So you want to “do something about/for diversity”

Tags

diversity, LGBTQ, Women in Science

In the last several months/years, I’ve seen an increasing number of “diversity initiatives”, and attention paid to issues of diversity in STEM fields. Which is, on the whole, good. But as a member of a minority community, these can often come across as botched jobs. Scientists are good at science, but not necessarily (or one might say not at all good) at sociology and psychology.

And it’s become tiring.

Here, dear reader, is a handy, easily digested checklist (because who in science doesn’t like checklists) for how not to completely miss the mark with whatever “diversity initiative” you might want to do. As you’ll see, these are all inter-related, and some/many of them aren’t easy or to be taken lightly.

1. What? What do you want to get out of this exercise, tangibly? Cut the vagueness. Make your objectives SMART. If you can’t articulate your goals in these terms, you’ll never achieve them (or be able to demonstrate beyond vague hand-waving that “things are better”). Are you trying to have better representation at conferences or on editorial boards? Or perhaps increased membership in your society by under-represented groups? The processes for achieving these will differ. See also: where?
2. Who? “Diversity” as usually applied in STEM fields typically covers sex and ethnicity. There are many facets of diversity, some of which can’t be perceived without interaction. Gender, orientation, and ableness are just three others that quickly come to mind. Each brings a different viewpoint. Or rather, the same multitude of viewpoints found in any grouping of people. And each of these is just a conglomeration of different groups. Gay men aren’t representative of transfolk, who aren’t representative of bisexuals. Which of these groups do you want to reach? See also: why? Also see also: what?
3. Where? The US isn’t the only place with issues around the over-representation of straight white cismen in STEM, and there are local (and regional) areas for improvement, laws, traditions, and solutions to the problems. Even though the pattern may be widespread, what works in one place may (or may not) work in another. Don’t parachute in. Work with someone on the ground (see also: who (part 2)).
4. Who? (part 2). Nothing dooms these kinds of initiatives like the lack of involvement of the groups you’re trying to reach. They will know the language and issues better, and excluding them is patronizing, like saying “we know diversity is an issue, so we’ll fix it for you!” Without this involvement your initiative is almost certainly doomed to failure.
5. Who? (part 3). If I had a dollar for every time I was asked to talk about “Diversity 101” I would have >$1. In this scenario, I should be broke. Do your research. Google is your friend. We’re (often) too busy trying to keep up with a systematically damaging professional culture to “point you in the right direction”. If you actually care about it, read about it or contact organizations who are explicitly designed to help, and then engage on specifics. See also: who (part 2). You might be getting the idea that people are rather important here. Good.
6. What (next)? Don’t just gather information, or email blitz a vague surveymonkey link to your members. What will you do once you’ve identified the problem/need? If you don’t do anything, or don’t follow through (see also: what), think of the potentially hours of collectively wasted time. I’ve filled in enough “it will only take 20-30 minutes of your time” surveys to know this is often true. And it makes me less likely to help you out in the future. Failure to do anything is paying mere lip-service to the careers and lives of honest to goodness people.
7. Danger, Will Robinson! Whatever you decide to do, think (and have others think) about how it will be perceived, especially by those in the group you’re trying to reach. Academic conferences get this one wrong rather often (I’m looking at you, ESA “Ally” ribbons!). Don’t roll something this important out without a thorough look-over. See also: who (part 2). Also see also: when?
8. When? Don’t rush this. It’s important. If you can’t get something together for this year’s meeting, wait for next year. Something good, but delivered later is better than a hatchet-job thrown together to meet an arbitrary deadline. I mean, you should’ve been thinking about and actually DOING something about this ages ago anyway.
9. Expect pushback. In all likelihood, if you get things (mostly) right, you will get pushback from the straight white cismen already entrenched in whatever group you’re trying to diversify. If you don’t, you might get pushback from the groups you’re trying to include. Listen to the second. See also: what (next).

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Another year of male-dominated NSERC prizes

Tags

NSERC, Women in Science

Once again, NSERC (the national science and engineering funding council in Canada) has announced the winners of its prestigious prizes, which highlight the crème de la crème of Canadian science. And once again, the list of winners has an overabundance of Y chromosomes.

• Herzberg Medal (“Canada’s top scientist”): man (only one woman has ever won this award, and it was last year)
• Polyani Award: man
• Brockhouse Canada Prize: 2 men
• Synergy Award for Innovation: 4 men
• E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowships: 4 men, 2 women
• Gilles Brassard Doctoral Prize for Interdisciplinary Research: 1 man, 1 woman

If you’re keeping score, that’s 3 women and 13 men, or 19% women awardees.

Sadly, this is an improvement (yes, you read that right) over previous years (17% in 2015, 13% in 2014, and an eye-rolling 0% in 2013).

This year brings the overall total to 42 women and 252 men, or a maddeningly low total of 14% women awardees.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different outcome. When will NSERC act to improve the gender representation of women in the highest accolades of Canadian science and engineering?

 

Update: here’s a great graphical representation courtesy of Jeff Clements.

First woman wins Herzberg medal as “Canada’s top scientist”

Tags

Herzberg Medal, NSERC, Women in Science

It’s become somewhat of a tradition these last few years for me to look at the gender (im)balance of the major prizes and awards dished out by NSERC in Canada, because they don’t have a great track record of recognizing women (see my original post here, and update on the 2014 awards here).

It is therefore with mixed feelings that I present below the 2015 results.

For the FIRST TIME in 25 years, a woman was awarded the Gerhard Herzberg Medal (colloquially known as the prize for “Canada’s top scientist”) – Dr Victoria Kaspi from McGill.

And for only the second time, a woman was awarded the John Polyani Award – Dr Barbara Sherwood Lollar from the University of Toronto. A hearty congratulations to both!

But, sadly, the exuberant news ends there…

• Brockhouse Canada Prize: 1 of 2 recipients a woman
• Steacie Fellowships: 1/6
• Brassard Prize: 0/1
• Synergy Awards: 0/12

That gives an overall total of 4/23 recipients being women (or 17%). The long-term average is now 39 women of 239 recipients, or 17% (which I will sadly point out is still higher than last year’s 13%), and unchanged from where it was when I did the original analysis in 2013.

So while this is a huge day for Canadian science (regardless of gender), we still have work to do.

 

Footnote: see the 2013 post for more background and discussion on the issue

2014 Major NSERC Prizes continue to under-represent women

Tags

NSERC, Women in Science

I’ve written before about the massive gender imbalance in NSERC’s “Big Prizes”.  Well, the 2014 awardees have been announced, so let’s see how things look:

• Hamer Prize: 0/1 recipients women
• Brockhouse Prize: 1/6 recipients women
• Steacie Fellowship: 1/6 recipients women
• Polyani Award: 0/1 recipients women
• Synergy Award: 2/16 recipients women
• Herzberg Medal (“Canada’s Top Scientist”): 0/1 recipients women

 

So that’s 4/31 women recipients in 2014, or 13% (which, believe it or not, is below the long-term average of 17%).  And yet again, we see that a woman has NEVER been named Canada’s top scientist (0/24 since 1991).

NSERC was great at responding to my last post, and highlighted the work they do for women in science and engineering.  But do we have to wait 10, 15, 20, 30 years for that to be reflected in the top tier of science?

We also don’t know anything about who was nominated, the gender balance of the review committees, or whether women nominees were specifically solicited.

We still have work to do …

We have work to do

Tags

LGBTQ, sexism, sexual assault, Women in Science

I’m not a linguist, but I think the theory that swearing and other “taboo” words came about to express extreme emotion.  Regular readers of The Lab & Field will know that I rarely (never?) use such words.  Similarly, in scientific writing, we couch emotion in verbose syntactical constructions, often devoid of feeling.

Such will not be the case with this post because today I had to, quite literally and without hyperbole, suppress the urge to wretch, and I feel my writing on this topic should reflect that reaction.

Buckle up, because we have work to do.

No, really. I’m assigning homework.  Or more accurately, work-work, because today we (as individuals, and as “the scientific community”) need to stop what we’re doing, and think about what we’ve done.  I’m not fucking kidding, either.

 

1. Read Clancy KBH, Nelson RG, Rutherford JN, Hinde K (2014) Survey of Academic Field Experiences (SAFE): Trainees Report Harassment and Assault. PLoS ONE 9(7): e102172. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0102172

Not just the abstract, and not a news outlet’s coverage.  The actual article.  It contains things like: “A majority (64%, N = 423/658) of all survey respondents, stated that they had personally experienced sexual harassment”.  That’s two out of three.

“Over 20% of respondents reported that they had personally experienced sexual assault”.  That’s 1 in 5.  ONE IN FIVE!

“women respondents [were] 3.5 times more likely to report having experienced sexual harassment than men (70% of women (N = 361/512) and 40% of men (N = 56/138)”

“Women were significantly more likely to have experienced sexual assault: 26% of women (N = 131/504) vs. 6% of men (N = 8/133)”

Again, that’s a quarter of women who engage in field work reported being sexually assaulted.  By whom? I’m glad you asked: “Harassment aimed at men primarily originated from peers at the field site (horizontal dynamics) whereas they originated from superiors when directed toward women (vertical dynamics)”

This is not OK. It’s so far away from OK that it’s enraging.

 

2. Find your organizations sexual harassment & assault policy

Go ahead. I’ll wait. Mine was section 4.12 of my employee handbook issued in March 2011.

 

 

 

Got it? Good. Now read it.

 

 

 

Now make sure the people you supervise, mentor, and train read it, and know what to do when they are harassed.

 

3. Stop objectifying women, and using transfolk as jokes

The cover story of Science this week was about HIV/AIDS, and featured the mid-torso and below of three women sex workers. Again, let that sink in.  One of the leading scientific publications in the world used a graphic of women’s bodies to depict HIV/AIDS.  That’s pretty awful.

Cue the editor of Science Careers, Jim Austin, to chime in via Twitter:

@JacquelynGill@LSU_FISH@AAASmember You realize they are transgender? Does it matter? That at least colors things, no?

— Jim Austin (@SciCareerEditor) July 16, 2014

Ah yes, because that makes it so much better.  I mean, transwomen sex workers make it so much better! </sarcasm>  Now, as for why such a publication though it befitting to use headless transwomen sex workers for a cover story about HIV/AIDS (read that again for full effect: SCIENCE THOUGHT USING HEADLESS TRANWSOMEN SEX WORKERS AS THEIR COVER FOR A STORY ABOUT HIV/AIDS WAS OK) , Austin had this to say (WARNING: this is what caused me to wretch):

@JacquelynGill@LSU_FISH@AAASmember Interesting to consider how those gazey males will feel when they find out.

— Jim Austin (@SciCareerEditor) July 16, 2014

In case Austin later deletes the tweet, here it is again: “Interesting to consider how those gazey males will feel when they find out.”

For fuck’s sake. Trolling straight cismen?  Jesus fucking christ.

 

There’s been lots of other reaction to the paper by Clancy et al, and the Science cover around the interwebs, and I won’t try to pull them all together here.  But we each have to look at how what we do (again as individuals and as a scientific community), and how we treat women, people of colour, queer & transfolk, because it ain’t pretty, and it ain’t right.  Here’s a wee reminder:

The Journal of Proteomics sexism case

Dynamic Ecology’s Women in Science series

The Queer in STEM study

Female Conference Speaker Bingo

Being gay in academia (and here)

Coming out as a trans scientist

 

And in my post on the lack of women awardees of major Canadian science prizes, let’s not forget this paragraph:

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 – $$).

 

If you want to play along at home, you can also calculate #MyGenderGap

 

The current state of affairs is fucking embarrassing, and it’s time to change.

Women are underrepresented in big NSERC awards

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.

 

Your daily dose of sexism (again) and #ProteomicsSexism

Tags

Women in Science

* 9:03am MDT, Important update – the images are apparently being removed by Elsevier (via Twitter; see updates below).  I’ll continue to post updates if/when they come in.

This post is an attempt to bring together a bunch of information on a story that Jonathan Eisen broke yesterday (note below: it was posted on TOC ROFL on Wednesday).  Pier Giorgio Righetti, a proteomics researcher from Milan recently published a paper on the proteome (group of proteins) found in coconut milk.  The graphical abstract was, well, a little graphic, and more than a little sexist (the images have now been removed, but see Zen Faukles’ post for what they looked like).

This isn’t the first time Righetti’s pulled this stunt, though (again, note that the images have now been removed).

Both papers appeared in the Elsevier published “Journal of Proteomics” of which Righetti is the executive editor!!

Now, if that’s not enough to get your blood boiling, when Rajini Rao, a Professor and Graduate Program Director at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore wrote Reghetti last night, his response was, well, not helpful:

Hello Prof. Rao,

I wonder if you have been trained in the Vatican. As you claim to be professor of Physiology, let me alert you that this image is physiology at its best!

Take care,

Prof. Dr. Per Giorgio Reghetti

You can follow along at the Twitter hashtag #ProteomicsSexism.  I’ll post updates below as they come.

Other takes on this story:

Maybe these graphical abstracts could be a little less graphic by Zen Faulkes

Journal of Proteomics, what the…?!?!?!?!? by OdysseyBlog

Reason #140 Why Sexist Bullshit in Academia is Not Okay by Dr. Isis

How not to write an apology … by Dr. Isis

This doesn’t belong in science. At all. by DrugMonkey

Not how I wanted to spend spring break by Joshua Drew

Journal of Proteomics gets weird by Jenna Bilbrey

Not cool, professore by Sylvie Coyaud in Ocasapiens in La Repubblica (in Italian)

Sexism charge hits proteomics journal – and you’ll see why by Retraction Watch

Some humour from Alex Wild: Elsevier’s latest journal is just for bros

Professor’s coconuts are causing quite a bit of breast-beating in The Times (subscription required, ht Tom Whipple)

 

I’ve got a lovely bunch of proteomes! Professor in sexism row for picture of girl covered by coconuts in protein research paper in The Daily Mail

 

 

— —

8:00am MDT – I neglected to mention that Righetti doesn’t own the images, so they likely violate the journal/publisher copyright agreements. At least one appears to be from a website called “Sexiest US Bartenders”

8:02am MDT – apparently, Reghetti has four such papers: 1) here; 2) here; 3) here; and 4) here (ht Michael Hawkes)

8:25am MDT – you can contact the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Proteomics, Juan Calvete, here (note that Dr. Calvete has included his form-letter reply in the comments below)

9:00 MDT – Apparently Elsevier is now aware, as Tom Reller tweeted, and they are looking into it.

9:03 MDT – the images are apparently going to be removed

9:08 MDT – I’m a little late with this, but Bug G. Membracid on Twitter (here and here) found one of the images Righetti used & modified

9:25 MDT – Elsevier has confirmed the images will be removed, via Twitter

11:02 MDT – the editor of the Journal of Proteomics has responded (a form response sent to various folks by email, and also left in the Comments section below).  Seems like a non-apology to me.

11:21 MDT – thanks to Zen Faulkes for pointing out that the whole thing was picked up by TOC ROFL 3 days ago.

11:31 MDT – Jonathan Eisen has put together a Storify of the various tweets around the whole incident

13:17 MDT – it appears the three papers of Righetti’s in the Journal of Proteomics are not currently available on the journal’s website; the fourth in Biochimica et Biophysica Acta remains unaltered.

17:39 MDT – I’ve cleaned up the typos and added the links

24 March, 19:48 MDT – word from Zen Faulkes that the three graphical abstracts in the Journal of Proteomics have been removed, and the papers are available again.  Interestingly, there’s no accompanying correction notice.  Juan Calvete seems to also be trolling pretty hard at Zen’s and Dr. Isis’ posts.  Righetti has is also no longer listed as an Executive Editor at the Journal of Proteomics.

25 March 18:14 MDT – New coverage from The Times (subscription required)

27 March 17:44 MDT – New coverage from The Daily Mail