1998, Virginia Valian published Why So Slow?, a landmark book on bias.[39] In 2018, she and her coworkers analyzed gender differences in 3,652 colloquium speakers who presented their work at 50 prestigious U.S. colleges and universities in 2013–2014.[40] The proportion of women presenting colloquia was significantly smaller than for those presented by men. There was no difference in the extent to which male and female professors at these elite universities valued or declined speaking invitations. The difference was in the number of invitations offered. These biases have significant consequences, because as the authors say, “Colloquium talks are an important part of academicians’ careers, providing an opportunity to publicize one’s research, begin and maintain synergistic and productive collaborations, and enhance one’s national reputation; those results in turn typically lead to retention, promotion, or greater salary increases. . . . Colloquium talks also signal to audience members who is worthy of being invited.”[41]
Ending implicit biases is not going to be easy. Combating implicit bias is difficult at the best of times, but it is particularly hard in the sciences, where scientists believe that the process of doing science is rigorous and objective and as a consequence are convinced that they are not prone to bias. “Gender discrimination is everywhere,” says Christine Williams, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin. “But what makes the experience unique among scientists is their almost unflappable belief in objectivity and meritocracy.”[42] Another complication is the fact that in acknowledging implicit bias against underrepresented groups, established white male researchers have to accept that they may have been privileged in the attainment of their positions. “Some scientists might be slow to consider that the system could be rigged because it implies that their own accomplishments might not be totally deserved,” says Deborah Rhode, a legal ethicist at Stanford University. “They might also be less willing to see how helping their closest peers (mainly males) might simultaneously exclude others.”[43]
Biases can lead to discrimination, a much deeper cut than implicit bias. A 2018 Pew Research Center report finds that the majority of black people in STEM fields (62 percent) report having experienced some form of discrimination at their work due to their race or ethnicity. The survey also finds that half of women working in STEM jobs report experiencing discrimination at work due to their gender, more than women in non-STEM jobs (41 percent) and far more than men working in STEM jobs (19 percent).[44] As mentioned previously, more women working in the Massachusetts biotech sector left their places of employment because of workplace issues than for family reasons. Discrimination does not lead to an inviting workspace, and it encourages scientists with important ideas and skills to leave the field.
Science and Masculine (Over)confidence
Society, and science specifically, rewards masculine (white American) confidence. Numerous studies have shown that in mixed-gender groups, men talk more than women, and that when women do speak they are more likely to be interrupted than men. In contrast, women are considered rude and abrasive if they interject when men are speaking. These behaviors all add to the perceived influence of men.[45] Science is no different.
More than 20 peer-reviewed studies have shown that men self-estimate their own intelligence higher than women do. Most recently, Katelyn Cooper, Anne Krieg, and Sara Brownell of Arizona State University collected data from their upper-level physiology courses. Sixty-six percent of all males in the class thought they were more intelligent than the average classmate, while 54 percent of women thought they were above average. Of course, statistically 50 percent should be above and 50 percent should be below the average. Not surprisingly, Americans tend to have a higher self-estimation than other nationalities. This was also reflected in the study, with only 46 percent of nonnative English speakers considering themselves above average.[46] When working with partners or in groups, the women were asked to rate themselves relative to their closest classmates. They rated themselves smarter than 33 percent of their collaborators, while men thought they were more intelligent than 66 percent of the group. The study shows that the men in the physiology class overestimate their credentials and skills, while underestimating the intelligence of their female classmates, noting that, as a result, “women themselves doubt their abilities—even when hard evidence such as grades say otherwise.”[47] It is worth noting that these observations were made in a physiology/biology classroom setting, because, as Brownell says, “Unlike the more male-dominated fields like engineering and physics, biology is seen as a safe place for women.”[48]
Science and Nature are the most prestigious scientific journals. Publishing in these journals is a sign that you have made it to the top of your field. The author listed first is typically the PhD student who has done the majority of lab work, while the author whose name appears last in the listing of authors associated with the paper is the one who directed the research: the head of the lab. Ione Fine is a neuroscientist at the University of Washington. When she and her coworkers analyzed the gender of the first and last authors of 166,000 articles published in high-profile journals between 2005 and 2017, they found a new disturbing “leaky pipeline.” The proportion of women drops dramatically from PhD students in neuroscience (55 percent), to tenure-track faculty (29 percent), to first author in Nature or Science (25 percent), to full professor (24 percent), and finally to last author in Nature or Science (15 percent). In a related large-scale analysis based on over eight million papers across the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, it was found that women are also significantly underrepresented as authors of single-authored papers.[49] In an article titled “Perish Not Publish? New Study Quantifies the Lack of Female Authors in Scientific Journals,”[50] Fine and Shen lay the blame for these findings on proven biases in the publishing pipeline. They cite studies showing that in situations in which women have done all the lab work, they are less likely to be given the prestigious first author position;[51] the honor is more likely to go to more assertive male students. In the article, Fine and Shen also point out that these biases become particularly important in the most selective journals that accept only the most superlative and brilliant papers, adjectives more likely attributed to white men than to women or men of color.[52] All these biases make women, who tend to be more restrained, less likely to submit articles to the highly selective journals, particularly as rejection by a journal and subsequent resubmission to a less selective journal can result in one’s research being scooped by other groups. In conclusion, Fine and Shen suggest that “the scientific community should demand that journals collect data about gender and ethnicity for article submissions and acceptances, and these data should be publicly available.” And more important, they should adopt mandatory double-blind reviews.[53] This solution has helped in the famously gendered world of elite orchestras. Female musicians in the top five symphony orchestras in the United States were less than 5 percent of all players in 1970 but are 25 percent today. The proportion of women hired increased dramatically after auditions were anonymized in the 1970s and 1980s by placing performers behind a curtain. Nevertheless, orchestras are still extremely gendered, not only in general makeup but also in instrument breakdown (similar to the observable difference in the gender breakdown of different STEM fields). In the world’s top 20 orchestras, 94 percent of harpists are female, and 100 percent of trombonists are male.[54]
Not only are women invited to give seminars less frequently than their male counterparts, but they behave differently at presentations, asking fewer questions. Alecia Carter, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Montpellier in France, collected observational data at 247 departmental seminars, hosted at 35 institutions in 10 countries. She and her colleagues found that men are 2.5 times more likely to ask questions at colloquia than their female counterparts. Upon further questioning, they established that “women were significantly more likely than men to say that they had kept silent because they were unsure whether their question was appropriate, or because they did not have enough ‘nerve’ to ask it.”[55]
Jennifer Harnden-Koehler, a former executive coach and talent management expert at Talent Acceleration Group, set out to establish why women in midlevel positions at
