Gender underlies the formation of STEM research groups.

Denon Start,Shannon Mccauley

doi:10.1002/ece3.6188

Denon Start, Shannon Mccauley

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6188

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Abstract

Research groups are the cornerstone of scientific research, yet little is known about how these groups are formed and how their organization is influenced by the gender of the research group leader. This represents an important gap in our understanding of the processes shaping gender structure within universities and the academic fields they represent. Here, we report the results of an email survey sent to department chairs and discipline‐specific listservs. We received responses from 275 female and 175 male research group leaders. Most respondents were biologists (n = 328) but psychology (n = 27), chemistry (n = 16), physics (n = 32), and mathematics (n = 30) were also relatively well represented. We found that men were self‐reported as overrepresented in research groups in the physical sciences, particularly at later career stages. Within biology, male and female group leaders reported supervising a disproportionate number of same‐gender trainees (students and postdoctoral fellows), particularly early in their careers. These self‐reported patterns were driven primarily by gender‐based differences in the pool of students applying to their research groups, while gender differences in acceptance rates played a seemingly smaller role. We discuss the implications of our results for women continuing into the professoriate and for the recruitment of young scientists into research groups.

Highlights

The advancement of basic and applied sciences, largely through academic pursuits, is central to our understanding of the world and the advancement of our societies
Our results show that gender differences among research groups exist across and within fields at all stages of academic training
Women tended to be underrepresented in math, physics, and chemistry, but were or overrepresented in biology and psychology (Figure 1a; absolute gender representation is difficult to interpret from survey data)

Summary

Introduction

The advancement of basic and applied sciences, largely through academic pursuits, is central to our understanding of the world and the advancement of our societies. Despite the central role that academic laboratories play in scientific training for STEM fields, the patterns of gender composition in research (laboratory) groups have rarely been investigated (but see: Sheltzer & Smith, 2014). Differences in gender composition in a given STEM field or research group can come about through two distinct, though not mutually exclusive, mechanisms. A gender may be underrepresented because they apply in fewer numbers (1; application differences) or because fewer applicants of that gender are chosen to join the research group (2; acceptance differences). These two mechanisms are not necessarily independent

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