• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Languishing Projects
  • Beyond Science
  • Other Blogging
  • Queer in STEM

The Lab and Field

~ Science, people, adventure

The Lab and Field

Tag Archives: gender

Women are underrepresented in big NSERC awards

29 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by Alex Bond in opinion, science, Uncategorized

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

funding, gender, NSERC, Women in Science

Back in April, as I was knee-deep in a trans-Atlantic move, Meg Duffy wrote a post at Dynamic Ecology on the US National Science Foundation’s Waterman Award (a prize for an under-35 scientist/engineer of $1 million), and lamented that the last 11 recipients were men.  The comments on that piece were particularly excellent, and included a response from NSF highlighting some of the broader issues of why women tend to be underrepresented in such awards.

Women are also underrepresented at conferences, on editorial boards, face biases when submitting to journals (PDF) and receive smaller grants.  In terms of “big awards”, one hurdle is that fewer women tend to be nominated (PDF – $$).  So it is with a heavy heart that I add to this mounting evidence the following:

Women have been awarded only 17% of major NSERC awards since 2004.

NSERC, Canada’s national granting body for natural sciences engineering, has six prizes that I would include as “big awards” (which includes both large-value, and low-number/high-exclusivity prizes). Let’s break them down.

 

André Hamer Postgraduate Prizes

From 2004-2010, there were two awards annually, and from 2011-2013, this was increased to five. They’re relatively low at $10,000 each, and “are awarded to the most outstanding candidates in NSERC’s master’s and doctoral scholarship competitions“.  Of the 29 prizes awarded since 2004, women received 13 (45%), which isn’t that bad. Until we realize that this accounts for nearly half the women award winners that I’ll cover in this post.  Since the number of prizes was increased in 2011 (n = 15 prizes at 5/year), only 3 women received them (including none in 2013, the last year for which data are available).

 

Brockhouse Canada Prize for Interdisciplinary Research

This is usually one award made to multiple people (anywhere from 2-11 in a given year), and there was no 2007 award.  The Brockhouse Prize “recognizes outstanding Canadian teams of researchers from different disciplines who came together to engage in research drawing on their combined knowledge and skills, and produced a record of excellent achievements in the natural sciences and engineering in the last six years.”.  We can look at these data in two ways: based on the number of awards (1/year), and based on the number of recipients, but as we’ll see it doesn’t make any difference.  Of the 9 years from 2004-2013 with an award, women received awards in 2006 and 2012 (2/9 = 11%).  Over the same period, 39 people were part of the award-winning teams, 4 of which were women (10%).

 

EWR Steacie Memorial Fellowships

The Steacie Fellowships are “awarded annually to enhance the career development of outstanding and highly promising scientists and engineers who are faculty members of Canadian universities“, and up to 6 are awarded annually.  From 2004-2013, there were 59 recipients, 9 of which were women (15%).  Parity occurred only in 2009 (3 women, 3 men), and no women received a Steacie Fellowship in 2004, 2007, or 2012.

 

Gerhard Herzberg Canada Medal

This is NSERC’s premiere award, often touted in the media as Canada’s “top science prize“, and is for “both the sustained excellence and overall influence of research work conducted in Canada in the natural sciences or engineering“.  Of the 10 recipients from 2004-2013, there were no women recipients.  In fact, since the award was established in 1991, it has never been awarded to a woman.

 

John C. Polyani Award

The Polyani Award is a bit trickier, since it can be awarded to groups or consortia for “an individual or team whose Canadian-based research has led to a recent outstanding advance in the natural sciences or engineering“.  It’s also only been around since 2006, and in that time, two groups have won the award (with no indication of the gender make-up of the teams), so the analysis is restricted to the 6 years where I could find details on the actual recipients.  In that time, there have been 9 recipients, 1 of which was a woman (in 2010).

 

Synergy Awards for Innovation

Lastly, these prizes are for “examples of collaboration that stand as a model of effective partnership between industry and colleges or universities“, and began in 2009.  Between 3-14 people have received this prize annually, and out of 33 recipients from 2009-2013, there have been 3 women, and none since 2010.

 

Of NSERC’s 185 “big award/prize” recipients from 2004-2013, only 31 (17%) were women.

 

Year Hamer Brockhouse Steacie Herzberg Polyani Synergy
2013 0/5 0/2 0/6 0/1 Group award 0/3
2012 2/5 3/11 1/5 0/1 0/1 0/7
2011 1/5 0/5 1/6 0/1 0/1 0/4
2010 2/2 0/2 3/6 0/1 1/1 1/5
2009 2/2 0/4 1/6 0/1 0/3 2/14
2008 1/2 0/2 0/6 0/1 0/1
2007 1/2 No award 1/6 0/1 0/2
2006 2/2 1/8 1/6 0/1 Group award
2005 0/2 0/3 0/6 0/1
2004 2/2 0/2 1/6 0/1
Total 13/29 4/39 10/65 0/10 1/9 3/33
Percent 44.83% 10.26% 15.38% 0.00% 11.11% 9.09%

 

And as you can see from the table, no women were recognized in any of these categories by NSERC in 2013. W.T.F.

 

I. like others, think the solutions to rectifying this ridiculousness must come from the scientific community, and from NSERC.  Community members need to nominate more women, as the comments in Meg’s post point out.  But in turn, the groups that receive the nominations should scrutinize the list of nominees and ask why there are fewer women, and what can be done to change that. When underrepresented groups see themselves in those selected for these awards, it increases the visibility of the group as a whole, gives others role models with whom they can identify, and neither of these should be discounted as not important for science.

Does the fact that no women have been awarded Canada’s top science prize, ever, mean there are no deserving women recipients for such a prestigious award? Heck no. It just means they’ve not been recognized because of systemic biases (whether those biases are recognized or not).  I highly recommend you scroll through the “Women in Science” category at Dynamic Ecology, as Meg Duffy has written extensively on stereotype threat, and was to improve the current gender imbalance.

But whether it’s major scientific prizes, or your own local seminar series, make the effort to balance the recognition of men and women in science. It shouldn’t be hard to do given how many fantastic women scientists there are.

 

Sex, gender, and when “modern” sensibilities go wrong

06 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by Alex Bond in opinion, thought papers

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

birds, gender, sex, writing

Ladies and gentlemen, the following may come as a shock, but sex and gender are NOT the same thing.  Now, before you get your knickers in a knot, let us visit the most hallowed of resources on the Queen’s English – the Oxford English Dictionary.

So sayeth the OED: the word sex is derived from middle French (c. 1200), and was first used to describe male and female humans around about 1475.  Now, this esteemed tome also mentions the recent trend of conflating sex with gender (which we’ll define shortly).  Some time in the 1960s, gender began to replace sex when describing males and females.

Gender is so aptly defined by the OED that I’ll reproduce the entire thing:

3b. – The state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones; the collective attributes or traits associated with a particular sex, or determined as a result of one’s sex. Also: a (male or female) group characterized in this way.

Put simplistically, gender is one’s conception of self, while sex refers to the biological reproductive bits betwixt our legs (for the moment, I’ll acknowledge, but not discuss the much more complex cases of intersexual, and others).

Putting these definitions to use, humans have both a biological sex, and also a gender identity.  In the majority of cases, these are cis (or the same), where biological males self-identify as males, and biological females self-identify their gender as females.  When these two do not align, an individual may identify as transgendered or transsexual.

But I digress.  The important point is that gender is a self-bestowed identity, while sex is a biological phenomenon related to reproduction.

Science is full of attempts to over-complicate, and loves jargon.  Why say “methods” when you can say “methodology”?  I think that a part of this desire to appear more sophisticated or erudite, and less vulgar in scientific writing has resulted in the wholesale replacement of sex with gender by some authors, editors, and copyeditors.

Lest there be any misconception about the point of this post: sex ≠ gender.

It is impossible to identify the gender of a butterfly (the butterfly’s internalized concept of self), while it’s sex can be readily apparent.  The same goes for fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, tardigrades, ctenophores, or sea urchins.  Until we have a way to convey the human concept of gender to these animals, and understand their response, we will never know their gender (or if indeed they have a gender at all, or multiple genders for that matter).  So when writing about differences between male and female animals, stick to sex, and avoid gender.

And if you’re curious, just flip through the latest issue of your organismal journal of choice and see how the authors describe males and females.  I mostly study birds, so I had a quick flip through the 2009 issues of a number of bird journals to see what prevailed:

Journal Sex Gender % Gender
Auk 41 0 0%
Bird Conservation International 7 1 13%
Bird Study 14 1 7%
Condor 38 0 0%
Ibis 21 4 16%
Journal of Avian Biology 25 3 11%
Journal of Field Ornithology 18 1 5%
Journal of Ornithology 30 4 12%
Journal of Raptor Research 17 1 6%
Ornis Fennica 5 0 0%
Ringing & Migration 8 0 0%
Waterbirds 18 5 22%
Wilson Journal of Ornithology 0 36 100%

At the time, the Wilson Journal of Ornithology had a policy to replace sex with gender (a policy that, I can gladly report, has now been reversed).  What’s evident from this table is that just about every journal has a mish-mash that largely depends on the author (only The Auk and The Condor had a copyediting policy of replacing gender with sex).  Yet there’s an increasing use of gender (rather than sex) in journal titles in the sciences.

Drop the pretence, and the desire to overly-technify the most simple concept: sex.

 

* And before anyone asks, I would argue that the bellbird in this article is more properly “intersex”, not transgender.

** And before any botanists or mycologists start filling my inbox with complaints, yes, I know plants have male and female sexes. Fungi apparently have 36,000 sexes!

Science Borealis

Science Borealis

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Archives

Recent Posts

  • 2020 by the numbers
  • Science, people, and surviving in the time of a global pandemic
  • Queer in STEM ask me anything – another LGBTQ&A
  • Overseas field courses and equity, diversity & inclusion.
  • What a long year the last month has been

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • The Lab and Field
    • Join 12,875 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Lab and Field
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar