry

The percentage of women among the students earning bachelor's degrees in biology peaked at 62 percent in 2003-2006 ( APS, 2018). Since then, it has remained steady, fluctuating between 59 and 61 percent from 2007 to 2017. The percentages of women obtaining master's degrees and enrolling in doctoral programs in the biological and biomedical sciences in 2017 were 52.6 percent ( NSF, 2018a), 45 percent ( Martinez et al., 2007) and 38 percent ( Plank-Bazinet et al., 2017), respectively.

The popular images of biologists and chemists are not as male-oriented as in fields such as computer science, engineering, and physics ( Cheryan et al., 2017). Negative stereotypes about women's innate abilities are also less prominent in biology and chemistry ( Cheryan et al., 2017). In many institutions, however, biases and barriers undermine success and increase the desire to leave at later educational and career stages.

Biology

Although women are not underrepresented in biology in general, they face biases and barriers that drive them out of the discipline over the course of their careers with greater frequency than their male counterparts. In 2014, the SAFE (Survey of Academic Field Experiences) team published its first findings on sexual harassment in the field sciences, most of which are biological sciences ( Clancy et al., 2014). Researchers distributed an online survey through a variety of channels (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, professional societies, and through science and service blogs in two waves: the first, aimed at biological anthropologists included 124 respondents, and the second (N = 542) that allowed respondents to provide their professional discipline). They found that most, or 72.4 percent, of women observed sexual harassment; a large number, 64 percent (N = 423/658), experienced sexual harassment, and a significant minority were sexually assaulted while conducting fieldwork. In this sample, when women were harassed the perpetrator was more likely to be senior to them in the workplace hierarchy; when men were harassed, the perpetrator was more likely to be a peer. Few (18 percent) respondents reported field experiences where there was a clear reporting mechanism for sexual harassment, and, of the hundreds who shared that they experienced sexual harassment, only a handful (N = 37) reported, and only seven were satisfied with the outcome of that report. One of the initial hypotheses proposed by Clancy et al. (2014) for why field researchers were so often sexually harassed was that the harassment was coming from "locals" in countries with sexist views about women; however, data demonstrated that women were much more often harassed by their co-workers, not the "locals" whom they encountered in the field.

In 2017, the SAFE team published a follow-up study based on 26 interviews with field scientists ( Nelson, 2017). The team found evidence that the culture of the field sciences is characterized by unclear boundaries, few sanctions for bad behavior, and unequal access to resources for women. As respondents shared, many were implicitly or explicitly told that they could not communicate with colleagues about their experiences with inappropriate behavior at their field sites. Respondents who reported incidents, spurned advances, or otherwise fought back in their harassing environment faced significant personal and professional consequences, from sabotage of their research to posttraumatic stress symptoms that interfered with publication of the results of their field research.

Women in biology also face substantial hiring disparities. Sheltzer and Smith (2014) found that at the trainee level, on average, male principal investigators ran laboratories that had 36 percent female postdocs and 47 percent female graduate students, significantly lower than was observed in laboratories headed by women, who employed on average 46 percent female postdocs and 53 percent female graduate students. Women are also hired at the faculty level less frequently at prestigious institutions, and instead are directed toward less prestigious, more teaching-focused positions ( Sheltzer and Smith, 2014). These findings point to lost opportunities for advancement for women in biology across the career stages.

Mathematics

These patterns raise the question as to how a significantly greater proportion of women students graduate with undergraduate degrees in math than in other physical science STEMM majors, despite similar negative associations and stereotypes about women's abilities. There are at least two possibilities that might work separately or in conjunction to explain why math is more gender balanced. First, negative stereotypes about girls' abilities in math may be weaker than negative stereotypes in other more male-dominated fields ( Cheryan et al., 2017). Second, pre-college math is mandatory in most curricula, and girls perform as well as boys in these courses. Mandatory courses-if taught well for girls-may reduce gender disparities in later participation because they provide girls with an opportunity to try a field (in a classroom that is gender balanced) instead of relying on stereotypes about girls or about the field to guide their decisions.

Medicine

Women of color face a double bind in medicine and are more underrepresented at higher academic ranks. Although minority women make up 18 percent of the U.S. population, they represent 3.2 percent of full professors in medicine. Additionally, women of color face higher workplace discrimination rates and work-family conflict, contributing to a negative climate ( Carapina et al., 2017).

Of the disciplines examined in the 2018 National Academy of Sciences report, Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, medical students had the highest rates of sexual harassment compared with students in engineering, the sciences, and the nonsciences ( NASEM, 2018b). The hierarchical and hostile work environments in many academic medical centers lead to greater bullying, intimidation, and harassment from patients, peers, and superiors. In fact, one-third of women in academic medicine experience gender harassment, and many reported that discrimination hindered their careers ( Foster et al., 2000). Harassment is a particular concern in medicine because it takes place in "environments with little structure or accountability for the faculty member, and a decreased ability for students to leave without professional repercussions" ( NASEM, 2018b). In a qualitative study at 23 medical schools, members of the Group on Women in Medicine and Science and the Group on Diversity and Inclusion of the Association of American Medical Colleges were interviewed. Despite the increase in numbers of women in medicine since the 1980s, only modest improvements were seen in the academic climate for women over the past 20 years, and there was a reported lack of institutional oversight and substantial variations by department ( Carr et al., 2015).

CONCLUSION: SYSTEMIC ISSUES IN STEMM CULTURE

Across the science enterprise, widespread instances of active and passive actions, as well as implicit and explicit biases, hinder women's careers in STEMM. Women of multiple marginalized identities are confronted with amplified forms of these biases and barriers throughout all STEMM fields. The result is that many women leave STEMM or stall out in positions of lower educational attainment, rank, prestige, and pay compared to male colleagues. Based on many years of research, it is fair to conclude that many White women and women of color make rational decisions to leave environments in which they are subject to harassment, believe that their careers are stalled, and/or that they are discriminated against in pay and promotions. While research demonstrates that many White women and women of color report that they "feel" unwelcome, isolated, or unfairly held back, the objective reality is that they work in cultures and climates that often exclude them and push them out. The fact that these patterns exist broadly, including in fields that have large numbers of entering White women, points to systemic problems that cannot be solved simply by recruiting more women. Disrupting the forces at play in STEMM are necessary to create an inclusive environment that will enliven American science, engineering, and medicine. The chapters that follow describe the current state of research on educational and workplace interventions that show promise in supporting improved recruitment, retention, and advancement of women across STEMM, while pointing out where there are important gaps in knowledge.

FINDINGS: CHAPTER 2

FINDING 2-1: Evidence does not support the longstanding perception that women are underrepresented in STEMM because of a lack of innate ability in these fields.

FINDING 2-2: Implicit and explicit biases contribute to the underrepresentation of women in STEMM. These biases manifest in multiple ways at all stages of STEMM career life cycles. Across STEMM fields, biases often affect women's educational and career trajectories at critical junctures, such as recruitment into lab management positions, consideration for graduate admissions, consideration for postdoctoral positions, and in promotion decisions. Women of multiple marginalized identities (e.g., women of color, women with disabilities, LGBTQIA women) experience intensified forms of bias and discrimination in STEMM as a result of the complex, cumulative ways in which multiple forms of discrimination (e.g., racism, sexism) intersect.
FINDING 2-3: In addition to experiences of heightened bias, sexual harassment, and microaggressions, women of color in STEMM frequently experience:

a.

isolation (i.e., experience a sense of invisibility or hypervisibility) and exclusion from social network supports usually available to men

b.

a sense of "not belonging" in STEMM

c.

"racial battle fatigue," which is the "cumulative result of a natural race-related stress response to distressing mental and emotional conditions" that adversely affects the health and achievements of students and faculty of color

d.

e.

cumulative disadvantage; such as interest on debt, and disadvantages, such as lower salary and delayed promotion, which accrue over time

f.

expectations that they must work harder, including working extended hours, to fit the ideal worker norm despite having had fewer role models who have successfully managed these expectations, fewer culturally competent mentors, and less access to informal professional networks
FINDING 2-4: There is less research on the factors that drive the underrepresentation of women with disabilities, LGBTQIA women, and international women, but the available research suggests that these groups face significant barriers in STEMM due to their intersectional identities.
FINDING 2-5: While bias, discrimination, and harassment exist across all STEMM disciplines, the form that these phenomena take varies with the history, culture, and context of the specific discipline, as does women's representation. In fields such as physics, engineering, and computer science, disparities in participation are seen by the time students enter college. In contrast, in the fields of biology, medicine, and chemistry, women encounter barriers and biases that prevent equal representation at the faculty level and block advancement into leadership positions. Mathematics has a slightly different pattern of underrepresentation, in that women comprise around 40 percent of undergraduate degree earners, but are lost at the transition from undergraduate to graduate school and the transition from graduate school to faculty.

FINDING 2-6: The number of women medical school applicants, admitted students, and graduates has steadily increased from around 10 percent in 1973 to gender parity today, although gender imbalances still exist in some specializations. Generally, women are well represented in specialties that involve women and children or are associated with nurturing, whereas men are represented in greater numbers in specialties that require technical specialization.
FINDING 2-7: Notwithstanding their overrepresentation at early career stages, women in medicine remain underrepresented among senior leadership roles in medicine. As of 2018, women accounted for only 18 percent of hospital CEOs and 16 percent of deans and department chairs. FINDING 2-8: Although women are disproportionately underrepresented in computer science, engineering, and physics at all levels, women who pursue these fields have a high likelihood of persisting across the academic career trajectory, making up about 20 percent of bachelor's degree earners and professors. In biology, mathematics, and chemistry, attrition of women occurs at every additional step in the academic career pathway-from postdoctoral associate to assistant professor to associate professor to full professor. FINDING 2-9: There is a long-standing cultural association between masculinity and objectivity in most segments of American society, which, in turn, underlies the associations of masculinity with STEMM. This expectation that STEMM professionals are White and male is implicitly conveyed in cultural portrayals of STEMM and STEMM education and these stereotypical associations shape the social and educational environments of children, as well as structural patterns that occur in STEMM professions. The popular images of biologists and chemists are not as male-oriented as in fields such as computer science, engineering, and physics. FINDING 2-10: Cultural expectations and biases about which jobs and careers are held, or should be held, by women and men present biases and barriers that limit both women's and men's opportunities in STEMM (for instance, biases and stereotypes can limit men's opportunities in certain medical fields). FINDING 2-11: The culture of disciplines matters as one of the downstream effects of these cultural histories is that success in physics, engineering, and computer science is presumed to hinge on innate brilliance, whereas in biology success is perceived to require effort and empathy. In both STEMM and the humanities, disciplines where successful practitioners are expected to have "raw, innate talent," women are less well represented-most likely because of sexist beliefs about women's innate "brilliance" that is not supported by evidence (see discussion of the field-specific abilities hypothesis).
FINDING 2-12: Fields such as the biological sciences and medicine have a culture of "hustle" that encourages a work-life blurring. Such STEMM work environments often require a commitment to the job through long hours, stagnant career trajectories, and constant availability and visibility-i.e., the "ideal worker norm" that implicitly assumes that there will be gendered separation of work and family, further reinforcing the stereotypical image of the scientist or physician as a man. Adherence to these ideal worker norms disadvantages both men and women who have commitments and duties outside of work and has a disproportionate impact on women of color because their multiple identities and their small numbers in STEMM departments contribute to an even greater perception that they do not demonstrate the characteristics of the "ideal worker."

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Factors that Drive the Underrepresentation of Women in Scientific, Engineering, and Medical Disciplines

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For decades, sustained investments from foundations, nonprofits, government agencies, and others have supported efforts to improve the representation of girls and women2 in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medical (STEMM) fields.3 Why these efforts to improve recruitment, retention, and advancement have effected little improvement in gender representation in many STEMM fields remains an open question.

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https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/01/09/women-and-men-in-stem-often-at-odds-over-workplace-equity/

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Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project

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Women and Men in STEM Often at Odds Over Workplace Equity

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Women in STEM jobs are more likely than their male counterparts to have experienced discrimination in the workplace and to believe that discrimination is a major reason there are not more women in STEM.

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https://www.insightintodiversity.com/sexual-harassment-continues-to-plague-women-in-science/

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Sexual harassment in the field of scientific research is a longstanding issue that deters some women from pursuing their educational and career goals. The problem is so persistent, in fact, that the U.S. Congress recently decided to get involved. Now, proposed federal legislation in addition to increased advocacy efforts by women scientists and their supporters is drawing attention to a problem long overlooked within a male-dominated workforce.

In 2019, Reps. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) and Frank Lucas (R-OK) introduced the Combating Sexual Harassment in Science Act to the U.S. House of Representatives to support anti-harassment efforts in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). It passed with unanimous, bipartisan support in April of this year.

"We have a responsibility to combat sexual harassment in the scientific community, both on behalf of the individuals who suffer from harassment and on behalf of our STEM workforce as a whole," Lucas said in an April hearing. "Only 23 percent of women who earn STEM degrees stay in STEM careers, and, sadly, a culture of harassment is one of the largest factors in our inability to retain women in the scientific workforce."

The legislation, which is still being reviewed by the Senate, grants funding for federal research to address the causes and consequences as well as mitigation of sexual and gender harassment in the STEM workforce, including at federally funded schools.

The bill also requires federal agencies that fund scientific research to "do their part to ensure that such funds do not go to researchers who are found to be harassers," Johnson stated during the hearing.

In addition to research, the legislation requires the director of the National Office of Science and Technology Policy to establish an interagency working group to coordinate efforts to reduce the prevalence of sexual and gender harassment involving grant personnel. If passed, a total of $17.5 million will be appropriated toward the legislation's implementation.

"My mother was a scientist, and I know the importance of ensuring more women enter [and] excel in this field," Vice President Kamala Harris, who co-sponsored the bill, tweeted in 2019. "And that means we have to change the workplace climate in STEM [and] prevent sexual harassment." Harris has also stated that ending such toxic behavior is essential if the U.S. is to increase the number of women who enter STEM professions.

Adrienne Hollis, PhD, JD, a senior climate and health scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says she is happy that this issue is drawing national attention, but wishes Congress would do more than simply fund research on the topic. Taking concrete steps to improve gender equity in STEM environments would be more beneficial to women and to the advancement of scientific research, she says.

"I'm way beyond research and examinations. I'm about action," Hollis explains. "I don't want to thwart the bill because it is something that addresses the issue, but the grants shouldn't be just about research; [they] should be about getting more [women] students into the STEM workforce."

Women in Hollis' discipline are especially vulnerable to harassment. Climate scientists of every gender are often targeted by climate deniers, especially online. Women who work in this field are subject to additional attacks - including death and rape threats - compared with their male peers, the Scientific American reports.

"We get this additional layer of hate mail, and people, I think, find it easier to put us down because we are women, or feel like they have more right in telling us what is right or wrong despite our expertise, which is always frustrating," Andrea Dutton, a geologist at the University of Florida at the time and an expert on sea-level rise, told the magazine in 2018.

In addition to intimidation tactics from climate change deniers, women in earth sciences have reported facing harassment and threats from colleagues during field experiences in remote areas. "[R]emote settings of traditional field programs enabled differential experiences for women. For example, women were uncomfortable with the lack of privacy going to the bathroom," a December 2020 report from the American Geophysical Union (AGU) found.

The report claims that sexual harassment is prevalent because these programs tend to blur the lines between formal and informal socializing. "During the day, students work on academic projects, and in the evenings, they socialize and drink together," the study states. "This blending makes the boundaries unclear for what behaviors are appropriate in each context."

Picture a Scientist, a 2020 Tribeca Film Festival documentary, explored this issue by sharing firsthand accounts of sexism and racism in STEM research.

"People said what happens in the field stays in the field," Jane Willenbring, PhD, states in the documentary. A geology professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and director of the Scripps Cosmogenic Isotope Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, Willenbring filed a Title IX complaint against Boston University (BU) Professor David Marchant after participating in a research program in Antarctica in 1999. Marchant barraged Willenbring and other women on their remote trip with sexual harassment and insults, she claims.

Despite the severe abuse, Willenbring waited seven years until after she had received tenure to report Marchant, for fear of reprisal, according to Science magazine. In 2019, BU fired him over the allegations.

Research has found that fear of professional retaliation prevents other women in STEM, including students, from reporting similar situations. Studies have also shown that the scientific community has shortcomings when it comes to proper reporting methods as well as workplace climate assessments.

A 2018 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, for example, revealed that federal science agencies and grantees failed to communicate through the proper channels, resulting in harassers receiving federal funding even after relocating to a different institution. AGU, meanwhile, recently reported that there is no "instrument designed specifically to assess academic research climates that includes psychological safety, civility, and misuses of power including, but not limited to, bullying, harassment, and assault."

Hollis encourages women in STEM who experience mistreatment to report the behavior. She notes that misogyny and microaggressions have traditionally been so ingrained in the scientific community that senior women in this field may also perpetuate these behaviors, but students should not let that deter them from their goals.

"Use your voice, because you don't have to put up with it in order to get your degree or get certified or do whatever you have to do," Hollis says. "Follow your dream."●

Mariah Stewart is a senior staff writer for INSIGHT Into Diversity.

This article was published in our September 2021 issue.

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Sexual Harassment Continues to Plague Women in Science | INSIGHT Into Diversity

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Sexual harassment in the field of scientific research is a longstanding issue that deters some women from pursuing their educational and career goals. The problem is so persistent, in fact, that the U.S. Congress recently decided to get involved. Now, proposed federal legislation in addition to increased advocacy efforts by women scientists and their supporters [...]

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https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/07/how-women-are-harassed-out-of-science/492521/

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When Joan was an undergraduate, in the 1970s, she asked her boyfriend why one of his roommates was finishing up a Ph.D. while another, in the same department, still had several years left.

"Barbara's rigid," her boyfriend said. His other roommate, Karen, had slept with her advisor, but Barbara refused to sleep with hers. Chuckling with approval, the boyfriend recounted how Karen had asked to use his waterbed, and left a pair of sexy underwear scrunched in his sheets.

Today, this kind of quid pro quo may be less common, but sexual harassment at universities persists. The spate of lawsuits, investigations, and recent resignations at the University of California, Berkeley, University of Chicago, and UCLA, accompanied by older cases leaked to the press and an increase in women going public about their experiences, have made that clear. Graduate students and postdocs are particularly vulnerable, because their futures depend so completely on good recommendations from professors. And STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) students are more dependent than others. Their career progress hinges on invitations to work on professors' grants or-if students have their own projects-access to big data sets or expensive lab equipment controlled by overwhelmingly male senior faculty.

A 2015 report that one of us co-authored found that one in three women science professors surveyed reported sexual harassment. There's been a lot of talk about how to keep women in the STEM pipeline, but it fails to make a crucial connection: One reason the pipeline leaks is that women are harassed out of science. And sexual harassment is just the beginning.

We recently spoke with a group of senior scientists who confirmed the prevalence of sexual harassment. Kim Barrett, the graduate dean at the University of California, San Diego, said she did not know of a single senior woman in gastroenterology, her subfield, who had not been sexually harassed. Margaret Leinen, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, described a conversation she once overheard between one male and five female scientists at a meeting where harassment was being discussed. "I don't see what the fuss is about," said the man. "I've never met anyone who has been sexually harassed." The women just looked at each other. "Well, now you've met five," they said.

Another established scientist-who, like several women we interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing professional repercussions for speaking out-expressed specific concern about sexual harassment in the summer training courses that feed into prestigious academic jobs. She recalled the lead professor of one such course taking photos of a student, zooming in on her breasts, and making jokes about her. In another course, a different lead professor hand-fed ice cream to a graduate student. "It can be devastating," she said. "[It happens] at the moment when a woman feels she is finally getting to be a real scientist and one of the gang."

Other scientists worried about harassment at annual conferences. Leinen, who was president of the AGU (American Geophysical Union) last year, said that shortly before their annual conference a young woman scientist-emboldened by a resolution widely seen as censure of Berkeley astronomer Geoffrey Marcy-came forward with a report. A colleague had sexually harassed her during graduate school, and continued to do so at AGU's annual meeting. The AGU sprang into action by holding a town-hall session at the conference, and is now discussing concrete steps to address sexual harassment at its next meeting, according to Leinen.
"Are you sure? ... women in your condition have pregnancy brain and can often misinterpret situations."
The American Association of Physical Anthropology was similarly rocked by a sexual assault allegation at its annual conference last year. The women we spoke with in that association agreed that conferences, fieldwork, and business travel are the worst. One recalled a male colleague who once said the only reason to go to conferences is to have an affair. A 2014 study of anthropologists and other field scientists found that 64 percent of 666 respondents had experienced some sort of sexual harassment while doing fieldwork.

Then, there's pregnancy harassment. One former doctoral student recalled having her job at a large research center cut due to "lack of funding" when she told her advisor she was expecting, only to see the position offered the next week to one of her friends. "I confided in my department chair that I believed I had been fired and discriminated against due to my pregnancy," the student wrote. "She replied (and I can quote from memory verbatim because I was so horrified) 'Are you sure? Because women in your condition have pregnancy brain and can often misinterpret situations.' I realized I was screwed. No job, no support, and no health insurance for my upcoming delivery."

This student's experience is far too common. Pregnant undergraduates and graduate students are frequently told that their only option is to withdraw from their programs, with no guarantee of readmission. Withdrawing can mean losing academic progress, tuition, fellowships, on-campus jobs, health insurance, and sometimes housing, according to the university policies we have studied and the people we have spoken with. (We currently have a National Science Foundation grant to work on this issue; the views expressed in this article are our own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the NSF.)

Postdocs, who fuel scientific research in the U.S., are equally at risk. For years, we've heard stories of Principal Investigators (PIs) who insist that pregnant postdocs return to the lab weeks after giving birth. A 2009 survey of postdocs by the social welfare researcher Mary Ann Mason and her colleagues found that of the women who entered their postdoc program intending to be research professors, 41 percent who had children during their postdoc decided against that career. By contrast, men who became fathers during their postdoc years changed their trajectory half as often-roughly the same rate as childless postdocs with no intention of having kids.

Our forthcoming report, Parents in the Pipeline, discusses postdocs' experiences of parenthood. Nearly 20 percent of the roughly 1,000 postdocs who responded to our survey said their PI's response to their parenthood had a negative impact on their training experience overall. According to our preliminary results, only 59 percent of postdoc women respondents said their institution had a maternity leave policy that applied to them, and just 15 percent of all respondents had access to a parental leave policy that covered care taking. Nearly one in 10 of the postdoc respondents were denied leave altogether. "No one explicitly said 'Do not take leave,'" reported one scientist, who instead faced "threats of pulling funding, constant pressure and reminders mere weeks after birth ... insulting remarks about my inability to complete deadlines and astonishing hostility as if having a child equals slacking off." We have heard many similar stories through our website that's dedicated to this issue.

Why don't women just wait to have children until they get their first professor jobs? They can't: The average age for getting a doctorate in science and engineering fields is nearly 32, right when female fertility significantly decreases. Even after graduating, researchers spend upwards of five years as a postdoc before moving into faculty positions, and there is evidence that those who spend more time as a postdoc are the ones who advance into tenure-track research positions.

Wherever it occurs, sexual harassment of students or professors is a violation of Title IX when there's federal funding involved. There almost always is. Sexual harassment of professors, students, or postdoc employees may violate employment laws as well. Moreover, it's profligate as public policy: The U.S. faces a projected deficit of 1 million college-educated STEM workers in the coming decade, according to a recent White House report. Women can fill that gap; nationwide, educators, activists, politicians, and celebrities are all scrambling to encourage girls to choose STEM careers. Yet once those girls reach the final stages of their education-after dedicating over two decades of study-we lose them. The sunk cost of training a postdoc, conservatively, is $500,000-much of it public funds.
Clearly, hounding mothers out of science is not mandated by the nature of scientific research.
Here's how we can stop harassing women out of science-two easier steps and two harder ones. The first is to break the silence surrounding sexual harassment. The decade-long behavior of Marcy, the Berkeley astronomer, was an open secret in the field until other astronomers finally organized in support of his victims, leading to his resignation. After molecular biologist Jason Lieb was found to have sexually assaulted a student and harassed others at the University of Chicago, the university came under fire for hiring him because it had received warnings that Lieb had been accused of harassment at two other universities.

"Reputation is the way we control behavior," points out Ben Barres, a Stanford neurobiologist and trans man who has been vocal about the treatment of women in STEM. "These are serial perps. They go to another school, and the same behavior starts at the next school. Why don't we make this public?" In Congress, Representative Jackie Speier is calling for a requirement that universities report findings of sexual harassment to federal funding agencies.

The second easy step is for funding agencies to send a clear message, backed by Title IX enforcement: Universities need to stop harassment and other illegal behavior towards students who become parents. Our preliminary survey data show that 53 percent of postdoc women report that their PI was very supportive of their pregnancy or parenthood; clearly, hounding mothers out of science is not mandated by the nature of scientific research. Discriminating against women based on pregnancy, or against either parent based on family responsibilities, is illegal sex discrimination. The lack of codified leave policies at institutions leaves the door open to unbridled discretion. Institutions need formal policies, if only as a risk-management measure.

The first hard step: Universities need a best-practice sexual harassment policy that protects the rights of survivors while also giving alleged harassers due process-not immunity. The hysteria suggesting that these two goals are irreconcilable is unjustified. Many advocates are working on this, from well established national groups like American Association of University Women to grassroots efforts such as Know Your IX.

The final step is hard because it involves our wallets. The National Science Foundation provides supplemental funding for graduate students and postdocs working on NSF-supported projects who need parental leave. This funding makes it possible for PIs to cover both the parental leave and the salary of a temporary replacement. Yet these programs typically only apply where an institution has a formal leave policy. They also need to be adopted by more funding agencies.

"Don't bother doing a postdoc," a male neuroscientist advised aspiring postdocs who want to have kids. His advice? "Work at McDonald's, which would pay you equally or more, would give you more respect, and [offer] a ray of hope through promotion."

If the U.S. wants to compete in a globalized world, where science and technology are developing at warp speed, we can't afford to keep harassing women-or anyone-out of science.

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When Joan was an undergraduate, in the 1970s, she asked her boyfriend why one of his roommates was finishing up a Ph.D. while another, in the same department, still had several years left. "Barbara's rigid," her boyfriend said. His other roommate, Karen, had slept with her advisor, but Barbara refused to sleep with hers.

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Women in the Workplace 2024: The 10th-anniversary report

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Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, McKinsey’s annual Women in the Workplace report is the largest study of women in corporate America. See our 2024 findings.

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https://hbr.org/2015/03/the-5-biases-pushing-women-out-of-stem

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A new study looks at race as well as gender.

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As they move up the academic ladder, women are very often underrepresented and underpaid. This is partially the fault of tradition-most of the academic institutions and research centers around the world were historically founded by men and most senior academic positions are still held by men. The rituals, rules, and customs to which many people in academia adhere were long ago formed based on the working style of those men. Today, these rules are quite often unwritten and unspoken, and they are barriers to success for women.

People working in academic institutions, both men and women, are often unaware and uninformed of these unwritten rules; they might think they are doing everything possible to promote women to higher-level professorship positions or grant them funding for their research projects. But during both my own academic career (teaching courses at various universities and pursing my PhD) and in my recent experience coaching and training academics, I've found that only those who play by these deep-seated rules are the ones who reach the most influential positions in academia.

Research shows that both men and women academics at advanced career stages describe themselves in terms that are more traditionally considered masculine-such as being independent, self-confident, and willing to take risks and initiative-than academics at early career stages do. Since unwritten masculine rules are deeply embedded in the present academic world, the race for academic positions highly favors men, despite initiatives to uplift women into positions of academic leadership.

"I feel that one of the biggest obstacles to an inclusive academic culture is the disparity in opportunities between men and women because of ingrained rules that favor what are traditionally considered masculine working styles."

So, what can be done? I feel that one of the biggest obstacles to an inclusive academic culture is the disparity in opportunities between men and women because of these ingrained rules that favor what are traditionally considered masculine working styles. Therefore, important first steps toward an inclusive culture in academic organizations include recognizing, questioning, and finding ways to change these unwritten rules.

Here are the five most important unwritten rules in academia that need changing-and practical ways you can start rewriting these rules at your academic institution.

1. Decisions Are Made During Informal Discussions

Research on female empowerment in science and technology academia shows that informal communication and decision-making processes play a large role in determining the actual outcomes of most organizational processes in higher education and research institutions. In practice, decisions are often not made at the meeting table, but around the coffee machine, during post-conference dinners, after giving visiting lectures, or while chairing a PhD defense.

A lot of men take care of business in informal networks, and they influence decision-making to their advantage while attending informal gatherings. This often happens at traditionally men-dominated locations, such as the pub for drinks after work. On the other hand, women often tend to follow official procedure; they wait to discuss their points of view in a meeting, only to realize that the decision has already been made.

How to Break the Rule

At the educator level:

Consciously include and invite women to join informal gatherings.

Be transparent that official decisions or research may be discussed at these informal gatherings.

Discourage informal networking and social activities that exclude women or don't suit their beliefs, lifestyle, cultural background, etc.

At the institution level:

Educate academic fellows about the effects of discussing decisions informally, the ways it might influence feelings of inclusiveness for colleagues who were not involved, and the negative effect it can have on their careers.

Establish clear, transparent decision-making processes and raise attention when someone deviates from such processes.

2. Your Rank in the Hierarchy Matters

Even in academic organizations that claim to have a "flat hierarchy" or no hierarchy at all, there is always an unofficial one. There are many factors that influence a person's rank in the unofficial hierarchy-women typically rank lower than men, those who natively speak the local language rank higher than those who do not, and those who publish in more prestigious journals, get bigger grants or awards, or receive funding for longer typically rank higher. The higher in the hierarchy one is, the more influence they have on the decision-making process, and the more their status, respect, and ability to exercise influence grow.

"While most men are aware of their position in the hierarchy and the influence it affords them, they often fail to understand their advantage over women, who are often lower in the hierarchy than men in similar professional standing."

While most men are aware of their position in the hierarchy and the influence it affords them, they often fail to understand their advantage over women, who are often lower in the hierarchy than men in similar professional standing. Additionally, women are often unable or unwilling to compete in the hierarchy. As a result, more women than men often accept bigger responsibilities without appropriate promotions or financial compensations, which contributes to the gender pay gap.

How to Break the Rule

At the educator level:

Mentor women colleagues to help them understand the unofficial hierarchy in academia.

Help women colleagues increase their visibility and strengthen their position in the hierarchy.

At the institution level:

Properly title and pay women for their work.

Assess the criteria for promotions and either eliminate unofficial ones or make them official.

Assess how financial compensations are awarded and implement criteria based on responsibilities and contributions.

Increase women's access to partners from industry, high-ranking conferences, and mentors.

3. Research Grants Are Stepping Stones for Professorship

Grants directly contribute to academic career development, according to analysis of the career development of recipients of an individual grant program for talented young scholars in the Netherlands. At the end of grant periods, recipients of these individual grants are more often promoted.

Yet statistics on gender differences in grant applications and grant awarding show that women decide to apply for talent grants less often than men. The proportion of women among grantees also closely reflects the proportion of women among corresponding authors in scientific publications.

"Women are disproportionately given administrative tasks, menial jobs, and undervalued assignments at their jobs."

I believe that what often holds women back from being corresponding authors, applying for grants, and subsequently being promoted to professorship is the amount of office housework they are given at their academic institutions. Women are disproportionately given administrative tasks, menial jobs, and undervalued assignments at their jobs. They are expected to plan department parties, order food, take notes in meetings, and join thankless committees at far greater rates than their male peers. Such expectations not only undermine women's hierarchical status and use up time they could spend writing scientific articles, they also create a political tightrope for women. If women push back against such office housework, they get backlash for not being cooperative.

How to Break the Rule

At the educator level:

Be cognizant of the disparity in office housework assignments and do your part to advocate for more equal distribution of these tasks.

Encourage women colleagues to apply for individual research grants.

At the institution level:

Help women to cope with high application pressure by establishing effective mentoring programs during the application process.

Cut the number of administrative tasks, menial jobs, and undervalued assignments given to women.

Give women projects that are visible and impactful for both themselves and their academic institutions.

4. You Must Make Your Achievements Visible

Pre-COVID research on how gender impacts the researcher journey shows an apparent trend in seven worldwide countries and 28 EU countries: In general, men publish more than women, they are awarded more grants than women, and they apply for more patents than women. This happens in part because women rely on their work to speak for itself and feel that they will be rewarded accordingly-which isn't always the case. Women in academia very often view their scientific research results as just part of their work, not additional achievements, and therefore feel like they're bragging if they talk about their successes.

For example, in one of my recent career training workshops, a woman assistant professor from a European university said she was preparing to apply for big funding. When I invited her to talk about her latest success to the group of participants, she said that she had no recent successes to talk about. I asked, "What about all your scientific publications that you published in the past six months?" To which she replied, "Well, I don't see them as particular successes; publishing is just part of my job."

On the other hand, men see scientific publishing as a networking activity and a competition for status, as well as an opportunity for external collaboration and increased visibility. Men also tend to have more coauthors than women, with the gap widening as publication history increases, which likely contributes to men having a higher publication output than women.

"In general, men publish more than women, they are awarded more grants than women, and they apply for more patents than women. This happens in part because women rely on their work to speak for itself and feel that they will be rewarded accordingly-which isn't always the case."

The pandemic has only worsened this trend. Research on manuscript submissions during COVID-19 indicate that women submitted fewer manuscripts than men during the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020, especially in health and medicine research areas.

How to Break the Rule

At the educator level:

Encourage women colleagues to share their successes with the scientific community and the broader world.

Promote a practice of communicating and celebrating each other's project milestones, successful student supervisions, teaching accomplishments, scientific publications, grants, and awards.

At the institution level:

Create a safe and truly inclusive environment in which women feel comfortable sharing their successes.

Provide unconscious bias training for all faculty members that will show how both men and women unconsciously underestimate women's performance.

Create opportunities for women to publish scientific articles with various research groups and actively promote their successful publications.

Include a COVID-19 impact statement in all academic assessments in which candidates are required to explain the opportunities and constraints faced during the pandemic.

5. Promotion Criteria Are Subjective

Many women focus on fulfilling the official promotion criteria, and they expect to be promoted if they tick all the boxes. It feels like a cold shower if they don't receive that promotion. Yet women are often passed over for promotions by their male colleagues because the criteria for grant application assessment and the tenure review process are often subjective, leaving space for individual interpretation by the members of the reviewing committee.

For example, it is not possible to measure the quality of research with hard and fixed rules while having evaluating criteria such as "work of outstanding originality." Most often, the unconscious gender biases of the reviewing committee influence decisions in favor of men.

In practice, men get promoted in academia when they match the stereotypical patterns we unconsciously expect. For example, men are expected to be known worldwide for their research, to have good business connections with industry partners, and to have the potential to bring in research funding. On the other hand, women are expected not only to tick all the promotion boxes, but also to constantly balance being assertive and being kind, one of the most common unconscious gender biases that all people have.

How to Break the Rule

At the educator level:

Be cognizant of double expectations you might have for men and women in the promotion review process.

Question your judgment and expectations during the review process and make efforts not to privilege certain people based on their gender.

At the institution level:

Practice processes that prevent promotions based on unwritten rules and unconscious gender bias.

Establish clear evaluation criteria before the review process begins.

Provide unconscious bias training for performance evaluators.

Empower candidates to surface bias in the moment and respond to it.

Ensure there is a third party in the room when evaluators discuss candidates to highlight potential bias and encourage objectivity.

Creating an Academia for All

All people who work in academia have come across these or other unwritten rules at some point in their academic careers. Instead of teaching academics how to play by these rules, we should be striving to make the academic environment more egalitarian and truly inclusive for all of our colleagues.

Academic institutions and faculty members who are men are crucial in helping to break down the masculine unwritten rules in academia and put a stop to them. Rather than simply telling women how to "man up," academic institutions should regularly review the outcomes of their promotion and compensation process by gender. Getting rid of unconscious gender bias will make academia a more inclusive and pleasant work environment for all people, no matter their gender identity.

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Do Women Have to Be Masculine to Succeed in Academia?

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As they move up the academic ladder, women are very often underrepresented and underpaid. This is partially the fault of tradition-most of the academic institutions and research centers around the world were historically founded by men and most senior academic positions are still held by men.

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Gender roles are the patterns of behaviors, attitudes, and expectations associated with a particular sex-with being either male or female. For clarity, psychologists sometimes distinguish gender differences, which are related to social roles, from sex differences, which are related only to physiology and anatomy. Using this terminology, gender matters in teaching more than sex (in spite of any jokes told about the latter!).

Although there are many exceptions, boys and girls do differ on average in ways that parallel conventional gender stereotypes and that affect how the sexes behave at school and in class. The differences have to do with physical behaviors, styles of social interaction, academic motivations, behaviors, and choices. They have a variety of sources-primarily parents, peers, and the media. Teachers are certainly not the primary cause of gender role differences, but sometimes teachers influence them by their responses to and choices made on behalf of students.

Physical differences in gender roles

Physically, boys tend to be more active than girls, and by the same token more restless if they have to sit for long periods. They are also more prone than girls to rely on physical aggression if they are frustrated (Espelage & Swearer, 2004). Both tendencies are inconsistent with the usual demands of classroom life, of course, and make it a little more likely that school will be a difficult experience for boys, even for boys who never actually get in trouble for being restless or aggressive.

During the first two or three years of elementary school, gross motor skills develop at almost the same average rate for boys and girls. As a group, both sexes can run, jump, throw a ball, and the like with about equal ease, though there are of course wide significant differences among individuals of both sexes. Toward the end of elementary school, however, boys pull ahead of girls at these skills even though neither sex has begun yet to experience puberty. The most likely reason is that boys participate more actively in formal and informal sports because of expectations and support from parents, peers, and society (Braddock, Sokol-Katz, Greene, & Basinger-Fleischman, 2005; Messner, Duncan, & Cooky, 2003). Puberty eventually adds to this advantage by making boys taller and stronger than girls, on average, and therefore more suited at least for sports that rely on height and strength.

In thinking about these differences, keep in mind that they refer to average trends and that there are numerous individual exceptions. Every teacher knows of individual boys who are not athletic, for example, or of particular girls who are especially restless in class. The individual differences mean, among other things, that it is hard to justify providing different levels of support or resources to boys than to girls for sports, athletics, or physical education. The differences also suggest, though, that individual students who contradict gender stereotypes about physical abilities may benefit from emotional support or affirmation from teachers, simply because they may be less likely than usual to get such affirmation from elsewhere.

Social differences in gender roles

When relaxing socially, boys more often gravitate to large groups. Whether on the playground, in a school hallway, or on the street, boys' social groups tend literally to fill up a lot of space, and often include significant amounts of roughhousing as well as organized and "semi-organized" competitive games or sports (Maccoby, 2002). Girls, for their part, are more likely to seek and maintain one or two close friends and to share more intimate information and feelings with these individuals. To the extent that these gender differences occur, they can make girls less visible or noticeable than boys, at least in leisure play situations where children or youth choose their companions freely. As with physical differences, however, keep in mind that differences in social interactions do not occur uniformly for all boys and girls. There are boys with close friends, contradicting the general trend, and girls who play primarily in large groups.

Differences in social interaction styles happen in the classroom as well. Boys, on average, are more likely to speak up during a class discussion-sometimes even if not called on, or even if they do not know as much about the topic as others in the class (Sadker, 2002). When working on a project in a small co-ed group, furthermore they have a tendency to ignore girls' comments and contributions to the group. In this respect co-ed student groups parallel interaction patterns in many parts of society, where men also have a tendency to ignore women's comments and contributions (Tannen, 2001).

Academic and cognitive differences in gender

On average, girls are more motivated than boys to perform well in school, at least during elementary school. By the time girls reach high school, however, some may try to down play their own academic ability in order make themselves more likeable by both sexes (Davies, 2005). Even if this occurs, though, it does not affect their grades: from kindergarten through twelfth grade, girls earn slightly higher average grades than boys (Freeman, 2004). This fact does not lead to similar achievement, however, because as youngsters move into high school, they tend to choose courses or subjects conventionally associated with their gender-math and science for boys, in particular, and literature and the arts for girls. By the end of high school, this difference in course selection makes a measurable difference in boys' and girls' academic performance in these subjects.

But again, consider my caution about stereotyping: there are individuals of both sexes whose behaviors and choices run counter to the group trends. (I have made this point as well in "Preparing for Licensure: Interpreting Gender-Related Behavior" by deliberately concealing the gender of a student described.) Differences within each gender group generally are far larger than any differences between the groups. A good example is the "difference" in cognitive ability of boys and girls. Many studies have found none at all. A few others have found small differences, with boys slightly better at math and girls slightly better at reading and literature. Still other studies have found the differences not only are small, but have been getting smaller in recent years compared to earlier studies. Collectively the findings about cognitive abilities are virtually "non-findings," and it is worth asking why gender differences have therefore been studied and discussed so much for so many years (Hyde, 2005). How teachers influence gender roles?

Teachers often intend to interact with both sexes equally, and frequently succeed at doing so. Research has found, though, that they do sometimes respond to boys and girls differently, perhaps without realizing it. Three kinds of differences have been noticed. The first is the overall amount of attention paid to each sex; the second is the visibility or "publicity" of conversations; and the third is the type of behavior that prompts teachers to support or criticize students.

Attention paid

In general, teachers interact with boys more often than with girls by a margin of 10 to 30 percent, depending on the grade level of the students and the personality of the teacher (Measor & Sykes, 1992). One possible reason for the difference is related to the greater assertiveness of boys that I already noted; if boys are speaking up more frequently in discussions or at other times, then a teacher may be "forced" to pay more attention to them. Another possibility is that some teachers may feel that boys are especially prone to getting into mischief, so they may interact with them more frequently to keep them focused on the task at hand (Erden & Wolfgang, 2004). Still another possibility is that boys, compared to girls, may interact in a wider variety of styles and situations, so there may simply be richer opportunities to interact with them. This last possibility is partially supported by another gender difference in classroom interaction, the amount of public versus private talk.

Public talk versus private talk

Teachers have a tendency to talk to boys from a greater physical distance than when they talk to girls (Wilkinson & Marrett, 1985). The difference may be both a cause and an effect of general gender expectations, expressive nurturing is expected more often of girls and women, and a businesslike task orientation is expected more often of boys and men, particularly in mixed-sex groups (Basow & Rubenfeld, 2003; Myaskovsky, Unikel, & Dew, 2005). Whatever the reason, the effect is to give interactions with boys more "publicity." When two people converse with each other from across the classroom, many others can overhear them; when they are at each other's elbows, though, few others can overhear.

Distributing praise and criticism

In spite of most teachers' desire to be fair to all students, it turns out that they sometimes distribute praise and criticism differently to boys and girls. The differences are summarized in Table 1. The tendency is to praise boys more than girls for displaying knowledge correctly, but to criticize girls more than boys for displaying knowledge incorrectly (Golombok & Fivush, 1994; Delamont, 1996). Another way of stating this difference is by what teachers tend to overlook: with boys, they tend to overlook wrong answers, but with girls, they tend to overlook right answers. The result (which is probably unintended) is a tendency to make boys' knowledge seem more important and boys themselves more competent. A second result is the other side of this coin: a tendency to make girls' knowledge less visible and girls themselves less competent.

Table 1: Gender differences in how teachers praise and criticize students

Type of response from teacher

Boys

Girls

Praises

Correct knowledge

"Good" or compliant behavior

Overlooks or ignores

"Good" or compliant behavior; in correct knowledge

Mis behavior; correct knowledge

Gender differences also occur in the realm of classroom behavior. Teachers tend to praise girls for "good" behavior, regardless of its relevance to content or to the lesson at hand, and tend to criticize boys for "bad" or inappropriate behavior (Golombok & Fivush, 1994). This difference can also be stated in terms of what teachers overlook: with girls, they tend to overlook behavior that is not appropriate, but with boys they tend to overlook behavior that is appropriate. The net result in this case is to make girls' seem more good than they may really be, and also to make their "goodness" seem more important than their academic competence. By the same token, the teacher's patterns of response imply that boys are more "bad" than they may really be.

At first glance, the gender differences in interaction can seem discouraging and critical of teachers because they imply that teachers as a group are biased about gender. But this conclusion is too simplistic for a couple of reasons. One is that like all differences between groups, interaction patterns are trends, and as such they hide a lot of variation within them. The other is that the trends suggest what often tends in fact to happen, not what can in fact happen if a teacher consciously sets about to avoid interaction patterns like the ones I have described. Fortunately for us all, teaching does not need to be unthinking; we have choices that we can make, even during a busy class!

References

Basow, S. & Rubenfeld, K. (2003). "Troubles talk": Effects of gender and gender-typing. Sex Roles, 48(3/4), 183-188.

Braddock, J., Sokol-Katz, J., Greene, A., & Basinger-Fleischman, L. (2005). Uneven playing fields: State variations in boys' and girls' access to and participation in high school interscholastic sports. Sociological Spectrum, 25(2), 231-250.

Davies, J. (2005). Expressions of gender: An analysis of pupils' gendered discourse styles in small group classroom discussions. Discourse and Society, 14(2), 115-132.

Erden, F. & Wolfgang, C. (2004). An exploration of the differences in teachers' beliefs related to discipline when dealing with male and female students. Early Child Development and Care, 174(1), 3-11.

Espelage, D. & Swearer, S. (2004). Bullying in American schools: A socio-ecological perspective on prevention and intervention. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Delamont, S. (1996). Women's place in education. Brookfield, MA: Avebury Publishers.

Freeman, D. (2004). Trends in educational equity of girls and women. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics.

Golombok, S. & Fivush, R. (1994). Gender development. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hyde, J. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60(6), 581-592.

Maccoby, E. (2002). Gender and social exchange: A developmental perspective. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Measor, L. & Sykes, P. (1992). Gender and schools. New York: Cassell.

Messner, M., Dunca, M., & Cooky, C. (2003). Silence, sports bras, and wrestling porn. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 27(1), 38-51.

Myaskovsky, L, Unikel, E., & Dew, M. (2005). Effects of gender diversity on performance and interpersonal behavior in small work groups. Sex Roles, 52(9/10), 645-657.

Sadker, D. (2002). An educator's primer on the gender war. Phi Delta Kappan, 84(3), 235-240.

Tannen, D. (2001). You just don't understand: Men and women in conversation. New York: Quill.

Wilkinson, L. & Marrett, C. (Eds.). (1985). Gender influences in classroom interaction. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.

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Gender roles are the patterns of behaviors, attitudes, and expectations associated with a particular sex-with being either male or female. For clarity, psychologists sometimes distinguish gender differences, which are related to social roles, from sex differences, which are related only to physiology and anatomy.

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https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field

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https://www.unicef.org/globalinsight/stories/mapping-gender-equality-stem-school-work

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The future of work is changing. Existing jobs are being modified and new ones are emerging at the frontiers of our economies, which require knowledge and skills in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). At the same time, millions of children and young people aren't developing the skills they need to effectively participate in society. Girls, in particular, are missing out on the skills they will need throughout their lives and to become more effective citizens and changemakers - skills which quality STEM education can cultivate, like thinking laterally, problem solving and innovating.

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Mapping gender equality in STEM from school to work

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The story of disparities in STEM in 17 illuminating charts

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https://19thnews.org/2021/05/women-health-care-leaving-breaking-point/

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Julie Conboy Russo had been a nurse for almost 40 years. She didn't want to leave the field, but she didn't feel she had a choice.

In November, COVID-19 cases were climbing nationally. Russo, who at the time worked in a long-term care facility in New York, had been lucky. She had never tested positive for the virus or brought it home to her immunocompromised husband. Case counts at her current workplace remained low.

Then the national surge arrived at her workplace. Within a week, she said, a COVID-19 cluster appeared at the facility. One resident fell ill and died days later.

Russo was terrified. Earlier that year, in a job at a different nursing facility, she had seen the damage the virus wrought. Working through the pandemic - seeing countless coworkers and patients die - is a memory she cannot shake. She doesn't know if it will ever fully get better.

"They talk about PTSD - this is a form of it," she said.

So when COVID arrived at the facility, she sought clearance to work from home. Her request was denied. Out of options, she resigned under duress, she said, which allowed her to qualify for unemployment. Now, Russo, 60, who had been working toward her doctorate in nursing, is devoting time to her dissertation. She hopes to return to work maybe a year from now, but isn't sure if she'll be able to find a job - she worries she is too old to be an attractive candidate.

"Maybe this is like a sign that this is where I needed to be. I'm healthy, I'm well, my husband is healthy and well," Russo said. "Maybe this was a way to get away from it."

The pandemic posed a Herculean challenge for the women-dominated health care industry, which is the largest single employment sector in America. Thousands of health care workers died. And still more carry immense psychological wounds in an industry where a third of workers say burnout is driving them out. In the past year, countless women - physicians, nurses and care workers - say the coronavirus crisis has driven them to leave the workforce or dramatically scale back their professional commitment.

Many don't know if or when they will return.

Employment data shows that women lost or left more than 1.5 million net health care jobs in April 2020 alone. That represented 12 percent of all jobs held by women in health care. About 6 percent, or 196,000, of the jobs held by men were lost that month.

Even as jobs have begun to rebound, the recovery has been slower for women: They were still short 480,000 jobs as of this March, the most recent month for which data is available, compared with pre-pandemic levels. Men were short 28,000.

Industry experts say employment data is the tip of the iceberg.

Studies of the pandemic 's impact on women in medicine have shown that the past year has disrupted pipelines to leadership positions, tenure tracks, access to networking and collaborations, productivity and publications of academic research.

Experts worry that the pandemic only exacerbated the myriad ways in which the medical industry limits the professional advancement or equitable treatment of the women workers it relies on. If those problems go unaddressed, they say, the impact could be devastating, robbing women of one of their stablest employment pipelines, and undermining health care quality and outcomes for patients.

"You're seeing these workers - they can't keep working, and many of them are women," said Bianca Frogner, a health economist at the University of Washington who has studied this workforce. "We're seeing a culmination that's leading to this continued downward slope of women not gaining back employment."

The onus of COVID caregiving fell squarely on the shoulders of health care workers who earned the least, and who had the most tenuous professional support structures in place - workers who happened to be women. As a result, burnout, already more prevalent among women health care workers than men, has skyrocketed.

Two decades ago, certified nursing assistant Kenya Blackburn would have been responsible for maybe five people a day at nursing homes in Michigan, enough to keep her busy but not overloaded, so she could properly care for patients.

At the height of the pandemic, she sprinted from patient to patient - as many as 30 in an eight-hour shift - to keep up with the workload.

Her care suffered. And so did her physical and mental health. Every missed interaction, every slip-up when she forgot to go back to a patient, felt like failure. The burdens she took home with her had never weighed heavier.

She's thought more than once of leaving the industry. It's all her coworkers talk about, she said. Her facility can scarcely keep trainees on before people quit to do something else - work at Amazon or a car plant or as a greeter at Walmart. As the industry overall has lost workers, cut costs and kept pay low - after 20 years, Blackburn only makes $15 an hour through a union contract - it has worn down people like her who are passionate about health care.

Things were difficult before the health crisis, "but it's not getting better, it's getting worse," said Blackburn, 51. "We need the help, but the companies don't want to pay for you to get more help or value you as a person. Instead they value you as a machine."

Kenya Blackburn, a certified nursing assistant, photographed on May 13, 2021. (Photo by Cydni Elledge)

Much of the job losses in the health care industry were concentrated in lower-paying, women-heavy professions such as home care and long-term care work. While men are back to pre-pandemic levels in almost every health care occupation, as of March 2021 there were still 10 percent fewer women working in nursing and residential care facilities compared to January 2020 and 3 percent fewer in home health care jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Grueling schedules, low pay and pay disparities have been common in the health care industry for decades. Occupational segregation - which refers to the economic and social factors that push workers of a certain demographic into a particular field or profession - has, in health care, kept women in lower-paying industry jobs and specialties even among higher-paying positions.

Efforts to reach parity have stalled for years at every level, beginning with pay.

Nursing assistants, like Blackburn, are 82 percent women, earning a median wage of $14.82 an hour. Women represent 90 percent of home health aides, earning a median wage of $13.02 an hour, according to BLS data. Surgeons - of which nearly three-quarters are men - earn an average annual salary of more than $250,000 a year (BLS doesn't list their median hourly pay because it is in excess of $100).

Doctors are closer to parity between men and women, with men representing 60 percent of the workforce. But women are still more likely to be in lower-paying specialties including pediatrics, family medicine and gynecology, and more likely to be junior physicians - the people who were called in when coronavirus cases surged, said Diana Lautenberger, the head of the gender equity lab at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).

In the past few years, women exceeded men as the largest share of medical school students at just over 50 percent. The pandemic has inspired an 18 percent surge in medical school applications - a shift that could help drive parity. But studies have found that following the completion of their residencies, women are far more likely to leave medicine because of burnout, harassment and pay inequities. As many as 40 percent of women doctors leave their jobs or move part-time within six years of completing their residency, according to one 2019 study by the University of Michigan.

Dr. Sasha Shillcutt - a cardiac anesthesiologist, professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and founder of Brave Enough, which helps women with reducing burnout in medicine - said the field of health care is still a reflection of the world it operated in decades ago when men were the overwhelming majority of physicians.

"The hierarchy of medicine has been built to accommodate men who for a century have not shared [the same caregiving] burdens. While the sheer number of women in medicine has increased, the hierarchy, and specifically the gender makeup of leadership in medicine, has not changed," Shillcutt said. "Thus, neither have the work structures or work flexibility."

Already, women health care professionals were questioning whether the industry could support them if it wasn't offering access to crucial benefits like paid leave and child care or access to flexible schedules and support for continuing education or mentorship. The pandemic has only made that question more urgent.

Only about 25 percent of health care workers have access to paid family leave, and surveys of mothers in medicine have found that about four in five reported facing gender or maternal discrimination at work. A recent study of women in academic medicine that looked at U.S. medical school graduates from 1979 to to 2018 found that women were 23 percent less likely to be promoted to professor positions and 54 percent less likely to chair departments. It cited responsibilities with child care and elder care as one of the reasons women were held back from promotions.

It was the events of the past year that finally pushed Dr. Joanna Turner Bisgrove to leave her job of almost 14 years, a position as a part-time family medicine doctor in Wisconsin that had long failed to support her and other women at her hospital, she said.

For years, she had pushed for more representation and support for women physicians. Bisgrove was one of two women in her hospital system's regional board and wanted to see more women in leadership. But many of those requests went unaddressed, she said. Then during the pandemic, doctors at her hospital were shut out of the support that some of the other health care workers received, such as flexibility for time off and help with child care.

The attitude toward the doctors, she said, was that they were expected to go without because their pay is significantly higher. But there was no acknowledgement of the dual roles many of them also perform, Bisgrove said.

"They completely ignored the women physicians who have the same issues as women on the health care staff," Bisgrove said. "The cultural approaches are, particularly in corporate medicine: You're just a cog in the machine and you're there to earn money and make money for the organization."

Bisgrove works part-time to focus on advocacy work centering equity and women in medicine and to take on leadership roles in the American Medical Association. She is moving to her hometown of Chicago to be closer to family and work in a program that gives her space to work on advocacy, public policy and finish her master's degree in public health.

"I need a place that will support my advocacy and my work in health equity," Bisgrove said. "When we've pointed it out, 'Hey, this is a better way to approach things so you retain more physicians, particularly women physicians because they are growing part of the workforce and we are short doctors in Wisconsin, they just ignore me."

But she said most of the physicians who also work part-time with her are doing it to address burnout or to better juggle family responsibilities.

There is limited research on how the pandemic affected women in medicine, but what exists points to child care as a major issue, said Dr. Yalda Jabbarpour, a primary care doctor who studies family medicine policy. Already, it was clear that burnout was higher for women in family medicine than men. When COVID-19 hit, she pivoted her research to figure out what that looked like in a global health emergency.

The survey she is working on - a qualitative analysis looking at about 100 family physicians, a specialty that already skews toward women - is still being analyzed. But the data already pointed out a clear theme, she said: During the pandemic, women left medicine to take on child care duties.

"'We're definitely seeing that trend of 'schools closed, there was no day care, my employer wasn't ready to support me with childcare options and so I think i'm going to have to leave,'" she said. "Medicine is one of those careers where when you leave, it's really hard to go back."

"Of course family's going to win out when there's no child care," she added.

A survey of 152 academic medical institutions last fall by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) found that about half offered child care support - whether by helping doctors find care, subsidizing it or offering it on-site. In the pandemic, only the institutions that were already offering aid for child care bolstered those efforts.

"This tells us the chasm is widening between those institutions that are really seeing this as a critical employee issue ... and those that have not," said Lautenberger at AAMC.

If no adjustments are made, experts worry it could erode parity even further in one of the occupations that has the most opportunity to help women achieve higher pay in health care.

The data likely won't reflect the pandemic's impact for years. But it's expected to show up later, Lautenberger said, as people make decisions about pursuing a health care profession, or instead opt for a job that allows for more flexibility and balance. The people most likely to seek that balance are women, who before their pandemic took on the majority of child care in their families and during the pandemic were willing to leave their jobs in order to perform care at home. It was a choice that men did not often confront.

"We've definitely seen that there is a demonstrated impact on women and their careers - we just don't know to what extent yet," she said.

An exodus of women from health care could have ramifications not just for the industry, but for the nation at large, as the aging population grows and more Americans are expected to need some kind of nursing or home care. About three-fourths of the health care workforce is women, a reflection of their predominance in nursing and home care, specifically.

"These care and health care occupations are absolutely critical to supporting our entire country, and to supporting the people who are most vulnerable - who are sick, who are children and who are elderly, who need this serious and intensive medical care," said Diana Boesch, a women's economic policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. "If we don't support the workers in those jobs, we will continue to face a crisis of care and a crisis of health care."

Meanwhile, the loss of women physicians brings its own form of harm.A 2016 paper suggested that, in some contexts, having a woman doctor could actually be linked to better outcomes for patient health. And a wealth of evidence suggests that often patients prefer having a physician who is their same gender.

"It's not that if I'm a woman, I don't give a shit about guys - it's just that everybody has their own unconscious bias," said Theresa Rohr-Kirchgraber, a professor of medicine at the University of Georgia and Augusta University, and past president of the American Medical Women's Association. "If you don't have folks who look like you at the table and in the office, you may not get the care that you need. It's an advantage of having folks who are like you giving you your care."

She worries that the past year built on the previous trends that might drive women out of medicine, or discourage them from pursuing a career in health care.

Zukie Seth, 24, has already felt those pressures acutely. She considers herself lucky: She's young, unattached and without kids. But Seth, a critical care nurse in Washington, D.C., found herself struggling to hold on through the past year.

Typically, she said, nurses in her hospital care for two patients. But then as schools closed - and nurses who had children stayed home to care for them - more responsibility fell on younger nurses, like her. At the same time, the number of patients kept climbing. She found herself spending three to four hours at a time caring for patients with COVID complications, performing the bulk of patient care.

Last May, she said, the hospital suggested each nurse take on more patients. For the first time, Seth wondered if she could or should stay at her job, which is her first-ever full-time position. If she left, she knew it could mean permanent professional setbacks. She called her mother.

"I was like, 'Mom, I can't make this work,'" Seth recalled. "It was starting to get bad, and we didn't know how much worse it was going to get, and how long it was going to go on."

Seth found it in herself to keep going. Still, the past year has made her think deeply about her choices going into nursing. She doesn't regret it, she said, but "it's been a big experience."

Now, COVID cases have declined in the area, but workers are still tired and grieving, with little time to process. The burden is acute for nurses on the frontlines.

"The grief aspect is definitely just seeing so many patients go downhill so fast, and losing a large number of them," she said. "The burnout has been coming from pocketing that grief and moving forward, because we don't have time to stop and process it."

President Joe Biden has touted plans that could ostensibly alleviate some of the challenges. He has called for improved access to child care, for reforms that would pay home care workers a $15 minimum wage, and that would create opportunities for advancement. Those are reforms that could help - especially with child care, which many women pointed to as a factor driving them out of work. (Biden's proposal likely would not achieve universal child care, though.)

But none of those proposals has gotten buy-in from Republicans, and it's unclear whether they will pass. Already, the U.S. Senate has shot down efforts to pass a $15 minimum wage. And even if enacted, they alone wouldn't necessarily undo the effects of the past year, let alone the past decades.

Money is also just one part of it, many women said. There are also societal shifts to consider - respect for nurses and home care workers, and a culture that treats caregiving as work for both parents.

"It's really important that our health care system revamps and thinks about what women in the workforce need," Jabbarpour said. "The pandemic has brought that to light."

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Women in health care are at a breaking point - and they're leaving

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Julie Conboy Russo had been a nurse for almost 40 years. She didn't want to leave the field, but she didn't feel she had a choice. In November, COVID-19 cases were climbing nationally. Russo, who at the time worked in a long-term care facility in New York, had been lucky.

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https://www.history.com/news/nursing-women-civil-war

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Before the American Civil War, the majority of hospital nurses-or "stewards" -were men. But the war created a medical crisis that demanded more volunteers, and a lot of the people who took up the call were women.

Of the estimated 620,000 military deaths during the Civil War, about two-thirds were due to disease. If a bullet didn't kill a soldier, the infection that developed from a wound might; and the infectious diseases that spread in war hospitals ravaged soldiers and medical workers alike. Amid this desperate need for medical workers, women began to volunteer as nurses for wounded soldiers. After the war, women continued to work in medicine; and by 1900, they represented 91 percent of U.S. nurses.

Women Volunteer as Nurses

When the Civil War began in 1861, medical jobs weren't yet professionalized as they are today, says Stanley Burns, a surgeon, historian and founder of The Burns Archive.

"Surgery was not part of medical training for many people," he says. To become a doctor, "the only requirement was an apprenticeship with a doctor and some courses." Many of the people who volunteered as surgeons during the Civil War essentially learned to operate on the job.

Similarly, there was no required training for the nurses who volunteered in war hospitals; so most of their training happened on the job, too. Although both Union and Confederate military medical departments preferred using men in war hospitals, the need for more nurses became obvious in the first few months of the war. Many of the men who ended up working as nurses in these hospitals were actually wounded soldiers who had been asked to help care for even more wounded soldiers.

Both white women and free Black women sought to fill this need by volunteering as nurses, though they had very different experiences. Free Black women were frequently assigned tasks viewed as more menial, and often could only treat Black soldiers or other nurses. In the Confederacy, slaveowners forced enslaved Black women to perform nursing duties and then slaveowners received compensation for the work.

Florence Nightingale, Dorothea Dix Shape Nursing

American nurses working during the Civil War may have heard about the British nurse Florence Nightingale, who had emphasized the benefits of training for nurses during the 1850s Crimean War. She helped establish nursing as a profession in Britain, and influenced the way that some Americans began to think about nursing during the Civil War.

In 1861, the U.S. Army appointed Dorothea Dix as its first superintendent of nurses. Dix implemented a system for women to volunteer for three-month nursing assignments during the war. In addition to establishing standards of care for nurses who volunteered with the Army, she also helped shape the image of what a nurse should look like. To volunteer as a nurse under Dix, women had to be between the ages of 35 and 50, healthy and "plain-looking."

Another influential Civil War nurse was the abolitionist Clara Barton, who became known as "Angel of the Battlefield" and went on to found the American Red Cross. In 1862, she made a harrowing journey by wagon to deliver medical supplies to the war hospital near Virginia's Cedar Mountain battlefield.

"Five days and nights with three hours' sleep-a narrow escape from capture-and some days of getting the wounded into hospitals at Washington," she wrote of her journey. "And if you chance to feel that the positions I occupied were rough and unseemly for a woman-I can only reply that they were rough and unseemly for men."

Nursing Becomes Professionalized-And Female

Thousands of women served as nurses during the Civil War, which served as a catalyst for more women entering the field. Like other medical jobs, nursing became more professionalized and specialized during the late 19th century. In 1873, New York City's Bellevue Hospital opened the first U.S. nursing school based on the standards developed by Florence Nightingale. That year, hospitals in New Haven and Boston opened similar schools.

However, this professionalization also created a gendered hierarchy in pay and prestige. At the turn of the century, men made up the majority of doctors and surgeons, while increasingly more women held lower-paying nursing jobs, which were seen as less prestigious.

Today, nursing is the largest healthcare profession in the United States. Although more men have entered the field in the 21st century, women are still in the majority, making up 91 percent of nurses.
READ MORE: When Computer Coding Was a 'Woman's' Job

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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How the US Civil War Inspired Women to Enter Nursing | HISTORY

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As America's brutal war inflicted high casualties and placed a strain on military medical care, women on both sides of the conflict answered the call.

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Subtopic 5- Historical Access to Education

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Subtopic 5- Historical Access to Education

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https://genius.com/Aretha-franklin-respect-lyrics

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[Refrain]
(Just a, just a, just a, just a) Yeah, baby
(Just a, just a, just a, just a) When you get home
(Just a little bit) Yeah
(Just a little bit)

[Instrumental]

[Verse 4]
Ooh, your kisses, sweeter than honey
And guess what? So is my money

[Chorus 2]
All I want you to do for me, is give it to me when you get home
(Re, re, re ,re) Yeah baby
(Re, re, re ,re) Whip it to me
(Respect, just a little bit) When you get home, now
(Just a little bit)

[Verse 5]
R-E-S-P-E-C-T , find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, take out E-C-T, oh

[Outro]
(Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me)
A little respect
(sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me)
Whoa, babe
(Just a little bit) A little respect
(Just a little bit) I get tired
(Just a little bit) Keep on tryin'
(Just a little bit) You're runnin' out of fools
(Just a little bit) And I ain't lyin'
(Just a little bit)
(Re, re, re, re) Start when you come home
(Re, re, re, respect) Or you might walk in
(Just a little bit) And find out I'm gone
(Just a little bit) I gotta have
(Just a little bit) A little respect
(Just a little bit)

Aretha Franklin's signature song was a groundbreaking female empowerment anthem of the late 1960s.

Originally a minor hit by Otis Redding in 1965, Aretha's "Respect" was given a new arrangement and new lyrics about a woman boldly demanding the respect of her man. The song hit #1 on Billboard's pop chart for 2 weeks in the summer of 1967, causing Rolling Stone to remark "Aretha Franklin has shot out of nowhere and become Lady Soul."

Otis Redding's original had a significantly different storyline: it's sung from the perspective of a hard-working man demanding "respect" (a euphemism for sex) from his woman. Engineer Tom Dowd-who worked on both Redding's version and Aretha's-suggested covering the song, and created a new arrangement. Aretha and her sisters rewrote the lyrics, including the song's memorable breakdown:

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB
Sock it to me, Sock it to me, Sock it to me, Sock it to me

"Respect" appeared on Aretha's 11th album I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You, her first for Atlantic Records. Its lyrics popularized several phrases, including "taking care of business" and "propers" (which later became "props," one of the defining slang terms of the hip-hop era). "Sock it to me" became a major meme in the late '60s-Richard Nixon even used it to help get elected President in 1968.

In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked "Respect" at #5 on their list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All-Time. In 2010, the song's producer Jerry Wexler reflected on Aretha's career:

"Respect" had the biggest impact, with overtones for the civil rights movement and gender equality. It was an appeal for dignity combined with a blatant lubricity. There are songs that are a call to action. There are love songs. There are sex songs. But it's hard to think of another song where all those elements are combined.

Ask us a question about this song

Why does she sing take care, TCB???

"TCB" was once slang for "taking care of business." Seems like Aretha just threw it in as an ad-lib that fit at the time!

What have the artists said about the song?

Otis Redding took Aretha Franklin's cover of his song in good humor, telling the audience at the Monterey Pop Festival:

This song was taken away from me, a friend of mine, this girl just took this song ... That's one of my favorite songs ... Everybody wants respect, you know?

Atlantic Records Studio, New York City

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Respect Lyrics: What you want, baby, I got it / What you need, do you know I got it? / All I'm askin' is for a little respect when you come home / (Just a little bit) Hey baby / (Just a little bit

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https://www.bestcollegesonline.org/faq/why-is-there-a-perception-that-nursing-is-a-female-occupation/#:~:text=While%20the%20nursing%20profession%20has,figure%20of%20a%20medical%20doctor.

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Individuals pursuing a nursing degree or interested in doing so may have noticed that male nurses seem to be anomalies. The widespread perception that nursing is a female profession is far from a natural conclusion, however, and digging into the predominance of women in the field reveals some rather startling and disturbing features of western culture. This article explores the stereotypes and the often-willful blindness to men within the nursing world.
See our ranking of the Top 30 Most Affordable Master's in Nursing Education Degrees Online.
Rooted in Patriarchy

While the nursing profession has always had male practitioners, the perception that the field is feminine is an excellent example of embedded misogyny. Simply put, caregiving and nurturing are perceived as primarily female pursuits, one that is subordinate to the authority figure of a medical doctor. That the archetypal perception of a doctor is also incorrectly perceived to be male is another facet of this ingrained stereotype.

The observed predominance of female nurses is not due to any natural suitability, but rather the fact that western culture essentially excluded women from most professions seen as masculine. This may be read that women have traditionally been excluded from pursuing any field that accorded authority or social mobility to an individual. Nursing was seen as an occupation or pastime that was suitable but second to a woman's primary cultural role as subordinate caregiver and the fruitful bearer of a family.

In Euro American modernity, women have been cast as supporting characters to whatever ambitions or earning power a male partner possessed. The role of women as natural nurturers acting in supportive roles rather than those of authority is reified in early education-presenting gendered imagery of these roles: nurses are women and doctors are men. This is only one example of the initial structure embedded that genders the perception of professions and pastimes, but it is a hallmark of patriarchal domination that dictates sex-based genders and sets the stage for restrictive and static ideations of men and women.

Repercussions and Reactivity

This cultural construction essentially disempowers male nurses and discourages many men from pursuing a nursing degree. The ideation of nursing as a strictly female role in society renders men in the field effectively invisible. Their essential work, for nursing, is a vital facet of the caregiving community, is devalued or disavowed entirely, because popular perception says they do not exist.

As has been asserted by J. Evans in an article published by the Journal of Advanced Nursing, the failure to recognize the participation of men in the field of nursing renders examination of gender dynamics within the healthcare sphere opaque, perpetuating inequality and other aspects of disproportionate authority. Because of this opacity, neither can the problems be identified clearly, nor can researchers examine them critically. A literature review of gender discrimination and nursing published in the Journal of Professional Nursing asserts that adult portrayals of nurses in the media further complicate the matter because nurses are characterized as sex objects. They are always women who exhibit little mature self-determination, agency, or resistance to the blandishments of males in general.

Male practitioners of the nursing profession are a fact, unlike the stereotype of the Nurse as a woman. Misunderstanding of feminist principals leads many to believe that recognition must act as a zero-sum game. However, modern feminist ideology applied to male nurses insists that they must be recognized in order to rectify the gross imbalance of power in the medical sphere. With current shortfalls in active practitioners, the nursing profession must address this misapprehension, permitting recognition for both male and female nurses, opening what is popularly believed to be a feminine profession to all individuals seeking a nursing degree.

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Why Is There A Perception That Nursing Is A Female Occupation? - Best Colleges Online

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Individuals pursuing a nursing degree or interested in doing so may have noticed that male nurses seem to be anomalies. The widespread perception that nursing is a female profession is far from a natural conclusion, however, and digging into the predominance of women in the field reveals some rather startling and disturbing features of western culture.

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https://youtu.be/d7uZOAzVRgU

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Jordan B Peterson: Why so many Male Engineers and Female Nurses?

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https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10225263/

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Abstract

To answer the question, "Why do women choose nursing?", female nursing students were given an opportunity to speak "in their own voices" to reveal their needs, motivations, and expectations. In a study employing grounded theory methodology, 16 female nursing students were interviewed and audiotaped for initial constant comparison analysis. Further analyses employing coding, categorizing, comparing, and contrasting of data made it possible to isolate recurrent words and phrases, and to identify concepts for the purpose of theory building. Reliability was established by both stability analysis and reproducibility analysis. Validity was supported by construct (convergent and discriminant) and representational components. Not surprisingly, the construct of desiring to care for others was readily apparent. However, it was power and empowerment that emerged from the interviews as the most resounding and fully developed construct of the study. Students' references to practical motivations for choosing nursing were so notably scarce that their virtual omission constituted an important theme.

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national center for biotechnology information

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To answer the question, "Why do women choose nursing?", female nursing students were given an opportunity to speak "in their own voices" to reveal their needs, motivations, and expectations. In a study employing grounded theory methodology, 16 female nursing students were interviewed and audiotaped ...

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https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01053/full

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in her words

New research explores how access to technology helps put girls on par with boys.

Image

Credit Nicole Ruggiero

Welcome to In Her Words, where women rule the headlines. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. Let me know what you think at dearmaya@nytimes.com.
"By teaching our girls to code, we're not just preparing them to enter the work force - we're preparing them to lead it." - Reshma Saujani, the founder of Girls Who Cod e, a nonprofit that aims to close the gender gap in technology
I have six nieces between the ages of 10 and 19, and over the years, I've spent many hours staring at them hunched over small screens, hypnotized by the glowing light and tapping away like mad. So much for quality time with their adoring auntie.

I usually manage to temper my impulse to snatch the device from their fingers, though - in part because I know that being well-versed in technology, particularly as girls, is going to serve them well: Over the last decade, opportunities in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math) have grown three times faster than in non-STEM fields, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

[Sign up here to get this column, In Her Words, delivered as a newsletter to your inbox.]

Boys play games for fun, while girls use tech to learn. The vast majority of children use their devices to watch videos and movies, listen to music and to play games. But while boys are more likely than girls to play games for fun - 81 percent versus 72 percent - girls are playing to learn, the study found. Girls also read books and articles on devices more than boys do, 40 percent compared with 28 percent. And girls are more inclined to use technology to create something new, whether it be videos or coding projects; to discover a new talent or interest; or to connect to social issues.

Still, boys remain more confident in their skills. Even if girls are spending more time learning, it's boys who are more likely to believe they are the tech experts of their families, 53 percent versus 38 percent of girls. Parents may have something to do with that: In the study, they tended to give sons more credit for figuring out new technology on their own while reporting that their daughters learn technology from someone else, whether it be a parent, sibling or friend.

[

Parents give sons more digital freedom. A variety of research has found that girls are more likely to be targeted by false rumors online, as well as to receive unwanted explicit messages. That might explain why parents of girls have stricter rules for their daughters' social media activity - they're more likely to require permission to download apps, turn on privacy settings or ask girls to share their passwords.

The future is bright (if we intervene at the right moment). "By teaching our girls to code, we're not just preparing them to enter the work force - we're preparing them to lead it," Reshma Saujani, chief executive ofGirls Who Code, said last year. Andaccording to theGirl Scouts' study, timing is crucial: Girls are the most interested in STEM careers in middle school, but that number drops sharply, by about 15 percent, between middle school and high school. (Despite increasing demand for STEM workers, women account for just about 25 percent of graduates in these fields, The Times reported in November.) The Girl Scouts' recommendation to keep girls' engaged: Get involved! Particularly early in high school, which it calls "an important intervention point."

______

Here are five articles from The Times you might have missed.

"Our national history of inequality is something that we have yet to succeed in getting rid of." Early feminists issued a declaration of independence. Where is it now? [ Read the story]

"This is my space." Kirsten Gillibrand has made running as a woman, for women, the central theme of her campaign. [ Read the story]

"A woman, just not that woman." Few people admit they would hesitate to vote for a woman for president, but they don't have to. The reluctance is apparent.[ Read the story]

"Especially if you're a female, your life is so disposable." The adult daughter of Dubai's ruler tried to escape a life of stultifying restrictions. She was captured at sea, forcibly taken back, and has not been heard from since. [ Read the story]

"People are trying to represent themselves in emojiland." Among a host of new emojis recently announced is a drop of blood to symbolize menstruation. [ Read the story]

READ MORE: Why Girls Beat Boys at School and Lose to Them at the Office]
Research by the Girl Scout Research Institute, out this week, drove that point home - showcasing through a survey of 2,900 girls and boys ages 5 to 17 (along with their parents) how access to smartphones, tablets, laptops and gaming devices helps put girls on par with boys when it comes to tech, or exceed them in some respects.

Among the study's most fascinating takeaways:

______

Dean Mabel S. Douglass would have been proud of me. I managed to escape "the danger years of a woman" without succumbing entirely to "bridge, luncheons, dinner parties and the petty details of housekeeping" - all things she warned of when speaking to 500 alumnae the New Jersey College of Women at a reunion in 1931.

The "danger years," she said, began right after graduation and extended for 10 to 15 years, according to an article in The Times.

"It is during this time the women sink themselves either in the petty details of their work or in the care of their homes and children," she said, adding that "real success" means staying "intellectually alive and abreast of the world's events."

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Girls Get Tech. They Just Need Others to Believe It.

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in her words New research explores how access to technology helps put girls on par with boys. Welcome to In Her Words, where women rule the headlines. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. Let me know what you think at dearmaya@nytimes.com.

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6759027/

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In the past, a dominant assumption about gender disparities in STEM concerned women's lack of ability due to biological, innate, and/or immutable differences ( Keller, 1985). Over time, a more complex possibility was added: observed gender differences may not be exclusively shaped by innate or immutable abilities but may also be influenced by sociocultural factors ( Ceci et al., 2014). Along a different dimension, it was previously assumed that the social barriers to women's entrance and advancement in STEM were exclusively from the prejudices held by men about women. Over time, this assumption has also been revised: both men and women evaluators can be involved in gender discrimination (e.g., Moss-Racusin et al., 2012). Finally, while the focus was previously on the biases of other people evaluating the work of women, a more complex thesis also looks at possible bias within both women and men themselves, including their own preferences, biology, and social experiences that may encourage opting in (or out) of certain careers (e.g., Diekman et al., 2010). Thus, the presumed causes of gender disparities in STEM have shifted over time as new evidence and interpretations emerge.

Today, the debates surrounding the causes of gender disparities in STEM often settle around three interrelated hypotheses. Gender disparities may arise from (1) innate and/or socially determined gender differences in STEM ability, (2) innate and/or socially determined gender differences in STEM preferences and lifestyle choices, and (3) explicit and implicit biases of both men and women in perceptions of men and women's work.

Differences in ability

Given the complexity of STEM careers, the abilities predicting success must be diverse. Yet for most of the 20th century, researchers focused almost exclusively on predicting gender differences in STEM success from single skills, such as math ability ( Hyde, 2014). It was only at the end of the 20th century, after decades of data on standardized tests had accumulated, that evidence suggested the gender differences were rapidly closing for many cognitive abilities, including math ability ( Feingold, 1988). Recent representative studies and meta-analyses reinforce this result, showing that gender gaps in overall math performance have dropped to trivial differences: studies of >7 million students in state math assessments indicate gender differences of only d = 0.0065, meaning that the averages of men and women on math assessments are almost perfectly overlapping ( Hyde et al., 2008). And a meta-analysis of 242 studies shows a mere difference of d = 0.05 on math performance, again indicating almost perfect overlap of men and women's average performance ( Lindberg et al., 2010). The weight of the evidence therefore implies gender parity in math ability ( Hyde, 2014, 2016; Zell et al., 2015).

In response, some researchers and public officials have argued that, while gender differences have disappeared in average mathematics ability (i.e., the middle of the distribution), men nevertheless remain overrepresented as high-performers (i.e., right-tail of the distribution) ( Ceci et al., 2014). On the one hand, nationally representative samples indeed reveal slight but consistent advantages for boys on standardized math tests, with a 2:1 overrepresentation among math high-performers from kindergarten ( Penner and Paret, 2008) to grade 7 ( Wai et al., 2010). On the other hand, these same studies reveal that the gender gap in high-performers has closed rapidly over time, moving from 13.5:1 in the 1980s, to 3.8:1 in the 1990s, to 2:1 today ( Penner and Paret, 2007; Wai et al., 2010). This rapid closing of the gap on both average and high-performing math ability ( Wai et al., 2010; Hyde, 2014) challenges the assumption that differences are rooted in immutable traits.

Additionally, gender differences in both average and high-performing math ability vary greatly across cultures ( Else-Quest et al., 2010; Gray et al., 2019), across U.S. states ( Pope and Sydnor, 2010), and across ethnic groups ( Penner and Paret, 2008; Hyde and Mertz, 2009), providing evidence of mutability based on local contexts. Finally, gender differences in math performance are most notable when gender stereotypes are activated before a test: creating stereotype threat by framing a math test as "known to show gender differences" impairs females' performance relative to framing the same test as "not showing gender differences" ( Spencer et al., 1999; Nguyen and Ryan, 2008; but see Stoet and Geary, 2012). This further highlights the role of mutable beliefs rather than immutable biological traits as the most likely explanations of historic gender differences in math performance. Thus, there remains no compelling evidence that gender differences in math ability are immutable or biologically innate ( Spelke, 2005; Ceci and Williams, 2010; Ceci et al., 2014; Hyde, 2016).

Moreover, even an overrepresentation of 2:1 among math high-performers would not be sufficient to account for the nearly 5:1 disparity seen in the representation of senior faculty in STEM fields (), the 7:1 disparity seen in first versus last authorship rates for some fields (), or differences in median salaries (). Other factors must therefore contribute, such as gender differences in academic self-efficacy ( Dixson et al., 2016) or math confidence ( Flanagan and Einarson, 2017). In sum, because gender differences in math ability (1) produce small to nonexistent effects, (2) are disappearing over time, and (3) cannot fully explain the large and persistent gaps, it can no longer be said that women and men are treated differently in STEM because of different cognitive capacities in mathematics. Recognizing this conclusion, researchers have turned to examining other abilities that may contribute to gender differences in STEM.

Two additional skills relevant to STEM success are spatial and language ability, and both show consistent gender differences ( Halpern et al., 2007). On many tests of spatial cognition, especially those involving 3D mental rotation tasks, men significantly outperform women, with a meta-synthesis of 70 meta-analyses revealing that men are approximately one-half an SD above women ( d = 0.57) ( Zell et al., 2015). However, even on 3D rotation tasks, gender differences fluctuate as a function of subject age, testing format, and test framing ( Voyer et al., 1995; Huguet and Régner, 2009; Voyer, 2011), with reversals to female advantages even observed when mental rotation tasks are framed as "art tasks" rather than "math tasks" ( Huguet and Régner, 2009). Furthermore, other aspects of spatial cognition reveal female advantages (e.g., object identity memory), or no gender differences (e.g., object location memory) ( Voyer et al., 2007).

In contrast to spatial cognition, language skills appear to consistently favor women ( Hyde and Linn, 1988; Halpern et al., 2007; Miller and Halpern, 2014). Recent estimates from national assessments document female advantages of approximately one-fourth of an SD ( d = −0.27) for reading and one-half SD ( d = −0.54) for writing ( Reilly et al., 2019). Moreover, gender gaps in language ability have not shown significant change from 1988 to 2011 ( Reilly et al., 2019). This implies that the causes of language differences, whether biological, as suggested by the overrepresentation of men with reading impairments ( Rabiner and Coie, 2000; Halpern et al., 2011a), and/or socio-psychological, as suggested by the sex-typing of language abilities as "female" ( Marinak and Gambrell, 2010; Halpern et al., 2011b), have remained stable over time, unlike closing gaps for other abilities.

Although often overlooked, the role of reading and writing is arguably just as relevant to STEM as math or spatial skills. The ability to comprehend verbal material and to communicate effectively through writing and speaking are obvious components of success in publications, grants, presentations, and effective STEM teaching or leadership. Indeed, long-term success in STEM careers is likely to be predicted by a set of skills, including abilities in language, spatial rotation, math, and more ( Ackerman et al., 2013). It is therefore worth focusing on the diversity of skills available within an individual rather than emphasizing any single quality.

Differences in preferences, values, or lifestyle choices

The cause of gender disparities in STEM has increasingly been linked to gendered roles, values, and lifestyle preferences ( Ceci et al., 2009, 2014; Ceci and Williams, 2011). In particular, the "goal congruity hypothesis" ( Diekman et al., 2010) was so-named to capture the idea that women make the choice, from both sociocultural pressures and innate psychological orientations, to opt out of STEM because they perceive their gendered goals to be incongruent with the nature of STEM work, the opportunities available in STEM, and their likelihood of success. Simply, women perceive a mismatch between their goals/values and the STEM environment.

As a consequence of such mismatch between values and environments, women may be particularly likely to opt out of (and men particularly likely to opt into) subfields that are perceived to strongly endorse the "brilliance," status, and competition (i.e., mathematics, engineering, and computer science), thereby accounting for differences in representation across subfields ( Meyer et al., 2015; see, e.g., Leslie et al., 2015). Additionally, women may be more likely to select low-paying part-time positions to better facilitate family goals, whereas men may be more likely to select high-paying status-based positions, possibly contributing to the gender pay gap. Women may also be more likely to perform service activities to satisfy communal group-serving values, whereas men may be more likely to focus on research activities to satisfy agentic self-serving values, contributing to disparities observed in service versus research awards. The match between values and environments (i.e., goal congruity) may therefore play a role in explaining gender gaps across representation, pay, and recognition.

Yet the question remains whether STEM environments are inherently incompatible with values that women are more likely to endorse, or whether generations of male-dominated STEM environments have led to a perception of incompatibility. If it is more about historical perceptions, then increasing the perception that a STEM environment can satisfy group-serving values should correspondingly increase women's success and persistence in STEM.

Indeed, describing STEM tasks and careers as emphasizing communal group-serving values ( Diekman et al., 2015), helping ( Weisgram and Bigler, 2006), or dedication ( Bian et al., 2018), rather than competition, isolation, or brilliance, increases women's interest in pursuing and persisting in STEM. For example, when female general population participants read about a STEM internship or major that emphasizes dedication (vs brilliance), they are approximately one-half an SD more likely to report interest ( Bian et al., 2018). Similarly, females in college are found to be more likely to feel like they belong in STEM after subtle environmental cues that emphasize STEM stereotypes of isolation or competition (e.g., Star Trek posters) are removed ( Cheryan et al., 2009). Thus, the goal mismatch appears to be rooted in perception rather than inherent features of STEM environments. As such, it is important to examine where this perception comes from ( Cheryan et al., 2017), especially the role of implicit and explicit biases in shaping perceptions of beliefs, values, and the environment.

Explicit and implicit bias

To understand the possible role of implicit and explicit biases in STEM gender disparities, the extent of these biases needs to be examined. If implicit biases are only identified, for example, in older adults, men, or those from particular geographic regions, then the biases are unlikely to play a role in accounting for widespread gender gaps in STEM. If, however, implicit biases are found to be persistent and pervasive, then their role within STEM becomes more meaningful. More than two decades of research on implicit gender stereotypes have conclusively shown that gender biases in STEM are indeed prevalent across the lifespan, across genders, across nations, and across time.

Implicit gender bias across the lifespan

New analyses of nearly 300,000 respondents from the Project Implicit Demonstration website ( http://implicit.harvard.edu) extend these findings through adolescence and adulthood, providing similar conclusions of early emergence (). By elementary and middle school (respondents <14 years old), 58% of respondents already show a strong, moderate, or slight implicit stereotype that men = science/women = arts, whereas only 17% show an opposite stereotype of women = science/men = arts and 25% show a neutral association, as measured by the IAT.

Notably, the strength of the implicit men = science/women = arts association increases slightly through the later lifespan: 68% of high schoolers, 71% of college students, 68%-69% of early-career respondents (ages 22-40), 72%-74% of mid-career respondents (ages 40-55), and 77% of older respondents (ages 55⁺) show implicit men = science/women = arts associations, with similar age-related trajectories in both women and men. Although these data are cross-sectional (making it difficult to disambiguate an age effect from an effect of historical changes over time), the increasing stereotype strength across ages nevertheless mirrors the trends of increasing underrepresentation from high school to college to full professorships. Age-related increases in stereotype strength may therefore represent either a cause and/or consequence of increases in gender disparities across career trajectories.

Implicit gender bias across genders

Surprisingly, women and men hold similarly strong implicit gender-STEM stereotypes. Data from Project Implicit show that, overall, 69% of women and 72% of men express slight, moderate, or strong implicit men = science/women = arts associations (see also Nosek et al., 2007). Nevertheless, gender differences in implicit stereotypes emerge among scientists from particular STEM subfields ( Nosek and Smyth, 2011; Smeding, 2012; Smyth and Nosek, 2015): women employed in male-dominated subfields (e.g., math or engineering) express significantly weaker implicit men = science/women = arts stereotypes than men in those subfields, whereas women employed in female-dominated subfields (e.g., humanities) express significantly stronger stereotypes than men in those subfields. This suggests that women already in science may perceive science as equally applicable to women and men, perhaps as a consequence of their own identification with science (e.g., Nosek et al., 2002), or being exposed to more female scientist role models ( Dennehy and Dasgupta, 2017). In contrast, women outside of science may neither identify with science nor be exposed to the same frequency of female scientists and may therefore associate STEM more with men than women. However, it is worth emphasizing that even women already in science still hold an implicit stereotype of men = science/women = arts ( Smyth and Nosek, 2015), implying that identification alone may not be sufficient to override pervasive cultural stereotypes.

Implicit gender bias across countries

Implicit gender bias across time

Explicit gender stereotypes and attitudes against working women and female scientists have decreased markedly over the past several decades ( CNN, 2012; Huang et al., 2018; General Social Survey, 2019). Yet absence of bias has not been achieved: even on self-reported attitudes and beliefs, 25% of U.S. respondents in 2018 agreed or strongly agreed that it was better for a man to work and a woman to stay home ( General Social Survey, 2019). Moreover, subtle biases are even more persistent, with women still perceived as "warm" but "incompetent" ( Haines et al., 2016; Fiske, 2018), and still described with words, such as "caring" and "emotional," rather than words, such as "competent" or "intelligent" ( Garg et al., 2018). While some progress has been made, gender bias continues in both explicit and subtle ways.

In line with this simultaneous progress and stability, new analyses of the Project Implicit dataset examining change in implicit men = science/women = arts stereotypes from 2007 to 2016 reveal that implicit gender stereotypes have decreased by ∼16% overall (comparable to change in implicit race and skin-tone attitudes) ( Charlesworth and Banaji, 2019a). Crucially, however, this change appears to be largely isolated to women (whose implicit bias has decreased by 19%), with relatively little change observed among men (decreased by only 6%; ). This result is unique, as almost every other implicit attitude or stereotype shows parallel change between men and women; there appears to be a particular intransigence among men's implicit gender-science stereotypes. Moreover, although overall trends of change in implicit gender stereotypes are both surprising and encouraging, the biases remain far from neutrality and suggest relative persistence over time.

In sum, implicit gender-science stereotypes are present across the lifespan, in both men and women, in every nation, and across time. Such persistence and prevalence in implicit biases match the prevalence of gender disparities in STEM representation, pay, and recognition. Together, these data reinforce that (1) gender-science stereotypes exist both in explicit statements and on implicit measures that tap less controllable beliefs; (2) gender-science stereotypes are not isolated to some people in only some parts of the world but, rather, are widespread; and (3) this pervasiveness, as well as variability within and across regions, provides an opportunity for deeper theoretical understanding of the mechanisms behind gender disparities in STEM.

The operation of implicit and explicit gender biases in STEM

If implicit and explicit biases indeed play a causal role in gender disparities in STEM, how would one know? What would evidence for bias look like? Complementary sources of evidence would be most persuasive. First, if bias is operating, then observational evidence of gender disparities (e.g., data on representation, pay, and awards/recognition) should reveal persistent disparities, even after alternative explanations or correlated variables are accounted for (e.g., subfield, part-time vs full-time job status). For example, the aforementioned 9% pay gap that persists after controlling for alternative explanations implies that an additional causal mechanism (i.e., bias) may be operating.

Second, if bias is operating, then correlational evidence should reveal a relationship between the magnitude of gender disparities and the magnitude of implicit or explicit gender stereotypes. This is suggested, for example, in the finding that larger gender gaps on national science and math assessments are positively correlated with stronger implicit gender-science stereotypes on the IAT, even after controlling for explicit stereotypes and alternative explanations ( Nosek et al., 2009).

Third, the strongest evidence for bias is experimental. In particular, experimental resume and audit studies can show that identical candidates (with the same resume and qualifications) receive differential treatment exclusively due to gender, and that the extent of such differential treatment is predicted by evaluators' explicit and implicit gender stereotypes. With these three standards of evidence, the possible operation of bias is examined in (1) hiring and compensation, (2) grants, publications and awards, and (3) organizational and academic culture.

Hiring and compensation

Evidence for the operation of gender biases in hiring and compensation comes primarily from experimental audit studies showing that women applicants in STEM are less likely to be hired and also receive lower starting salaries than men with identical records ( Steinpreis et al., 1999; Moss-Racusin et al., 2012; Reuben et al., 2014; Milkman et al., 2015; but see Williams and Ceci, 2015). To illustrate one such study, Moss-Racusin et al. (2012) asked faculty from biology, chemistry, and physics to evaluate the application of a prospective laboratory manager on their hire-ability, competence, suggested salary, and deservingness of mentoring. Candidates' applications were identical, with the exception of whether the candidate's name was female or male.

Six results from this study are notable: (1) despite identical resumes, the female candidate was perceived as less hire-able than the male candidate; (2) the female candidate was offered the equivalent of 88% of the male candidate's salary; (3) the female candidate was perceived to be less deserving of mentoring than the male candidate; (4) both male and female faculty evaluators were more likely to select and more generously compensate and mentor male candidates; (5) the extent of differential evaluation was mediated by the perception of greater competence in male than female candidates; and (5) the extent of this perceived competence gap was, in turn, moderated by the strength of faculty's subtle gender bias (measured via self-reported modern sexism or beliefs that are benevolent but paternalistic) ( Swim et al., 1995). Together, these findings highlight the operation of subtle gender biases as a mechanism behind hiring, compensation, and mentoring disparities ( Moss-Racusin et al., 2012).

Importantly, implicit biases measured through the IAT have also been shown to explain such gender disparities. For instance, Reuben et al. (2014) asked participants ("employers") to hire a candidate for a simple math task, and were given a choice between two candidates who were matched on performance but not gender. Further, in some conditions, employers were given information about the candidates' past performance on the math task. The results provide three noteworthy conclusions. First, when employers had no information other than the candidates' gender, the employers (both male and female) were half as likely to hire the female candidate than the male candidate, implying a baseline preference for males over females. Second, this gender-biased hiring was reduced, but not eliminated, when employers were given information about the two candidates' identical past performance, indicating that the employers were not sufficiently updating their beliefs. That is, if employers had sufficiently updated following evidence of equivalent performance, then hiring should also have been equivalent between male and female candidates. Third, both the extent of the initial hiring bias and the extent of the updating bias were correlated with employers' implicit stereotypes associating men = math and science/women = liberal arts. Thus, implicit bias may help explain not only initial gaps in hiring and representation but also the persistence of these gaps, even in the face of evidence showing women's capacities and success in STEM.

Large-scale correlational data are consistent with these experimental findings. On explicit measures of bias, the greater the number of academics in a STEM field who endorse the beliefs that (1) brilliance (rather than dedication) is required for success, (2) men are more brilliant than women, and (3) women are not suited to scholarly work, the lower the representation of female faculty in those fields ( Leslie et al., 2015; Meyer et al., 2015). Similarly, the higher the endorsement of an explicit association between science and male, the lower the number of female faculty in that field ( Smyth and Nosek, 2015). Importantly, these correlations between representation and explicit stereotypes remain significant after controlling for proxies of personal values (e.g., perceived selectivity/competitiveness of the field, working part-time vs full-time to satisfy family values). Thus, the role of bias may persist above values and lifestyle choices.

Nevertheless, evidence from these experimental and correlational studies needs to be reconciled with data from the NSF, the National Center for Education Statistics, and faculty surveys reporting that, from 1995 to 2003, women applying for professorships in STEM were hired at rates commensurate to their application rate, implying no hiring biases ( National Academy of Sciences, 2010). Additionally, a recent audit study suggests that, in fields of biology, psychology, and engineering, women appear to have a 2:1 advantage in hiring for tenure-track positions ( Williams and Ceci, 2015).

Explaining such discrepancies will likely require many factors, including (1) changes over time in the focus on equitable hiring practices and proactive efforts to reconcile past gender disparities (leading earlier studies to show more bias than later studies), (2) experimental differences in the measured outcomes (e.g., hiring a laboratory manager vs evaluating a candidate for a math task vs hiring a tenure-track faculty) and the fields studied (e.g., psychology vs engineering), and/or (3) applicant differences (e.g., women may have a higher threshold and be more self-selective for applying to jobs) ( Ceci et al., 2014). Continued research is needed to resolve correlational, experimental, and observational evidence, as well as to understand disproportionately lower hiring rates and compensation of mothers, racial minority women, women in high-status positions, and women in engineering and computer science.

Publications, grants, and awards

Observational evidence, reviewed in Part 1, suggests the encouraging result of overall gender parity in authorship, grants, and awards in STEM. Nevertheless, subtle gender differences persist on indicators, such as (1) last authorship positions ( Holman et al., 2018), (2) application rates for the top 1% of grants ( Hosek et al., 2005), and (3) rates of research versus service awards ( Metcalfe, 2015; Popejoy and Leboy, 2018). While these data suggest the operation of bias because gender disparities persist after accounting for alternative explanations, compelling experimental evidence for the operation of implicit and explicit biases in publications, grants, and awards remains limited ( Eagly and Miller, 2016).

With respect to gender bias in academic publications, audit studies indicate that publications, conference abstracts, and fellowship applications from men are more likely to be accepted, rated as higher quality and indicating more competence, and given more collaboration interest than quality-matched materials from women ( Wenneras and Wold, 1997; Knobloch-Westerwick et al., 2013; Krawczyk and Smyk, 2016). These few studies imply that subtle disparities in publications may arise from biased evaluations from peer reviews.

On the other hand, removing gender (i.e., by masking the author's gender through double-blind reviews) does not appear to increase the rate of publication success for women ( Webb et al., 2008; Tomkins et al., 2017). While it is possible that the lack of efficacy in double-blind review is due to men producing better publications (for many reasons, including differences in caregiving demands, or differences in risk-taking with "big" research ideas), it may be more likely due to the fact that author gender can be detected, even without the author's gendered name. Indeed, author gender could be determined using cues, such as style of writing ( Argamon et al., 2003), word use ( Kolev et al., 2019), and overall tendency to self-cite ( Eagly and Miller, 2016). Thus, reviewers' implicit or explicit biases may be able to persist, even under double-blind conditions because the reviewers can still detect author gender.

The operation of gender bias in grants and awards has also received limited experimental study. One recent experimental audit study shows no evidence of gender bias in initial grant reviews at NIH ( Forscher et al., 2019). Additionally, a review screening 170 papers identified only one study that directly assessed the effect of gender bias in grant review ( Tricco et al., 2017). This study found that removing gender through double-blinding did not increase the proportion of women's successful grant applications ( Ledin et al., 2007), although (as aforementioned) double-blind conditions may not entirely eliminate evaluators' ability to detect applicants' gender, and the conclusions are therefore limited.

Finally, to our knowledge, there remains no experimental evidence that directly measures the role of implicit or explicit biases in the persistent gap in research versus service awards ( Lincoln et al., 2012; Popejoy and Leboy, 2018), suggesting an important focus for future research. While numerous cognitive biases (e.g., shifting standards, halo effects, confirmation bias) are likely to disrupt objectivity in the review of publications, grants, and awards ( Kaatz et al., 2014), further research is needed to experimentally quantify the role of such biases.

Organization and academic culture

Beyond disparities of representation, compensation, and recognition, implicit and explicit biases may also operate in the experiences of the organization and academic culture. Gender differences in experiences of a hostile culture have received increasing attention through the #metoo movement and highly publicized allegations of harassment. Large-scale empirical reports also indicate that hostile culture is a persistent and pervasive problem: at least half of all female academics in STEM (vs 19% of male academics in STEM) report experiencing sexual harassment, and even greater numbers (78%) of females in male-dominated STEM workplaces report experiencing gender-based discrimination ( Funk and Parker, 2018; National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, 2018).

The operation of bias in producing these gender differences in organizational experiences is suggested by audit studies showing that a female scientist is offered less mentorship relative to an identical male scientist as a result of the evaluators' biases ( Correll et al., 2007; Moss-Racusin et al., 2012). This decreased mentoring may, in turn, hamper female scientists' feelings of belonging and identification and exacerbate feelings of a hostile climate. Indeed, women in STEM are more likely than men to report a lack of belonging ( Cheryan and Plaut, 2010; Cheryan et al., 2017; McPherson et al., 2018), a lack of support and free expression ( Xu, 2008), a lack of mentorship and role models ( Cheryan and Plaut, 2010; Cheryan et al., 2011), and a lack of feeling identified with or competent in STEM ( Spencer et al., 1999; Ertl et al., 2017), including on implicit measures ( Nosek et al., 2002).

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Gender in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics: Issues, Causes, Solutions

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In the past, a dominant assumption about gender disparities in STEM concerned women's lack of ability due to biological, innate, and/or immutable differences ( Keller, 1985). Over time, a more complex possibility was added: observed gender differences may not be exclusively shaped by innate or immutable abilities but may also be influenced by sociocultural factors ( Ceci et al., 2014).

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Within the broader March-long observance of Women's History Month, March 8th marks the annual International Women's Day. It's a day of both celebration and reflection, dedicated not only to honoring the accomplishments and contributions that women bring to the table, but also to critical analysis of the areas where gender inequality still persists.

Although we've made big strides in the last few decades, women are still significantly under-represented in many fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Women make up nearly 50% of the US workforce, but less than 30% of that number are STEM workers, and with women comprising less than 30% of the world's researchers.

In honor of this year's theme for International Women's Day, Break the Bias, and as a woman in science myself, I was interested in exploring the challenges of anyone who identifies and lives as a woman in science, and the key factors that continue to perpetuate the gender gap in STEM fields. I invited eight of my female colleagues at Promega-diverse in roles, age, educational background, ethnicity, and experience-to sit down with me (virtually) to learn more about them and their experiences as women in STEM.

In no particular order, these women are: Johanna Lee, Content Lead, Marketing Services; Jacqui Mendez-Johnson, Quality Assurance Scientist; Kris Pearson, Director, Manufacturing & Custom Operations; Monica Yue, Technical Services Scientist; Jen Romanin, Sr. Director, IVD Operations and Global Support Services; Poonam Jassal, Manager, Regional Sales; Becky Godat, Instrumentation Scientist; and Leta Steffen, Supervisor, Scientific Applications.

Though I feel like I could easily write an entire dissertation on what I have learned from these conversations alone, for the sake of brevity, I've split my learnings and takeaways into a series of three blogs. In part one, we'll take a look at the key factors of gender stereotypes and male-dominated culture.

Why Does This Conversation Matter?

There are a lot of excellent, deeply-insightful and well-researched answers that could be share in response to the questions akin to "Why should I care?" and "Why do we keep talking about this?". Here are few reasons why the topic of gender disparities in STEM warrant continuous discussion:

Scientific research is more accurate and beneficial when gender is considered.
From studies on seatbelt safety to clinical trials for drugs, historically men have been treated as the default test subjects. But it's important to recognize, as one study on whiplash so eloquently put it, "women are not scaled down men". When studies neglect to factor in gender and sex as variables, it's not uncommon to see a difference in safety and health outcomes between men and women play out in real world settings.

Women bring unique perspectives and experiences to research.
People from diverse backgrounds bring creativity to the way we approach problems, helping us see them from different angles and approach old problems in new ways. Including women and minorities in research allows these groups to be agents of change for their communities, by bringing to light their lived experiences, perspectives and the challenges they face. Recent studies also show that a group's collective intelligence is strongly linked to the number of women in the group and the average levels of social sensitivity. Gender-diverse groups are able to work more collaboratively across a diverse set of tasks, which is crucial for research teams tackling the complex scientific issues we currently face.

We need more STEM professionals.
Since 1990, employment in STEM jobs has grown 79%, increasing from 9.7 million to 17.3 million, and between 2019 and 2029, STEM jobs are projected to grow 8.8%. It's clear that we will continue to see increasing demand for STEM professionals, and that STEM fields are economic drivers that provide a wide range of career opportunities, and the number of female professionals will need to increase in order to help meet this demand.

Because we're not there yet.
More attention has been directed at this topic in recent years, with various studies pinpointing many of the issues contributing to the STEM gender gap. While that's certainly a step in the right direction, there is still work to be done. Continuing to examine the experiences and views of under-represented groups in STEM across multiple disciplines can help us gain insight, spread awareness, and develop effective strategies to successfully dismantle the systemic barriers that perpetuate the inequality gaps in STEM. Leveling the STEM playing field would be a stepping stone on the path to achieving a society with full gender equality.

Key Factor #1: Gender Stereotypes

When you think of the word "scientist", who immediately comes to mind? How about when you hear the word "technology"? I would be willing to bet your first thoughts went to someone like Albert Einstein, not Emmy Noether; like James Watson and Francis Crick, not Rosalind Franklin; like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, not Grace Hopper or Hedy Lamarr.

Although it's not conscious or intentional, this is an example of implicit bias: your brain has naturally picked up on the pattern of seeing and hearing about more men in STEM, so when you think "STEM" you think "men". We can have implicit biases towards a number of things-age, gender, race, religion, socioeconomic status-and it can be difficult for us to change these biases. However, some implicit biases that go unchecked or unchallenged can perpetuate harmful stereotypes that ultimately play a role in our social systems, contributing to problems like the systemic under-representation of women and other minorities in STEM.

"Women Aren't As Brilliant As Men"

Throughout history, there was a pervasive misconception that women were intellectually inferior to men. And though we would like to think we have moved past such ridiculous and blatantly sexist generalizations, a recent study indicates that this implicit bias is still very much at play in this day and age. In the study, researchers asked over 3,600 men, women and children from over 78 countries if they agreed with the stereotype that men were more brilliant than women, which they said they didn't. However, when these same people were given a test that measured their implicit bias, the results showed that between 60% and 75% of the participants showed implicit bias towards that stereotype.

The outcomes of this study builds upon a larger body of research illustrating that this stereotype of "male-brilliance" may contribute to the underrepresentation of women in career fields, like STEM, where success is perceived to depend on high levels of intellectual ability.

We see this stereotype play out early and often in education, with teachers and parents underestimating girls math abilities as early as preschool, though girls perform just as well as boys in math. Middle school girls pass algebra at higher rates than boys, and in science girls perform as well as boys and pursue advanced math and science courses at equal rates as they transition into high school. Researchers are not clear on the exact cause, but the gender gap begins to appear as girls enroll less and less in advanced STEM classes as they inch closer to college, and issues of race and class widens the STEM gender gap further. Even if we grow up feeling like we haven't experienced gender bias or stereotypes actively working against us, we are unconsciously internalizing these biases. Jacqui voiced this exact issue based on her experience in overcoming her own internalized biases: "I think they were more in my head as a young person. We internalize all these things without knowing that we're doing it. All these biases are getting imposed on us, and I just had to become comfortable with who I am. My color, my accent, not having a PhD-all of those things. I had to overcome my own complexes, inferiority complexes, right? I think that's just so ingrained in our culture and how we grew up."

"STEM Fields Are 'Masculine' or 'Nerdy' and Girls Aren't Interested in STEM Topics"

Some additional common stereotypes in STEM perpetuate the idea that STEM-related activities are "masculine" or "nerdy", and by default, girls just would not be interested in them.

One study evaluated if stereotyping STEM as a domain for "nerdy geniuses" would negatively relate to women's STEM identity and if STEM identity would mediate the relation between stereotypes and STEM motivation. The results found that both gender and nerd-genius stereotypes contributed negatively to women's STEM identity, and also found the STEM identity positively contributed to women's STEM motivation, highlighting the impact different stereotypes have on women's identification with STEM, which in turn impacts their motivation to pursue STEM paths.

In a similar vein, Kris shared with me that her high-school age daughter is interested in pursuing a career in science, and she told her about how important it is to study hard to best prepare herself for tackling challenging science course in college one day. As a result of her being an active participant and really engaged in her science classes, Kris' daughter has heard comments from other girls calling her things like "smartypants" and "know-it-all", words that fall into the same category as "nerdy".

Luckily, studies show that parents, especially parents involved in STEM fields themselves, as well as teachers also carry influence in children's decisions to pursue STEM, and can counterbalance these experiences for their kids by continuing to support and encourage their interests. Kris told me they've had several conversations in which she reminded her daughter to let comments like that slide off her shoulders, just like she and so many women in STEM professions, have had to do in the face of stereotypes and naysayers to keep pursuing this work that they really love.

In terms of girls not liking STEM stereotype, another study tested out gender stereotyping in computer science and found that telling girls that they don't like STEM halves their resulting interest and involvement at any age. The researchers discovered that labelling activities in a stereotyped way ended up influencing children's interest and willingness to participate, with 65% of girls choosing to join in activities they were told that both boys and girls like compared to only 35% of girls participating in the activities when they were told boys liked it better.

Based on these studies and examples, I think we can safely draw the logical conclusions that:

1. Going forward, we all need to be mindful of the ways we may label or stereotype activities and identities to avoid negatively influencing children's interests or discouraging their participation.
And...

2. Don't tell women and girls what they should or should not like 😊

"Traditionally, Culturally and Historically, Women Are More Focused On Marriage and Motherhood"

For a good portion of history up to the not-so-distant past, the primary role and expectation in society for girls was that they grow up to be good wives and mothers. Access to education for women was few and far-between, and when it would finally become more available, there was usually a catch, in the form of no space to work, no funding, no recognition.

For many years (we are talking centuries) and in many cultures, access to education for women was conditionally dependent on the whether the stance of the era in question believed education to be a help or a hindrance to women's roles as mothers and wives. For example, in ancient China, women's education was limited to social roles and behaviors, in medieval Europe, women had to become nuns for any hope to receive more than a modicum of education, while some American women in the early 1800s argued that women required college-level education for the sake of being well-educated mothers.

Poonam told me that historically in India, that girls in general are considered burdens, largely because of the dowry system, meaning when a daughter eventually gets married the family will have to give dowry that they spend years saving up. She said that in terms of objectives for girls, they can go to school and they can have a career, but "the main objective of the parents of girls are to get them married off, because once they're married off, then the responsibility is off of the parents' heads. So, often the focus is more on making sure you know how to cook, making sure you know how to take care of a family, making sure you know how to build those relationships, so you're always considered last." She continued, "And I'm sure that's in many cultures, it's not just in the Indian culture, but I kind of grew up seeing my mom-seeing generationally-that you put yourself last and everything else first. So I don't think that I was even able to sit down and say 'Okay, what are my true passions? What are my true interests and what do I really wanna do?"

"I feel like that's where we should be moving forward within the science community, just be supportive of whatever choices women make in their lives."
- Johanna Lee

The Maternal Wall

One of the major patterns of gender bias is known as The Maternal Wall, which refers to the metaphorical wall professional women often find themselves running into after having children. In many cases, their competency and commitment to their work get called into question, prompting many of them to have to fight hard to prove themselves to be good scientists and good moms. All the colleagues I spoke with share that they experienced or witnessed this bias to some degree.

Before you even have kids, women are having to weigh options and make decisions regarding family planning. Monica doesn't have children yet and told me about her experience in grad school of watching her postdoc navigate systemic challenges during her pregnancy. She said, "It was so difficult seeing her go through it because she had no support...she had no recourse for finding childcare very easily either and I just felt like- This is difficult. I don't know if I'm ready to do this yet. So it just made me consciously think I need to push this back until I feel like I'm more stable. And there's a lot of expectation for any woman who's thinking 'Should I start a family or not?' and I saw it playing out as she was going through it."

She went on to tell me that this postdoc was even considering going back to work only a week after giving birth, because she didn't know if she could afford to be gone longer than that. "It made me pause and think more carefully about some of the important life decisions", Monica said. "And I'm sure men consider this too, but I don't know if they consider it quite as much."

Johanna and I talked about the disadvantages women face as working parents, especially in STEM fields. " Think about all the long hours that people put into research and being in the lab all day and going in on weekends-it's a lot of stress for anybody", she said. "But because women kind of just take on the family burden, like even to this day, in modern times, we're still taking more than half of the child-rearing responsibilities and family duties and that kind of thing. There's a lot of reasons that lead to this, like it's societal, it's biological, but it's kind of the reality. And I think it's very challenging for women to continue on a research path because they're taking on a lot more responsibilities than men. So even though there are a lot of outstanding women scientists, I feel like they have to work like 50% harder just to reach the level a lot of men do just because they may not have that burden on them."

Studies support this, indicating that while the amount of time men spend parenting has increased over the last few decades from 2.5 hours per week in 1965 to 7 hours in 2011, women's parenting time has also increased, from 10 hours a week in 1965 to 14 hours a week in 2011. Research also found, when factoring the time dedicated to child care in addition to time dedicated to working for pay and housework, the birth of a baby increased mothers' total workload by 70%, which pans out to a total weekly workload increase of 12.5 hours for fathers and 21 hours for mothers.

Johanna continued, "What I think empowering women is, is really giving them a system or support from a very high level. If you want to have a child and also work full time, and be in the labs on weekends, we need to provide the right support system for those women." Leta echoed this sentiment, agreeing that it would be great if structural support existed for both parents in our society, in order to alleviate some of the pressure of parental responsibilities that tend to fall by default on to mothers. She had both of her kids while working as a postdoc at Promega in R&D and although her supervisor was very supportive, she said, "..In this current society I think it's even more difficult to be a working mom because there are only so many hours in the day, and if you're a high-performing person, there are expectations you have for how much work you can generate and add value for your team, and it's kind of at odds with feeling that same need to participate fully in your family life."

Studies support this too, illustrating that mothers experience the greatest pressure trying to meet the unrealistic standards of the idealized role of motherhood. The pressure mothers feel to excel in all their roles can be compounded by additional unspoken expectations. For example, mothers in dual-earning families for shown to spend 10 more hours a week multitasking (doing unpaid activities like housework and childcare) than fathers, and are also more likely to take responsibility of the managing and organizing "worry work" tasks (e.g., making childcare arrangements, signing permission slips, scheduling appointments) than fathers.

Johanna drove home the point of what a no-win situation it can be to be a working mom, with any decision you make likely to draw criticism. When she was pregnant and made the decision to not continue with research, she heard things like, "You're wasting your PhD. Why are you not continuing on being productive?". But when she later decided to go back to work, she said, "People would say things like, 'Your child is still so young. Why are you going back to work full-time when you should be prioritizing your family? And I'm like, can you all just leave me alone, let me make my own choice, you know what I mean?", and I believe generations of women, mothers or not, would understand down to their bones exactly what she means. "So I feel like that's where we should be moving forward within the science community, just be supportive of whatever choices women make in their lives."

Key Factor #2: Male-Dominated Culture

In the world of STEM, gender stereotypes and male-dominated culture currently coexist in a toxic symbiotic relationship, with the negative outcomes of one cycle reinforcing the negative outcomes of the other. For example, when we see fewer women pursuing degrees and careers in STEM due to gender stereotypes, the resulting absence of women can reinforce "proof" that women aren't part of these fields because they aren't for women. This, in turn, can bolster existing exclusionary, male-dominated attitudes and cultures in STEM which further effectively deter women and minorities from pursuing a degree or career in field in which they don't feel welcome.

Exclusionary Environments

When we were discussing challenges that they have faced in their careers and educations, the experiences that both Leta and Jen shared illustrate this point perfectly. Leta shared that growing up, "I was in an accelerated math program and the class was largely boys, who liked to point out frequently that girls weren't as good at math because ' see how few girls are part of this program? ". And I had the same experience in physics in college, where I was one of few [girls]. I should say that most guys that I have worked with and most faculty that I've worked with, regardless of their gender, have been very supportive. But there is always a small and vocal portion that is not. So you do have to have some kind of personal fortitude if you want to keep going."

In college, Jen had started off in electrical and computer engineering, with the initial desire to pursue biomedical engineering. When she was in the engineering program, she was very aware of her status as one of only four women in that program. Jen said, "When I went to talk to my 60-year-old male advisor, he literally said, 'Well, if you can't hack it...' and it was like, wow. Okay, so you're telling me you're not gonna give me support here. Cool, good to know man. And I didn't love [the material] enough to push through that lack of support that I was looking for."

Prove-It-Again Bias

Another major pattern of bias observed regarding women in STEM is the Prove-It-Again bias, in which women have to prove themselves over and over again, constantly having their expertise called into question and successes disregarded. In this study, of the 60 female scientists interviewed and 557 female scientists surveyed, two-thirds of both those interviewed and those surveyed, reported that in order to prove themselves to their colleagues, they needed to provide evidence of their competence; black women were found disproportionately more likely to experience this type of bias compared to other women.

Environments like this, where women are presumed incompetent, and where women's mistakes tend to be noticed more, and remembered longer than men's, leads to this additional pressure on women in STEM, setting the expectation that they have to be perfect, always say yes, and never make mistakes.

This came up in my conversation with Becky as we talked about women's societal expectations. She said, "I think the hardest part, and I think it's going [away] with age, is always feeling like you have to be perfect. And I have a horrible time saying no to anybody or anything, and I don't know if that's part of that expectation, showing like 'Yeah, I can handle one more thing, I can handle one more thing, and take on something additional'", in reference to the many commitments she would take on as working parent, like being on the PTA and a variety of volunteer work.

When I asked if she thought if men feel similarly pressured, she replied, "No, because I think people listen to men more than women. So if you listen in on a meeting, it's usually more dominated by men. And then sometimes you feel like when you have input, it's small-and that can be in any conversation, right? How do you be confident in yourself and say 'This is really what I believe and I deserve to be heard'.

A couple of studies illustrate men's penchant for dominating meetings and conversations well: one study that recorded seven university faculty meetings, researchers found that the men in the meetings spoke more often, with one exception, and spoke longer, without exception. It was also determined that the longest comment made by a woman in all seven gatherings was still shorter than the shortest comment made by a man. A meta-analysis of 43 studies additionally revealed that men were more likely than women to talk over others, particularly in an obstructive way that allow them to assert dominance.

A Pleasant Contradiction

Contrary to all the biases and stereotypes we've looked at here, working at Promega does appear to be a bit of an anomaly in it's treatment of women, at least when it comes to my own experience and the cross section of experiences shared by my colleagues. In all of these conversations, everyone shared at one point that they've never been on the receiving end of gender bias or discrimination while at Promega, they only experienced these instances in college or in their youth. Kris and Jen both shared with me that the only time they have ever really felt a noticeable difference in being a woman at work is in interactions with other companies, where a lot of the time there will be a lot more men at the table compared to our company.

Seeing women in a variety of roles at this company, including positions of senior leadership, sets a more inclusive tone and provides a welcome contrast to the biases and stereotypes many of us have experienced in our scientific educations and careers. It's an encouraging demonstration that not only is there room for women in STEM, there's room for them to grow and excel.

How Can We Address These Factors?

- Recognizing inequality is the first step towards changing it. Engage kids early and promote awareness that girls are just as capable as boys.

Support and Inclusion - Parents and teachers can work to provide equitable educational opportunities and encouragement for their daughters and female students. Support them with positive messages about their abilities. Seek out inclusive environments in schools, communities, and workplaces, and surround yourself with people and colleagues that value the voices and contributions of women and girls.

Take Stock of Your Implicit Biases - Instead of perpetuating myths about why STEM isn't for women, think about if that's something you truly believe and where you think that stems from. Start paying attention to your thought patterns, challenge thoughts you think may be rooted in bias, and hold yourself accountable for re-evaluating and changing those patterns

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, out next week!

References

American Association of University Women. The STEM Gap: Women and Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Accessed February 2022.

Arabia, J. (2021) Women in STEM Statistics to Inspire Future Leaders. Accessed February 2022.

Bert, A. (2018) 3 reasons gender diversity is crucial to science. Elsevier Connect.

Berwick, C. (2019) Keeping Girls in STEM: 3 Barriers, 3 Solutions. Accessed February 2022.

Grant, A. (2021) Who won't shut up in meetings? Men say it's women. It's not. The Washington Post. Accessed February 2022.

Hammond, A. and Rubiano-Matulevich, E. (2020) Myths and Misperceptions: Reframing the narrative around women and girls in STEM. Accessed February 2022.

Kricorian, K. et al. (2020) Factors influencing participation of underrepresented students in STEM fields: matched mentors and mindsets. International Journal of STEM Education. 7, 16.

Riedl, C. et al. (2021) Quantifying collective intelligence in human groups. PNAS. 118, 21.

Schoppe-Sullivan, S. (2017) Dads are more involved in parenting, yes, but moms still put in more work. Accessed February 2022.

Storage, D. et al. (2012) Adults and children implicitly associate brilliance with men more than women. J Exp Soc Psychol.

Tannen, D. (2017) The Truth About How Much Women Talk-and Whether Men Listen. TIME. Accessed February 2022.

Thorpe, JR. (2017) Here's How Women Fought For the Right To Be Educated. Bustle. Accessed February 2022.

Timeline of Legal History of Women in the United States. (2021) National Women's History Alliance. Accessed February 2022.

Williams, J.C. (2015) The 5 Biases Pushing Women Out of STEM. Harvard Business Review.

Williams, J.C., Phillips, K.W. and Hall, E.V. (2014) Double Jeopardy? Gender Bias Against Women of Color in Science.

Wooley, A. and Malone, T. (2011) What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women. Harvard Business Review. Accessed February 2022.

Yurcaba, J. (2020) Implicit Bias Study Reveals 75% of People Perceive Men to Be Smarter Than Women. Accessed February 2022.

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Breaking the Bias: Addressing the STEM Gender Gap

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Within the broader March-long observance of Women's History Month, March 8th marks the annual International Women's Day. It's a day of both celebration and reflection, dedicated not only to honoring the accomplishments and contributions that women bring to the table, but also to critical analysis of the areas where gender inequality still persists.

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Department of Business Economics, School of Business & Economics, Universidad CEU San Pablo, Madrid, Spain

Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Barcelona, Spain

Women are underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers, and this poses new challenges at the dawn of the era of digital transformation. The goal of the present study is to demonstrate how female role models influence girls' preferences for STEM studies. This paper evaluates a role-model intervention in which female volunteers working in STEM go into schools to talk to girls about their careers. The study was conducted with 304 girls, from 12 years old (sixth primary grade) to 16 years old (fourth secondary grade), both before and after the role-model sessions. An adaptation of the expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation is used to test the extent to which this role-model intervention improves girls' beliefs that they can be successful in STEM fields and increases their likelihood of choosing a STEM career. The results of multigroup structural equation modeling analysis show that on average, the role-model intervention has a positive and significant effect on mathematics enjoyment, importance attached to math, expectations of success in math, and girls' aspirations in STEM, and a negative effect on gender stereotypes. Additionally, the female role-model sessions significantly increase the positive impact of expectations of success on STEM choices. Finally, the moderation role of the counterstereotypical content of the role-model sessions is tested. The results show that the higher the counterstereotypical character of the sessions, the higher the relationship between expectations of success in math and the choice of STEM. These results are discussed regarding their implications for long-term STEM engagement.

Introduction

The proportion of women university students has increased from 46% in 1985 to 56% in 2017, and this has helped to improve their presence in the labor market, which on average means growth from 50.8% in 1985 to 52.5% in 2017 in countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ( Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2018a, b, c). However, gender equality in the workplace is far from being achieved. This labor gender gap is especially acute in professions that tend to be male dominated, with a high technological and mathematical component (i.e., fields known by the acronym STEM, for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) ( Kahn and Ginther, 2017). Indeed, women in OECD countries account for only 19% of entrants into tertiary level in these programs ( Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 2018c).

This pattern of low representation of women in the STEM disciplines can also be seen in many Western and European countries. Indeed, the lack of girls choosing scientific studies may mean there is no critical mass of candidates prepared to access leadership positions ( Kanter, 1977) and result in the exclusion of the feminine perspective in creating and developing solutions ( World Economic Forum [WEF], 2020). Moreover, women should not miss out on fulfilling, rewarding, and highly paid careers in STEM, where employment growth rate is three times faster than for non-STEM jobs ( Langdon et al., 2011). Educational background is also increasingly important in the appointment of directors to boards ( Hitt and Tyler, 1991), where technological profiles are in high demand ( Ruigrok et al., 2007) because they drive research and innovation ( Barker and Mueller, 2002).

Much research has been devoted to identifying the beliefs of students about STEM competences and gendered motivational factors that influence their educational and career decisions ( Hackett and Betz, 1981; Quimby and O'Brien, 2004; Sáinz and Eccles, 2012; Watt et al., 2012; Wang and Degol, 2014; Wang et al., 2017). This research draws on the expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation by Eccles and Wigfield (1995) and Wigfield and Eccles (2000). According to this theory ( Eccles et al., 1983; Eccles, 2005), when expectations of success and the value of STEM degrees and careers are high, girls are much more likely to choose STEM pathways. Existing stereotypes about the nature of STEM work and people working in STEM become powerful drivers of gendered aspirations and affinities ( Thébaud and Charles, 2018; Sáinz et al., 2019), supporting women's STEM avoidance and men's STEM affinity ( Glick and Fiske, 1999; Diekman and Eagly, 2008). A good way of overcoming stereotype barriers is through the intervention of female role models, who can increase the sense of belonging to STEM and reinforce the idea that hard work is the way to succeed in STEM ( Weisgram and Bigler, 2007; Shin et al., 2016; Bertrand and Duflo, 2017).

In this study, we examine the effectiveness of a current and innovative role-model-based intervention on the perceptions that young girls (from 12 to 16 years old) have of gender stereotypes about mathematical competence, expectation of success in math, their degree of math enjoyment, and the importance attached to math, and how all of these contribute to shaping the likelihood that girls will choose STEM careers. We expect that the exposure to successful female role models in STEM fields could serve as a key driver to convey that they can succeed in these careers while still having a personal life ( Marx et al., 2005; Williams and Ceci, 2012; Sáinz et al., 2019). This is especially relevant during the first stages of education because there is a consensus that the progressive abandonment of girls in some STEM fields (the start of the "leaking pipeline") begins after the age of 12 ( Sáinz and Eccles, 2012) given the predisposition of girls to underestimate their ability to be successful in STEM fields ( Correll, 2001; Sáinz and Eccles, 2012).

Theory and Hypotheses

STEM Career Choice: Expectancy-Value Theory

The expectancy-value theory developed by Eccles and her colleagues proposes that achievement-related choices can be predicted by the expectations a person has of succeeding, as well as subjective task values ( Eccles et al., 1983; Eccles, 2005). This model has been used in different fields (e.g., math, reading, computing, health, communications, sports, marketing, and economics) and specifically when trying to explain the gender gaps in STEM (e.g., Sáinz and Eccles, 2012; Eccles, 2015). The expectations of success and subjective task values are presumed to directly influence achievement-related choices, performance, and persistence ( Eccles, 2015). Students will, therefore, be more likely to pursue those studies and academic options in which they think they can excel or that have a high value for them ( Eccles and Wigfield, 1995; Sáinz and Eccles, 2012). That is, when expectations of success and the value of STEM disciplines are high, girls are much more likely to choose, persist in, and graduate from STEM fields ( Eccles and Wigfield, 1995; Sáinz and Eccles, 2012; Eccles, 2015).

According to the theory ( Wigfield and Eccles, 2002; Eccles, 2005; Wigfield et al., 2006), expectations of success and task values are shaped by a combination of factors, from individual child characteristics (e.g., abilities, previous experiences, goals, self-concepts, beliefs, and expectations) to environmental influences (e.g., cultural milieu, peer beliefs, and behaviors). Subjective task values include the following motivational factors: attainment value or importance, intrinsic value (enjoyment), utility or usefulness of the task, and costs [ Eccles et al. (1983) and Wigfield and Eccles (1992) discuss these components in more detail].

Shin et al. (2016) identified two stereotypes that affect the level of recruitment and retention of women in STEM fields. On one hand, there is the idea that STEM studies are difficult, and a person should be a brilliant or gifted student to succeed in them. On the other hand, there are cultural and social stereotypes about the characteristics of scientists and scientific jobs (i.e., people lacking social abilities, with an unattractive physical appearance, or freaks) that undermine the interest that girls may have in STEM, as they do not match these stereotypes. Further empirical research supports this analytical view ( Cheryan et al., 2015; Sáinz et al., 2016, 2019). Shin et al. (2016) agree that a good way of overcoming these two barriers is through the intervention of female role models, as they can increase the sense of belonging to STEM and reinforce the idea that hard work is the way to succeed in STEM. We present the overall model to provide a sense of its scope ( Figure 1).

The present research focuses on how two elements of the task values (personal enjoyment and the importance attached to math) along with expectations of success predict the future STEM aspirations of a group of girls before and after having participated in a female role-model intervention. For this purpose, we focus the present work on a portion of the model; specifically, the constructs contained in the boxes related to expectancies and subjective task values boxes, along with the construct of child perception of gender role stereotypes (shaded boxes in Figure 1).

Expectations of success depend on both the confidence that individuals have in their various intellectual abilities, on their estimations of the difficulty of the options they are considering and on their estimates of the external or societal barriers to their success ( Eccles, 1987; Eccles, 2005). Regarding the subjective task values, according to the theory ( Eccles et al., 1983; Wigfield and Eccles, 1992; Eccles, 2005), they are assigned to a task (e.g., math) based on interest or personal enjoyment (intrinsic value), utility value, and attainment value. More specifically, interest or intrinsic value is the enjoyment one gains from doing the task (i.e., in our case the enjoyment value of doing a math exercise); attainment value is defined as the importance of doing well at a given task, which is given by the link between the mathematical topic and one's sense of self and identity; and utility value or usefulness refers to how a task fits into an individual's future plans, for instance, taking a math class to fulfill a requirement for a science degree. The latter two are usually combined and known as the importance value (e.g., Wigfield and Eccles, 2002; Eccles, 2005), so we have grouped them in that way. As we can see in our theoretical model, although being highly correlated, all these motivational factors tends to predict the choice of a STEM career in a positive way.

The theory also considers the role played by gender stereotypes (another social-cognitive process) in shaping gender differences in the choice of a STEM career ( Bussey and Bandura, 1999). Girls tend to move away from some STEM disciplines, as success in a STEM career is commonly associated with a high degree of intellectual brilliance, and brilliantness is stereotypically correlated with masculinity ( Eccles et al., 1998; Guimond and Roussel, 2001; Sáinz et al., 2019). Frenzel et al. (2007) found that girls, when addressing a scientific problem, were more insecure and considered themselves more incompetent, and that their degree of enjoyment was lower. This is why women tend to avoid disciplines with a strong mathematical load ( Wigfield and Eccles, 2002; Eccles, 2005, 2008; Sáinz and Eccles, 2012). In this way, gender-role stereotypes in math should act as a direct deterrent when it comes to choosing a STEM career.

As illustrated in Figure 2, the present paper theorizes that a girl's choice of a STEM career can be explained by the relationships among the following key identity, social, and motivational factors associated with math (a basic required competence across STEM fields that is the basis of science higher education in most academic institutions and that students often have to choose as they advance academically): expectations of success, math enjoyment, importance, and gender stereotypes about math ability.

All that said, for a better understanding of how gender-role stereotypes and motivational factors prevent or encourage girls from entering STEM careers, we propose the following hypothesis:

H1: Expectancy-value-related motivational factors predict positively female-student preferences for a STEM career, whereas gender-role stereotypes have a negative effect both in these motivational factors and on the intention to pursue a STEM career.

Role-Model Influence

Role models can be inspirational and can reduce the self-stereotyping of stigmatized groups, and this may be the case for women in male-dominated STEM fields ( Lockwood, 2006; Betz and Sekaquaptewa, 2012; O'Brien et al., 2017). Interventions based on role models revolve around enhancing a sense of belonging and identity in STEM fields, thereby fostering the personal connections of girls to the STEM community ( Casad et al., 2018; Van Camp et al., 2019). Scholars have identified two factors that affect the efficacy of the inspiration that role models provide for individuals ( Lockwood and Kunda, 1997), namely (i) the perceived relevance of the role model to the individual (i.e., domain relevance) and (ii) the believed attainability of the role model's success. Dasgupta (2011) used the theoretical lens of the stereotype inoculation model to explain how contact with successful female STEM role models can serve as "social vaccines" that protect the self-concept of women in STEM against stereotypes.

There is evidence that among STEM women, perceptions of incompatibility between their gender and STEM identities (i.e., the extent to which people perceive their identity as a woman or man to fit with their identity as a STEM member) are related to a lesser sense of belonging, greater insecurity, and less motivation in STEM, as well as greater expectations of dropping out of STEM ( London et al., 2011). Same-gender role models seem to be a more effective option for attracting young women into STEM ( Bussey and Bandura, 1999; Cheryan et al., 2011; Stout et al., 2011). Female-oriented STEM promotion thus requires role models (sometimes mentors) who not only work in a STEM field but who are also female. However, because the participation rates of women in these fields are low, finding a sufficient number of professional women in STEM fields such as engineering and physical science is challenging. This could explain the sparse research about the influence of same-sex role models on the intention to choose a STEM career and the use of computer-based agents, biographies, or teachers as close substitutes for actual female STEM role models. So, Stout et al. (2011) discovered that women exposed to female calculus professors showed enhanced self-efficacy, greater self-concept, as well as a higher identification with and commitment to STEM, even among students who still maintained gender stereotypes. In a similar vein, Plant et al. (2009) exposed middle-school girls to computer-based female role models and found that the role model was effective at promoting academic interest and motivation among girls. It is therefore not surprising that exposure to role-model biographies that challenge common STEM stereotypes (e.g., that STEM is for gifted individuals) has also been demonstrated to have positive effects on both STEM and non-STEM student interests in STEM, as well as their perceived identity compatibility between themselves and STEM ( Shin et al., 2016; Sáinz et al., 2019). Role-model exposure also has a positive impact on academic sense of belonging among STEM and non-STEM students, and a positive impact on academic self-efficacy among STEM students, but not non-STEM students ( Shin et al., 2016).

Indeed, not only do role models and mentors help broaden the perspectives of who can work in the STEM field, they also expand students' perceptions of their own potential ( Johnson et al., 2020). Research shows the positive impact of interaction with STEM professionals on students' STEM interest ( Kesar, 2018). Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that girls are more motivated (in terms of expectation of success, enjoyment, and importance) to engage in subjects related with STEM fields, such as math, after interacting with female role models in STEM than before doing so.

Based on the above rationale, to evaluate the effectiveness of the female role models' intervention, we posit the following hypotheses:

H2a: Female-student participation in the role-model sessions increases the mean value of the motivational factors considered in our theoretical model (expectations of success, enjoyment, and importance), as well as that of the intention to pursue a STEM career, while decreasing the mean value of gender stereotypes about STEM abilities.

H2b: Female-student participation in the role-model sessions increases the positive effect of the motivational factors (expectations of success, enjoyment, and importance) on the intention to pursue a STEM career, while strengthening the negative impact of gender stereotypes on these motivational factors, as well as on preferences for a STEM career (i.e., role-model sessions have a moderator effect).

Counterstereotypical Role-Model Influence on Girls' STEM Choices

Based on this idea, numerous initiatives and research-based interventions involving observing or interacting with gender-counterstereotypical role models have been implemented in several countries, particularly focusing on outcomes for girls and women. The review of these interventions carried out by Olsson and Martiny (2018) shows that exposure to or interaction with counterstereotypical role models can reduce gender stereotyping during childhood and preadolescence among girls on a short-term basis. However, the changes in stereotypes are not always sustained and do not necessarily affect children's aspirations and behavior. In this regard, Olsson and Martiny (2018) recommend that future research should assess whether a change in stereotypes is internalized and acted upon. The present work follows this recommendation by investigating not only the changes in young girls' gender stereotypes after the intervention but also its influence on their STEM career aspirations.

Against this background, we tested for differences in our model relations within the post-intervention sample between those sessions perceived as highly counterstereotypical by the girls and those that were not. To test this, we postulate our third hypothesis:

H3: Highly counterstereotypical role-model sessions strengthen the possible changes observed in the relationship(s) of the constructs in the theoretical model (i.e., the counterstereotypical content of the sessions plays a role as a strength moderator).

Materials and Methods

Procedure

This study is part of the program of the Inspiring Girls Foundation (IGF), whose main objective is to raise girls' aspirations in STEM by connecting them with female role models. The IGF has implemented a cutting-edge program, recruiting top women leaders from STEM companies as role models to go into schools to talk about their careers and experiences in the profession. All volunteers follow an innovative digital onboarding training process before engaging in the program. This training highlights the importance of volunteers talking about the opportunities and requirements to enter their jobs, the contribution that their jobs make to the real world, and the opportunities for making work and private life compatible, as well as the negative effects of gender stereotypes in career choices. The sessions are organized through a platform for role models, where participating schools can access female STEM experts directly ( Inspiring Girls Foundation [IGF], 2018). Another key strength of this project is that each group of students meets three female role models. These interactions increase the probability that girls are exposed to women with diverse personality traits, physical appearance, socio-demographical characteristics (e.g., civil status and number of children), ages, and professional paths, which provides the intervention with a higher diversity and inclusiveness compared with other experimental designs.

Sample

We designed two questionnaires that were administered in 2018-2019 to 304 girls from 12 years old (sixth primary grade) to 16 years old (fourth secondary grade) who responded before and after the role-model sessions. The first questionnaire was administered 1 week before the role-model session and the second 1 month after. A total of 16 schools participated: 11 were public and five were private. At nine schools, the family income of the students was the average for Spain; at the other seven, it was above average. Seven schools were in the south of Spain (Malaga, Seville, Almeria, Cadiz, and Huelva), four in the center (Madrid and Toledo), four in the east (Barcelona, Valencia, and Alicante), and one in the north (Navarra).

Study Design

The empirical strategy was as follows. First, the relationship between the social (stereotypes) and motivational factors in our theoretical STEM-choice model were tested by using structural equation modeling (SEM) with the whole data set (H1). Next, the effectiveness of female role-model interventions was examined, comparing the differences in the mean of the constructs (H2a) and changes in the relationships after the role-model sessions (H2b). Finally, we tested for differences in these relationships between the sessions perceived as highly counterstereotypical by the girls and those that were not (H3). To do this, we ran a multigroup SEM within the post-intervention sample. Within this post-intervention sample, we tested for invariance in the changed relationships after the intervention between (i) the sessions considered highly counterstereotypical by the girls in terms of the content that they were provided with and (ii) those that were not, to check for the possible strength-moderator effect of this characteristic of the sessions.

Once the possible effectiveness of the role-model intervention was analyzed through this design, an additional multigroup SEM analysis was carried out to test whether the counterstereotypical content of the sessions could act as a strength moderator of the changes found in the models' relation(s) after the role-model sessions. A multigroup model nested in the post-test model was run using the girls' perception of the role models' reporting about the need for counterstereotypical skills (e.g., social and communication abilities) among the requirements for following a STEM career as a grouping variable.

Measures

The participants completed the questionnaires in the same way that it would be completed in the actual project (i.e., through an online platform). Once they had completed the two designed questionnaires, we found no significant problems on the survey design, except for the low rate of participation in the second wave. To address this problem in the main study, we asked for collaboration to the call center in charged with communication with the schools to track more closely the participation of the schools in both waves and to insist to the teachers of those that hadn't answered yet, of the importance of transmitting to their students the need of answering the second questionnaire. As a result, in the main study the drop out ratio between waves was negligible.

Gender Stereotypes About Math Abilities

The gender stereotypes revolved around the higher math abilities and motivation of boys compared to girls ( Li, 2007). Three items were used: "Math is more important for boys," "Boys do better in math than girls," and "In the future, math will be more useful for boys."

Expectations of Math Success

The following seven items measuring several aspects related to girls' expectations of success in math from expectancy-value theory were translated into Spanish ( Eccles and Wigfield, 1995). Students had to rate their degree of agreement with the following statements: "I am talented at math"; "I expect to do well in a STEM degree"; "Math is easy for me"; "Learning new things in math is easy for me"; "I am more talented at math than other students in my class"; "I am more talented at math than at other subjects"; "I expect to do well at math this year."

Math Enjoyment

Students had to rate their math enjoyment using the following five items, translated into Spanish: "I like math"; "I find math enjoyable"; "I learn a lot of interesting things in math"; "I like to solve math problems"; "I enjoy doing math exercises" ( Wigfield and Eccles, 2002).

Importance Attached to Math

Students had to rate their level of agreement with seven items measuring the attainment and utility attached to math: "Mathematical skills increase job opportunities" ( Wigfield and Eccles, 1992); "Mathematical skills will allow me to choose the work/career that I want"; "Mathematical skills are useful in the everyday world"; "Math is more useful than other subjects"; "I have always wanted to do well in math"; "I prefer doing well in math rather than in other subjects"; "Doing well at math makes me feel good" ( Wigfield and Eccles, 2002).

STEM Career Choice

Students had to rate their likelihood of choosing a university degree across the following four STEM disciplines: math, physical science, computer science, and engineering ( Stoeger et al., 2016). We created a construct that includes all the disciplines that usually configure the STEM field because we are interested in the overall result of all the degrees, not in a single specific one.

STEM Counterstereotypical Content of the Sessions: Highly Counterstereotypical Sessions Versus Lower Counterstereotypical Sessions

Because we could not manipulate the stereotypical content of the role models by using variable tuning, we included three items in the post-test questionnaire to measure the degree to which the girls perceived the role models as more counterstereotypical: "This profession requires communication skills," "This profession requires teamwork," and "This profession requires social skills." We chose these three questions because they show skills (such as communication and teamwork) that are more congruent with the female gender role (social abilities).

Next, we grouped the after-session data into two subsets to test the counterstereotypical content of the sessions as a possible strength moderator of the relationships that change after the interventions. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted ( Table 1) on the three questions. The factorial score was transformed into a dummy variable, using its median as a cut point. This produced a balanced split of the sample, with 50% of the cases having a value equal to 1 ( Rigdon et al., 1998).

Construct Validity

The validity assessment of reflective measurement models focuses on convergent and discriminant validity. Researchers must examine the average variance extracted (AVE) for convergent validity. An AVE value of 0.50 or higher indicates a sufficient degree of convergent validity, meaning that the latent variable explains more than half of its indicators' variance ( Hair et al., 2011). As Table 2 shows, all the constructs have AVE values of at least 0.5 or very close to this cut-off (the lowest one corresponds to the construct "STEM choice").

The Fornell-Larcker criterion ( Fornell and Larcker, 1981) was followed for the assessment of discriminant validity, where a latent construct shares more variance with its assigned indicators than with another latent variable in the structural model. The AVE of each latent construct should therefore be greater than the latent construct's highest squared correlation with any other latent construct. Similarly, another more liberal criterion is met for every single item. Congruently, an indicator's loading with its associated latent construct should be higher than its loadings with all the remaining constructs (i.e., the cross loadings).

Results

All the analyses were conducted with the SEM in Stata 15.1. Several indicators of model fit were used, including χ ²/df, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), the Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), and the comparative fit index (CFI). General guidelines for the cut-off values of the different indicators suggest that an adequate fit is supported by RMSEA < 0.06, CFI > 0.90, TLI > 0.90, and χ ²/df < 2 (e.g., Byrne, 1998; Hu and Bentler, 1999; Raykov and Marcoulides, 2000). All the models presented herein satisfy these conditions and were estimated with full information maximum likelihood to incorporate cases with missing data ( Enders, 2010). Robust standard errors were clustered by schools. We provide correlation matrices for replicability purposes in Tables 3A, B. Table 3A shows the correlation matrix for the all the variables before and after the role model sessions, whereas, Table 3B displays the correlations for the same variables but for low and high counterstrerotypical sessions within the post-intervention sample.

Measurement Models and Invariance

To assess the invariances between the two points in time (before and after the role-model sessions), a measurement model was estimated, including the five constructs in Figure 3, because they are focal constructs in the following STEM-choice models. The five constructs included in the measurement model were gender stereotypes, expectations of success, enjoyment, importance, and STEM choice. All constructs were specified as latent variables, and the covariances between all five constructs were estimated.

The unconstrained multigroup CFAs (model 1) showed adequate model fits across a range of frequently emphasized fit statistics for the latent constructs (χ ²/df = 1.936; RMSEA = 0.055; TLI = 0.947; CFI = 0.953).

After confirming the goodness of fit of the CFAs, the invariances between the two moments were explored. The sequence of analyses began with a combined multiple-group model with no cross-time equality constraints for the five latent constructs before and after the role-model sessions (model 1). Second, the constraint that item loadings are invariant between the two moments was added (model 2). Third, the constraint that loadings as well as item error variances are equivalent across samples was added (model 3). Finally, the constraint that loadings as well as intercepts are equivalent across samples was added (model 4). The nested models were compared according to the change in the χ ² statistic relative to that in the degrees of freedom; a significant worsening of model fit indicates that the imposed model constraints are not tenable.

The model fits for sequential constrained models 1-4 for each of the latent constructs are given in Table 4. The fit statistics of models 1 and 2 (the unconstrained and loading-invariant models, respectively) are acceptable, and the change in χ ² is not statistically significant. This result implies that the condition of partial scalar invariance is therefore met (e.g., Byrne, 2010), indicating that the time difference does not differentially affect the underlying measurement characteristics of the constructs; i.e., the constructs have the same meaning before and after attending the role-model sessions, and quantitative comparisons of factor scores can be undertaken meaningfully at both points in time. The factor loadings, which are all statistically significant, are presented in Table 2.

Model 3 (loading and error-variance invariant) and model 4 (loading and intercept invariant) cannot be accepted because of a statistically significant worsening in the change in χ ² with respect to model 2. This implies that the heterogeneity and mean values of the constructs changed after the role-model sessions, indicating (as will be shown later) the effectiveness of these interventions in changing the motivational factors, gender stereotypes, and STEM choice of girls.

Testing the Theoretical STEM-Choice Model (H1)

Having ensured the partial scalar invariance and the consistency of the constructs before and after the role-model sessions, path models were used to test the theoretical STEM-choice model. The model includes all of the paths and covariances shown in Figure 4, as well as paths estimating the predictive relations between gender stereotypes and the motivational constructs (i.e., expectations of success, enjoyment, importance, and STEM choice) shown in Figure 3.

Total and Indirect Effects of Role Stereotypes

In the STEM-choice model, stereotypes about math ability have both a direct and indirect influence on STEM choice, and so direct and indirect effects were tested through the motivational constructs of enjoyment, importance, and expectations of success with indirect effects in Stata. Table 6 shows the total effect, together with one direct and three indirect effects that make up the total effect.

The results suggest the indirect effects of stereotypes about math abilities on STEM choice via the three motivational factors of the model. As seen in Table 6, the total effect of stereotypes about math abilities on the STEM-choice model is negative and highly significant. This is due to adding the indirect effect of stereotypes via enjoyment, importance, and especially expectations of success to the direct effect of the construct. The indirect effects thus suggest that although stereotypes about math abilities have a significant direct effect on STEM choice at 5%, their total effect (especially via expectations) is highly significant both before and after the role-model interventions.

Testing Mean-Level Differences in Research Variables (H2a)

First, differences in student motivations and gender stereotypes about math abilities after the role-model sessions were examined by using univariate t-test scores ( Table 7). As anticipated in the CFA model, there are several significant differences across time. The variables of enjoyment, importance, expectations of success, and STEM choice increase significantly after attending the role-model sessions. Conversely, stereotypes regarding women's lower math abilities decrease significantly after attending the role-model sessions. These findings are consistent with the predictions made in H2a.

Table 7. Means and univariate t-test scores before and after the role-model sessions.

Testing the Moderator Effect of the Role-Model Sessions (H2b)

After changes in the mean value of the constructs were confirmed, whether the relations in the STEM-choice model (i.e., the path model described under H1) vary after the role-model sessions was also tested. Moderation of the role-model sessions through multigroup SEMs was also tested ( Little, 2013). For these purposes, the change in χ ² (Δχ ²) was examined across two nested models: one that freely estimated the predictive paths and covariances for each group separately, and another that constrained all or some of the predictive paths and covariances to be equal across two moments in time.

Differences in the path coefficients were tested using likelihood ratio tests ( Table 5, LR test column). At both points in time, the estimated path coefficients kept their sign and similar significance. The outcomes suggested that there is an increase in the path coefficient from expectations to STEM choice that goes from marginally significant to highly significant after the role-model interventions. This result shows that the positive influence of expectations on STEM choice is reinforced after attending the role-model sessions, thus confirming H2b. A strengthening in the negative influence of stereotypes about math abilities on importance after the role-model sessions is also observed, which is also consistent with the moderator effect of the sessions predicted in H2b. This highlights the relevance of these interventions. That is, reducing the weight of stereotypes about math abilities has a strong effect on the importance that girls attribute to doing well in math, a basic competence in high demand in STEM careers.

Testing the Counterstereotypical Content of the Sessions as a Moderator of Strength (H3)

To delve into the possible causes of the moderating effect of the role-model sessions, we examined the possible influence of a role model mentioning during a session that counterstereotypical skills are among the requirements for following a STEM career. Multigroup SEMs were run within the sample after the role-model sessions to evaluate the possible role of the counterstereotypical content of the sessions as a moderator of strength ( Bentler, 1995) on the effect of expectations on STEM choices.

A dummy variable was used to group the sessions into two clusters, one comprising the sessions that the participants considered to be highly counterstereotypical regarding the demand for social and communication skills among STEM career requirements, and another comprising the remaining sessions that the participants perceived to be more stereotypical.

According to the results in Table 8, expectations and STEM choice increase significantly among girls who believe that the role-model sessions are highly counterstereotypical about STEM career requirements. Meanwhile, the stereotype construct regarding math abilities decrease significantly. Finally, there is no significant effect on importance and only a marginal effect on enjoyment.

Table 8. Means and univariate t-test scores between girls who perceived the role-model sessions as counter-stereotypical and those who did not.

After confirming the changes in the mean values of the constructs, the analysis concentrated on testing whether the relationships in the STEM-choice model after the role-model sessions vary between those girls who considered the role-model sessions to be highly counterstereotypical and those who considered the sessions to be more stereotypical. In particular, we tested whether there are significant changes in the path coefficient that measures the influence of expectations of success on STEM choice between the two groups of girls. As the results in Table 9 show, there is a significant increase in the path coefficient from expectations to STEM choice. Thus, we conclude that participant feedback on whether the sessions about STEM career requirements are counterstereotypical acts as a moderator, thus confirming H3.

Finally, the marginal effect of expectations of success on STEM choice in both groups is shown in Figure 6. The effect of expectations on STEM choice after the intervention is between the minimum value for this path coefficient estimated from those girls who perceive the interventions as being more stereotypical and the maximum value obtained for those girls who consider the sessions to be highly counterstereotypical.

Conclusion and Discussion

This research contributes to the literature on how to increase girls' interest in STEM through a female role-model-based intervention. This study advances our understanding of the influence of female role models in improving girls' preferences for STEM by exploring the change in the mean values of the constructs (i.e., mean-level group differences) and in their relationships (i.e., moderation) by using an adaptation of the expectancy-value model of career choice in STEM fields. The findings of this research show that the optimal way to encourage young girls to pursue emerging high-growth roles, particularly those requiring STEM math skills, is to expose them to the professional and personal experiences of actual female role models with a successful professional trajectory in STEM fields.

On average, the role-model sessions significantly increased the two considered task-value factors of the expectancy-value theory (i.e., enjoyment and importance), as well as girls' expectations of success in math, together with girls' preference for a STEM career. These sessions also contributed to decreasing the effect of gender-role stereotypes. Additionally, the female role-model sessions had a moderator effect in increasing the influence of expectations of success on STEM choices. In particular, when young girls perceive that counterstereotypical skills (such as teamworking, communication, and social skills) are among the requirements demanded across the different STEM professions, the positive effect that the expectation of success has on the intention to pursue a STEM career is reinforced. Thus, the counterstereotypical content of the sessions acted as a moderator because it strengthened the influence that expectations of success had on STEM choices.

This result could be because the impact of ability beliefs on STEM choice depends on the extent to which the stereotypes (resp. counterstereotypes) are incongruent (resp. congruent) with individuals' self-concepts and goals ( Starr, 2019). Indeed, according to the theory of role congruity ( Diekman et al., 2010), social skills are more congruent with the communal goals (e.g., working with or helping other people) that women are more likely to endorse. Thus, in this case the concordance occurs when girls perceive that among the requirements for following a STEM career, which are usually thought mainly to include masculine agentic goals such as developing instrumental and technical tasks, there are counterstereotypical skills in this field (such as communication and social abilities). This congruence acts as a strength moderator of the positive impact of expectancy beliefs on STEM choice.

Of course, many other dimensions of the role-model sessions could also play a moderator role, but the sessions were designed especially to offer the girls firsthand information about the actual skills and abilities formally or informally needed to pursue a STEM career from the direct experience of a female expert in those fields. A wide range of studies have shown that the preferences for certain jobs and skill sets among men and women are shaped by both the expectation and experience of diversity and inclusion across occupations ( Seron et al., 2016; Cardador, 2017; Kang et al., 2019). This could be due, in part, to the increase in the feelings of belonging and inclusion in these domains that they experience after having been exposed to female role models who are successful in STEM fields ( Walton and Cohen, 2007; Shin et al., 2016; Casad et al., 2018; Kang et al., 2019; Van Camp et al., 2019).

The findings of the present study make several important contributions to the existing literature on role models and girls in STEM, which can help future research and policies on this topic. Much of the previous research was focused on undergraduate or high-school students (e.g., Anderson and Gilbride, 2003; Rosenthal et al., 2011; Shin et al., 2016; Van Camp et al., 2019), but the present research addresses girls from and above 12 years old because this is the age when their self-perception of competence and self-confidence begins to fall ( Willms and Jacobsen, 1990; Sáinz and Eccles, 2012). This implies that future research should be focused on the start of the leaky pipeline, before students specialize and choose their different academic tracks in secondary education and beyond, which is especially relevant if the intention is to fix this problem from the very beginning. Another important contribution is the identification, through a one-group pretest-post-test design, of female role-model interventions as a way of reducing stereotypes and of boosting the motivational factors that play an important role in girls' engagement with STEM fields. This type of design to evaluate the effectiveness of these role-model interventions is especially versatile, and although, in general, it still has some limitations, certain rules have been applied to mitigate the negative effects that could stem from the absence of a control group. The fact that girls find STEM careers more interesting after the role-model sessions is also worth mentioning. This is aligned with the literature on role-model interventions ( Shin et al., 2016; Van Camp et al., 2019).

Finally, it is also important to highlight that the present role-model exposure was not carried out in an experimental or artificial environment (with avatars or online biographies) but rather is the consequence of an actual and innovative female role-model intervention implemented by a foundation with continuity over time and international expansion. Indeed, this program is currently being spread to many countries around the world (the United Kingdom, Spain, Serbia, Switzerland, Singapore, Italy, Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Honduras, and Panama). These role-model sessions are carried out with actual successful women volunteers that are experts in their fields and are willing to collaborate with the program, and we consider that this creates an atmosphere of closeness and warmth that is ideal for the girls to interact directly with the role models and dare to share their doubts and concerns regarding the male-dominated domain of STEM careers.

The present research has immediate practical applications because the conclusions of this study will allow the IGF to improve the effectiveness of its role-model program. Taking into account the results obtained, the sessions would be enhanced significantly if they were focused especially on the counterstereotypical skills and abilities that are needed to pursue a STEM career, along with information about job opportunities in the new age of automation, the social and practical contributions of STEM fields, and the possibility of achieving work-life balance.

Practical Implications of the Present Research

The findings from the present study also have practical implications. This study shows the effectiveness of the role-model sessions in terms of reducing gender stereotypes, increasing enjoyment and importance-related values as well as expectation of success, and strengthening the direct effect of expectancies of success on girls' STEM choices. This research thus demonstrates the benefits of role-model sessions in increasing STEM intention of enrollment among young girls, and thereby suggests a promising method of increasing the number of STEM graduates to meet the growing need for STEM professionals.

An increase in women's presence within STEM professions is particularly important so as to enable women to seize the new opportunities offered by digital transformation. If women continue to be underrepresented in STEM fields oriented to the design and production of digital technologies, they may fall further behind in the labor market. The World Economic Forum [WEF] (2020) suggests that there is an urgent need to increase the supply and visibility of women with technical skills to close the gender gap in the professions of the future.

In this regard, Madgavkar et al. (2019) estimate that, globally, between 40 million and 160 million women (7-24% of those currently employed) may need to transition between occupations by 2030, often into higher-skilled roles. To make these transitions, women will need new skills. In particular, they will need to overcome their low participation in STEM fields compared to men, as an important barrier that, if not broken, will make it harder for women to make transitions. Policymakers and organizations must step up interventions targeted especially at women, such as addressing stereotypes about occupations and supporting women in STEM professions, which is precisely at the core of the studied role-model sessions.

Although not the main objective of the program, an important positive spillover of these interventions has to do with addressing the issue of vertical sex segregation. This is relevant because, according to the literature, increasing women's visibility and power in male-dominated occupations will reduce the persistent gender stereotyping, discrimination, and perceptions of lack of belongingness and interest that pose barriers to women's representation in managerial roles ( Gaucher et al., 2011; Skaggs et al., 2012). This potential benefit could come from the fact that many female role models who participate in the sessions are successful professionals who have broken the glass ceiling (i.e., they have been promoted into the upper echelons of their organization). Indeed, some of the strategies that have been posed for fostering greater equality and gender integration in the workplace are focused on the supply side (i.e., women) and include efforts to increase women's interest in male-typed occupations, such as leadership positions and/or male-dominated STEM fields, through programs targeted at precollege girls to develop their confidence and challenge the cultural contexts that restrict the spectrum of self-beliefs they find acceptable and desirable in gendered ways ( Eccles, 1994; Cech et al., 2011; Cech, 2013).

Finally, all these measures should be accompanied by a learning and social environment that promotes the reduction of sexist attitudes and helps to configure a world without stereotypes ( Solbes-Canales et al., 2020). Only in this way can the next generation of potential female scientists believe that they can achieve a successful STEM career.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

The present results are based on a survey with self-selected schools, and it would be desirable to use a larger sample of schools to reinforce the statistical validity of the results obtained. However, because this is a real and non-laboratory-based study, the design of the sample procedure is beyond the reach of the researcher, who is limited to collecting data in the real environment in which the program is being implemented. Second, and as a consequence of the previous limitation, it could be argued that the results reported in this study are bounded in the sample and might not reflect the patterns of the overall population of young female adolescents in Spain regarding the motivational factors that drive their underrepresentation in STEM fields and the effectiveness of the role-model interventions in these fields. However, the schools that went through the role-model sessions included several regional and socioeconomic varieties, including both public and private schools, giving a relatively diverse sample. Third, the effect of the counterstereotypical content offered by the role models during the sessions in the female adolescents' career choices suggested by the theoretical model would need to be explored further over a longer period of time, with longitudinal data. This could be carried out through a third-wave survey, at least 3 months after participants attended the role-model sessions, to evaluate their possible residual effect. To do this, it would be necessary to have a larger sample because of the revisable high drop-out rate.

The IGF has developed a new means of exposure to role models through videos, which is easier to implement than face-to-face sessions. It would be interesting for future work to understand which of the two types of intervention is more effective, as the video library has important advantages in terms of cost-effectiveness and time flexibility. The findings from the present study suggest other promising directions for future research. Future work could consider expanding upon the current research with a longitudinal study with repeated exposure to role-model sessions. This would facilitate understanding of the long-lasting effects of role-model exposure. Additionally, because the IGF has started a process of international expansion, mainly in Latin American countries, it could be interesting to evaluate the influence of these role-model sessions across different cultural settings.

Further research should also incorporate a control group of female students who, being in possession of the same features as the final participants, have not been involved in the role-model sessions. This would be key for generalizability, although this has to be done carefully because of ethical concerns about the injustice of omitting a group of girls who could have benefited in the future by attending these role-model sessions. The IGF does not want to discriminate against a group of girls for study reasons. The measurement of STEM choice as a global compendium of different STEM disciplines could be another limitation, this being because the content and objectives of engineering as a discipline (although related) are not the same as those of physical science, computer science, and math. The interest of female students in pursuing physical science could thus be different from their interest in math, computer science, or engineering.

Data Availability Statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation, to any qualified researcher.

Ethics Statement

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Marta Pérez-Dorao (Fundación Inspiring Girls) Carmen Calderón (Universidad CEU San Pablo) Mirian González Durántez (Inspiring Girls Chair). Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants' legal guardian/next of kin.

Author Contributions

RM, SG-P, and MS designed, performed, and analyzed the research, searched literature, and wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

Funding

This research was funded by (i) the Spanish Government (Project I+D+i FEM2017-83006-R, funded by AEI/FEDER, UE), (ii) the XV Call for research mobility grants CEU-Banco Santander, and (iii) Cátedra Universidad CEU San Pablo - Mutua Madrileña (060516-USPMM-02/17).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the generosity of Fundación Inspiring Girls España and especially of its Chair Marta Pérez, without which the present study could not have been completed. We are also grateful to Jacquelynne Eccles, Lorenzo Escot, Veronica Frisancho, Ricardo Gimeno, Laura Hospido, Jose Luis Montes, Lee Ross, Siri Terjesen, and Ernesto Villanueva for their valuable comments and suggestions. We are also thankful for the vaulable comments and suggestions of the editor Esther Sanz de la Cal and the reviewers Eva Cifre and Nicola Naismith.

References

Breda, T., Grenet, J., Monnet, M., and Effenterre, C. (2018). "Can female role models reduce the gender gap in science? Evidence from classroom interventions in French high schools," in PSE Working Papers halshs-01713068. Paris: HAL.
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Inspiring the next generation of women and girls in science

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To mark International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we take a look at some of the ways we are helping to highlight a few of the many remarkable female scientists, explore the continuing gender gap in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) and inspire the next generation of women in t…

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To understand the lack of female participation in STEM disciplines we need to examine why girls feel shut out.

"I was taught the way of progress was neither swift nor easy", once said Marie Curie, physicist, chemist, and winner of the 1903 and 1911 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Since Ms. Curie's first win, only 18 women have been awarded a Nobel Prize in physics, chemistry, physiology, or medicine. During the same period, the number of men given awards in these fields was 575.

Like any self-fulfilling prophecy, the absence of women from STEM is like a snake eating its own tail. The invisibility of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) contributes to fewer girls studying and working in STEM, which creates further invisibility, and so the cycle continues.

The elephant in the room is the archaic notion that women are inherently incapable of excelling in tech and, thus, are less represented. This, and other such stereotypes, are at least partly responsible for making women feel shut out of STEM disciplines. However, to fully understand the current state of female participation in STEM, we must examine another question: why do girls feel shut out of STEM?

Eureka! and other myths

Time and again, studies show that girls in grades K through 12 participate and perform as well in math and science courses as their male classmates. But while undergraduate women earn 50.3% of science and engineering bachelor's degrees, they only make up 29% of the science and engineering workforce.

Clearly, the pipeline has some inherent leaks. But where does it start, really, the path that steers girls away from STEM?

According to the UNESCO report, Cracking the Code: Girls' and women's education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), gender stereotypes about STEM are rooted in the socialization process, a time where girls and boys learn what it means to be girls and boys. The predominant stereotypes that rise during this time are, "boys are better at math and science than girls" and "science and engineering careers are masculine domains".
The invisibility of women in STEM contributes to fewer girls studying and working in STEM, which creates further invisibility. Click To Tweet
Similarly, in the Nobel world, the myth of the lone genius, in which a handful of scientists are given acclaim for the work of many, is continuously promoted. It helps propagate a familiar image: a sole scientist working in a dimly lit laboratory shouts "eureka" as bolts of lightning fill the room. Think of historically great technologists and scientists, real and fictional, that encompass this myth: Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Doctor Frankenstein, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, and even Doctor Who. Almost always, these genius scientists are both white and male.

Recent studies have found that stereotypes associating high-level intellectual capacity and "genius" with males are internalized by children as young as six years old. One particular study claims there is "no significant correlation between girls' perceptions of school achievement and their perceptions of brilliance", meaning that while girls in grades K through 12 generally perform as well as - or better than - boys in STEM subjects, they still can't foresee themselves becoming brilliant scientists.

The claim that the lack of women in STEM is due to biological inferiority or differences can be put to rest once and for all: it's not that girls can't do it, it's that somewhere along the line, they decide not to.

That decision, to be truly understood, must be looked at holistically: a systems approach. In the center is the girl; around her are her family and peers, school and community, and larger societal influences. In this theory, it is not the singular girl who makes the decision but a series of intertwined, systemic influences that guide her hand. The "lone genius", one can argue, is alone not because great achievements are made by individuals or by men alone but because it has systematically marginalized those who don't fit its image, further perpetuating the prevailing bias.

You can't be what you can't see
As outdated as the myth of the 'lone genius' is, it is still a powerful image that allows boys to more readily envision their future success. The opposite rings true for girls: you can't be what you can't see. Click To Tweet
As outdated as the myth of the "lone genius" is, it is still a powerful image that allows boys to more readily envision their future success. The opposite rings true for girls: you can't be what you can't see. The lack of female representation in STEM creates a world in which girls just don't quite fit.

A striking recent example of this can be seen in the popular show Doctor Who. Since casting actress Jodie Whittaker as the latest incarnation of the Doctor, the show's creators experienced a major backlash.This is largely down to the fact that Whittaker is the first female to play the character. The previous 12 were played by men. While young girls may rejoice at seeing a female Doctor, the ever-present hum of gender bias rumbles on.

"Time and again, I hear from women who chose their STEM career because they were inspired by a successful woman who proved it could be done," says Suw Charman-Anderson, Founder of Ada Lovelace Day. "We must prove that there is a path for them to tread by telling the stories, past and present, of the women who've built, invented, discovered and explained the world around us, but who so often go unmentioned."

Fortunately, there are many ways to do this.

Many STEM initiatives now focus on providing girls and young women with empowering female mentors. Parents and educators also play a significant role in encouraging girls' interest in STEM. If you're a parent, consider your own relationship to STEM and how that translates into your daughters' lives. Consider your language; do you speak differently to your sons and daughters? When you see inequality in the media, do you make a point to challenge it and have a discussion?

This type of modeling and awareness can create alternative narratives to the harmful ones that are prevalent in society. They indicate to girls that they too can be geniuses (pink lab coat not necessary).
The question is not 'How can we push girls into STEM?' but 'How can we bring STEM into the experience of girlhood?' Click To Tweet
Not just for the boys

Research shows that as girls enter middle school and high school, their interest in STEM starts to decline. The question is not "How can we push girls into STEM?" but "How can we bring STEM into the experience of girlhood?" Finding female role models, both real and representational, is a great start, but there is a myriad of ways to make the experience of STEM something that resists the trite stereotypes of the sciences being "masculine" or "just for the boys" and reserved for "lone geniuses".

Just as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are working to establish a more connected approach to science, we too can re-examine our relationship with math and science, especially in the home and communities in which we live. For parents (and even teachers), thinking outside of the box is critical to making STEM approachable. It may be the case that a girl appears to hate the scientific method or mathematical formulas but can't stay away from her phone, collects crystal stones, or loves murder-mysteries.

Helping her see that her phone runs on the technology created by science and math, that crystals derive their appearance from the microscopic arrangement of atoms, or that solving crimes may involve anything from psychological analyses to forensic scientific testing at the crime scenes could all help her consider a career in STEM that may previously have seemed an impossibility.

The world can be a laboratory; as parents and educators, seeing where science and math come to life outside of the textbook can be just the thing to pique a girl's interest.

Leading the way: Supporting women in STEM

Many organizations are leading the way in helping girls connect with inspiring female leaders and get hands-on experience building and addressing problems that tie their communities to the world as a whole. All of this brings together two of the most important clues in tackling the conundrum of female absence in STEM: the importance of both female visibility and the cohesive, social narrative beyond STEM. Here are a few organizations doing just that:
Two of the most important areas in tackling the conundrum of female absence in STEM are 1) the importance of female visibility and 2) the cohesive, social narrative beyond STEM. Click To Tweet'There's no magic recipe for getting girls into STEM, but we know early and positive exposure makes an impact.' Click To Tweet
Girls Who Code teaches girls about computer science and the programming through clubs and summer immersion programs related to computer science with the added bonus of connecting with female engineers and entrepreneurs.

Girlstart works to engage girls in a year-round, intensive suite of STEM education programs. They even have an annual Girls in STEM conference with workshops guided by women in science, technology, engineering, and math fields.

The Society of Women Engineers aims to spark girls' interest in STEM in many ways, notably their "Invent It. Build It." conference where middle school and high school girls, parents, and educators participate in hands-on activities and learn about engineering clubs, careers, scholarships, college admission, and resources.

"There's no magic recipe for getting girls into STEM, but we know early and positive exposure makes an impact," says Karen Horting, CEO and Executive Director at the Society of Women Engineers. Many recent initiatives have been introduced aiming to do just that. In early 2017, for example, the Girl Scouts of the USA launched an initiative to enhance girls' interest in STEM called the Girl Scout STEM Pledge, which intends to raise $70 million and get 2.5 million girls involved in STEM industries by 2025.

Other initiatives stem (no pun intended!) from unlikely places. In partnership with NASA, Mattel's newest American Girl Doll, Luciana Vega, is an aspiring astronaut. According to Katy Dickson, president of American Girl, "Luciana is a role model for today's girls - empowering them to defy stereotypes, and embrace risks that will teach them about failure and success as they chart their own course in life - whatever the goal." To further engage with Luciana, girls can explore space simulations, quizzes, challenges, and more on the American Girl website or app, read about Luciana in a chapter book series written by Erin Teagan, or apply for a scholarship to train like an astronaut at a Luciana-Themed Space Camp. Similarly in 2017, Lego released a "Women of NASA" collection which quickly became Amazon's No. 1 best-selling toy.

We must broaden our minds to see that STEM is neither static nor something that's taught only in the classroom; it is dynamic and woven into every aspect of our lives. While neither swift nor easy, progress is happening. As we barrel into a new year, I can't help but hear Ms. Curie's words softly chiming in the background - a potent reminder that while we have come so far, there is still much left to do.

The invisibility of women in STEM contributes to fewer girls studying and working in STEM, which creates further invisibility. Click To Tweet As outdated as the myth of the 'lone genius' is, it is still a powerful image that allows boys to more readily envision their future success. The opposite rings true for girls: you can't be what you can't see. The question is not 'How can we push girls into STEM?' but 'How can we bring STEM into the experience of girlhood?' Two of the most important areas in tackling the conundrum of female absence in STEM are 1) the importance of female visibility and 2) the cohesive, social narrative beyond STEM. 'There's no magic recipe for getting girls into STEM, but we know early and positive exposure makes an impact.' Click To Tweet Click To Tweet Click To Tweet Click To Tweet

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Women in STEM - Bring STEM Into The Experience Of Girlhood

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Like any self-fulfilling prophecy, the absence of women from STEM is like a snake eating its own tail. The invisibility of women in STEM-based roles contributes to fewer girls studying and working in STEM subjects, which creates further invisibility, and so the cycle continues.

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Mathematicians and scientists are socially awkward men who wear glasses-at least, according to children.

In several studies, when children were asked to draw a mathematician or scientist, girls were twice as likely to draw men as they were to draw women, while boys almost universally drew men, often in a lab coat. I decided to try this out at home with my 12-year-old son, who said, "Really anyone can be a mathematician, but this is your average one," and promptly sketched a man in a checked oxford shirt with a pocket protector.

As an English teacher at a STEM magnet high school in New Jersey, I see these gender disparities in our engineering and computer science (CS) academies, even as our dynamic, thoughtful girls work hard to dispel stereotypes and recruit younger girls through coding camps and workshops. Our teachers certainly reflect the STEM fields of a generation ago: Three of our four CS teachers and engineering teachers are male.

The irony is that girls perform as well as boys in math. Nationally, math test scores for girls have been consistently equal to or within two points of boys in fourth and eighth grades over several years; middle school girls pass algebra at higher rates than boys. In science, girls perform on par with boys and enroll in advanced science and math courses at equal rates as they move into high school. And then something happens: A gender gap in participation starts to appear as girls take fewer of the more advanced STEM courses and tests as they get closer to college. This gap widens the longer girls are in school and is often compounded by issues of race and class.

Researchers don't know yet if these continuing disparities in STEM reflect the slow pace of societal change, child-rearing expectations, or something deeper and more entrenched, such as the way we think about girls' minds. But teachers can play a significant role in influencing or dispelling stereotypes in STEM education. Here are some studies from researchers and educators that may offer a few insights-and a few solutions.

Barrier 1: Building a Math Identity

The problem: One explanation for the gender differences in STEM participation may lie with those formative ideas about who a mathematician or scientist is.

Stereotype threat -the mere perception that a group one belongs to is not good at a task-has been linked to lower academic performance, according to researchers. When girls become aware through both subtle and overt cultural messages about male superiority in math, it makes each encounter with math and technology more fraught, triggering self-doubt in even the most studious young girls.

Both teachers and curriculum can inadvertently contribute to these perceptions.

In one striking study from 2015, Israeli researchers divided sixth-grade exams into two sets for grading: One batch was graded by the teachers and included students' names, and the other contained no student names and was graded externally. In math, teachers graded boys higher, while external graders rated girls higher. Those low teacher grades then dissuaded girls for years to come.

Teachers often harbor these biases about themselves, too. Elementary school teachers are predominantly female, and many are anxious about teaching math, which can lead to lower achievement in math for girls. This persists into high school, where anxious teachers might be overly reliant on textbooks and rote methods of instruction. Images in those same textbooks can subconsciously trigger self-doubt in girls. One study found that when female high school students viewed chemistry textbooks containing pictures of female scientists, they performed better than female students who viewed textbooks containing only pictures of males.

Solutions: In response, researchers say teachers can foster a growth mindset in students by emphasizing that practice rather than innate ability improves performance. Other studies show that brief, targeted interventions in which students learn that intelligence is not fixed but can be improved through training and hard work can help them persist through challenges, a trait that, in math and science, should be particularly advantageous for girls.

Adding images of female mathematicians or scientists throughout classroom materials and assigning individual or group work that summarizes or contextualizes women's achievements in these subjects can also shift perceptions about who belongs.
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Tackling the STEM gender bias can also warrant some self-reflection on the part of teachers.

"For me, it starts with a belief, these expectations I have for all of my students, that all kids can learn-every teacher doesn't have that belief," says Cicely Woodard, a middle school math teacher in Franklin, Tennessee, and the state's 2018 Teacher of the Year. "When the kids walk in the door I immediately believe they will get this content."

Stanford University professor and researcher Jo Boaler recommends that female teachers avoid phrases that imply their discomfort or dislike of math-like "I'm bad at math" or "This is hard"-and get creative with assignments that show they are truly interested in the topic. They may also want to grade papers anonymously, where possible.

Barrier 2: The Question of Race and Class

The problem: Our assumptions about who does math well-and the academic and financial support that follows-may, in fact, impact performance more than raw aptitude. This has particularly profound implications for low-income students and black and Latino females, who are significantly less likely to take advanced STEM courses and pursue STEM professions later in life.

A recent study by Sean Reardon at Stanford University revealed that girls often do better than boys on math in racially diverse districts, while boys perform better in affluent white districts. He theorized that in higher-income communities, parents are more able and more likely to invest in enrichment for their children-like robotics camps or theater classes-that adhere to stereotypes. Children in these communities may also be more likely to see men in positions like doctors or engineers that reinforce the narrative about who pursues STEM careers.

Additionally, research "has clearly [indicated] that black girls view themselves as outsiders in mathematics and teachers view them as outsiders," says Nicole Joseph, assistant professor of mathematics and science education at Vanderbilt University. Joseph points to tracking in math, more common in middle and high school than in the humanities, as a key structure infused with bias that restricts access to rigorous math education for black students.

Solutions: In a review of 62 studies on the perseverance of black women and girls in math, Joseph and her coauthors found that several measures can help build math identity and interest among black girls. For starters, schools can consider "structural disruptions" to how math instruction usually happens. San Francisco Unified School District, for example, recently eliminated accelerated math in middle school and allowed all students to take Algebra I in ninth grade-effectively ending tracking-which led to a rise in algebra test scores and a decrease in repeat rates for all students, including black and Latino students.

Joseph also suggests that "community influences and resilience strategies" from extra- or co-curricular programs, single-sex programs, teacher training in culturally responsive teaching strategies, and black and female role models in STEM can help.

Educators like Norman Alston, a Seattle-based educator, and Patricia Brown, a technology integration specialist in Ladue, Missouri, are fostering mathematical interest in girls through after-school STEM programs. Alston requires middle school graduates of his program to teach younger students, and every speaker or expert Brown brings to talk to her female students is a woman of color, so students can see powerful, successful female mathematicians and scientists who look like them.

Barrier 3: It's Not Just Content-It's Context, Too

The problem: When it comes to teaching and learning STEM, research shows that the format matters.

A recent analysis of the admission tests to elite New York City high schools found that at Stuyvesant High School (considered the most rigorous in the city) girls had better grades in higher-level math, but overall had scored slightly lower on the admissions test, leading to lower admission rates. This is not because girls are worse at math, but may be because they guess less-a disadvantage on a multiple-choice test-and perform better with open-ended answers, according to the study.

Stanford's Reardon and his colleagues drew similar conclusions after analyzing 8 million fourth- and eighth-grade national standardized test scores and finding that gender gaps correlated with multiple choice questions-as opposed to open-ended ones-and attributed to 25 percent of the difference in scores between males and females.
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Solutions: Teachers may want to move away from multiple-choice tests-often a staple in math and science-and place more emphasis on open-ended assessments that allow students, especially girls, to demonstrate their proficiency through word problems or writing, where they feel more confident.

Other STEM educators are going beyond traditional STEM instruction in their classrooms to ensure that every child has a fair chance to learn math.

I hate when people say kids need grit-they have resilience, but need understanding of how to frame it in the content of the course.

As part of a pilot project at Georgia Tech to bring AP Computer Science to Atlanta students, teacher Shana White makes sure to use hands-on activities and real-world examples to supplement the online coursework and provide context and purpose for assignments.

"I hate when people say kids need grit-they have resilience, but need understanding of how to frame it in the content of the course," says White, whose students are all African American, half of them girls.

Focusing on the interdisciplinary and problem-focused nature of STEM is key, recommends Dr. Jill Marshall, associate co-director of UTeach at the University of Texas at Austin, a program trying to confront the pipeline problem of STEM teachers from diverse backgrounds.

"Project-based instruction just generally draws in more people because it addresses problems that people see as relevant," said Marshall. She cites a 2008 study from the National Academy of Engineering that asked people if they wanted to be engineers: Girls were twice as likely as boys to say no. But when asked if they would like to design a safe water system, save the rainforest, or use DNA to solve crimes, the girls answered yes.

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Keeping Girls in STEM: 3 Barriers, 3 Solutions

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Stereotypes and cultural norms dampen girls' interest in STEM, but educators can counter the disparities with small changes to their practice.

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https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2019.00060/full

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Gender equity in the workplace has become a key indicator of a company's social standing. While major corporations may invest in diversity and inclusion mainly to satisfy public expectations, to those whose identities are included in these initiatives, these actions mean a safer, brighter future. They mean access to opportunity and wealth, to progress and prosperity. And for these companies, it means that the work they do to support their people is paramount.

Women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) are a major demographic who face workplace discrimination, pay gaps, and lack of opportunity, according to the Pew Research Center.

Although women are more likely than men to say they will major in a STEM discipline as college freshmen, by graduation, far more men earn STEM degrees. This is largely due to the confidence gap. Even when women have the necessary skills to succeed in tech, they're much less likely than men to believe that they're capable of performing the job. While 40% of men with a STEM degree work in STEM jobs, only 26% of women with STEM degrees work in STEM-related fields.

While most fields see a gender gap in the treatment and pay of women, STEM fields are commonly known to be male-dominated-and difficult to infiltrate. Giving women equal opportunities to study, grow and thrive in STEM careers helps narrow the aforementioned confidence gap-and perhaps most importantly, the gender pay gap.

We've compiled a list of eight companies that are *actually* putting in the time, energy and resources into supporting women in STEM, and in turn, enhancing the economic security of women and creating visionary products and services with a diverse team of STEM professionals.

Airbnb is a popular platform that allows people to host their homes and spaces to travelers and guests through a streamlined and safe process. Their reach has grown dramatically since its inception in 2008, and with it, their population of employees has grown, too. Airbnb is dedicated to gender parity and is on track to reach its goal by 2025. According to a diversity report published in September of 2021, the percentage of women in tech at the company has increased by 2.2 percentage points to 27.5 percent since 2019.

Even in 2016, Airbnb was mindful of diversity during a time of hyper-growth. During that time, its data science team doubled the ratio of women employees by making their interview and hiring process more gender-blind, as well as hosting talks that empowered more women outside of the company to apply for data science jobs.

As Airbnb fights discrimination internally, they also provide tools for all of their hosts to learn more about navigating bias and fostering belonging through their digital Community Center.

Appian helps organizations build apps and workflows rapidly, with a low-code platform that can help companies maximize their resources and improve business results. The Appian Women in Engineering Guild is an employee-led working group that meets monthly to discuss topics around building community support within varying teams and driving initiatives that help us recruit more women at Appian.

Appian continues to feature women in tech who are making strides in the organization and encourages them to share their stories and words of wisdom to other women in STEM.

Rachel Bittner, a quality engineer at Appian, and member of the Guild said: "Women making contributions in STEM fields is not new. What is new is increased recognition. I know I was inspired when I read or heard about women working in engineering, technology, and other highly technical fields. I believe that increasing that type of visibility will inspire more women."
Learn more about why women love working at Appian here.
Capital One's mission is to change banking for good, by advocating for an inclusive society, building thriving communities, and providing financial tools (such as credit cards, banking and more) that enrich lives. The Capital One Women In Tech business resource group encourages women technologists in ten different chapters across the country to reach their fullest potential and find mentorship and growth opportunities within the company.

The group offers events and learning opportunities for women within the company and extends into the community by getting girls interested in the tech space. Capital One also recently implemented the Julie A. Elberfeld Tech Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Awards to honor the work of a tech leader in the company who started the WIT resource group, and to build on the groundwork of creating a brighter future in tech for everyone.

Freddie Mac aims to build a better housing finance system, making homeownership and rental housing more affordable, lowering barriers to accessing sustainable housing, and advancing equity in housing across the U.S. With a number of women in high-level leadership roles, Freddie Mac is dedicated to closing the gender gap within their company. Betty Elliott, Freddie Mac's Senior VP & Chief Information Security Officer was named among the top 100 CISOs by CISOConnect this year.

In addition, Angela Locke, Vice President of HR Business Partners,, aims to implement new policies in support of pay equity. This includes policies like no longer asking for salary history in job interviews and being mindful of bias in company policies and procedures.

"We stopped asking for salary history in job interviews," Locke said. "This inclusive approach allows us to more strictly focus on the job itself - its value as defined by the marketplace and the pay equity of the position."
Learn more about Freddie Mac here.
While Google is a name that doesn't need much introduction, it's helpful to note that the company's mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Their inclusive approach to business bleeds into their gender equality initiatives.

The company's Women Techmakers program provides visibility, community and resources for women in tech, bringing together over 70,000 women each year through events and leadership programs. The Women Techmakers program highlighted Black women engineers at Google this year with their "Tech Bytes" series.

In addition, Google launched the Grow With Google for Women in STEM initiative this summer. This is a three-month program that seeks to train more than 100 women engineers and engineering students in cloud technology. Selected students will receive mentorship from members of the Google Cloud team and will complete an online course to specialize as an Associate Cloud Engineer.

Google also demonstrates an understanding of intersectionality, supporting women engineers of different racial backgrounds. On their diversity and inclusion webpage, Google says: "We are building a robust, diverse talent pool to support our industry's growth. By providing computer science education from primary school through university we are growing the next generation of Black and Latinx tech leaders."

Lucid Motors is known for its focus on innovation, luxury and sustainability in the automotive industry. Earlier this year, Lucid introduced their Lucid Air luxury electric car-which was produced under the leadership of three brilliant women. Sue Magnusson, Jenny Ha and Joann Jung were lead engineers at the company involved in developing the new car.

Lucid Motor's commitment to women in leadership demonstrates how an empowering and inclusive work environment breeds innovation. Jung stated in an episode of the Formcast podcast that the field needs the perspective of women, sharing that automotive professionals are moving further away from simple mechanical engineering and into developing innovative software and catering to the identity of the customer. "I am not going to try to be a man," she said. "I love being a woman, and I think we made things really sexy and beautiful."
Learn more about Lucid Motors here.
Moody's is a global integrated risk assessment firm that empowers organizations to make better decisions. The company has invested heavily into researching the impact of gender equality across sectors and leans in heavily to diversity initiatives in the finance industry. Their gender and finance dashboard presents their research findings, as well as robust insights about the economic and social impact of empowering women in finance.

Moody's also boasts a holistic approach to diversity and inclusion, including comprehensive education programs and diversity trainings, as well as business resource groups, and a Courageous Conversations platform. Women leadership in the executive suite has increased by 3% since 2018, according to Moody's most recent DEI report.
Learn more about Moody's here.
One of America's favorite superstores, Target's mission is to "help all families discover the joy of everyday life." Target was recently named one of the Top Companies for Women Technologists by AnitaB.org and hosts an annual conference boosting the leadership, networking and change-making potential for women in tech at Target.

The Elevate Conference was first hosted in India, and in 2020 hosted 400 women to inspire and grow as leaders in STEM. 2021's conference is a virtual gathering that will discuss the future of connecting in a digital space. Rachel Whitcomb, Target's VP of Engineering, leads the charge in the success of the Elevate conference. The conference website states: "It helps women excel at what they do, empowers them with the skills to push the boundaries of what's possible, learn from each other and form a support system to co-create and co-succeed."

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8 Companies Doing the Work to Support Women in STEM

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Gender equity in the workplace has become a key indicator of a company's social standing. While major corporations may invest in diversity and inclusion mainly to satisfy public expectations, to those whose identities are included in these initiatives, these actions mean a safer, brighter future.

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A significant gender gap has persisted throughout the years at all levels of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines all over the world. Even though women have made tremendous progress towards increasing their participation in higher education, they are still under-represented in these fields.

In response to this, the United Nations declared 11 February as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science in 2015. The goal of this day was to push for full and equal access to and participation in science for women and girls.

Air Force Master Sgt. Briana Mullane, a Senior Cyber Operator, described some of the challenges and rewards for women working in the STEM field with U.S Cyber Command.

"The biggest challenge working in a STEM field is the self-assessment of our own capabilities," said Mullane. "We tend to value our capabilities in a lot of STEM fields lower than male counterparts and hour hold ourselves to a higher standard just to feel like we fit in with the men."

There is ample research showing some of the challenges facing women in these fields including:

Research has shown that women are typically given smaller research grants than their male colleagues and, while they represent 33.3% of all researchers, only 12% of members of national science academies are women. In cutting edge technology fields, women only comprise 22% of the professional positions.

Female researchers tend to have shorter, less well-paid careers. Their work is underrepresented in high-profile journals and they are often passed over for promotion.

Although women represent half of the world's population and, therefore, half of its potential, women still only account for 28% of engineering graduates and 40% of graduates in computer science and informatics.

"Women are working against negative expectations, a multigenerational negative stereotype that persists, reinforced by either conscious or unconsciously expressed human bias," said Mullane.

Mullane's path to her current career began when she was working as a linguist with the Air Force and given the opportunity to become a section tech director. After researching how networks worked and those technologies were developed, she changed her college major from international relations to information systems security.

"I love the fact that there are so many hard problems in cyber to solve and there are different solutions to the same problem," she said.

As nations and institutions push for equality in STEM fields, it's also important for parents to encourage their daughters to approach problem solving and technology. Parental support and positive role models like Margaret Hamilton and Grace Hopper can be the defining influence pushing girls and young women towards STEM fields.

"I would encourage anyone who thinks they may have a passion to just go for it," said Mullane. "Don't let any hang-ups detract you from achieving what you set out to do. I would encourage girls to think about what kind of problems they want to solve and to not be afraid to forge their own paths ahead."

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The Power of Women in the STEM Workforce

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A significant gender gap has persisted throughout the years at all levels of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines all over the world. Even though women have made tremendous progress towards increasing their participation in higher education, they are still under-represented in these fields.

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https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2277975220975513

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Tracking Girls and Women Out of Higher-Paying STEM Areas

Giving women equal opportunities to pursue - and thrive in - STEM careers helps narrow the gender pay gap, enhances women's economic security, ensures a diverse and talented STEM workforce and prevents biases in these fields and the products and services they produce.

A typical STEM worker earns two-thirds more than those employed in other fields, according to Pew Research Center. And some of the highest-earning STEM occupations, such as computer science and engineering, have the lowest percentages of women workers.
Key factors perpetuating gender STEM gaps:

Gender Stereotypes: STEM fields are often viewed as masculine, and teachers and parents often underestimate girls' math abilities starting as early as preschool.

Male-Dominated Cultures: Because fewer women study and work in STEM, these fields tend to perpetuate inflexible, exclusionary, male-dominated cultures that are not supportive of or attractive to women and minorities.

Fewer Role Models: girls have fewer role models to inspire their interest in these fields, seeing limited examples of female scientists and engineers in books, media and popular culture. There are even fewer Black women role models in math and science.

Math Anxiety: Teachers, who are predominantly women, often have math anxiety they pass onto girls, and they often grade girls harder for the same work, and assume girls need to work harder to achieve the same level as boys.

The Confidence Gap
The myth of the math brain is one of the most self-destructive ideas in American education - research shows no innate cognitive biological differences between men and women in math.

Many girls lose confidence in math by third grade. Boys, on the other hand, are more likely to say they are strong in math by 2nd grade, before any performance differences are evident.

A gendered math gap exists in elementary school - but it is really only evident among boys from higher-income and predominantly white areas performing significantly higher in math, even compared to girls attending those same schools.

Girls score higher than boys in math in lower-income, predominantly Black areas (representing around one-quarter of school districts), but their scores are still disproportionately low compared to scores for white boys in high-income areas.
Women are Underrepresented in STEM Workforce
By the time students reach college, women are significantly underrepresented in STEM majors - for instance, only around 21% of engineering majors are women and only around 19% of computer and information science majors are women.

Nearly 80% of the health care workforce are women, but only about 21% of health executives and board members are women, and only about a third of doctors. And, women are more highly represented in lower-paying fields, such as home health workers, nurses and the lower-paying specialties such as pediatricians.

38% of women who major in computers work in computer fields, and only 24% of those who majored in engineering work in the engineering field.

Men in STEM annual salaries are nearly $15,000 higher per year than women ($85,000 compared to $60,828). And Latina and Black women in STEM earn around $33,000 less (at an average of around $52,000 a year).

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The STEM Gap: Women and Girls in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

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Giving women equal opportunities to pursue - and thrive in - STEM careers helps narrow the gender pay gap, enhances women's economic security and ensures a diverse and talented STEM workforce and prevents biases in these fields and the products and services they produce.

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SUBTOPIC 2: The recent push for women in STEM

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TOPIC: Women in STEM