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End date: 2019Discipline: search.filters.discipline.Mathematics

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  • Item type:Publication,
    A “scientific diversity” intervention to reduce gender bias in a sample of life scientists Open PDF 
    (American Society for Cell Biology, 2016)
    Moss-Racusin, C.A.
    ;
    van der Toorn, J.
    ;
    Dovidio, J.F.
    ;
    Brescoll, V.L.
    ;
    Graham, M.J.
    Mounting experimental evidence suggests that subtle gender biases favoring men contribute to the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), including many subfields of the life sciences. However, there are relatively few evaluations of diversity interventions designed to reduce gender biases within the STEM community. Because gender biases distort the meritocratic evaluation and advancement of students, interventions targeting instructors’ biases are particularly needed. We evaluated one such intervention, a workshop called “Scientific Diversity” that was consistent with an established framework guiding the development of diversity interventions designed to reduce biases and was administered to a sample of life science instructors (N=126) at several sessions of the National Academies Summer Institute for Undergraduate Education held nationwide. Evidence emerged indicating the efficacy of the “Scientific Diversity” work-shop, such that participants were more aware of gender bias, expressed less gender bias, and were more willing to engage in actions to reduce gender bias 2 weeks after participating in the intervention compared with 2 weeks before the intervention. Implications for diversity interventions aimed at reducing gender bias and broadening the participation of women in the life sciences are discussed. © 2016 C. A. Moss-Racusin et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education.
  • Item type:Publication,
    A bibliometric study of women researchers in early organizational structures of exact sciences and engineering in Mexico from 1900 to 2000 Open PDF 
    (2018)
    Morales, M.E.L.
    ;
    Morales, E.L.
    The scientific production of Mexico registered in Web of Science from 1900-2000 in the areas of Exact Sciences and Engineering is analyzed to describe the way in which female researchers are integrated in the development of these fields of study. The paper employs a quantitative bibliometric method, applying indicators of gender, scientific output and impact, and analysis of bibliometric networks of co-authorship. In Mexico, researchers in exact sciences and engineering published their first papers in the first half of the 20th century, but female researchers working in Syn-tex laboratories did not publish until the 1940s. As more women joined faculties in higher education and research centers in the 60s and 70s, publication by female researchers began to increase accordingly. This growth also appears to be associated with changes in career choice by women. While the contributions of this work represent an advantage for the scientific community itself, they also are useful for organizations that promote gender equity and institutions that integrate female researchers in this field of study. © 2018, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico. All rights reserved.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Women involvement in editorial boards of mathematics journals
    (2007)
    Mauleón, E.
    ;
    Bordons, M.
    Members of editorial boards of journals play an essential role in science, since they contribute to guarantee the quality and relevance of publications. This study analyses whether women are well represented in editorial boards as a sign of her participation in responsibility positions in science. Women's representation on the editorial board of eight international high quality mathematics journals is studied and compared to women's presence as authors of papers in the same journals. On average only 4% of the members of the editorial boards analysed were women, while 10% of the authors with publications were female scientists. Inter-gender differences in impact of publications were not found, but less collaboration was observed in female publications. This study shows that women are under-represented as authors in Mathematics journals but her presence is even lower in leadership positions such as members of journal editorial boards.
  • Item type:Publication,
    A phenomenological study of factors influencing the gender gap in physics and other STEM-related fields
    (American Society for Engineering Education, 2014)
    Larkin, T.L.
    ;
    Vogel, T.
    Current reports on the gender gap in STEM suggest factors influencing career choice between the sexes are not inevitable. Recent decades have documented a clear change in the gender makeup of some STEM disciplines. However, in many areas, the gap has persisted with little or no change in the number of women choosing to pursue a career in a STEM-related field such as Physics. According to recent AIP reports1, 2, women comprise 21% of undergraduate, 21% of graduate, and 19% of doctoral degrees in Physics. Many factors have been studied by scholars as contributing to the dearth of women in Physics and STEM3-8. Factors including the lack of role models, discouragement from the media, sex difference in cognitive skill, and unpleasant experiences related to gender-bias in the classroom have all been suggested as potential reasons why women tend not to pursue a career in Physics or other STEM field. Suggestions from some scholars also indicate that women often tend to seek out careers in which they feel they can make a difference. Unfortunately, the size of the gap in many areas has reached a plateau that hasn't appeared to shift significantly over time. This phenomenological study will look at how individual perceptions of STEM (with an emphasis on Physics) as a career option may influence academic and professional pursuits. To that end, formal interviews with practicing professionals and college students from a range of disciplines will be used as a primary data collection tool. This paper will provide a synthesis of the empirical data collected through these formal interviews. Factors that emerge from this synthesis as having a significant influence on one's perception of STEM as a career choice will be further examined and discussed. By focusing on individual perceptions, this study aims to contribute to the existing empirical database of factors that influence career choice and perpetuate the gender gap in STEMrelated fields such as Physics. The themes that emerge may stimulate further research on this topic and provide suggestions for best practices that may contribute to closing the gap. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2014.
  • Item type:Publication,
    The gender gap in science: How long until women are equally represented? Open PDF 
    (2018)
    Holman, Luke
    ;
    Stuart-Fox, Devi
    ;
    Hauser, Cindy E.
    Women comprise a minority of the Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) workforce. Quantifying the gender gap may identify fields that will not reach parity without intervention, reveal underappreciated biases, and inform benchmarks for gender balance among conference speakers, editors, and hiring committees. Using the PubMed and arXiv databases, we estimated the gender of 36 million authors from >100 countries publishing in >6000 journals, covering most STEMM disciplines over the last 15 years, and made a web app allowing easy access to the data (https://lukeholman.github.io/genderGap/). Despite recent progress, the gender gap appears likely to persist for generations, particularly in surgery, computer science, physics, and maths. The gap is especially large in authorship positions associated with seniority, and prestigious journals have fewer women authors. Additionally, we estimate that men are invited by journals to submit papers at approximately double the rate of women. Wealthy countries, notably Japan, Germany, and Switzerland, had fewer women authors than poorer ones. We conclude that the STEMM gender gap will not close without further reforms in education, mentoring, and academic publishing.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Quality of evidence revealing subtle gender biases in science is in the eye of the beholder Open PDF 
    (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015)
    Handley, Ian M.
    ;
    Brown, Elizabeth R.
    ;
    Moss-Racusin, Corinne A.
    ;
    Smith, Jessi L.
    Scientists are trained to evaluate and interpret evidence without bias or subjectivity. Thus, growing evidence revealing a gender bias against women—or favoring men—within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) settings is provocative and raises questions about the extent to which gender bias may contribute to women’s underrepresentation within STEM fields. To the extent that research illustrating gender bias in STEM is viewed as convincing, the culture of science can begin to address the bias. However, are men and women equally receptive to this type of experimental evidence? This question was tested with three randomized, double-blind experiments—two involving samples from the general public (n = 205 and 303, respectively) and one involving a sample of university STEM and non-STEM faculty (n = 205). In all experiments, participants read an actual journal abstract reporting gender bias in a STEM context (or an altered abstract reporting no gender bias in experiment 3) and evaluated the overall quality of the research. Results across experiments showed that men evaluate the gender-bias research less favorably than women, and, of concern, this gender difference was especially prominent among STEM faculty (experiment 2). These results suggest a relative reluctance among men, especially faculty men within STEM, to accept evidence of gender biases in STEM. This finding is problematic because broadening the participation of underrepresented people in STEM, including women, necessarily requires a widespread willingness (particularly by those in the majority) to acknowledge that bias exists before transformation is possible.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Bibliometric studies on gender disparities in science
    (2019)
    Halevi, G.
    Understanding gender related disparities in science is an essential step in tackling these issues. Through the years, bibliometric studies have designed several methodologies to analyze scholarly output and demonstrate that there are significant gaps between men and women in the scientific arena. However, gender identification in itself is an enormous challenge, since bibliographic data does not reveal it. These bibliometric studies not only focused on publication output and impact, but also on cross-referencing output, promotions and tenure data, and other related curriculum vitae (CV) information. This chapter discusses the challenges of tracking gender disparities in science through bibliometrics and reviews the various approaches taken by bibliometricians to identify gender and analyze the bibliographic data in order to point to gender disparities in science. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.
  • Item type:Publication,
    Gender Bias in Higher Education: Spanish Doctoral Dissertations in Mathematics Education Open PDF 
    (2016)
    Vallejo, M.
    ;
    Torralbo, M.
    ;
    Fernández-Cano, A.
    This article reviews the results of a quantitative study that provides evidence of gender biases in relation to women in the field of Spanish mathematics education. For this purpose, doctoral dissertations produced in Spain and defended in Spanish universities between 1970 and 2014 were subjected to exhaustive analysis. Focusing on gender, the authorship, supervision, and evaluation of doctoral dissertations were used as explanatory variables. A prospective analysis of the variables was also carried out. The results reveal different situations depending on the above-mentioned dimensions. Specifically, a marked bias against women was detected in terms of the supervision and evaluation of doctoral dissertations, but not in terms of their authorship. This seems to suggest the existence of a glass ceiling that prevents women from gaining access to certain scientific fields and/or engaging in particular roles in the higher education setting, such as the supervision or evaluation of doctoral dissertations. © The Author(s) 2015.
  • Item type:Publication,
  • Item type:Publication,
    Gender Representation on Journal Editorial Boards in the Mathematical Sciences Open PDF 
    (Public Library of Science, 2016)
    Topaz, Chad M.
    ;
    Sen, Shilad
    We study gender representation on the editorial boards of 435 journals in the mathematical sciences. Women are known to comprise approximately 15% of tenure-stream faculty positions in doctoral-granting mathematical sciences departments in the United States. Compared to this group, we find that 8.9% of the 13067 editorships in our study are held by women. We describe group variations within the editorships by identifying specific journals, subfields, publishers, and countries that significantly exceed or fall short of this average. To enable our study, we develop a semi-automated method for inferring gender that has an estimated accuracy of 97.5%. Our findings provide the first measure of gender distribution on editorial boards in the mathematical sciences, offer insights that suggest future studies in the mathematical sciences, and introduce new methods that enable large-scale studies of gender distribution in other fields.