Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion

The symbolstands for non-peer-reviewed work.

The symbolstands for summaries on the topic of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Education and Socio-economic status (APA, 2017b) ◈⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Children from low socio-economic status take longer to develop academic skills than children from higher socio-economic status groups (e.g. poor cognitive development), leading to poorer academic achievement.
  • Children from low socio-economic status are less likely to attain experiences for the development of reading acquisition and reading competence.
  • As a result of fewer learning materials and experiences at home, children from low socio-economic status enter high school with literacy skills 5 years behind their affluent age-matched peers.
  • Children from lower socio-economic status households are twice as likely as those from high SES households to show learning related behaviour problems.
  • High school dropout rate was evident in low-income families compared to high-income families.
  • Placing low-socio-economic status students in higher-quality classrooms will help them earn more disposable income, more likely to attend college, live in affluent neighbourhoods and save more income for retirement.
  • Students from low socio-economic status are less likely to have access to resources about colleges (e.g. career offices and familial experience with higher/further education) and are more at-risk of being in debt to student loans than their affluent peers.
  • Low income students are less likely to succeed in STEM disciplines, 8 times less likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree by the age of 24 and have less career-related self-efficacy when it came to vocational aspirations than high income students.
  • These problems are worsened for people of colour, women, people who are disabled and LGBTIQ-identified individuals.

Abstract

This fact sheet explains the impact socioeconomic status on educational outcomes.

APA Style Reference

APA (2017, July). Education and Socioeconomic Status [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education

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Ethnic and Racial minorities and socio-economic status (APA, 2017) ◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • The relationship between SES, race and ethnicity is intimately intertwined.  Communities are segregated by socio-economic status, race and ethnicity. Low economic development, poor health conditions and low levels of educational attainment are often comorbidities shared in these communities.
  • Discrimination hinders social mobility of ethnic and racial minorities. In the US, 39% of African American children and adolescents, and 33% of Latino children and adolescents are living in poverty, which is more than double than the 14% poverty rate for non-Latino, White and Asian children and adolescents.
  • Minority racial groups are more likely to experience multidimensional poverty than their White counterparts. American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian families are more likely than Caucasian and Asian families to live in poverty.
  • “African Americans (53%) and Latinos (43%) are more likely to receive high-cost mortgages than Caucasians (18%; Logan, 2008).” (p.9).
  • African American unemployment rates are double of Caucasian Americans. African American men working full time earn only 72% of Caucasian men's average earnings, and 85% of earnings of Caucasian women.
  • African Americans and Latinos are more likely to attend high-poverty schools than Asian Americans and Caucasians. From 2000 to 2013, dropout rates between racial groups narrowed significantly.  High school dropouts were highest for Latinos, followed by African Americans and Whites.
  • High achieving African American students may be exposed to less rigorous curriculums, attend schools with fewer resources, and have teachers who expect less of them academically than similarly situated Caucasian students.
  • 12% of African American college graduates were unemployed, which is more than double the rate of unemployment among all college graduates in the same age range.
  • Racial and ethnic minorities have worse health than that of White Americans.
  • Health disparities stem from economic determinants, education, geography, neighbourhood, environment, lower-quality care, inadequate access to care, inability to navigate the system, provider ignorance or bias, and stress.
  • “At each level of income or education, African American have worse outcomes than Whites. This could be due to adverse health effects of more concentrated disadvantage or a range of experiences related to racial bias (Braveman, Cubbin, Egerter, Williams, & Pamuk, 2010).” (p.10).
  • In pre-retirement years, Hispanics and American Indians are much less likely than Whites, African Americans, and Asians to have any health insurance. Negative net worth, zero net worth, and not owning a home in young adulthood are linked to depressive symptoms independent of other socio-economic indicators.
  • Hispanics and African Americans report a lower risk of psychiatric disorder relative to White counterparts, but those who become ill tend to have more persistent disorders.
  • African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, American Indians, and Native Hawaiians have higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorders than Whites, which is not explained by Socio-economic status and a history of psychiatric  disorders. However discrimination is factor that contributes to increasing mental health disorders among the Asian and African American communities (i.e., compared to the White community, African American communities are more frequently diagnosed with schizophrenia, a low prevalence but serious condition).

Abstract

Learn how socioeconomic status affects the lives of many racial and ethnic minorities.

APA Style Reference

APA (2017, July). Ethnic and Racial Minorities & Socioeconomic Status [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/minorities

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Faculty promotion must assess reproducibility (Flier, 2017) ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Inadequate training, increased competition, problems in peer review and publishing, and occasionally scientific misconduct are some of the variables behind irreproducible research in the biomedical field.
  • Diverse causes make finding solutions for the problem of irreproducibility  difficult, especially, as they must be implemented by independent constituencies including funders and publishers.
  • Academic institutions can and must do better to make science more reliable. One of the most effective (but least discussed) measures is to change how we appoint and promote our faculty members.
  • Promotion criteria has changed over time. Committees now consider how well a candidate participates in team science, but we still depend on imperfect metrics for judging research publications and our ability to assess reliability and accuracy is underdeveloped.
  • Reproducibility and robustness are under-emphasised when job applicants are evaluated and when faculty members are promoted.
  • Currently, reviewers of committees are asked to assess how a field would be different without a candidate’s contributions, and to survey a candidate’s accomplishment, scholarship, and recognition.
  • The promotion process should also encourage evaluators to say whether they feel candidates’ work is problematic or over-stated and whether it has been reproduced and broadly accepted. If not, they should say whether they believe widespread reproducibility is likely or whether work will advance the field.
  • Applicants should also be asked to critically evaluate their research, including unanswered questions, controversies and uncertainties. This signals the importance of assessment and creates a mechanism to judge a candidate’s capacity for critical self-reflection.
  • Evaluators should be asked to consider how technical and statistical issues were handled by candidates. Research and discovery is not simple and unidirectional, and evaluators should be sceptical of candidates who oversimplify.
  • Institutions need to incentivise data sharing and transparency. Efforts are more urgent as increasingly interdisciplinary projects extend beyond individual investigators’ expertise.
  • Success will need creativity, pragmatism and diplomacy, because investigators bristle at any perceived imposition on their academic freedom.

Quote

“Over time, efforts to increase the ratio of self-reflection to self-promotion may be the best way to improve science. It will be a slog, but if we don’t take this on, formally and explicitly, nothing will change.” (p.133)

Abstract

Research institutions should explicitly seek job candidates who can be frankly self-critical of their work, says Jeffrey Flier.

APA Style Reference

Flier J. (2017) Faculty promotion must assess reproducibility. Nature, 549(7671),133. https://doi.org/10.1038/549133a

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Women and Socio-economic status (APA, 2010)◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Socioeconomic status encompasses quality of life attributes and opportunities and privileges afforded to people in society.
  • Socio-economic status is a consistent and reliable predictor of outcomes across lifespan.
  • Low socio-economic status and its correlates (e.g., lower educational achievement, poverty and poor health) affect society.
  • Inequities in health distribution, resource distribution and quality of life are increasing in the US and globally.
  • Socio-economic status is a key factor in determining the quality of life for women and, by extension, strongly affects the lives of children and families.
  • Inequities in wealth and quality of life for women are long-standing and exist both locally and globally.
  • Women are more likely to live in poverty than men.
  • Men are paid more than women despite similar levels of education and fields of occupation.
  • Reduced income for women coupled with longer life expectancy and increased responsibility to raise children, increase probabilities that women face economic disadvantages.
  • Pay gap has narrowed over time but recently the progress has plateaued.
  • Women with a high school diploma are paid 80% of what men with the same qualifications are paid.
  • Single mother families are more than 5 times as likely to live in poverty as married-couples families.
  • Pregnancy affects work and educational opportunities for women and costs associated with pregnancy are higher for women than men.
  • 46% of women believed they have experienced gender discrimination.
  • Pregnant women with low socio-economic status report more depressive symptoms, suggesting the third trimester may be more stressful for low-income women.
  • At 2 and 3 months postpartum, women with low income have been found to experience more depressive symptoms than women with high-income.
  • Women with insecure and low-status jobs with little to no decision-making authority experience higher-levels of negative life events, insecure housing tenure, more chronic stressors, and reduced social support.
  • Depression and anxiety have increased significantly  for poor women in developing countries undergoing restructuring.
  • Women with low income develop alcoholism and drug addiction influenced by social stressors linked to poverty.
  • Improved balance in gender roles, obligations, pay equity, poverty reduction and renewed attention to maintenance of social capital redress the gender disparities in mental health.
  • SES also affects physical health, with women living with breast cancer being11% more likely to die if they live in lower SES communities.
  • Low-income women who have no insurance have lowest rates of mammography screening among women aged 40-64, increasing risk of death from breast cancer.
  • Obesity and staying obese from adolescence to young adulthood is linked to poverty among women.
  • Relative to HIV-positive men, women with HIV have disproportionately low-income in the US.

Abstract

Learn how socioeconomic status affects the lives of women.

APA Style Reference

APA. (2017, July). Women & Socioeconomic Status [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/women 

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The Gender Gap: Who Is (and Is Not) Included on Graduate-Level Syllabi in Social/Personality Psychology (Skitka et al., 2020) ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • This article investigates whether there is a gender gap in Social/Personality Psychology syllabi.
  • One factor contributing to gender gaps is whose work we choose to teach in graduate seminars.
  • It is hypothesised that one link in the broad chain of factors contributing to the eminent gender gap is that female authors are likely to be under-represented on graduate course syllabi compared to their male peers (gender gap hypothesis).
  • Reasons why female authors might be under-represented on course syllabi could be varied.
  • Instructors may internalise cultural prejudices and biases favouring men over women. This might result in a greater preference for male over female-authored papers (i.e., bias hypothesis).
  • Another possibility is that instructors might prefer older over contemporary papers (i.e., classic hypothesis).
  • Yet another possibility is that there are more male-authored papers available to include in syllabi than female-authored papers (i.e., availability hypothesis).
  • The present study investigates whether there is a gender gap in representation on graduate level syllabi and whether it is explained by preference for classic over contemporary papers or relative availability of male- versus female-authored manuscripts.
  • Method: The authors identified every social and/or personality PhD program in the US using the Social Psychology Network’s PhD ranking list and Graduate Programs GeoSearch.
  • 120 programs were identified and a list of social/personality faculty names and email addresses for each program were put together by going to psychology department websites.
  • Main interest was in courses for first-year graduate students.
  • Inclusion criteria for syllabi were: (1) course name includes words: social or personality, (2) course was at the graduate level.
  • Papers cited in the syllabi were coded for the following characteristics: gender of all authors, each author’s h-index, total number of authors, journal where the article was published, number of citations the article received since publication and topic in social/personality psychology.
  • To understand whether the gender representation on graduate syllabi is (or is not) consistent with the number of high-quality papers from which instructors can select, the present study obtained all names of authors, authorship order and year of publication for all papers published in the Journal of Social and Personality Psychology from 1965 to 2017 and published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin from 1974 until April 2018. These journals accounted for 33% of reading on sample course syllabi and formed benchmarks.
  • Results: Less than 30% of papers referenced on syllabi were written by female first authors.
  • The gender gap on syllabi, differed as a function of instructor gender and decade papers were published: female instructors assigned more recently published papers (post-1990) and female first-authored papers at levels significantly higher than their male counterparts.
  • Difference in inclusion rates of female first-authored paper could not be explained by preference for classic over contemporary papers in syllabi or relative availability of female first-authored papers in the published  literature.
  • The gender gap differed depending on the content of the course. Male and female authors were approximately equally represented on graduate-level syllabi of topics as prejudice, close relationships, culture and health. The gender gap was much larger in syllabi of topics as best practices, replicability, attitude change and persuasion.
  • Male and female-authored papers included on syllabi had similar citation rates, although they had different h-index scores.
  • Increasing representation of female scholars’ work on graduate course syllabi would have beneficial consequences, moving toward greater gender inclusiveness in social/personality psychology.

Abstract

We contacted a random sample of social/personality psychologists in the United States and asked for copies of their graduate syllabi. We coded more than 3,400 papers referenced on these syllabi for gender of authors as well as other characteristics. Less than 30% of the papers referenced on these syllabi were written by female first authors, with no evidence of a trend toward greater inclusion of papers published by female first authors since the 1980s. The difference in inclusion rates of female first-authored papers could not be explained by a preference for including classic over contemporary papers in syllabi (there was evidence of a recency bias instead) or the relative availability of female first-authored papers in the published literature. Implications are discussed.

APA Style Reference

Skitka, L. J., Melton, Z. J., Mueller, A. B., & Wei, K. Y. (2020). The Gender Gap: Who Is (and Is Not) Included on Graduate-Level Syllabi in Social/Personality Psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 0146167220947326. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220947326

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Leveraging a collaborative consortium model of mentee/mentor training to foster career progression of under-represented post-doctoral researchers and promote institutional diversity and inclusion (Risner et al., 2020) ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • The goal of the study is to empower post-doctoral students and make them active participants in the mentoring relationships by emphasising the mentees’ contributions in shaping more productive interactions to be built upon to develop their own skills as a future mentor.
  • The study used several metrics by which they assessed the success of this collaborative, multi-institutional approach, using National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN), the Committee on Institutional Cooperation Academic Network (CAN) approach to provide mentor facilitator training for faculty and senior administrators and mentoring-Up training for post-doctoral students.
  • Background: “Establishing a functioning consortium needs buy-in and high-level cooperation from all partners. Prior to initiating programming, all potential institutional representatives set initial goals to address campus needs for mentor-up skill development for post-docs and mentor facilitator training for staff and faculty, establish sustainable communities of practice for mentor training and develop mechanisms for central coordination, outreach to campus constituents, templates for recruitment of participants and strategies to sustain collaboration and develop mechanisms for central coordination, outreach to campus constituents, templates for recruitment of participants, and strategies to sustain collaboration.” (p.4)
  • Method:  “The seven Core Principles [of “Mentoring-UP”] are: 1. Two-way communication, 2. Aligning expectations, 3. Assessing understanding, 4. Fostering independence, 5. Ethics, 6. Addressing equity and inclusion, 7. Promoting professional development. This curriculum provided postdocs opportunities for: i.) self-evaluation and reflection to become aware of their personal biases, attitudes, and behaviors; ii.) exploring strengths, weaknesses, and challenges in their interpersonal and professional relationships; iii.) understanding and learning how to use the mentor principles; and iv.) focusing on cognitive processes that may lead to behavioral changes and strategies to facilitate those changes in a process-based approach over 1.5–2 day workshops.” (p.5)
  • Method: “The 1.5–2 day workshops included case studies and activities that: i.) engage mentors in peer discussion of a mentor framework; ii.) explore strategies to improve mentoring relationships; iii.) address mentoring problems; iv.) reflect on mentoring philosophies; v.) and create mentoring action plans to model the interactive, collaborative, and problem-solving ways to develop and implement this set of trainings in the future. The training goals provided tools and mechanisms to implement mentor training venues at the participating institutions, thereby establishing sustainable Mentor-training programs for undergrads, graduate students, postdocs and faculty” (p.5).
  • “A specific NRMN-CAN survey was developed for all four postdoc cohorts to ascertain whether mentor training: i.) influenced career progression; ii.) impacted the postdocs’ relationship with their PIs; and iii.) components of the mentor training that were implemented by the postdoc mentees... A dedicated NRMN-CAN survey for faculty and senior administrators was also developed to ascertain whether participation in Mentor Facilitator training led to: i.) implementation of training workshops on their campuses; ii.) the level and number of participants; iii.) and whether facilitated sessions were carried out in partnership with others.” (p.5)
  • Results: Post-doctoral students reported improvements in their mentoring proficiency and improved relationships with the Principal Investigators. 29% of post-doc respondents transitioned to faculty positions, and 85% of these respondents were under-represented and 75% were female. 59 out of 120 faculty and administrators provided mentor training to over 3000 undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students and faculty on their campus for the duration of this  project.
  • The findings showed that the majority of post-doctoral students indicate that mentor training positively influenced their relationship with their Mentors in several domains (e.g. confidence building). In addition, this curriculum has guided most post-doctoral students to better understand their mentoring needs, develop strategies to manage their mentoring relationships and empower them to make critical career decisions to pursue an academic career.  In addition, early-career scientists stated they had more confidence to pursue an academic career with increased self-efficiency and advocacy.
  • Impressively, 29% of the responding postdocs, predominantly females (75%) and underrepresented postdocs (85%) have successfully migrated to faculty. Some postdocs also indicated that their mentor training and experiences were valuable skills when applying for academic positions and definitely aided in adapting to responsibilities as a faculty mentor.

Abstract

Changing institutional culture to be more diverse and inclusive within the biomedical academic community is difficult for many reasons. Herein we present evidence that a collaborative model involving multiple institutions of higher education can initiate and execute individual institutional change directed at enhancing diversity and inclusion at the postdoctoral researcher (postdoc) and junior faculty level by implementing evidence-based mentoring practices. A higher education consortium, the Big Ten Academic Alliance, invited individual member institutions to send participants to one of two types of annual mentor training: 1) “Mentoring-Up” training for postdocs, a majority of whom were from underrepresented groups; 2) Mentor Facilitator training—a train-the-trainer model—for faculty and senior leadership. From 2016 to 2019, 102 postdocs and 160 senior faculty and administrative leaders participated. Postdocs reported improvements in their mentoring proficiency (87%) and improved relationships with their PIs (71%). 29% of postdoc respondents transitioned to faculty positions, and 85% of these were underrepresented and 75% were female. 59 out of the 120 faculty and administrators (49%) trained in the first three years provided mentor training on their campuses to over 3000 undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs and faculty within the project period. We conclude that early stage biomedical professionals as well as individual institutions of higher education benefited significantly from this collaborative mentee/mentor training model

APA Style Reference

Risner, L. E., Morin, X. K., Erenrich, E. S., Clifford, P. S., Franke, J., Hurley, I., & Schwartz, N. B. (2020). Leveraging a collaborative consortium model of mentee/mentor training to foster career progression of underrepresented postdoctoral researchers and promote institutional diversity and inclusion. PloS one, 15(9), e0238518. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238518

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Disability and Socio-economic status (APA, 2010) ◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • The Disabilities Act assures equal opportunities in education and employment for people with disabilities and prohibits discrimination based on disability.
  • Despite the Disabilities Act, people with disabilities remain over-represented among America’s poor and under-educated.
  • The federal government has two major programs to assist individuals with disabilities: the Social Security Disability Insurance and the Supplemental Security Income.
  • The Social Security Disability Insurance is a program  for workers who have become disabled and unable to work after paying Social Security taxes for at least 40 quarters. In this program, a higher income yields higher SSDI earnings.
  • The Supplemental Security Income is a welfare program for individuals with low income, fewer overall resources and no or an abbreviated work history.
  • Current federal benefit for a single person using Supplemental Security Income is $735 a month.
  • Despite these programs, people with disabilities are more likely to be unemployed and live in poverty.
  • For individuals who are blind and visually impaired, unemployment rates exceed 70 percent while for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, the unemployment rate exceeds 80 percent. Also, one in ten veterans with disabilities are unemployed.
  • The American Association of People with Disabilities estimates that two thirds of people with disabilities are of working age and want to work.
  • There are disparities in median incomes for people with and without disabilities, such that individuals with disabilities often earn lower incomes.
  • A study surveyed human resources and project managers about perceptions of hiring persons with disabilities. Results show professionals held negative perceptions related to productivity, social maturity, interpersonal skills and psychological adjustment of persons with disabilities.
  • Disparities in education have been ongoing for generations. 20.9% of individuals 65 years and older without a disability failed to complete high school, relative to 25.1% and 38.6% of elder individuals with a non-severe or severe disability.
  • Great disparities exist when comparing attainment of higher degrees. 15.1% of the population aged 25 and over with disability obtain a bachelor’s degree, whereas 33% of individuals in the same age category with no disability attain the same educational status.
  • Individuals with a disability experience increased barriers to obtaining health care as a result of accessibility concerns, such as transportation, problems with communication and insurance.
  • Family members who provide care to individuals with chronic or disabling conditions are themselves at risk of developing emotional, mental and physical health problems due to complex caregiving situations.

Abstract

Learn how socioeconomic status affects individuals with disabilities.

APA Style Reference

APA (2010). Disability & Socioeconomic Status [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/disability

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Boosting research without supporting universities is wrong-headed  (Nature, 2020b) ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Coronavirus lockdowns have precipitated a crisis in university funding and academic morale.
  • Universities all over the world closed their doors. Classes and some research activities were moved online.
  • Staff were given little or no time to prepare and few resources or training to help them with online teaching.
  • Fewer students are expected to enrol in the coming academic year, instead waiting until institutions open fully. This means young people will lose a year of their education and universities will lose out financially.
  • Governments have plans to boost post-lockdown research but these plans will be undermined if universities make job cuts and end up with staff shortages. Universities need support at this crucial time.
  • Low- and middle-income countries face extra challenges from sudden transition to online learning. The main concern is for students unable to access digital classrooms (those who live in areas without fast, reliable and affordable broadband or where students have no access to laptops, tablets, smartphones and other essential hardware).
  • Teachers report students struggle to keep up since lockdown began. Students from poorer households in remote regions travel to the nearest city to access the Internet and pay commercial internet cafes to download course materials. To solve this issue, governments and funding bodies need to accept that students and universities should be eligible for the same kinds of temporary emergency funding as other industries are asking for.
  • Governments have denied requests to negotiate with universities or delayed decisions. In high-income countries, this is partly because universities are functioning and might be seen as less deserving of government help than businesses and professions that had no choice but to close. In poorer countries, public funding for universities is under threat because economies have crashed during lockdowns.
  • Cuts in universities’ budgets will disproportionately affect poorest students and more vulnerable members of staff (those with fixed-term contracts).
  • Students and staff on short-term contracts would welcome more support from academic colleagues in senior positions and from others with permanent positions.
  • Colleagues should make the case for managers that failing to provide more help to low-income students or cutting the number of post-doctoral staff and teaching fellows presents a harm to the next generation of researchers and teachers. It will reduce departments’ capacity to teach and increase load on those who remain.
  • Cutting back on scholarly capacity while increasing spending on research and development is wrong-headed, slowing down economic recovery and jeopardising plans to make research more inclusive.

Abstract

Universities face a severe financial crisis, and some contract staff are hanging by a thread. Senior colleagues need to speak up now.

APA Style Reference

Nature. (2020). Boosting research without supporting universities is wrong-headed. Nature, 582, 313-314. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01788-6

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Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Persons & Socioeconomic Status (APA, 2010) ◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Individuals who identify as Lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender are specially susceptible to socio-economic disadvantages.
  • Socioeconomic status is inherently linked to rights, quality of life, and general well-being of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and/or transgender persons.
  • Low income LGBT individuals and same-sex/gender couples have been found to be more likely to receive cash assistance and food stamps benefits compared to heterosexual individuals or couples.
  • Transgender adults were nearly 4 times more likely to have household income of less than $10,000 per year relative to the general population.
  • Raising the federal minimum wage benefits LGBT individuals and couples in the United States.
  • An increase in minimum wage should reduce poverty rates by 25% for same-sex/gender female couples and 30% for same-sex/gender male couples.
  • Due to an increase in minimum wage, poverty rates would be projected to fall for the most vulnerable individuals in same-sex/gender couples, including African American, couples with children, people with disabilities, individuals under 24 years of age, people without high school diplomas or the equivalent, and those living in rural areas.
  • The socio-economic position may be linked to experiences of discrimination.
  • Gay and bisexual men who earned higher income were less likely to report discrimination relative to those in lower socio-economic positions.
  • Discrimination against and unfair treatment of LGBT persons remains legally permitted. 47% of transgender individuals report being discriminated against in hiring, firing and promotion, over 25% had lost a job due to discrimination based on gender identity.
  • A lack of acceptance and fear of persecution lead many LGBT youth to leave their homes and live in transitional housing or on the street.
  • Many LGBT youth may be rejected by their family of origin or caregivers and forced to leave home as minors.
  • LGBT youth experience homeless at a disproportionate rate.
  • LGBT homeless youth are more likely than their homeless heterosexual counterparts to have poorer mental and physical health outcomes.
  • Although since 2015 states must issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and recognise same-sex unions, legal barriers continue to exist.
  • Workplace and housing discrimination contribute to increasing socio-economic status disparities for LGBT persons and families.
  • 20 states and District of Columbia prohibit discrimination in workplace based on sexual orientation and gender identity, while 18 states have no laws prohibiting workplace discrimination against LGBT people.
  • 19% of transgender individuals report in a previous study that they were  refused a home or apartment and 11% report being evicted because of their gender identity or expression.

Abstract

Evidence indicates individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender (LGBT) are especially susceptible to socioeconomic disadvantages. Thus, SES is inherently related to the rights, quality of life and general well-being of LGBT persons.

APA Style Reference

APA (2010). Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Persons & Socioeconomic Status. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/lgbt

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The Focus on Fame distorts Science (Innes-Ker, 2017) ◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • The author argues that instead of focusing on individual merit it is important that science is focused on scientific ideas and collaborative groups.
  • Asking if you are famous is a wrong question. It focuses on the individual scientist, as if science is a lonely enterprise of hopeful geniuses.
  • We should focus on ideas and knowledge and refining those ideas.
  • H-index is not an objective measure. It presupposes that peer-review papers are solid and that citations are a proxy for quality.
  • Science is argued to advance in an evolutionary manner. A wealth of ideas is produced, but only some are selected and survive depending on scientific merit and social process (production of papers, citations and engagement of groups of scientists).
  • Ideas that engage groups of scientists will grow and change and bring knowledge closer to the truth. Ideas that are not interacted with, on the other hand, will likely die. This is far from focus on eminence and individual fame prevalent in science.
  • Competition is a factor but cooperation is vital.
  • For ideas to survive, multiple labs need to engage with them as champions or severe adversarial testers.
  • If we focus on who may become eminent, we lose some power of the scientific process.
  • Eminent scientists would be nowhere without collaborators and adversaries willing to engage with the ideas.
  • The tendency to overwhelmingly publish only positive results with no clear avenue for publishing failures to confirm, means scientists are not grappling with the real field.
  • Recent work to improve methods, statistics and publishing practices is an example of collaboration.
  • In science, scientific ideas are the ones that need to be stress-tested, not scientists.
  • We need to move away from the cultural market model of science focusing on individuals rather than on robustness of ideas. Science is a low yield, high risk business.
  • Assigning individual merit based on productivity and citation encourages poor scientific practices and discourages collaboration and argumentative engagement with ideas. It results in a waste of talent.
  • Objectivity in Science is not a characteristic of individual researchers, but a characteristic of scientific communities.

Abstract

The 2016 symposium on Scholarly Merit focused on individual eminence and fame. I argue, with some evidence, that the focus on individual merit distorts science. Instead we need to focus on the scientific ideas, and the creation of collaborative groups.

APA Style Reference

Innes-Ker, Å. (2017). The Focus on Fame Distorts Science. https://psyarxiv.com/vyr3e/

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Fame: I’m Skeptical (Ferreira, 2017) ◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • The author argues that fame and quality sometimes diverge and that reliance on fame helps to perpetuate stereotypes that keep women and underrepresented groups from participating in science.
  • Most of us believe we have the respect of our peers and acknowledge we wish to be admired and viewed as successful and important.
  • No psychologist and no rational person would deny that evaluating people and the quality of their work is necessary and inevitable in any field.
  • We like to admit most promising candidates to graduate programs, hire the best faculty, tenure only those who have long productive careers and reward scientists with prizes if they contributed more than most to uncover the nature of psychological processes.
  • We must not conflate fame and scientific quality, integrity and impact.
  • All of us point to colleagues who completed excellent work but are barely known or who are not famous until long after their research careers have ended.
  • Some scientists are well known because they have been called out for unethical practices, including data fabrication and other forms of cheating.
  • We need to discriminate between two questions: (i) what one must do to become famous and (ii) what leads a person to end up famous. While the second question is merely an attempt to reconstruct someone’s path to fame, the motivations of the first question need to be challenged.
  • Fame should not be a goal in science and valuing people or ideas because they are famous comes at a risk.
  • Fame should be viewed with caution and scepticism to avoid temptation to assume that if someone is famous, their work is significant.
  • Fame perpetuates discrimination and overlook excellent people and work.
  • Science is based on critical thinking. As such, we should never hesitate to question the ideas of someone who is famous.
  • We should not refuse to view the work of famous people positively or refuse to give it its due, but we must be careful to think an idea is useful due to the person being famous.

Abstract

Fame is often deserved, emerging from a person’s significant and timely contributions to science. It is also true that fame and quality clearly sometimes diverge: many people who do excellent work are barely known, and some people are famous even though their work is mediocre. Reliance on fame and name recognition when identifying psychologists as candidates for honors and awards helps to perpetuate a range of stereotypes and prevents us from broadening participation in our field, particularly from women and underrepresented groups. The pursuit of fame may also be contributing to the current crisis in psychology concerning research integrity, because it incentivizes quantity and speed in publishing. The right attitude towards fame is to use it wisely if it happens to come, but to focus our efforts on conducting excellent research and nurturing talent in others.

APA Style Reference

Ferreira, F. (2017). Fame: I'm Skeptical (2017).  https://psyarxiv.com/6zb4f/

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Let’s Look at the Big Picture: A System-Level Approach to Assessing Scholarly Merit (Pickett, 2017) ◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Why do we care about judging scientific merit? There is a need to have a system to determine whether to award tenure and promotion to faculty members, leading to a development of criteria in order to judge and measure the scholarly merit of individuals.
  • Science is a collective enterprise whose goal is to explain and understand the natural world and to build knowledge. Science cares about advancements and discoveries, not about individuals.
  • Individual scientists are valued to the extent that they further the goals of the collective system. However, science comprises lab workers, scientists, institutions, agencies, and broader society.
  • At organisation level, features facilitate scientific discovery-organisational autonomy, organisational flexibility, moderate scientific diversity and frequent and intense interaction among scientists with different viewpoints.
  • An individual scientist contributes to scientific discovery directly through their own scientific products or indirectly by positively affecting other aspects of the system.
  • More senior graduate students train incoming graduate students- when good at this the output of an entire lab can skyrocket as a result.
  • Graduate students not only conduct their own personal research but their presence in the lab facilitates scientific progress of others.
  • Scientists promote productivity of other scientists by reviewing manuscripts, sharing data, creating and serving scientific organisations, and developing scientific tools and paradigms used by others.
  • Individual research scientists do not have resources to create large research centres, but can organise conferences and symposia, create and contribute to scientific discussion platforms, and make their research protocols and data easily shareable.
  • Scholarly merit should include an individual’s system-level contributions, not only their productivity.

Abstract

When judging scientific merit, the traditional method has been to use measures that assess the quality and/or quantity of an individual’s research program. In today’s academic world, a meritorious scholar is one who publishes high quality work that is frequently cited, who receives plentiful funding and scientific awards, and who is well regarded among his or her peers. In other words, merit is defined by how successful the scholar has been in terms of promoting his or her own career. In this commentary, I argue that there has been an overemphasis on measuring individual career outcomes and that we should be more concerned with the effect that scholars have on the scientific system in which they are embedded. Put simply, the question we should be asking is whether and to what extent a scholar has advanced the scientific discipline and moved the field forward collectively.

APA Style Reference

Pickett, C. (2017). Let's Look at the Big Picture: A System-Level Approach to Assessing Scholarly Merit. https://psyarxiv.com/tv6nb/

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“Fame” is the Problem: Conflation of Visibility With Potential for Long-Term Impact in Psychological Science (Shiota, 2017)◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Fame is about visibility – who is seen. Ample evidence documents the influence of heuristics in determining who is visible, and whose contribution is considered important.
  • Explicit and implicit beliefs about competence influences peer review when methodological quality or potential impact is ambiguous.
  • The author is sceptical about the extent that fame is shaped by the quality of one’s work instead of confidence, dominance, persistence and demographics.
  • The pace of academic life accelerates, the pressure to depend on shortcuts in gatekeeping and evaluation will continue to grow.
  • The scientific community cannot remove implicit biases, there are ways to deflect the impact of these implicit biases.
  • Reviews of submitted work should be blind to identity and demographics, letting the quality of the product stand on its own.

Quote

“We specify criteria for good science flexibly but explicitly and in detail, including thorough and accurate contextualisation in relevant previous work, methodological rigour; innovation and problem solving and implications for theory, future research and/or intervention.  We should insist on diversity in career stage, gender, ethnicity and perspective instead of inviting first people who come to mind for invited opportunities such as conference talks, contribution to edited volumes, awards, and participation in committees that determine the direction of our field. We can resist temptation to track women and minorities into high profile, high-demand services roles, thinking that this solves problems of diversity in science. When, in fact, it does not.” (p.7)

Abstract

To be famous is to be widely known, and honored for one’s achievements. The process by which researchers achieve fame or eminence is skewed by heuristics that influence visibility; implications of these heuristics are magnified by a snowball effect, in which current fame leads to bias in ostensibly objective metrics of merit, including the distribution of resources that support future excellence. This effect may disproportionately hurt women and minorities, who struggle with both external and internalized implicit biases regarding competence and worth. While some solutions to this problem are available, they will not address the deeper problems of defining what it means for research to “make a difference” in our field and in society, and consistently holding our work to that criterion.

APA Style Reference

Shiota, M. N. (2017) “Fame” is the Problem: Conflation of Visibility With Potential for Long-Term Impact in Psychological Science. https://psyarxiv.com/4kwuq

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Why a Focus on Eminence is Misguided: A Call to Return to Basic Scientific Values (Corker, 2017) ◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • The author argues that our current methods of scientific rewards are based on identifying research eminence. This reward system is not in line with scientific values of transparency and universalism and undermines scientific quality.
  • Why do we accord knowledge derived from scientific method a privileged position relative to common sense, appeals to authority figures, or other forms of rhetoric?
  • If scientists depend on their own expertise as justification to prioritise their claims, we are not better to make truth-claims than religious, political and other leaders.
  • Instead, science’s claim on truth comes not from its practitioners’ training and expertise, but rather from its strong adherence to norms of transparency and universalism.
  • Universalism means scientists reject claims of special authority. It matters far less who did the research than how it was done.
  • How do we square scientific ideals of universalism with scientific culture that fetishizes lone scientific genius?
  • We need to recognise the methods used to produce a scientific claim are more important than eminence of a person who produced it.
  • Focusing primarily on the individual researcher excellence hurts psychological science, as eminence reflects values that are counterproductive to maximise scientific knowledge.
  • The current system privileges quantity over quality, outcome of research instead of the process itself.
  • Systematic biases (e.g., structural sexism, racism, and status bias) affect how we identify who qualifies as eminent under status quo.
  • Gender, nationality, race or institution should not matter to measure research quality.
  • Structural changes should be initiated to help researchers reward and evaluate quality research (i.e., work that is reproducible, transparent and open, and likely to be high in validity).
  • We can do a much better job to recognise and reward many activities  researchers do that support scientific discovery beyond publishing peer reviewed articles (e.g. develop scientific software, generate large datasets, write data analytic code and construct tutorials to teach others to use it).
  • We need to re-evaluate ways to measure researchers’ excellence in light of value and promise of team-driven research. After all, science is a communal endeavour.
  • To combat structural and systematic problems linked to recognising eminence, double blind peer reviews need to be considered as standard practice for journal publication, grant funding and awards committee.
  • Technological solutions could even be developed to allow departments to blind in early stages of faculty hiring, as blinding is associated with higher levels of diversity.

Abstract

The scientific method has been used to eradicate polio, send humans to the moon, and enrich understanding of human cognition and behavior. It produced these accomplishments not through magic or appeals to authority, but through open, detailed, and reproducible methods. To call something “science” means there are clear ways to independently and empirically evaluate research claims. There is no need to simply trust an information source. Scientific values thus prioritize transparency and universalism, emphasizing that it matters less who has made a discovery than how it was done. Yet, scientific reward systems are based on identifying individual eminence. The current paper contrasts this focus on individual eminence with reforms to scientific rewards systems that help these systems better align with scientific values.

APA Style Reference

Corker, K. S. (2017). Why a Focus on Eminence is Misguided: A Call to Return to Basic Scientific Values. https://psyarxiv.com/yqfrd

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Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists (Myers et al., 2019) ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • COVID-19 pandemic disrupted scientific enterprise.
  • Policymakers and institutional leaders have started to respond to reduce influences of pandemic on researchers.
  • For this study, authors reached out to US- and Europe-based scientists across institutions, career stages and demographic backgrounds.
  • The present paper solicited information about working hours and how time allocations changed since the onset of pandemic and asked scientists to report the range of individual and family properties, as these feature moderate effects of pandemic.
  • The sample was self-selected and it is likely that those who feel strongly about sharing situations, whether they experienced large positive or negative changes due to the pandemic, were the ones who chose to participate.
  • They found a decline in total working hours with the average dropping from 61 hours per week pre-pandemic to 54 hours at time of survey.
  • Only 5% of scientists report they worked 42 hours or less before the pandemic. This  share increased to 30% of scientists during the pandemic.
  • Time devoted to research has changed most during pandemic. Total working hours decreased by 11% on average, but research declined by 24%.
  • Scientists working in fields that rely on physical laboratories and on time sensitive experiments report largest declines in research time (in the range of 30-40% below pre-pandemic levels).
  • Fields that are less equipment intensive (e.g., mathematics, statistics, computer science and economics) report lowest declines in research time. The difference to other fields can be as large as fourfold.
  • There are differences between male and female respondents in how the pandemic influenced their work.
  • Female scientists and scientists with young dependents report ability to devote time to their research has been influenced and effects are additive - most impact was for female scientists with young dependents.
  • Individual circumstances of researchers best explain changes in time devoted to research during pandemic.
  • Career stage and facility closures did not contribute to changes in time allocated to research when everything else is held constant. Gender and young dependents contributed major roles.
  • Female scientists reported a 5% larger decline in research time than male scientists, but scientists with at least one child 5 years old or younger experienced a 17% larger decline in research time.
  • Having multiple dependents was linked to a  further 3% reduction in time spent on research. Scientists with dependents aged 6-11 years were less affected.
  • This indicates gender discrepancy can be due to female scientists being more likely to have young children as dependents.
  • Results indicate that the pandemic influences members of the scientific community differently.
  • Shelter at home is not the same as work from home, when dependents are also at home and need care.
  • Unless adequate childcare services are available, researchers with young children continue to be affected irrespective of reopening plans of institutions.
  • Pandemic will likely have longer-term impacts that are important to monitor. Further efforts to track effects of pandemic on the scientific workforce need to consider household circumstances.
  • Uniform policies do not consider individual circumstances and may have unintended consequences and worsen pre-existing inequalities.
  • The disparities may worsen as institutions begin the process of reopening given that different priorities for bench sciences versus work with human subjects or field-work travel may lead to new disparities across scientists.
  • Funders seeking to support high-impact programs adopt a similar approach, favouring proposals that are more resilient to uncertain future scenarios.
  • Senior researchers have incentives to avoid in-person interactions facilitating mentoring and hands-on training of junior researchers.
  • Impact of changes on individuals and groups of scientists could be large in short- and long-term, worsening negative impacts among those at a disadvantage.
  • We need to consider consequences of policies adopted to respond to pandemic, as they may disadvantage under-represented minorities and worsen existing disparities.

Quote

“The disparities we observe and the likely surfacing of new impacts in the coming months and years argue for targeted and nuanced approaches as the world-wide research enterprise rebuilds.” (p.882)

Abstract

COVID-19 has not affected all scientists equally. A survey of principal investigators indicates that female scientists, those in the ‘bench sciences’ and, especially, scientists with young children experienced a substantial decline in time devoted to research. This could have important short- and longer-term effects on their careers, which institution leaders and funders need to address carefully.

APA Style Reference

Myers, K. R., Tham, W. Y., Yin, Y., Cohodes, N., Thursby, J. G., Thursby, M. C., ... & Wang, D. (2020). Unequal effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on scientists. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 880-883. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0921-y

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Against Eminence (Vazire, 2017) ◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • The author argues that the drive for eminence is inherently at odds with scientific values and that insufficient attention to this problem is partly responsible for the recent crisis of confidence in psychology and other sciences.
  • Transparency makes it possible for scientists to discriminate robust from shaky findings.
  • The Replicability crisis shows a system without transparency does not work.
  • Those in charge of setting scientific norms and standards should strive to increase transparency, bolster our confidence that we trust published research.
  • However many high level decisions in science are made with a different goal in mind: to increase impact.
  • Professional societies and journals prioritise publishing attention-grabbing findings to boost visibility and prestige.
  • Seeking eminence is at odds with scientific value and affects scientific gatekeepers’ decisions.
  • Editors influenced by the status of submitting authors or prestige of institutions violate the basic premise of science. Science work should be evaluated on its own merit, irrespective of the source.
  • Lack of transparency in science is a direct consequence of the corrupting influence of eminence seeking.
  • Gatekeepers control incentive structures that shape individual researchers’ behaviour. Therefore they have a bigger responsibility to uphold scientific values and most power to erode those values.
  • Individual researchers’ desire for eminence threatens the integrity of the research process.
  • All researchers are human and desire recognition for their work. However, there is no good reason to amplify this human drive and encourage scientists to seek fame.
  • The glorification of eminence also reinforces inequalities in science. If scientists are evaluated based on ability to attract attention, those with the most prestige will be heard the loudest. Certain groups are overrepresented at a high level of status.
  • Eminence propagates privilege and raises barriers to entry for others.
  • How should scientific merit be evaluated? What does this mean for committees to select one or few winners?
  • First, it is important to admit that a larger number of scientists meet the objective criteria for these recognitions (i.e., do sound science).
  • It is also important to admit that selection of one or few individuals is not based on merit but on preference or partiality.
  • It is fine to select or recognise members who exemplify their values, but this should not be confused with exceptional scientific merit.
  • Whenever possible (for tenure, promotion and when journal space or grant fund permits), we should attempt to reward scientists whose work reaches a more objective threshold of scientific rigour or soundness instead of selecting scientists based on fame.

Abstract

The drive for eminence is inherently at odds with scientific values, and insufficient attention to this problem is partly responsible for the recent crisis of confidence in psychology and other sciences. The replicability crisis has shown that a system without transparency doesn’t work. The lack of transparency in science is a direct consequence of the corrupting influence of eminence-seeking. If journals and societies are primarily motivated by boosting their impact, their most effective strategy will be to publish the sexiest findings by the most famous authors. Humans will always care about eminence. Scientific institutions and gatekeepers should be a bulwark against the corrupting influence of the drive for eminence, and help researchers maintain integrity and uphold scientific values in the face of internal and external pressures to compromise. One implication for evaluating scientific merit is that gatekeepers should attempt to reward all scientists whose work reaches a more objective threshold of scientific rigor or soundness, rather than attempting to select the cream of the crop (i.e., identify the most “eminent”).

APA Style Reference

Vazire, S. (2017). Against eminence. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/djbcw

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Scientific Eminence: Where Are the Women? (Eagly & Miller, 2016)  ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Women’s scientific contributions in psychology may not be as numerous or influential as those of men.
  • What is the magnitude of the current eminence gender gap?
  • Women’s modest inroads into this list of eminent psychologists deserve respect, given this lag between obtaining a doctorate and attaining eminence and formidable barriers that women once faced in pursuing scientific careers.
  • Psychologists judge eminence by observing signs such as memberships in selective societies, career scientific achievement awards and honorary degrees.
  • Do men exceed women on both quantity and impact of their publication underlies h index?
  • Are these metrics tainted by unfair bias against women?
  • Does the h-index identify potential socio-cultural and individual causes of the eminence gap?
  • Women’s publications are cited less than men. This gap was larger in psychology.
  • Women received 20% fewer in psychology varying across subfields.
  • Gender gap on h-index and similar metrics has two sources: women publish less than men and articles receive fewer citations.
  • Metrics assessing scientific eminence may be tainted by prejudicial bias against female scientists in obtaining grant support, publishing papers, or gaining citations of published papers.
  • If psychologists are disadvantaged in publishing their work, bias may be limited to culturally masculine topics or male-dominated research areas.
  • Such topics and are no doubt becoming rarer in psychology, given women receive most US doctorates.
  • Men’s greater overall citations reflect higher rates of self-citation, women self-cite less often.
  • This reflects men’s larger corpus of their own citable papers.
  • Prejudicial gender bias is limited and presents ambiguity given most studies are correlational instead of experimental.
  • Little is known about possible gender bias in awards for scientific eminence such as science prizes and honorary degrees, which are imperfect indicators of the importance of scientists’ contributions.
  • Female scientists’ lesser rates of publication and citation reflect causes other than biases.
  • Broader socio-cultural factors shape individual identities and motivations.
  • Nature and nurture affects role occupancies so men and women are differently distributed into social roles.
  • Women excel in communal qualities of warmth and concern for others and for men to excel in agentic qualities of assertiveness and mastery.
  • Women are over-represented in less research intensive but more in teaching-intensive ranks and part-time positions.
  • Gender norms discourage female agency may disadvantage to gain status in departmental and disciplinary networks and garner resources.
  • Stereotypes erode women’s confidence in ability to become highly successful scientists.
  • Eminence gender gaps in psychology and other sciences shrink further over time as new cohorts of scientists advance in their careers.
  • Women’s representation among PhD earners has increased dramatically over recent decades.

Abstract

Women are sparsely represented among psychologists honored for scientific eminence. However, most currently eminent psychologists started their careers when far fewer women pursued training in psychological science. Now that women earn the majority of psychology Ph.D.’s, will they predominate in the next generation’s cadre of eminent psychologists? Comparing currently active female and male psychology professors on publication metrics such as the h index provides clues for answering this question. Men outperform women on the h index and its two components: scientific productivity and citations of contributions. To interpret these gender gaps, we first evaluate whether publication metrics are affected by gender bias in obtaining grant support, publishing papers, or gaining citations of published papers. We also consider whether women’s chances of attaining eminence are compromised by two intertwined sets of influences: (a) gender bias stemming from social norms pertaining to gender and to science and (b) the choices that individual psychologists make in pursuing their careers.

APA Style Reference

Eagly, A. H., & Miller, D. I. (2016). Scientific eminence: Where are the women?. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(6), 899-904. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691616663918

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Seeking Congruity Between Goals and Roles: A New Look at Why Women Opt Out of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Careers (Diekman et al., 2010) ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • We present a new perspective on this issue by proposing that interest in some careers and disinterest in others results from the intersection of people’s goals and their preconceptions of the goals afforded by different careers. We hypothesize that people perceive Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) careers as being especially incompatible with an orientation to care about other people (i.e. communion). Because women in particular tend to endorse communal goals, they may be more likely than men to opt out of STEM careers in favor of careers that seem to afford communion.
  • These trends suggest that to explain women’s absence in STEM fields, research should focus on factors that differentiate careers in STEM from other careers. We hypothesize that a critical but relatively unexplored factor may be that many non-STEM careers are perceived as fulfilling communal goals.
  • We thus examined (a) whether communal-goal affordances are perceived to differ between STEM and other careers, and (b) whether communal-goal endorsement inhibits STEM interest, given consensual beliefs about the goals these careers afford.
  • Method: 333 introductory psychology students provided goal-affordance ratings and information about their mathematics and science experience. Our goal was to determine predictors of differential interest in STEM, male-stereotypic/non-STEM (MST), and female-stereotypic (FST) careers. To create scales reflecting these different stereotypic categories, we used archival and primary data.
  • Method: For each core career, participants rated how much they considered the career to fulfill agentic goals (power, achievement, and seeking new experiences or excitement) and communal goals (intimacy, affiliation, and altruism).
  • Method: Because career interest was our critical dependent measure, participants rated their interest in the core careers, as well as additional careers.
  • Method: Participants rated several goals according to “how important each of the following kinds of goals is to you personally,” on scales ranging from 1 (not at all important) to 7 (extremely important).
  • Method: Self-efficacy and experience. Measures of self-efficacy included the scientific, mechanical, and computational subscales of the Kuder Task Self-Efficacy Scale as well as participants’ estimated grades in STEM classes.
  • Results: The authors found that STEM careers, relative to other careers, were perceived to impede communal goals. Moreover, communal-goal endorsement negatively predicted interest in STEM careers, even when controlling for past experience and self-efficacy in science and mathematics.
  • STEM careers are perceived as inhibiting communal goals: When individuals highly endorse communal goals, they are less interested in STEM. If women perceive STEM as antithetical to highly valued goals, it is not surprising that even women talented in these areas might choose alternative career paths.
  • Certainly, traditionally studied predictors of STEM interest, such as agentic motivations or self-efficacy, continue to be critical factors. Our argument is not that the study of communal motivations should replace agentic motivations or self-efficacy, but that this traditional approach overlooks critically important information.

Quote

“It is ironic that STEM fields hold the key to helping many people, but are commonly regarded as antithetical (or, at best, irrelevant) to such communal goals. However, the first step toward change is increasing knowledge about this belief and its consequences. Interventions could not only provide opportunities for girls and young women to succeed in mathematics and science but also demonstrate how STEM fields involve helping and collaborating with other people. For example, our current research investigates how portraying science or engineering careers as more other-oriented fosters positivity.” (p.1056).

Abstract

Although women have nearly attained equality with men in several formerly male-dominated fields, they remain underrepresented in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). We argue that one important reason for this discrepancy is that STEM careers are perceived as less likely than careers in other fields to fulfill communal goals (e.g., working with or helping other people). Such perceptions might disproportionately affect women’s career decisions, because women tend to endorse communal goals more than men. As predicted, we found that STEM careers, relative to other careers, were perceived to impede communal goals. Moreover, communal-goal endorsement negatively predicted interest in STEM careers, even when controlling for past experience and self-efficacy in science and mathematics. Understanding how communal goals influence people’s interest in STEM fields thus provides a new perspective on the issue of women’s representation in STEM careers.

APA Style Reference

Diekman, A. B., Brown, E. R., Johnston, A. M., & Clark, E. K. (2010). Seeking congruity between goals and roles: A new look at why women opt out of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers. Psychological science, 21(8), 1051-1057. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610377342

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#bropenscience is broken science (Whitaker & Guest, 2020) ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • [Scientists have] been spurred into action by a variety of disappointing stories about irreplicable research – due to both purposeful misconduct and variable guidance for transparent reporting standards – as well as inspired by the pre-existing ideals of ‘open science’.
  • It is a very narrow demographic of researchers who have the institutional support to spend time on such projects as well as the fortune to be publicly acknowledged for their hard work.
  • However, #bropenscience has also been misunderstood and misrepresented. Not all men are bros, and not all bros are men. A bro will often be condescending, forthright, aggressive, overpowering, and lacking kindness and self-awareness.
  • Although bros solicit debate on important issues, they tend to resist descriptions of the complexities, nuances, and multiple perspectives on their argument. Bros find it hard to understand – or accept – that others will have a different lived experience. At its worst, #bropenscience is the same closed system as before.
  • Broscience creates new breaks within science such as excluding people from participating in open science generally due to the behaviour of a vocal, powerful and privileged minority. It’s a type of exclusionary, monolithic, inflexible rhetoric that ignores or even builds on structural power imbalances.
  • Most researchers don’t fit neatly into many of the broposed solutions, and science is not a monolith. The authors have both dealt with published findings that cannot be reproduced, been driven by frustration at the inefficiency of current research practices and have different work ethics and philosophies. This is a feature, not a bug. A diverse and inclusive definition of open science is necessary to truly reform academic practice.
  • At its core, open scholarship reminds researchers why they wanted to conduct research in the first place: to learn and to educate.
  • Regardless of individual intentions, groups can easily develop and perpetuate elitist, yet informal social structures, recreating the same biases inherent in society at large. Bro-y culture dominates at the leadership level in science and technology because it always has and there aren’t enough explicit processes to deconstruct these biases.
  • To avoid perpetuating ‘bropen’ practices, the authors recommend following three core principles: Understanding: You make the work accessible and clear; Sharing: You make the work easy to adapt, reproduce, and spread; and Participation & inclusion: You build shared ownership and agency with contributors through accountability, equity, and transparency to make the work inviting, relevant, safe, and sustainable for all.
  • Inclusive actions that you can take to make science more open to underrepresented minorities include: using a microphone at in person events or providing live transcription and sign language translation for online events so that hard of hearing and autistic colleagues (among others) can engage more effectively.
  • Editors and tenured faculty members can and should do the most to improve equity and inclusion in academia.
  • What are the actions you can take that will improve scholarship for all? Ultimately, the only way to dismantle structural and systemic biases is to listen to those who experience them.

Quote

“It’s likely infeasible to include all the possible open scholarship elements mentioned above in the readers’ work. Therefore, and to change metaphors, the authors encourage the reader to take a healthy and balanced portion from the open science buffet...Binging from the many different topics that fall under open scholarship will leave you feeling overwhelmed and exhausted...take what you can and what benefits you now, and then come back for more when you have the time and mental space to develop a new skill.” (p.2)

Abstract

Kirstie Whitaker and Olivia Guest ask how open ‘open science’ really is.

APA Style Reference

Whitaker, K., & Guest, O. (2020). #bropenscience is broken science. The Psychologist, 33, 34-37.

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Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favour male students (Moss-Racusin et al., 2012) ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • The present research investigates whether faculty gender bias exists within academic biological and physical sciences, whether it might exert an independent effect on the gender disparity as students progress through the pipeline to careers in science, and finally, whether, given an equally qualified male and female student, science faculty members would show preferential evaluation and treatment of the male student to work in their laboratory. Also, the authors investigated whether faculty members’ perceptions of student competence would help to explain why they would be less likely to hire a female (relative to an identical male) student for a laboratory manager position.
  • Science faculty’s perceptions and treatment of students would reveal a gender bias favoring male students in perceptions of competence and hireability, salary conferral, and willingness to mentor; Faculty gender would not influence this gender bias. Hiring discrimination against the female student would be mediated (i.e., explained) by faculty perceptions that a female student is less competent than an identical male student. Finally, participants’ preexisting subtle bias against women would moderate (i.e., impact) results, such that subtle bias against women would be negatively related to evaluations of the female student, but unrelated to evaluations of the male student.
  • Method: 127 faculty participants from Biology, Chemistry and Physics provided feedback on materials of an undergraduate science student who stated their intention to go on to graduate school and those who applied for a science laboratory manager position and evaluated a real student who received faculty participants’ ratings as feedback to help their career development.
  • Method: Participants were randomly assigned to one of two student gender conditions: male or female. Using validated scales, participants rated student competence, their own likelihood of hiring the student, selecting an annual starting salary for the student, indicated how much career mentoring they would provide and also had to fill in the Modern Sexism Scale.
  • Results: Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. The authors found that preexisting subtle bias against women played a moderating role, such that subtle bias against women was associated with less support for the female student, but was unrelated to reactions to the male student.
  • A female student was seen as less competent and less worthy of being hired than an identical male student with a smaller starting salary and less career mentoring. The subtle gender bias is important to address as it could translate into large real-world disadvantages in judgment and treatment of female science students.
  • The female student was less likely to be hired than male student because the former was seen as less competent. Faculty participants’ pre-existing subtle bias against women undermined perceptions and treatment of the female, not male, student, indicating chronic subtle biases may harm women within academic science.
  • Female faculty members were just as likely as their male colleagues to favour the male student. Faculty members’ bias was independent of their gender, scientific discipline, age and tenure status indicating this bias is not consciously done and is unintentionally generated from widespread cultural stereotypes.
  • Faculty participants reported liking the female more than male students  indicates that faculty members’ are not overtly hostile toward women. Faculty members of both genders are affected by enduring cultural stereotypes about a women’s lack of science competence, which translate into biases in student evaluation and mentoring.
  • Not only do women encounter biased judgments regarding their competence and hireability but receive less faculty encouragement and financial rewards than identical male counterparts.

Abstract

Despite efforts to recruit and retain more women, a stark gender disparity persists within academic science. Abundant research has demonstrated gender bias in many demographic groups, but has yet to experimentally investigate whether science faculty exhibit a bias against female students that could contribute to the gender disparity in academic science. In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. We also assessed faculty participants’ preexisting subtle bias against women using a standard instrument and found that preexisting subtle bias against women played a moderating

APA Style Reference

Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J., & Handelsman, J. (2012). Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 109(41), 16474-16479. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1211286109

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The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance (AlShebli et al., 2020)⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • This paper has been retracted: https://retractionwatch.com/2020/12/21/nature-communications-retracts-much-criticized-paper-on-mentorship/
  • By mentoring novices, senior members pass on the organizational culture, best practices, and the inner workings of a profession. In this way, the mentor–protégé relationship provides the social glue that links generations within a field.
  • The authors study mentorship in scientific collaboration, where a junior scientist is supported by potentially multiple senior collaborators, without them necessarily having formal supervisory roles.The authors also identify 3 million mentor-protege pairs and survey a random sample, verifying that their relationship involved some form of mentorship.
  • Method: This dataset includes records of scientific publications specifying the date of the publication, the authors’ names and affiliations, and the publication venue. It also contains a citation network in which every node represents a paper and every directed edge represents a citation. While the number of citations of any given paper is not provided explicitly, it can be calculated from the citation network in any given year. Additionally, every paper is positioned in a field-of-study hierarchy, the highest level of which comprises 19 scientific disciplines.
  • The authors derive two key measures: the discipline of scientists and their impact and additional measures such as the scientists’ gender. Whenever a junior scientist (with academic age = 7) publishes a paper with a senior scientist (academic age > 7), the former is defined as a protégé, and the latter is delineated as a mentor. The author analyze every mentor–protégé dyad that satisfies all of the following conditions: (i) the protégé has at least one publication during their senior years without a mentor; (ii) the affiliation of the protégé is in the US throughout their mentorship years; (iii) the main discipline of the mentor is the same as that of the protégé; (iv) the mentor and the protégé share an affiliation on at least one publication; (v) during the mentorship period, the mentor and the protégé worked together on a paper whose number of authors is 20 or less; and (vi) the protégé does not have a gap of 5-years or more in their publication history.
  • Results: The author finds that mentorship quality predicts the scientific impact of the papers written by protégés post mentorship without their mentors. The author observed that increasing the proportion of female mentors is associated not only with a reduction in post-mentorship impact of female protégés, but also a reduction in the gain of female mentors.
  • The authors  found that both have an independent association with the protégé’s impact post mentorship without their mentors. Interestingly, the big-shot experience seems to matter more than the hub experience, implying that the scientific impact of mentors matters more than the number of their collaborators. The association between the big-shot experience and the post-mentorship outcome persists regardless of the discipline, the affiliation rank, the number of mentors, the average age of the mentors, the protégé’s gender, and the protégé’s first year of publication.
  • The present study suggests that female protégés who remain in academia reap more benefits when mentored by males rather than equally-impactful females. The specific drivers underlying this empirical fact could be multifold, such as female mentors serving on more committees, thereby reducing the time they are able to invest in their protégés or women taking onless recognized topics that their protégés emulate.
  • Additionally,  findings also suggest that mentors benefit more when working with male protégés rather than working with comparable female protégés, especially if the mentor is female. These conclusions are all deduced from careful comparisons between protégés who published their first mentored paper in the same discipline, in the same cohort, and at the very same institution.
  • One potential explanation could be that, historically, male scientists had enjoyed more privileges and access to resources than their female counterparts, and thus were able to provide more support to their protégés. Alternatively, these findings may be attributed to sorting mechanisms within programs based on the quality of protégés and the gender of mentors.
  • The gender-related findings suggest that current diversity policies promoting female–female mentorships, as well-intended as they may be, could hinder the careers of women who remain in academia in unexpected ways. Female scientists, in fact, may benefit from opposite-gender mentorships in terms of their publication potential and impact throughout their post-mentorship careers.

Abstract

We study mentorship in scientific collaborations, where a junior scientist is supported by potentially multiple senior collaborators, without them necessarily having formal supervisory roles. We identify 3 million mentor–protégé pairs and survey a random sample, verifying that their relationship involved some form of mentorship. We find that mentorship quality predicts the scientific impact of the papers written by protégés post mentorship without their mentors. We also find that increasing the proportion of female mentors is associated not only with a reduction in post-mentorship impact of female protégés, but also a reduction in the gain of female mentors. While current diversity policies encourage same-gender mentorships to retain women in academia, our findings raise the possibility that opposite-gender mentorship may actually increase the impact of women who pursue a scientific career. These findings add a new perspective to the policy debate on how to best elevate the status of women in science.

APA Style Reference

AlShebli, B., Makovi, K., & Rahwan, T. (2020). The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance. Nature communications, 11(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19723-8

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Is science only for the rich? (Lee, 2016) ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Few countries collect detailed data on socioeconomic status, but the available numbers consistently show that nations are wasting the talents of underprivileged youth who might otherwise be tackling challenges in health, energy, pollution, climate change and a host of other societal issues. And it’s clear that the universal issue of class is far from universal in the way it plays out. Here, Nature looks at eight countries around the world, and their efforts to battle the many problems of class in science.
  • Students from poor districts therefore end up being less prepared for university-level science than are their wealthier peers, many of whom attended well-appointed private schools.
  • That also puts the students at a disadvantage in the fiercely competitive applications process: only about 40% of high-school graduates in the lowest-income bracket enrolled in a university in 2013, versus about 68% of those born to families with the highest incomes. The students who do get in then have to find a way to pay the increasingly steep cost of university. Between 2003 and 2013, undergraduate tuition, fees, room and board rose by an average of 34% at state-supported institutions, and by 25% at private institutions, after adjusting for inflation. The bill at a top university can easily surpass US$60,000 per year. Many students are at least partly supported by their parents, and can also take advantage of scholarships, grants and federal financial aid. Many, like Quasney, work part time.
  • But if graduate students have to worry about repaying student loans, that can dissuade them from continuing with their scientific training.
  • In China:

Abstract

Around the world, poverty and social background remain huge barriers in scientific careers.

APA Style Reference

Lee, J. J. (2016). Is science only for the rich?. Nature, 537(7621), 466-467.

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Speaker Introductions at Internal Medicine Grand Rounds: Forms of Address Reveal Gender Bias (Files et al., 2017)⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • The authors hypothesize that female speakers in this professional setting are more often addressed by first name or equivalent than their male counterparts during speaker introductions.
  • The authors examined the association between gender and address practices used during formal introductions of speakers in Internal Medicine Grand Rounds (IMGR).
  • Method: 134 unique grand rounds presentations listed in a video archive library were accessed and reviewed. Of the 124 grand rounds reviewed, 83 had more than 1 introduction (introducer introducing the speaker) with each introduction representing an opportunity for the introducer to utilize the appropriate professional title. Each grand round had between one and five introducers. The authors analyzed the form of address used in up to 5 speaker introductions in each grand round.
  • Results: Female introducers were more likely to use professional titles when introducing any speaker during the first form of address compared with male introducers. Female dyads utilized formal titles during the first form of address compared with male dyads who utilized a formal title 72.4% of the time. In mixed-gender dyads, where the introducer was female and speaker male, formal titles were used 95.0% of the time. Male introducers of female speakers utilized professional titles 49.2% of the time.
  • In this study, women introduced by men at IMGR were less likely to be addressed by their professional title than were men introduced by men. In contrast, women introducers were more formal in both same- and mixed-gender interactions.
  • The findings demonstrate that female introducers compared with male introducers were more likely to use professional titles when introducing any speaker, male or female, during the first form of address. However, there were striking differences in how males utilized their informal introduction style depending on whether the speaker was a man or woman.
  • While women consistently and nearly universally introduced both male and female speakers by their formal titles during first form of address, men used male’s formal title during introductions 72% of the time, whereas acknowledging female speakers with their professional title only 49.2% (31/63) of the time.
  • Female introducers with their high utilization of formal title during the first form of address exhibited no change in their utilization of formal title. When all introductions by men were included, the rate of utilization of professional titles increased slightly, but a gender difference remained. Despite multiple opportunities to acknowledge the speakers’ credentials, the title of Dr. was withheld by male introducers from 41.3% of female speakers compared with only 24.3% of male speakers.
  • This study supports what many female physicians have experienced and discussed informally; the withholding of their professional titles when they are referenced or addressed by their male colleagues. Perhaps this is made more noticeable by their finding that women use formal titles close to 100% of the time for both the men and the women they introduce. This formal practice by women may engender an expectation of reciprocity, thus, further amplifying the disparity.
  • While the did find that men are less formal overall and do withhold the professional title of Dr. during the first form of address from over one quarter of male speakers, it is important to view the experience from the perspective of the female speaker. As she prepares to assume the podium for her formal presentation, she will hear her formal title from almost all of the female introducers; however, she has less than a 50% likelihood that a male introducer will set the tone in the first form of address by calling her ‘‘Doctor.’
  • The significance of these linguistic biases lies in the fact that they implicitly communicate stereotypes to the individual, in this case women in medicine, and thereby contribute to the transmission and maintenance of socially shared stereotypes which ultimately have the potential to affect both the recipient and the audience.
  • Overt discrimination is usually obvious and well recognized by those experiencing it, whereas more subtle forms of gender bias are difficult to describe, explain, and to address especially when inflicted upon an individual who may feel unsafe to address the practice as it occurs. Furthermore, unrecognized aspects of an organization’s culture may have different effects on men and women.
  • It is the authors’ hope that objective documentation of the gender disparity identified in speaker introductions at IMGR will provide validation to women who have experienced it.

Abstract

Background: Gender bias has been identified as one of the drivers of gender disparity in academic medicine. Bias may be reinforced by gender subordinating language or differential use of formality in forms of address. Professional titles may influence the perceived expertise and authority of the referenced individual. The objective of this study is to examine how professional titles were used in the same and mixed-gender speaker introductions at Internal Medicine Grand Rounds (IMGR).Methods: A retrospective observational study of video-archived speaker introductions at consecutive IMGR was conducted at two different locations (Arizona, Minnesota) of an academic medical center. Introducers and speakers at IMGR were physician and scientist peers holding MD, PhD, or MD/PhD degrees. The primary outcome was whether or not a speaker’s professional title was used during the first form of address during speaker introductions at IMGR. As secondary outcomes, we evaluated whether or not the speakers professional title was used in any form of address during the introduction.Results: Three hundred twenty-one forms of address were analyzed. Female introducers were more likely to use professional titles when introducing any speaker during the first form of address compared with male introducers (96.2% [102/106] vs. 65.6% [141/215]; p < 0.001). Female dyads utilized formal titles during the first form of address 97.8% (45/46) compared with male dyads who utilized a formal title 72.4% (110/152) of the time ( p = 0.007). In mixed-gender dyads, where the introducer was female and speaker male, formal titles were used 95.0% (57/60) of the time. Male introducers of female speakers utilized professional titles 49.2% (31/63) of the time ( p < 0.001).Conclusion: In this study, women introduced by men at IMGR were less likely to be addressed by professional title than were men introduced by men. Differential formality in speaker introductions may amplify isolation, marginalization, and professional discomfiture expressed by women faculty in academic medicine.

APA Style Reference

Files, J. A., Mayer, A. P., Ko, M. G., Friedrich, P., Jenkins, M., Bryan, M. J., ... & Duston, T. (2017). Speaker introductions at internal medicine grand rounds: forms of address reveal gender bias. Journal of women's health, 26(5), 413-419. https://doi.org/10.1089/jwh.2016.6044

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Redesign open science for Asia, Africa and Latin America (Onie, 2020)⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Research is relatively new in many countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Across these regions, young scientists are working to build practices for open science from the ground up. The aim is that scientific communities will incorporate these principles as they grow. But these communities’ needs differ from those that are part of mature research systems. So, rather than shifting and shaping established systems, scientists are endeavouring to design new ones.
  • Financial and career incentives to publish (or disadvantages from not publishing) are common government policies in countries such as Indonesia, China and Brazil where research culture is still being shaped. They aim to increase publication quantity to ‘catch up’ with other countries, but inadvertently encourage poor research practices.
  • Lower-income countries cannot waste resources on funding untrustworthy research. Policies should therefore be designed to improve transparency, relevance and scientific rigour, rather than just to increase output — especially if governments want to use research to inform decision-making. Governments must also provide the training, resources and motivation needed for people to take these changes to heart.
  • Crucially, the team will include researchers from many different types of university, not just the largest ones. Going forward, the institute will monitor whether the repository improves research quality. Other countries will face different issues. But a commonality will be that all stakeholders — not just the rich or prestigious ones — should be involved in finding a solution.
  • Most universities in Asia, Africa and Latin America were set up for education. Many are ill-equipped to perform research and lack the proper infrastructure.
  • Sustainable changes require education. Universities should train researchers not just in field-specific theories, but also in how to improve scientific practice. This training should cover the pitfalls of modern academia (e.g. prestige and academic metrics) have contributed to publication bias. It must address the consequences of succumbing to these pressures for the quality, replicability and trustworthiness of research. And it should honestly highlight disagreements about whether and when these practices actually work — debates about when pre-registration of research is and is not useful, for instance. And researchers must learn about these topics as they begin their research careers, even as undergraduates, rather having to modify existing practices later.
  • Training in good scientific practices will set scientists up to think more critically and to adopt practices that increase the credibility of their work.
  • Training will also enable researchers to add their diverse voices to continuing debates about open science, including active consideration of how science can benefit society, locally and globally. This shift towards open research might require a reworking of the overall training package, reducing the number of field-specific courses to avoid an overwhelming workload.
  • Journals should take an active role in reducing under-representation, without compromising rigour. Ask authors to explicitly describe the populations they study upfront, and not to generalize their findings beyond this sample without good reason. Open reviews could reduce potential bias against samples from outside Western countries. Established journals should make efforts to communicate their standards to scientists in developing research cultures, and could also host special issues focused on understanding under-represented populations.
  • A lack of funding and travel restrictions in many parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America reduce these opportunities for international collaboration, networking and travel, leading to researchers becoming more isolated. Such problems need to be acknowledged explicitly and confronted.
  • Metrics and policies should be in place only if they are useful to science’s goal: knowledge accumulation for the greater societal good. Constant monitoring and introspection are therefore essential. Some of the best initiatives to improve science today might not be relevant in the future.

Quote

“If young research cultures can guard against harmful practices becoming ingrained, they have the opportunity to lay down a new type of strategy for open research. This could avoid the pressures that can sometimes warp research in the Western world and ultimately produce work that is credible and beneficial to society. The goal is not to replicate what is done in North America, Europe and Australia — rather, it is to do better.” (p.37)

Abstract

Researchers in many countries need custom-built systems to do robust and transparent science.

APA Style Reference

Onie, S.(2020). Redesign open science for Asia, Africa and Latin America. Nature, 587, 35-37. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03052-3

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On supporting early-career black scholars (Roberson, 2020)  ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Non-Black researchers need to take immediate support for early-career Black scholars.
  • “Maybe you were in a seminar where a Black doctoral student pushed back against a racist disciplinary norm, and you silently agreed and followed up with them afterwards to let them know that you support them.”
  • This silence in public signals to Black scholars that they are not welcome in these spaces
  • We must challenge white supremacy in academia. Speaking up about this is much more costly for Black scholars,  who face an onslaught of racist micro- and macro-aggressions on a daily basis. The burden should not fall on their shoulders.
  • We should be proactive in our outreach. We should invite early-career Black scholars, if they have expertise to improve a research project. Our careers and science will benefit from this help.
  • “Do not just encourage [Black scholars] to apply, provide material support to promote our successful applications; share funded grants with [Black scholars], work with [Black scholars] on developing compelling aims pages, and write [Black scholars] a persuasive letter of support. Supporting [Black scholars] on manuscripts and funding opportunities can mitigate some of the barriers in science that often stunt Black success.”
  • Inviting Black scholars will increase their credibility as experts and expand the audience’s familiarity with their scholarship. Manels are now being prohibited but we need to eliminate all-white speaker panels.
  • Educate yourself on rising Black scholars in your field, learn from early-career Black researchers, investigate journals that publish their scholarships, be familiar with the Black community’s professional societies, affinity groups and diversify your following list on Twitter.
  • Incorporate Black scholar’s work into your syllabi. This is necessary to eliminate structural racism. However, it requires individuals with the most amount of power. These steps will promote Black people to thrive among trainees and early-career scholars.
  • This will remove barriers to promote a more inclusive environment!

Quote

“Do not just encourage [Black scholars] to apply, provide material support to promote our successful applications; share funded grants with [Black scholars], work with [Black scholars] on developing compelling aims pages, and write [Black scholars] a persuasive letter of support. Supporting [Black scholars] on manuscripts and funding opportunities can mitigate some of the barriers in science that often stunt Black success.”

Abstract

Professor Mya Roberson provides a detailed commentary about the struggles that Black people encounter in academia and starting steps to eliminate structural racism.

APA Style Reference

Roberson, M. L. (2020). On supporting early-career Black scholars. Nature Human Behaviour, 1-1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0926-6

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Bias against research on gender bias (Cislak et al., 2018)  ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Scientific inquiries often disregard the moderating roles of sex or gender. Moreover, some finding applies only to male participants, producing biased knowledge.
  • Findings related to men may be irrelevant and harmful to women.
  • Studies on gender bias are often met with lower appreciation in the scientific community compared to studies on race bias.
  • The present study investigated whether research on gender bias is prone to biased evaluation resulting in fewer and less prestigious publications and fewer funding opportunities.
  • The present study compared articles for gender bias and race bias in impact factor and grant support.
  • Method: 1485 articles published in 520 journals were assigned a numerical value based on type of bias. Two peer review criteria were used: Impact factor and whether the article was supported by finding or not.
  • Results: Articles on gender bias are funded less often and published in journals with lower Impact factor than articles on similar instances of social discrimination.
  • Discussion: Results suggest that bias against gender bias research is not merit based but reflects the topic's lower prestige and appreciation due to a generalised gender bias.
  • Another potential explanation for the observed difference in grant funding is the relative difference in availability of participant samples. Recruiting racially diverse samples may be more difficult, time-consuming and costly, while recruiting gender-diverse samples does not have similar issues.
  • It is less plausible, however, that differences in participant samples affect researcher’s decisions of the outlet for their work. It may be that researchers are aware of bias against gender bias research and consider their own work less suitable for more prestigious journals.
  • Research on gender bias is more often reviewed by male researchers than research on race bias.
  • Rejection by more prestigious journals show subtle bias in perceived quality of studies evidencing gender discrimination.

Quote

“This discussion is primarily important in order for gender bias to be properly acknowledged within the scientific community and to pursue further examination of this powerful source of inequality that severely affects many women in the world.” (p. 200)

Abstract

The bias against women in academia is a documented phenomenon that has had detrimental consequences, not only for women, but also for the quality of science. First, gender bias in academia affects female scientists, resulting in their underrepresentation in academic institutions, particularly in higher ranks. The second type of gender bias in science relates to some findings applying only to male participants, which produces biased knowledge. Here, we identify a third potentially powerful source of gender bias in academia: the bias against research on gender bias. In a bibliometric investigation covering a broad range of social sciences, we analyzed published articles on gender bias and race bias and established that articles on gender bias are funded less often and published in journals with a lower Impact Factor than articles on comparable instances of social discrimination. This result suggests the possibility of an underappreciation of the phenomenon of gender bias and related research within the academic community. Addressing this meta-bias is crucial for the further examination of gender inequality, which severely affects many women across the world.

APA Style Reference

Cislak, A., Formanowicz, M., & Saguy, T. (2018). Bias against research on gender bias. Scientometrics, 115(1), 189-200. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2667-0

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Prestige drives epistemic inequality in the diffusion of scientific ideas (Morgan et al., 2018)  ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • There is no clear evidence that epistemic inequality is driven by non-meritocratic social mechanisms.
  • It remains unknown how an idea spreads in the scientific community.
  • If the origin does shape its scientific discourse, what is the relationship between the intrinsic fitness of the idea and its structural advantage by the prestige of origin?
  • The present study takes a different approach to define how faculty hiring drives epistemic inequality and can determine which researchers are situated in which institutions and the origin of the idea.
  • Method:  5032 tenured or tenure-track faculty data were collected. Data was collected from faculty hiring networks, nodes reflect university and the connections if a PhD was acquired at that university and if they held a tenure-track position.
  • Networks with a self-loop contained individuals who received their PhD at the same institution and held a faculty position.
  • Small departments have high placement power, while large departments have power. Elite institutions have a structural advantage.
  • Faculty hiring may not contribute to the spread of every research idea. Hiring contributes to others. Faculty hiring is a possible mechanism for the diffusion of ideas in academia.
  • The spread of information from a varying level of prestige for universities was investigated.
  • Results: Research from prestigious institutions spreads more quickly and completely than work of similar quality originating from less prestigious institutions.
  • Higher quality research from less prestigious universities has similar success as lower-quality research in more prestigious universities.
  • Even when the assessment of an idea’s quality is objective, idea dissemination in academia is not meritocratic.
  • Researchers at prestigious institutions benefit from structural advantage allowing ideas to be more easily spread throughout the network of institutions and impact discourse of science.
  • Lower quality ideas are overshadowed by comparable ideas from more prestigious institutions, high-quality ideas circulate widely, irrespective of origin.

Abstract

The spread of ideas in the scientific community is often viewed as a competition, in which good ideas spread further because of greater intrinsic fitness, and publication venue and citation counts correlate with importance and impact. However, relatively little is known about how structural factors influence the spread of ideas, and specifically how where an idea originates might influence how it spreads. Here, we investigate the role of faculty hiring networks, which embody the set of researcher transitions from doctoral to faculty institutions, in shaping the spread of ideas in computer science, and the importance of where in the network an idea originates. We consider comprehensive data on the hiring events of 5032 faculty at all 205 Phd.-granting departments of computer science in the U.S. and Canada, and on the timing and titles of 200,476 associated publications. Analyzing five popular research topics, we show empirically that faculty hiring can and does facilitate the spread of ideas in science. Having established such a mechanism, we then analyze its potential consequences using epidemic models to simulate the generic spread of research ideas and quantify the impact of where an idea originates on its long-term diffusion across the network. We find that research from prestigious institutions spreads more quickly and completely than work of similar quality originating from less prestigious institutions. Our analyses establish the theoretical trade-offs between university prestige and the quality of ideas necessary for efficient circulation. Our results establish faculty hiring as an underlying mechanism that drives the persistent epistemic advantage observed for elite institutions, and provide a theoretical lower bound for the impact of structural inequality in shaping the spread of ideas in science.

APA Style Reference

Morgan, A. C., Economou, D. J., Way, S. F., & Clauset, A. (2018). Prestige drives epistemic inequality in the diffusion of scientific ideas. EPJ Data Science, 7(1), 40. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjds/s13688-018-0166-4

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Open Science Isn’t Always Open to All Scientists (Bahlai et al., 2019) ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Open science focuses on accountability and transparency, invites anyone to observe, contribute and create.
  • Open science focuses on conviction that research performs in dialogue with society. Science is a mainstreamed but increasing sense of competition rewards scientists who discover ideas and publish findings. “... science traditionally has rewarded only scientists who are the first to discover ideas and publish findings, there is resistance to move from “closed” practices…”
  • The broad term of Open Science and resulting vague scope is stalling the progress of the open science movement. We are now often caught up in detailed checklists about whether a project is “open” or not, rather than “focusing on the core goal of accountability and transparency.” All or nothing checklists reduce “the accessibility of science and may reify existing inequalities within this profession.”
  • Open science makes science accessible to everyone but there are systemic barriers (e.g. financial and social) that make open science more accessible to some not others such as career stage, power imbalance, employment stability, financial circumstance, country of origin and cultural context.
  • These barriers prevent scientists from pursuing further and should not be used to deny further participation, including receiving grant funding or job applications.
  • “To truly achieve open science’s transformative vision, it must be universally accessible, so that all people have access to the dialogue of science. Accessible in this context means usable by all, with particular emphasis on communities often not served by scientific products.”
  • Open science practices are not equally accessible to all scientists.  aywalls make research inaccessible but Open Access processing fees may prevent scientists from sharing their work, as not all institutions/individuals have the resources to overcome these barriers.
  • If open access is paid out of our personal funds, instead of grant or institution funding sources, it is an unsustainable solution for many scholars that do not have access to these funds.
  • “Yet open tools, code, or data sets are often not valued the same as “normal” academic products, and therefore those who spend their limited time and resources on these products suffer a cost in how they are evaluated for current and future jobs.”
  • Preprints and signed peer reviews may exacerbate inherent biases. “.. forcing transparency in practices that have traditionally operated in a “black box” may exacerbate inherent biases against women and people of color, especially women of color.”
  • Making data available is seen as high risk as someone can publish analyses with your data before you can.  Even “a small risk particularly affects members of the scientific community with fewer resources…”

Quote

“Power imbalance can play a large role in an individual’s ability to convince their research group to use openscience practices and as a result may cause them to not engage in these practices until they have stable employment or are in a senior position.”

Abstract

Current efforts to make research more accessible and transparent can reinforce inequality within STEM professions.

APA Style Reference

Bahlai, C., Bartlett, L. J., Burgio, K. R., Fournier, A., Keiser, C. N., Poisot, T., & Whitney, K. S. (2019). Open science isn’t always open to all scientists. American Scientist, 107(2), 78-82. https://doi.org/10.1511/2019.107.2.78

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Surviving (thriving) in academia: feminist support networks and women ECRs (Macoun & Miller, 2014) ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • This paper argues about how peer support networks may affect the experience of early-career scholars
  • Women who participated in the Feminist Reading Group (FRG) are actively intellectually engaged in theorising their own experiences.
  • The group perform functions linked to reading groups, create an informal space concerned with furthering disciplinary knowledge and developing academic skills.
  • FRG members created a community of belonging among themselves, in which personal support, knowledge, and cultural and social capital were provided.
  • Participants share resources and information about institutional processes and gain the confidence to navigate complex and hostile spaces of the University.
  • School’s official spaces are seen as gendered and not reflective of our research interests or intellectual backgrounds.
  • Participants state that FRG allowed them to continue their studies in times of difficulty.
  • FRG provides opportunities to broaden exposure to other fields and improve critical thinking skills.
  • FRG promotes the learn essential academic skills, since women are able to learn from experience with writing and publishing, and also developing presentation and analytical skills without fear of seeming to be an inadequate researcher.
  • Academic work can be isolating and early career researchers frequently report feeling unsettled, anxious and experiencing self-doubt.
  • FRG re-dresses this opacity and operates as an information sharing network for participants to learn about how things work at the University and in the department.
  • Women graduates receive less mentoring, less involvement in professional and social networking than their male peers.
  • Participation in the FRG also stimulated other academic activities, with members encouraging each other to attend conferences and present paper.
  • Most participants were white, straight, cis-gendered and middle class. The group was whiter than our department as a whole.
  • FRG provides participants with an opportunity to understand individual experiences of exclusion, exploitation, self-doubt, discrimination as shared and fundamentally political in character.
  • Our backgrounds and experiences are not homogeneous, most participants in the reading group are racially and socio-economically privileged.

Abstract

In this paper, we reflect upon our experiences and those of our peers as doctoral students and early career researchers in an Australian Political Science department. We seek to explain and understand the diverse ways that participating in an unofficial Feminist Reading Group in our department affected our experiences. We contend that informal peer support networks like reading groups do more than is conventionally assumed, and may provide important avenues for sustaining feminist research in times of austerity, as well as supporting and enabling women and emerging feminist scholars in academia. Participating in the group created a community of belonging and resistance, providing women with personal validation, information and material support, as well as intellectual and political resources to understand and resist our position within the often hostile spaces of the University. While these experiences are specific to our context, time and location, they signal that peer networks may offer critical political resources for responding to the ways that women’s bodies and concerns are marginalised in increasingly competitive and corporatised university environments.

APA Style Reference

Macoun, A., & Miller, D. (2014). Surviving (thriving) in academia: Feminist support networks and women ECRs. Journal of Gender Studies, 23(3), 287-301. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2014.909718

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Global gender disparities in science (Lariviere et al., 2013) ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Gender inequality is still rife in science.
  • There are gender inequalities in hiring, earnings, funding, satisfactions and patenting.
  • Men publish more papers than women. There is no consensus whether gender differences are a result of bias, childbearing or other variables.
  • The present state of quantitative knowledge of gender disparities in science was shaped by anecdotal reports and studies which are localized, monodisciplinary and dated. These studies take little account of changes in scholarly practices.
  • The present study presents a cross-disciplinary bibliographic research to investigate (i) the relationship between gender and academic output, (ii) the extent of collaboration and (iii) the scientific impact of all articles published between 2008 and 2012 and indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science databases
  • Citation disadvantage is highlighted by the fact that women’s publication portfolios are more domestic than male colleagues and profit less from extra citations that international collaborations accrue.
  • Men dominate scientific production in nearly every country (the extent of this domination varies by region).
  • Women account for  fewer than 30% fractionalised authorships, while men representation in such publications was more than 70%.
  • Women are underrepresented when it comes to first authorships.
  • For every article with a female first author, there are nearly two (1.93) articles first-authored by men.
  • Female authorship is more prevalent in countries with lower scientific output.
  • Female collaborations are more domestically oriented than collaborations of males from the same country.
  • The present study analysed prominent author positions (sole, first- and last-authorship). When a woman was in any of these roles, paper attracted fewer citations than in cases wherein a man was in one of these roles.
  • Academic pipeline from junior to senior faculty leaks female scientists. Thus it is likely that many of the trends we observed can be explained by the under-representation of women among the elders of science.
  • Barriers to women in science remain widespread worldwide, despite more than a decade of policies aimed at levelling the playing field. For a country to be scientifically competitive, it needs to maximise its human intellectual capital.
  • Collaboration is one of the main drivers of research output and scientific impact. Programmes fostering international collaboration for female researchers might help to level the playing field.
  • No country can afford to neglect the intellectual contributions of half of its population.

Abstract

Cassidy R. Sugimoto and colleagues present a bibliometric analysis confirming that gender imbalances persist in research output worldwide.

APA Style Reference

Larivière, V., Ni, C., Gingras, Y., Cronin, B., & Sugimoto, C. R. (2013). Bibliometrics: Global gender disparities in science. Nature News, 504(7479), 211. https://doi.org/10.1038/504211a

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The Pandemic and Gender Inequality in Academia (Kim & Patterson, Jr, 2020)◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • The COVID-19 pandemic worsened existing gender inequalities across society.
  • The present study investigated the influence of the current pandemic requires addressing an academic publication pipeline best measured in months, if not years.
  • If the pandemic disproportionately influences the productivity of female faculty, the effects on research productivity may not fully materialise for years and evaluation and promotion of female scholars could adversely be affected by gender-related inequalities woven into the system years before.
  • The present study determined the proportion of work- and family-related tweets sent by male and female academics using subject-specific keywords.
  • The pandemic caused the gender-related differences in professional tweeting to increase by 239%.  The lockdown increased the gap between male and female faculty member’s propensity to tweet about family and care-giving.
  • Women bear all care-giving activities- both men and women experienced an increase in family-related tweets- patterns we uncover reveal that female careers are more severely taxed by these commitments.
  • Method: Our sample was narrowed to tenure-track or tenured faculty based in the United States, producing approximately 3000 handles.
  • Method: We first identified all tweets related to career-promoting and family-related activities, and began with terms (e.g. publication, new paper, child care and home school).
  • Each tweet was coded as work- and family-related or not. A more extensive set of keywords classified the entire corpus.
  • Most papers and articles are shared on Twitter via URL, tweet was classified as work-related, if shared, URL address indicates file type, publication venue or data repository services.
  • Results: Faculty members of both genders were affected by the pandemic, the gap in work-related tweets between male and female academics roughly tripled following the work-from-home.
  • Variation in effects between junior and senior faculty indicates this relationship is not driven by an intrinsic gender difference. This effect is produced by gendered differences in adapting a work/life balance to the pandemic.
  • Female academics who reach full professor have overcome existing barriers to gender equality in academia.
  • Parenting obligations overshadow all other factors in limiting research productivity, indicating the influence of parenting on productivity.
  • Increased efforts to address these deep-rooted inequalities, the cracks in the pipeline continue to loom large.
  • Gender imbalances are less pronounced among the ranks of junior faculty, efforts to explain biases in early career trajectories would have the greatest long-term influence on the pipeline of female academics.

Quote

“With gender imbalances less pronounced among the ranks of junior faculty, efforts to account for biases in early career trajectories would have the greatest long-term impact on the pipeline of female academics. Moreover, as female role-models can positively influence young women’s propensities to enter male-dominated fields (Bonneau and Kanthak, 2018; Breda et al., 2020), administrators’ success or failure here could have downstream impacts on female representation in the academy for the next generation.” (p.15)

Abstract

Does the pandemic exacerbate gender inequality in academia? The temporal lag in publication pipeline complicates the effort to determine the extent to which women’s productivity is disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 crisis. We provide real-time evidence by analyzing 1.8 million tweets from approximately 3,000 political scientists, leveraging their use of social media for career advancement. Using automated text analysis and difference-in-differences estimation, we find that while faculty members of both genders were affected by the pandemic, the gap in work-related tweets between male and female academics roughly tripled following work-from-home. We further argue that these effects are likely driven by the increased familial obligations placed on women, as demonstrated by the increase in family-related tweets and the more pronounced effects among junior academics. Our causal evidence on work-family trade-off provides an opportunity for proactive efforts to address gender disparities that may otherwise take years to manifest.

APA Style Reference

Kim, E., & Patterson, S. (2020). The Pandemic and Gender Inequality in Academia. Available at SSRN 3666587. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3666587

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Gender in the editorial boards of scientific journals: A study on the current state of the art (Ghasemi et al., 2020) ◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • There is a large number of studies on gender in academia, gender in membership of editorial boards of scientific journals garner attention of research and little literature.  They make the policies and determine what is accepted for publication and what is not.
  • Admission or rejection of articles influences the academic careers of authors: full professors or PhD students. Gender in editorial boards attracted attention from several researchers, albeit studies focus on journals of a specific field of knowledge.
  • Works dealing with women and academia are addressed, those works focusing on editorial boards are reviewed. Male professors, male authors in journals and male dominance is higher than female counterparts.
  • Women’s receipt of professional awards, prizes and funding increased in the past two decades. Men continue to win a higher proportion of awards and funding for scholarly research than expected based on the nomination pool.
  • Stereotypes about women’s abilities, harsh self-assessment of scientific ability by women than by men; academic and professional climates dissatisfying to women and unconscious bias contribute to achieving fewer awards and funds.
  • Female board representations have improved over time, is consistent across countries, and gendered subdisciplines attract higher female board representations. Inequities persist at the highest level: women are under-represented as editors and on boards of higher ranked journals.  Three factors for women under-representation in editorial board: discipline, journal's prestige and editor’s gender.
  • The last 15 years hinders women’s ability to attain scholarly recognition and advancement and carries risk to the narrow nature and scope of research in the field. They all show a worrying trend of under-representation of women and agree on negative consequences for advancement of science.

Abstract

Gender issues have been studied in a broad range of fields and in many areas of society, including social relations, politics, labour, and also academia. However, gender in the membership of editorial boards of scientific journals is a topic that only recently has started to attract the attention of researchers, and there is little literature on this subject as of today. The objective of this work is to present a study of the current state of editorial boards with regard to gender. The methodology is based on a literature review of gender issues in academia, and more specifically in the incipient field of gender in editorial boards. The main findings of this work, according to the reviewed bibliography, are that women are underrepresented in academic institutions, that this underrepresentation is increasingly marked in higher rank positions in academia and in editorial boards, and that this carries the risk of narrowing the nature and scope of the research in some fields of knowledge.

APA Style Reference

Ghasemi, N. M., Perramon Tornil, X., & Simó Guzmán, P. (2019, March). Gender in the editorial boards of scientific journals: a study on the current state of the art. In Congrés Dones Ciència i Tecnologia 2019: Terrassa, 6 i 7 de març de 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2117/134267

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Something’s Got to Give (Flaherty, 2020) ◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Women's journal submission rates fell as their caring responsibilities increased due to COVID-19 (see also) based on data from ongoing study of article submissions to preprint databases, whose preliminary results were published in Nature’s Index.
  • Submissions were up since COVID-19, but the share of submissions made by women was down.
  • Submissions by women as first authors (often junior scholars) were especially down, with some indication that they were shifting to middle authors.
  • Female first-author submissions to medRxiv, for example, dropped from 36% in December to 20% in April 2020.
  • Senior and author submissions by women decreased 6% over the same period, while male senior author submissions rose 5%.
  • Other researchers have found COVID-19 related papers in medicine and economics have fewer female authors than expected.
  • At one journal, male authors outnumbered female authors by more than three to one.
  • It was recommended by Melina R. Kibbe, editor of JAMA Surgery, that we should pause the tenure clock during the pandemic. However, critics of this approach have argued this can actually hurt, not help, women and under-represented minorities, as it can delay career progression and decrease lifetime earnings.
  • The status quo is such that men win the COVID-19 game, whereas women, in general, lose. We need to allow part-time work. Different work shifts should be available to those who need them. And agencies should extend grant end dates and allow for increased funding carryover from year to year.

Quote

“In any case, Power said, the challenge “needs more thinking about and a bigger public conversation, because this situation is not going away fast.” That conversation is long overdue, she added, in that “women and carers are supposed to just fit into a system designed for people without caring responsibilities. There is a saying working mothers have: ‘You have to work like you don’t have children and parents like you don’t have a job.’ And that was before COVID-19.”” (p.10).

Abstract

Women's journal submission rates fell as their caring responsibilities jumped due to COVID-19. Without meaningful interventions, the trend is likely to continue.

APA Style Reference

Flaherty, C. (2020, August, 20). Something's Got to Give. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved fromhttps://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/08/20/womens-journal-submission-rates-continue-fall

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ls There a Positive Correlation between Socioeconomic Status and Academic Achievement? (Quagliata, 2008) ◈ ⌺

Main Takeaways:

  • Poverty rates have been increasing together with a debate on socio-economic status. Parental income is an indicator of socio-economic status reflecting a potential for social and economic resources.
  • Parental education is a component of socio-economic status.
  • Learning in a meaningful context so at-risk students can immediately apply when they have learned and connect it to their own lives and individual experiences.
  • Many dropouts are not only from low SES backgrounds but also from mismatched learning styles.
  • SES affects children’s academic achievement. It is beneficial to determine the type of home environment, how educators will best support them at school.
  • Learning environment must be structured to achieve the highest level of internal motivation from all students.
  • School success is greatly determined by a family's socio-economic status. American society may be failing to provide educational opportunities for every student and citizen irrespective of socio-economic background.
  • Many poor students come to school without social and economic benefits available to most middle and high SES students. Sufficient resources for optimal academic achievement irrespective of socio-economic status.
  • The educational system produces an intergenerational cycle of school failures and short change an entire future American society as a result of family socio-economic status.
  • Method: 31 surveys were handed out and 13 were returned.  Some of the answers include health/nutrition; level of IQ; motivation or lack of motivation of teacher; amount of parental support; class size; quality of instruction/teaching resources; support available in home; school; student disabilities; language; education in culture; style of learning exposure to style; gender; peer influence; natural ability; attendance; family loss of tragic event; pregnancy full term; expectations and teacher/student relationship were also considered.
  • Method: Every teacher felt that the environment contributed most when considering academic achievement.
  • Method: Additional variables for socio-economic status were included: attitude; self-confidence; need to please; desire to do better; love of learning; acceptance; economics in the home; stability of family; siblings; age of parent(s); age of student maturity; family involvement; importance placed on learning; cognitive level; family history; neighbourhood; modelling of good work; ethics; pride; choices made; resources available; parental achievement; attending pre-k; home literacy; received early intervention; good nutrition; health; high IQ; oral language development; self-care skills; family life; class dynamics; personality and mood on any given day tells a specific teacher what they can or cannot do on a given day.
  • Results: The higher the socio-economic status, the higher the academic achievement.
  • The current literature is not available as specific students in low socio-economic status homes have high academic achievement.
  • Income, education and occupation are responsible for low academic achievement in many low SES families.
  • Socio-economic status causes less time with children and a result of lower education level of a parent, students from families of higher economic status tend to have parents who read to and with them, parents more apt to talk to them about the world and offer them more cultural experiences, many of the students' struggle with reading comes from low SES and parents that struggle with reading.
  • If a family does not have a good educational background or materials to use to work with their child, the child may suffer as a result of their environment.
  • If education is not valued in the home, students will not value education, more expectation for higher education in higher classes.

Abstract

In this literature review, family environments of low socioeconomic status (SES) students were examined and a comparison made in learning styles between low and high achievers Socioeconomic factors such as family income, education, and occupation play major role in the academic achievement of all students. There is a positive correlation between SES and academic achievement. The conclusions of this review have implications for all educators as well as the entire future of American society.

APA Style Reference

Quagliata, T. (2008). Is there a positive correlation between socioeconomic status and academic achievement?. Paper: Education masters (p. 78). https://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1077&context=education_ETD_masters

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