Despite the importance of gender diversity in scientific research, women are still underrepresented. Gender stereotypes may limit women's participation in scientific research. The Matilda effect describes the lack of recognition of women and the systematic attribution of credit for their achievements to male colleagues. These are some of the difficulties faced by women in scientific research.
Promoting gender equality in science requires concrete actions. Examples include interventions and debates in schools, training of teachers and research managers on gender discrimination, quotas, and mentoring programs. The use of inclusive language and inclusive writing also matter. In addition, it would be useful to review the criteria for career advancement and research funding.
Foreword
When in Spring 2024 Volt Italia asked me to give a presentation on the situation of women in Science, I couldn't decide where to start. Ideas were crowding in my mind. In fact, since I joined the Femmes & Sciences association seven years ago, I have acquired a variety of evidence on how disadvantaged women are in the world of scientific research - there really is so much to say. This overview, no doubt incomplete, serves to awaken your interest and curiosity. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you wish to have or provide additional information.
In this article we will touch on the subject, dwelling on stereotypes. We will discuss the Matilda effect, and after presenting some figures, we will look at the importance of gender balance in scientific research. We will conclude with examples of concrete actions.
Introduction: gender stereotypes
Let us begin by mentioning an exercise proposed to two groups of mixed male and female schoolchildren as part of a research project in psychology. It involved reproducing a picture. The results published in the 2007 Journal of Educational Psychology are surprising. The girls succeed better when presenting the exercise as a memory test than when presenting it as a geometry test. The researchers interpreted the result as determined by the activation of a widespread stereotype: that girls are not very good at math, geometry and technical activities in general.
Stereotypes can be descriptive or prescriptive, conscious or unconscious. The gender stereotype about mathematics is descriptive. Another classic example is the claim that women have no sense of direction. Among the most cumbersome prescriptive gender stereotypes we find the expectation that it is essentially the woman who takes care of the children and household activities. Post-lockdown surveys regarding which of the two parents spent more time assisting with their children's schoolwork and managing daily routines give clear indications in this regard, with the consequences one can imagine for their professional lives.
The memory or geometry test experiment mentioned above indicates that people end up believing these stereotypes by precluding themselves from life options where perhaps they could have fulfilled their full potential. Perhaps this sounds exaggerated to you, yet Clara Schumann's biography seems to support my assertion. Clara Wiek Schumann, a brilliant pianist and composer, in deciding to give up music composition to care for the many children she had with the famous Robert Schumann, wonders in her diary how she could ever have thought of becoming a top composer since no woman had ever succeeded in such an exploit. Yet she had begun composing at a very young age, much like Mozart. Some might say that perhaps she was happier that way, yet her question indicates a certain regret in giving up music creation. Undoubtedly classical music lovers have lost something. Similarly, it is legitimate to ask how much we have lost in science by precluding or hindering women's access to research for centuries.
At the 2023 annual conference of the Femmes & Sciences association, the scientific director of the Andalusia Institute of Astrophysics, Isabel Marquez, presented some data on stereotypes and gender inequality within the European Union, based on various reports she collected. Let's note a few points: 44% of Europeans (regardless of gender) believe that a woman's most important role is to take care of the home and family, women devote 22 hours a week to family and household tasks compared to 9 hours a week for men, the percentage of men working in the digital sector is 3.1 times that of women, only 22% of artificial intelligence programmers are women - we will see later why it is important that there are more women in artificial intelligence programming. Finally, we note that the pay gap between men and women is about 15.7 percent. In fact, this last point is extremely complex and intricate because there are so many elements that come into play, such as the blocking of women's careers at lower paid levels - the glass ceiling - and the widespread tendency among women to underestimate their own abilities and to be reluctant to ask for pay raises. It is likely that the so-called imposter syndrome plays a not insignificant role on the pay gap between men and women.
To conclude this introduction, I offer a look at the situation in the private industrial and technology sector in France. The figures come from the survey published in September 2024 by the Elles Bougent association, in collaboration with OpinionWay.
82% of the women surveyed have experienced gender stereotypes during their careers.
Forty-four percent have heard that they are less competent in math than their male counterparts.
Sixty-five percent of working women perceive the industrial sector as unaffordable.
"These stereotypes, which are often internalized from an early age, lead to self-censorship and lack of self-confidence and drive girls away from careers in science."
Women in science
A question to you readers. How easy is it for you to find the name of a famous female scientist other than Maria Curie? It is generally much easier to name male scientists. The Matilda effect, that is, the lack of recognition of women in scientific research and the systematic attribution of credit for their achievements to male colleagues, certainly contributes to this difficulty. The expression "Matilda effect" was coined by historian of science Margaret W. Rossiter in 1993 from the name of a 19th-century American feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage who in 1870 published the essay "Woman As Inventor" in which she recounted how various scientific discoveries and inventions were the result of the work of women who remained anonymous. Consider, for example, the story of Jocelyn Bel Burning who, during her doctoral research, discovered Pulsars (pulsating stars, "Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source"). A few years later, in 1974, the scientist was not among the Nobel Prize winners in physics, while her thesis director, Anthony Hewish, received the prize "for his decisive role in the discovery of pulsars" https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1974/summary/ ).
Textbooks rightly mention scientists such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein. It is certainly interesting to know who discovered gravity, evolution or relativity. When it is studied that the most abundant atom in the universe is hydrogen, who wonders how we know that? It was a certain Cecilia Payne who discovered it. I hope I have aroused your curiosity. If you look hard enough, you will find many additional victims of the Matilda effect.
The good news is that the situation is evolving, albeit very slowly. To give you a sense of the slow pace I offer a list highlighting a number of important achievements by women in the sciences, with a focus on physics and chemistry, a domain in which women are still extremely underrepresented.
- In 1776, Laura Bassi became the first woman to hold a university STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) professorship in Europe, specifically in Bologna, focusing on experimental physics.
- In 1903, Marie Skłodowska Curie received the first Nobel Prize awarded to a woman, distinguishing herself in both physics and chemistry. Despite this, Marie Curie is rejected by the prestigious "Académie des Sciences," reflecting the extent of stereotypes toward women.
- It was only in 1979 that a woman, Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, was elected to the French Académie des Sciences (the first woman elected a member "ad vitam æternam!").
- In 2018, Donna Strickland became a professor after receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics: at the time of the award she was covering the role of assistant professor despite the unquestionable quality of her research.
These achievements highlight not only the talent and dedication of women in the scientific field, but also the challenges and obstacles they have faced in gaining the recognition they are entitled to.
I conclude the paragraph on the slow progress in gender equality in science with the sequence of years in which a Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to a woman: 1903, 1963, 2018, 2020, 2023.
The situation in Europe
The memory/geometry test experiment highlights how the stereotype regarding aptitude for mathematics influences girls' results. This stereotype naturally has consequences for the range of disciplines contemplated by girls when choosing university studies, not to mention that, very often, with the same school curriculum, the career guidance advice is often different for a boy and a girl. We note here a first possible filter on the number of women in the sciences.
UNESCO alerts us to the following points globally:
Out of every 3 people who are scientists, only one is a woman
Fewer than ⅖ of the people with degrees in STEM disciplines are women
Only 12 percent of the members of the national academies of sciences are women
Not all countries have reliable data on gender and science
To guide us through the figures below, I offer definitions from the European Commission's "She Figures" report of 2021
Gender equality refers to a 50:50 balance in the number or proportion of women and men.
Gender balance balance refers to a presence of women and men that ranges between 40% and 60% of the total population
Underrepresentation and overrepresentation refers to where the representation of women or men is below 40% or above 60%, respectively.
In the UNESCO 2017 ranking of the percentage of female researchers in Europe, the countries of the former communist bloc attest to percentages above 40 percent, from North Macedonia (51.3 percent) to Slovakia (41.4 percent). The percentage of female researchers in Italy is 35 percent-slightly better than France (27 percent), which is surprising when looking at the percentage of women in the global professional field (World Bank data from 2021), which sees Italy at the bottom of the list in Europe and positioned at the same level as Saudi Arabia and below Kuwait.
To fully appreciate the underrepresentation of female researchers, it is necessary to take into account the phenomenon of "leaky pipeline" that is, the gradual decline of female presence in the path from undergraduate education to the top of the career ladder. It is the phenomenon that affects all career women and leads to the aforementioned glass ceiling. As an example, I quote figures on parity in higher education and research for all university disciplines from a 2021 Conseil National de la Recherche Scientifique report ("Parité et évaluation non-discriminatoire au CNRS, Rapport de restitution des travaux du Comité Parité de la section 14 Comité National"). If at the bachelor's ("licence") and master's levels the percentage of girls (57.6 percent) is higher than that of boys, already at the level of doctoral studies the figures are almost reversed. Moving toward the top we find for the HDR position (“Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches”, Habilitation to Supervise Research) only 22.5 percent of women, a percentage that drops to 14.8 percent for the position of Dean. As pointed out, the figures pertain to all university disciplines, we can easily assume that the data specific to STEMs have more weight in pulling the female presence figures down. From my personal experience, the situation in Italy does not seem any better.
Me too
One might expect that in the intellectual realm of science, often associated with the image of the ivory tower, the problem of sexual harassment would not occur. Unfortunately, the results of a recent worldwide survey by the l'Oréal Foundation, entrusted to the IPSOS institute, are quite disturbing in this regard. Of the 5,184 female researchers surveyed in 117 countries:
one in two has been a victim of sexual harassment in the workplace
81% have been victims of sexism, and of these, 46% have suffered negative consequences for talking about it
62% say they have been sidelined or condescended to because of their gender
36% reported being humiliated by colleagues with disrespectful nicknames
34% experienced difficulties in gaining visibility, e.g., participation in juries, journal editorial boards, contributions to major events.
32% report encountering problems related to intellectual property or copyright of projects and/or publications
These findings add weight to the urgency of creating work environments that promote inclusion, diversity and equity. Of course, the creation of such work environments requires a far greater presence of women in positions of responsibility than generally exists in public and private facilities.
Why it is important
The underrepresentation of women in science is a serious problem.
UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No. 5 implies that gender equality is necessary to achieve sustainable development, beyond a pure equality principle. Moreover, it is well known that where diversity has been integrated at the strategic level and managed with appropriate practices and behaviors, working groups are all the more effective the more diverse their members are. We can anticipate that gender equality in scientific research has the potential to improve the efficiency of the results obtained and, consequently, improve the living conditions of all humanity. Consider for example the field of Artificial Intelligence, it is clear that AI will play an increasingly important role in everyday life. AI algorithms inevitably involve biases that only the diversity of programming groups can allow to limit. Note that while the human brain has the formidable ability to forget, AI remembers everything; in other words, it is difficult to deconstruct the bias of an AI.
A sad example of the serious consequences of gender stereotypes and the resulting bias on research topic choices is known in the field of medicine where diseases afflicting women have long been under-studied or ignored. The arrival of women in senior positions is a powerful propellant to promote research projects with broader goals. According to Anna Maria Moretti current president of the International Society of Gender Medicine, the birth of Gender Medicine can be traced back to 1991, when the American cardiologist Bernardine Healy highlighted in the two sexes a different management of coronary artery disease with a consequent different clinical-therapeutic approach (https://www.innlifes.com/esg/medicina-di-genere-moretti/).
Vera Regitz-Zagrosek, a cardiologist and pioneer of gender medicine in Germany, reports in an interview the dismissive comment of a department head when confronted with the difficulty of diagnosis on a female patient: "She's a woman, she's beyond our reach anyway!" Fortunately, the episode dates back to the 1980s; unfortunately, the patient in question paid the ultimate price for a lack of understanding regarding heart attack symptoms in women. To emphasize how the inclusion of women in science benefits everyone, it is appropriate to conclude this paragraph with the words of Anna Maria Moretti: "It is good to reiterate, however, that Gender Medicine is not medicine for women. Gender-specific medicine is medicine that takes into account the differences found in various diseases and treatments in all individuals who inevitably have specific characteristics."
What is being done and what could be done
In the face of the situation, international and national institutions, public and private, and professional associations are promoting research, activities, specific programs as well as employment and recruitment practices that are particularly careful to avoid discrimination.
Among other initiatives, I mention UNESCO's "Call to Action - Close the Gender Gap in Science" https://www.unesco.org/en/science-technology-and-innovation/cta launched in February 2024 on the International Day of Women and Girls in Science to promote multilateral collaborative actions to:
Dismantling gender stereotypes and biases in science through increased visibility of role models
Open educational pathways for girls in science through innovative educational strategies and initiatives
Create empowering workplace environments through policies and actions that promote inclusion, diversity and equity.
An exhaustive list of all initiatives and proposals exceeds the scope of this article. I simply list the most frequent actions that I am aware of.
Educational interventions and discussions in schools with testimonies from female researchers as a source of inspiration ("role models") for girls;
Educational programs for teachers, managers, research managers to become aware of gender stereotypes and to explore and learn practices to "de-crystallize" such stereotypes;
Inclusive communication
Implementing quotas
Make available to the national media lists of female researchers with expertise in various disciplines to be contacted for interviews, to provide explanations and comments on events related to science (earthquakes, epidemics, various discoveries, etc.)
Mentoring programs
Certainly some of the points listed above elicit puzzlement and/or vehement reactions. Often the use of inclusive communication is seen as an unnecessary chore. Why not rest on the rule used for centuries and studied in school that prescribes the use of the masculine to address a mixed audience, even when there is only one man among many women? I report the experience of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) in France, which received many more applications from women after the title of its request for projects was changed to reflect inclusive communication.
I am aware that for total inclusiveness one would also need to consider transgenderedness but that is a topic beyond the scope of this article.
Quotas are a topic of lively debate. Women promoted under quotas often feel embarrassed. The practice of encouraging women not to question their abilities too much when applying for jobs or promotion should help neutralize such embarrassment since having passed the pre-selection stage is already an indication of their competence. Moreover, if we consider that the underrepresentation of women in prominent roles acts as a feedback loop that discourages girls from heading for certain disciplines, women promoted under quotas are also invested with the rewarding mission of serving as an example for the younger generation, contributing to the emergence of new role models.
Certainly we can see that quotas, with all the pros and cons that can be discussed at length, yield concrete results such as in the composition of boards in Norway.
However, considering that diversity boosts the productivity of work teams, quotas should be seen first and foremost as a benefit to the organizations that adopt them.
One point that elicits unanimity is the mentoring programs whose benefits are put forward regularly while citing numerous positive testimonials from those who have benefited from them. Personally I have been devoting a good part of my time since 2019 to the mentoring program for doctoral students at the University of Paris-Saclay in collaboration with the Femmes & Sciences association. In disciplines such as physics and computer science, PhD students are often the only women in a team of men. Through paired mentor-mentee meetings and group activities such as discussion circles, personal and professional development seminars, and testimonials from female researchers, the program showcases the richness of career opportunities and allows young female researchers to realize they share similar concerns as well as the ambition to keep science at the center of their professional lives.
Individual or group sessions with professional coaches would provide additional support. Acknowledging one's abilities and needs, in fact, reinforces self-confidence and helps to define the career path consistent with one's aspirations, with the confidence that one can deal with the inevitable difficulties encountered along the way. Such sessions allow one to challenge beliefs, values and thought patterns and contribute to lasting transformation with the emergence of new paradigms of thinking. Currently, coaching sessions, enjoyed by many senior executives in the private sector, are still not widely used as an accompanying tool to address the root causes of gender inequality in the workplace.
What else could be done to act at the systemic level? Keeping in mind that there is no miracle solution, it is vital to intervene on multiple fronts by enacting suitable processes, establishing gender- and diversity-conscious institutions, and fostering the creation of novel thought patterns. It is necessary to reevaluate what constitutes the potential for excellence in academic and scientific positions in order to devise new processes for hiring, promotion, funding and career development. At this point, I'd like to provide some thoughts, which can certainly be refined and improved. For example, breaking the vicious cycle of the race for prestige publications by putting more emphasis on the background work of scientific research, which includes endeavors carried out with acumen, patience, and perseverance, as well as behavioral and human skills to manage teams and projects, qualities that would also benefit diversity and inclusion. Achieving scientific excellence does not necessarily imply the human aptitudes that foster a quality work environment. During the collecting of anonymous testimonials of young female researchers, one of them described an incident that highlights the potential gap between scientific accomplishment and inclusive and fair behavior. The anecdote concerns the behavior of an unnamed well-known and renowned scientist during a public event in the researcher's field of expertise: "After looking at my skirt, he never addressed me during the collective discussion, despite the fact that I made valid remarks on the topics discussed. This caused the other participants - males - to ignore me while they had previously talked to me." We can imagine the psychological effect of this episode on the researcher. Underrepresented groups face chronic barriers, with heavy mental and physical health consequences ("Why the mental cost of a STEM career can be too high for women and people of color." https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00324-0). This episode also highlights the weight of role models, in this case a "toxic" role model.
Recognizing the importance of work-life balance for everyone, at all levels, is critical for reconciling high-intensity scientific work with self- and family care.For example, enhancing the terms and practices of paternity leave, sponsoring workplace crèches, and providing the necessary support when returning to work following maternity leave. Some research organizations and institutes, e.g., EMBL (European Molecular Biology Laboratory), are considering a maternity support budget to hire a support person before, during and after maternity leave in order to avoid loss of productivity and ensure continuity of various activities (publications, data security, project submission, supervision of students, etc.).
New processes and solutions can arise from actively listening to all stakeholders with various tools that are more or less easy to implement, from reverse mentoring to participatory governance with appropriate distribution of roles and responsibilities.
I conclude this article with a series of proverbs collected from around the world and published by Mineke Schipper in the book "The Shrinking Goddess," without commentary.
"The glory of man is knowledge, the glory of woman is to renounce it."
"Men should set knowledge before virtue, women virtue before knowledge."
"Virtuous is a woman without knowledge."
"A wise woman is twice a fool."
"The women’s side of the house: the side without knowledge."
"A woman's intelligence can cause a catastrophe."
"A man doesn't want a woman smarter than he is."
"A dog is smarter than a woman, it doesn't bark at its master."
"Educating a woman is like putting a knife in the hands of a monkey."
"A crowing hen and a woman who knows Latin never come to a good end."
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Roberto Bonino for the critical reading.
I initially authored this essay in Italian for the digital information platform Agenda Digitale, published on December 9th, 2024.
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