To reduce gender biases, acknowledge them

Abstract

L ate in the afternoon of 6 December 1989, a man walked into the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Canada, carrying a hunting rifle, a knife, ammunition and a grudge against women in nontraditional roles -in this case, engineering. He went from class to class, targeting female students. Fourteen women died. It remains the worst mass murder in modern Canadian history.At the time, I was an 18-year-old studying engineering at the University of Toronto. The shooting was a harsh lesson that some men don't think women belong in science and technology. As I persisted in the field and became a faculty member, I heard this message again and again, albeit expressed less violently.

Let's Talk About Sex − Not Gender

“…These days, the term ‘gender’ seems to be on everyone's lips because it is an important issue in society and politics . While it was basically absent in the biological literature before the 1990's, the word is now increasingly used in publications on non‐human organisms (Figure ).…”

Men, Women, and STEM: Why the Differences and What Should Be Done?

“…Unfortunately, much of this debate was decidedly inaccurate in its presentation of the research on the topic. A great deal was said about bias and discrimination, but relatively little about other factors contributing to STEM gender gaps (e.g., Chachra, 2017). Furthermore, to the extent that other factors were mentionedfactors such as average sex differences in academic interests these were typically attributed to socialization, rather than to biology or to a 1 Strictly speaking, the issue is not STEM per se, but rather STEM fields that focus on the non-living world, or that have a strong spatial or mathematical component.…”

Diversity in geoscience: Participation, behaviour, and the division of scientific labour at a Canadian geoscience conference

“…Beyond ethical arguments, instrumental arguments have emphasized research findings that diverse scientific teams are more productive in both quantity and quality of scientific outputs (Guterl 2014;Nielsen et al 2017). As humans embedded in societies and cultures, scientists internalize certain social and political biases in the ways they interact, and one way to guard against such bias is to solicit a variety of perspectives on an issue, informed by a variety of experiences and backgrounds (Hawkesworth 2010;Chachra 2017).…”

“…The scientific community is progressively recognizing that modern science has historically been the domain of an elite, white male minority residing in the Global North, and ethical and instrumental arguments for increasing diversity in science have become well circulated and promoted (e.g., Carey et al 2016). As an ethical argument, if science is to produce knowledge for the benefit of all of humanity, then it should be open to all humans irrespective of their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or any other aspect of their background (e.g., Chachra 2017). Beyond ethical arguments, instrumental arguments have emphasized research findings that diverse scientific teams are more productive in both quantity and quality of scientific outputs (Guterl 2014;Nielsen et al 2017).…”