Men and women differ in their perception of gender bias in research institutions

Abstract

There is extensive evidence of gender inequality in research leading to insufficient representation of women in leadership positions. Numbers revealing a gender gap in research are periodically reported by national and international institutions but data on perceptions of gender equality within the research community are scarce. In the present study, a questionnaire based on the British Athena Survey of Science, Engineering and Technology (ASSET 2016) was distributed among researchers working in Spain. Consistent with the original UKbased study, women in research perceived a greater degree of gender inequality than men. This difference was consistent from junior to senior positions, within public and private universities as well as research centres, and across all research disciplines. When responses were compared with the existing UK-based questionnaire, researchers in Spain felt that women and men are treated more equally in the workplace, yet they perceived their home departments to be less supportive regarding matters of gender equality. The results of this study provide clear evidence that men and women do not share the same perceptions of gender equality in science and that their differing perceptions are relatively consistent across two major European countries. The fact that men occupy the majority of senior positions while not perceiving the same inequality as women do, may be critical when it comes to ensuring the fair ascent of women to senior positions in an academic system. These data encourage the implementation of measures to ensure that both men and women are aware of gender biases in research.PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.research and innovation in Europe [2], showed that only 21% of grade A, top-level researchers were women and, strikingly, numbers have not improved much from the 20% observed in 2010. In the Spanish academic system, the representation of women is nearly identical to that of the rest of the EU (40.8% vs 41.0%), and women occupy 21.0% of senior positions in Spain vs 20.9% in the EU [2,3].Gender perceptions may influence women's ascent to senior positions [4]. Women are perceived as worse scientific leaders [5,6] and are stereotyped as not possessing the innate talent that is required in some fields [7]. These and other gender stereotypes may explain why women receive similar levels of research funding when they are judged on the quality of their research but less funding when judged on the excellence of the researcher [8], are less frequently invited to conferences [9,10], are less likely to be selected for scientific awards [11,12], are less represented on editorial boards [13], their work is less likely to be cited [14], they have less chances of being invited to participate in peer review [14,15], and they have a more restricted access to influential networks [16]. In 2015, Handley et al reported that men do not recognise the presence of gender bias in research to the same extent as women: when men and women were asked to read an abstract from a study reportin...

Perception of male otolaryngologists on gender discrimination: a comparative study

“…Another comparative study conducted among the nonmedical academicians in Spain and the UK demonstrated that women perceived more gender inequality in areas of invitation to conferences as speakers, receiving scientific awards, representation on editorial boards of scientific publications, receiving citations, invitation to be a reviewer, promotions and leadership positions, whereas men did not perceive such extensive discrimination [14]. Similarly, Handley et al documented that men didn't admit the existence of gender bias in science as women did [15].…”

Closing the gender gap at academic conferences: A tool for monitoring and assessing academic events

“…According to this theory, women (and maybe other under-represented minorities) may feel less capable, less prepared, or have less self-confidence to carry out certain roles [1]. Also, they may feel that they do not belong in that environment.…”

“…The explanation about the imbalance suggests that bias against women plays an important role in generating these differences [35,38,39]. There are conscious or unconscious biases, subtle or blatant, which have a great impact on the absence of female scientific models [1,40]. The under-representation of women in science is a multi-dimensional problem.…”

“…% of women who send abstracts and the ratio of acceptance [35] % of women according to their job category/position and active participation [1,15] % of invited women to a baseline estimated using membership data of the associated scientific societies (or departmental members, academic staff, professional ranks. .…”

“…In line with this perspective, a large number of existing studies have examined the persistence of gender imbalance in the scientific structure [1,[4][5][6]. It has been suggested that women have a lower wage [7,8], are promoted more slowly [9], receive less research funding [10], and their proportion in editorial and faculties boards is lower [2] A different line of studies of gender imbalance has focused on knowledge production.…”