Women in Molecular Immunology
Wednesday, November 21, 2012 at 8:49PM It is easy to discuss equality in science through anecodote. Just by spending most of my waking adult life on university campuses across three continents I am fairly confident in saying that sexual equality is better in biology and medicine than in chemistry or physics, is great at undergraduate level and lagging at professorial level, and is better in Australia than in Belgium. Much better than anecodote, though, is quantitative analysis, which is why I love this website. If you don't publish your research it is a hobby, not science, and a good publication record is the A to Z of career success for a scientist. This website collates data on authorship across time and across disciplines, at a global level, and assesses the participation of women. There are a few caveats: papers are only assessed if they are listed in the JSTOR database, and a gender is only assigned by first name analysis (using the US Social Security database as a reference, so it probably fails for first names not commonly used in the US). Still, it is an absolutely beautiful reference point.
There is an wealth of knowledge in this database, but my interest is in molecular immunology, so how are we performing? Well, the question kind of depends on "compared to what?" In 1991-2010, 29.7% of authors on molecular immunology papers were women. This is an improvement from 1971-1990 (23.9%), and a huge improvement from pre-history (being everything from 1970 and before, at 13.7%). It is also outstanding compared to fields such as mathematics, where women still only account for 10% authors (maths clearly has a problem with women; anyone who says the reverse is kidding themselves). But 29.7% is still a long way from 50%. Even among first authors (typically PhD students or post-docs), only 33.2% of molecular immunology authors were women, and among last authors (typically professors) only a dismal 15.4% were women.
I've said before what I think the problem is (hint, it is men), but this database gives us a resource to see who is fixing the problem, and how fast, and who is content to live in the stone-age and try to do science with a 50% lobotomy. So many questions arise. Why has virology been more equal than immunology throughout the time period? I would love to see a break-down by country to know if this is a discipline-thing, or is a statistical quirk due to regional differences in sexism correlating by chance with regional differences in research focus.
Oh, and for the trivia-minded, within molecular biology the most equal area of research is heat shock proteins, while the most sexist is prostaglandins. In the entire database, the most female-dominated area of research is gender studies (57.8% female authors), while the most male-dominated area of research is a discipline of mathematics called Riemannian manifolds (99.3% male authors). Check it out.
Reader Comments (1)
In many ways, maths would be a great discipline for a researcher who wanted to take a career break, work part time, or not spend time writing million dollar grants.
Also:
http://www.nature.com/news/nature-s-sexism-1.11850