Women in evolution – highlighting the changing face of evolutionary biology

Wellenreuther, Maren; Otto, Sarah P.

doi:10.1111/eva.12343

Cited by 25 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Women are still underrepresented in academic science, despite considerable improvements over the last century (Wellenreuther and Otto ). While women represented 42% of PhD graduates of all science disciplines across the 28 countries of the European Union (EU) in 2012, they only made up 33% of researchers in these sectors in 2011 (European Union ); similar patterns are observed in North America (Handelsman et al.…”

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confidence: 53%

Gender equity at scientific events

2018

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Although the proportion of women in science, and in evolutionary biology in particular, has substantially increased over the last century, women remain underrepresented in academia, especially at senior levels. In addition, their scientific achievements do not always receive the same level of recognition as do men's, which can be reflected in a lower relative representation of women among invited speakers at conferences or specialized courses. Using announcements sent to the EvolDir mailing list between April 2016 and September 2017, and the symposium programs of three large evolutionary biology congresses held in summer 2017, we quantified the representation of women announced as invited speakers in conferences, congress symposia, and specialized courses. We compared the proportion of invited women to a baseline estimated using membership data of the associated scientific societies, and surveyed organizers to investigate their influence and that of potential gender‐ratio guidelines on the proportion of invited women. We find that the average proportion of invited women is comparable (conferences), significantly lower (specialized courses), or significantly higher (congress symposia) than the current baseline (32% women). It is positively correlated to the proportion of women among the organizers, and it is on average higher for events whose organizers considered gender when choosing speakers than for those whose organizers did not. To investigate the impact of Equal Opportunity guidelines, we then collected longitudinal data on the proportion of invited women at two series of congresses, covering the 2001–2017 period. The proportion of invited women is higher when Equal Opportunity guidelines are announced. Encouraging women to sit on organizing committees of scientific events, and the establishment of visible Equal Opportunity guidelines, thus could be ways to ensure higher number of invited female speakers in the future. Our results suggest that change, if desired, requires deliberate actions.

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confidence: 53%

Gender equity at scientific events

2018

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“…Diversity leads to better problem‐solving, expands the talent pool, and promotes full inclusion of excellence across the social spectrum (Blackburn, 2017; Nielsen et al., 2017). Among the plethora of topics regarding increasing diversity in STEM fields (Blackburn, 2017; Wellenreuther & Otto, 2015), here we focus on overcoming the biases against women in computer sciences and the persistence of unconscious gender stereotypes that influence both male and female researchers.…”

Section: Increasing Contributions By Women (Sarah Hendricks and Brennmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recent advances in conservation and population genomics data analysis

Hendricks

Anderson

Antão

et al. 2018

Evolutionary Applications

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New computational methods and next‐generation sequencing (NGS) approaches have enabled the use of thousands or hundreds of thousands of genetic markers to address previously intractable questions. The methods and massive marker sets present both new data analysis challenges and opportunities to visualize, understand, and apply population and conservation genomic data in novel ways. The large scale and complexity of NGS data also increases the expertise and effort required to thoroughly and thoughtfully analyze and interpret data. To aid in this endeavor, a recent workshop entitled “Population Genomic Data Analysis,” also known as “ConGen 2017,” was held at the University of Montana. The ConGen workshop brought 15 instructors together with knowledge in a wide range of topics including NGS data filtering, genome assembly, genomic monitoring of effective population size, migration modeling, detecting adaptive genomic variation, genomewide association analysis, inbreeding depression, and landscape genomics. Here, we summarize the major themes of the workshop and the important take‐home points that were offered to students throughout. We emphasize increasing participation by women in population and conservation genomics as a vital step for the advancement of science. Some important themes that emerged during the workshop included the need for data visualization and its importance in finding problematic data, the effects of data filtering choices on downstream population genomic analyses, the increasing availability of whole‐genome sequencing, and the new challenges it presents. Our goal here is to help motivate and educate a worldwide audience to improve population genomic data analysis and interpretation, and thereby advance the contribution of genomics to molecular ecology, evolutionary biology, and especially to the conservation of biodiversity.

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“…Women in science face additional barriers to success that are rooted in historical biases (Wellenreuther and Otto 2016), which remain widespread despite over a decade of policies aimed at increasing female participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields (Larivière et al 2013). While higher levels of gender parity have been achieved at earlier STEM career stages (e.g., graduate school, post-doctoral fellowships) (National Science Foundation and National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics 2018), there are still fewer women at senior levels (Larivière et al 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and language use in scientific grant writing

Urquhart‐Cronish

Otto

2019

FACETS

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Women in science, technology, engineering, and math are not equally represented across tenure-track career stages, and this extends to grant funding, where women applicants often have lower success rates compared with men. While gender bias in reviewers has been documented, it is currently unknown whether written language in grant applications varies predictably with gender to elicit bias against women. Here we analyse the text of ∼2000 public research summaries from the 2016 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) individual Discovery Grant (DG) program. We explore the relationship between language variables, inferred gender and career stage, and funding levels. We also analyse aggregated data from the 2012–2018 NSERC DG competitions to determine whether gender impacted the probability of receiving a grant for early-career researchers. We document a marginally significant gender difference in funding levels for successful grants, with women receiving $1756 less than men, and a large and significant difference in rejection rates among early-career applicants (women: 40.4% rejection; men: 33.0% rejection rate). Language variables had little ability to predict gender or funding level using predictive modelling. Our results indicate that NSERC funding levels and success rates differ between men and women, but we find no evidence that gendered language use affected funding outcomes.

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Women in evolution – highlighting the changing face of evolutionary biology

Cited by 25 publications

References 53 publications

Gender equity at scientific events

Gender equity at scientific events

Recent advances in conservation and population genomics data analysis

Gender and language use in scientific grant writing

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