Close the gender gap in Chinese science

Abstract

Analysis shows that extending the age limit for grants boosts the number awarded to women, but more must be done to achieve parity, say Ying Ma and colleagues.Chemist Youyou Tu, who discovered the malaria treatment artemisinin, was the first Chinese female scientist to win a Nobel prize. CLAUDIO BRESCIANI/AFP/GETTY 3 M A Y 2 0 1 8 | V O L 5 5 7 | N A T U R E | 2 5 COMMENT © 2 0 1 8 M a c m i l l a n P u b l i s h e r s L i m i t e d , p a r t o f S p r i n g e r N a t u r e . A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . Chemist Youyou Tu worked with pharmacologist Lou Zhicen (left) on traditional Chinese medicine in the 1950s, when women's participation in the workforce in China was encouraged and protected. 3 M A Y 2 0 1 8 | V O L 5 5 7 | N A T U R E | 2 7 COMMENT XINHUA/ALAMY © 2 0 1 8 M a c m i l l a n P u b l i s h e r s L i m i t e d , p a r t o f S p r i n g e r N a t u r e . A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d .

Is there gender bias in research grant success in social sciences?: Hong Kong as a case study

“…Our results suggest promising next steps for universities, research institutes, funding agencies, and the society at large to narrow the gender gap across disciplines. Within departments, faculties, and universities, although female Principal Investigators (PIs) were shown to perform better than male PIs in early career, proactive strategies should be promoted to plug the holes in the 'leaky pipeline' (Ma et al, 2018;Gewin, 2019;Grogan, 2019;Weigel et al, 2020). For example, continuous support for female academics through mentorship programs and early career development may reduce productivity disparities and encourage their continuous grant seeking in the mid-career and seniorcareer stages (Mejia, 2010;Holliday et al, 2014).…”

“…For example, continuous support for female academics through mentorship programs and early career development may reduce productivity disparities and encourage their continuous grant seeking in the mid-career and seniorcareer stages (Mejia, 2010;Holliday et al, 2014). Bold restructuring of leadership positions and opportunities for advanced career development, including offering more flexible tenure and promotion pathways for women (Mejia, 2010;Zakaib, 2011), or extending the age criteria for women to apply for senior scientific career awards (Ma et al, 2018) have been suggested to retain female researchers beyond their early stage of the academic career. Universities should also consider involving male staffs in the promotion of gender equity, such as providing gender capacity-development training to increase awareness, identify challenges, and find solutions to empower female colleagues in workplaces.…”

“…The initiative was found to encourage gender equity and to be associated with increased rates of female leaders in managerial and professoriate positions (Ovseiko et al, 2016;Xiao et al, 2020). In China, recent studies found raising the maximum age for applying for the Young Scientist Fund by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) has increased the representation of female applicants from 37% to 48% since 2011, and female awardees also increased from 33% to 43% (Ma et al, 2018).…”

“…In particular, gender disparity persists in biomedicine (Edmunds et al, 2016;Sheltzer, 2018), science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM; Holmes et al, 2008;National Research Council, 2010;Finkel, 2013;Latimer et al, 2019). Underrepresentation of women in the academia has prevailed in the United Kingdom (UK; Bedi et al, 2012;Schmidt et al, 2020), the United States (US; Pohlhaus et al, 2011;Ginther et al, 2016), Australia (Finkel, 2013), Canada (Witteman et al, 2019a(Witteman et al, , 2019b, Denmark (Watson and Hjorth, 2015), and China (Postiglione and Tang, 2008;Aiston, 2014;Ma et al, 2018;Aiston et al, 2020).…”

“…We pay particular attention to four "myths" about why gender disparity existed in research funding for STEM and biomedicine (Mejia, 2010;Zakaib, 2011;Shen, 2013;Ovseiko et al, 2017;Ma et al, 2018;Sheltzer, 2018).…”