Gender Inequality in Science Today

Auckland University Women in Science | Josie Greenwood, Alisha Keshaw, Angeline Xiao & Emily Caldelari-Hume

Many universities around the world value the ideals of inclusivity and diversity in their environment. However, women remain disproportionately represented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, especially in executive and senior leadership positions [1]. This is mostly due to gender discrimination and personal obligations such as childcare and taking care of their family. This calls for a greater need for more female representation in science [1], associated diversity training and initiatives [3], and, overall, an attitudinal change [2] to overcome barriers that women face when reaching senior academic positions [3]. Historically, university institutions were systematically designed to discriminate against people of colour and women from engaging [4], whereas those of privileged nature, including being white or being male, were catered to.

Even when minority groups were allowed to conduct research and join these academic institutions, the working environment/culture had been formed to benefit men, who experience life very differently from women [3]. As described by Laureate Professor Marilyn Fleer, “a male with a wife at home default’ [5].

Today, much of the conversation around achieving gender equity in academia has been dominated by the idea of raising women to the same standard as men in terms of salary, leadership positions, career progression, and abolishing workplace harassment [6]. These are all important conversations to be had, however, we need to consider other aspects such as childcare, family responsibilities, and how empowering more women in academia would impact their personal and social values (for women who choose to have these responsibilities, as not all women want to have kids and raise a family), which often goes hand in hand with personal satisfaction and wellbeing [3, 6].

In a study examining parenting engagement and academic performance, they also looked at parenting labour by gender and found that women were more likely to be the primary caregiver for their children (30.6% vs. 3.9%), which is an important baseline to establish that women in academia are disproportionately taking the lead in parenting, and hence suffering higher penalties at work in regard to feeling inadequate in fulfilling their responsibilities. This can lead to stress, imposter syndrome, and not wanting to continue progressing through their field.

In Aotearoa, there is a lack of representation of females in a variety of areas of academia, especially associate professor and HOD positions, where 64-69% were men, and professor and dean positions, where 74-81% were men over the period from 2012-2017 [7]. Additionally, this was lower for women in senior positions at crown research institutes [7]. In 2020, at the University of Auckland, women made up 31% of professors and 39.1% of associate professors [8]. Across New Zealand, women made up 38.6% of associate professors and 27.4% of professors [8]; however, there were more women in research fellow, senior tutor, professional teaching fellow and graduate teaching assistant/teaching assistant roles as a whole at the University of Auckland.

A Harvard study [9] proposed that 30% of an institution needs to be filled with minority groups across all levels of superiority to feel represented. When you look at representation, you can see that we clearly match the minimum to see representation. However, when you take a closer look at individual fields, we do not hit critical mass for some of these fields.

The University of Auckland has pledged to close this equity gap in the Taumata Teitei — Vision 2030 and Strategic Plan 2025, which outlines a goal to ‘determine and craft changes to recruitment, career entry pathways and mentoring initiatives aligned to the needs of specific cohorts.’ Part of this plan involves consistent monitoring of the University’s equity statistics via the Equity Profile, last conducted in 2020. The Equity Profile states that in the UoA Science Faculty, women are underrepresented (under 30%) in computer science, environmental sciences, mathematics, and physics [8]. Women are also underrepresented in Engineering (below 10% in senior positions and below 30% in other positions) [8] and in Medical and Health Sciences (especially Optometry and Vision Science) [8].

However, in the last ten years, we have seen dramatic positive shifts. The proportion of associate professors who are women has increased substantially from 27.7% in 2010 to 39.1% in 2020, and the proportion of professors who are women increased from 20% in 2010 to 31% in 2020 [8]. We can only hope that the University continues this trend, and keeps on making these huge improvements in gender disparity.

The Leaky Pipeline: Women in STEM Workforces

These inequities seen in academia prevail in private industries as well. Women are consistently underrepresented among industries that hire large numbers of science graduates, including technology, data science, finance, and engineering. Martin et al. [10] describe the ‘leaky pipeline’ that occurs when fewer and fewer women are represented in STEM at each stage, from training to employment to promotion. As a result, there is a scarcity of women in high-level leadership positions in STEM industry fields.

Indeed, while 48% of the New Zealand STEM workplace are women, only 21% of New Zealand’s tech executives are women, and only a quarter of the small to medium-sized enterprises in the tech sector report having a gender-balanced leadership team [11]. The shortage of women in these higher-paid positions contributes to the significant wage gaps in our STEMaffiliated industries: 17.3% in Information, Media and Telecommunications, 3.4% in Construction, and 31.0% in Financial and Assurance services [12]. Attention given to the representation of women should also be given to retainment and career development.

This leaky pipeline phenomenon can, in part, be attributed to the significant bias against women in STEM industries. Women are regularly perceived as less capable and less suitable for STEM careers, and this bias is not always explicit; Martin et al. cite multiple studies that suggest significant subconscious bias may be held even by those who reject gender stereotypes [10]. A study by Moss-Racusin et al. produced conclusive results that indicated women who are exposed to the reality of gender bias in STEM are less likely to identify, engage and positively associate with a career in STEM [13].

This evidence highlights the need for these biases to be addressed, as they pose a significant barrier to female success in STEM pursuits. In particular, it is significantly harder for women to succeed in start-ups in comparison to their male entrepreneur counterparts. In 2019, ventures led by women received less than 3% of the global venture capital investments [14]. Furthermore, many women who have a male co-founder report how during introductory meetings with investors, investors would assume that they were ‘not founders, nor key decision-makers’ [15].

These challenges are compounded by the addition of the ‘maternal wall’: additional workplace discrimination due to the need to take time off of work for pregnancies and motherhood. For this reason, many women in STEM feel time pressure to build a stable career before they have children. Crosby et al. go as far as to say that ‘motherhood is the worst economic decision a woman can make’ [16].

Bias, barriers to entrepreneurship, and the maternal wall all exacerbate the leaky pipeline phenomenon in the STEM industry. Our female science graduates who choose to forgo academia and pursue corporate careers face significant challenges all the same.

To tackle an issue this systemic, we must look to where it all starts — as a pervasive culture. From a very young age, girls are taught, whether implicitly or explicitly, that science and mathematics is a field for men. Brain scans have shown that males and females have equal processing ability for mathematics, and additionally, mathematical achievement seems to be similar for young boys and girls until partway through primary school, when children start becoming more aware of social gender factors [17]. There is no biological reason for any gender differences in mathematics achievement, and so the disproportionate number of men in numerical fields compared to women is almost certainly an environmental factor.

By high school, interest in these subjects among female students drops significantly. For example, in the UK in 2017, only 3% of female high school students reported a career in technology or computer science as their first choice, compared to 15% of their male counterparts [18]. Over the years, from when girls first start school until they choose what career path they would like to pursue post high school, they are being diverted away from these STEM subjects, leading to a lower number studying them at university, which drops even lower as they continue into their permanent career paths.

There is currently a significant gender imbalance in some science subjects, seen most significantly in computer science, mathematics and physics. As of 2020, at the University of Auckland, only 22.2% of computer science students were female, and 0.43% were gender diverse [19]. This was closely followed by 36.6% female and 0.56% gender diverse in physics, with 33.3% female and 0.37% gender diverse in mathematics [19].

Our own club, AUWS, was created as a response to the isolation we felt as women in STEM in our degrees. Many of the founding members were in mathematics or physics degrees, where the proportion of men was notoriously high. An executive officer recounts, ‘once in first-year Physics, a male classmate told me to shut up since the men were talking.’ Another executive member remembers the day she sat down in a maths lecture and realised that every single person in the room was a man.

This gender imbalance reinforces the way in which science is being taught and learnt, by which it is projected through a male lens. Thus, studies, experiments, and research are often focused on issues that are primarily relevant to men and lack the inclusiveness that could be extended to minority groups in the classroom. Seatbelts in cars are tested on crash dummies based on the average male body, leading to women having a higher risk of injury in a collision [20]. One in ten women suffer from endometriosis, but we know shockingly little about it — indeed, this applies to the entire female reproductive system. Historic ADHD and ASD research were primarily done on young white boys, and the diagnostic criteria reflect that, making it harder for people who don’t fall into this category to get help [21]. Sexism in science literally makes it harder to live as a woman in this world!

It would be remiss to discuss these issues without taking an intersectional lens. Similar barriers exist racially for Māori and Pasifika students in New Zealand. Most scientific research takes a Western lens and often focuses on Caucasian people, and little to no scientific research acknowledges people who sit outside the gender binary. In New Zealand, the life expectancy of Māori women is 77, and for non-Māori women, it is 85 [22]. Scientific and medical inequity stretches far beyond the boundaries of gender, and the horrifying statistics show there is a need for all types of diversity in science.

How do we fix this?

We cannot expect female and gender non-conforming scientists to learn, grow and thrive in environments such as these. Something needs to change. It will be a long and arduous road to scientific gender equality, but by reading this far, you are already helping us spread the message. However, it is fixable! We are already starting to see gradual improvements across STEM gender equity. For example, there was a 3% increase in women studying Mathematics and Physics at UoA from 2016 to 2020 [19].

AUWS hopes to help support this change, as every bit counts, however small. It is extremely important to have places within these STEM fields where women and gender minorities can come together to combat this feeling of isolation. This is where groups such as AUWS, as well as the WEN (Women in Engineering Network) and WIHN (Women in Health Network) come into play. It has been shown that having a sense of belonging increases the retention rates of women in STEM fields [23]. We hope that one day, not only scientists, but all people will be treated equally regardless of gender or race. However, we must consistently do the mahi and actively make change. Only then will equality be possible.