Women In Science Research Articles

The internationalization of scientist stereotypes through new media: Thai students’ perceptions of scientists from graphic interchange formats (GIFs)

ABSTRACT Background Students from Eastern cultures have historically viewed scientists differently than those from Western cultures, largely due to the high value of science in Eastern educational systems, reinforced by Eastern values and maintained by geographic distance from the Occident. With the proliferation of new media, Western (stereotypical) portrayals of scientists are now reaching a younger, more diverse, and global audience, outside of a formal education context (via social media, for example). Purpose The present study explored Eastern culture students’ perceptions of scientists in one specific type of new media modality, Graphic Interchange Formats (GIFs). Sample This study analyzed 97 adolescent aged Thai students’ (42 secondary and 55 tertiary level) perceptions of scientists as portrayed in four different GIFs from the high/low warmth and high/low competence dimensions of the pancultural Stereotype Content Model framework. Design and Methods Upon viewing each GIF through an online survey, participants narratively described their thoughts of the scientist/s therein. Responses were analyzed using directed content analysis to identify and categorize dimensions of high/low warmth and competence. Results Findings suggest that Thai students perceived scientists similarly to the High-Competence and Low-Warmth stereotype. Female scientists were perceived as equally competent (yet warmer than) their male counterparts. Conclusions The present study provides practical suggestions for enhancing warmth in portrayals of scientists in media, such as friendly imagery of scientists engaging in prosocial activities (e.g. friendly appearance, collaboration, etc.). Educators and new media creators can challenge and correct damaging stereotypical representations of scientists by understanding the role of digital media in shaping students’ perceptions of scientists around the world.

Dr Boring: what the Draw-A-Scientist Test shows science undergraduate students think about scientists

This study sought to determine what undergraduate science students envision when asked to picture a scientist at work. Stereotypical understandings of who becomes a scientist and what the work involves may deter young people from STEM careers. The Draw-A-Scientist Test (DAST) and variations have been used over 40 years to explore student perceptions of scientists. It has consistently revealed stereotypical views, with students often depicting scientists as male figures working alone in chemistry laboratories and wearing lab coats and safety glasses. While most studies have focused on school students, this study examined undergraduate science students (n = 208) who had committed to scientific training. Approximately two-thirds of these students were female, primarily studying Life Sciences. Their drawings consistently included five to seven stereotypical appearances, roles, and workplace elements. There was no significant difference between male and female students, except in the gender of the scientists depicted. Although 42% of female students drew female scientists and incorporated more non-stereotypical elements, most students lacked a robust self-image as scientists. Instead of drawing scientists in their field of specialisation, they perpetuated stereotypes. A subset of students (n = 69) surveyed at the end of their first semester reported a richer understanding of what a scientific career entails and what type of person becomes a scientist. To challenge persistent stereotypes, students must encounter varied images of scientists throughout their primary and secondary education, encouraging them to envision themselves in STEM careers.

Gender Disparities in Academic Publishing in Argentina. A Review of Political Science Journals (2011–2021)

Given the scarcity of women in hierarchical positions in academic institutions, it is worth asking whether a gender gap in publications precedes this issue. We examine the gender gap in publications in eight of the most important Political Science journals in Argentina. We reviewed 974 peer-reviewed articles from 144 volumes published between 2011 and 2021, focusing on three dimensions: gender gaps in authorship, co-authorship patterns, and subfield affinities. Our findings suggest that while there is a gender gap in authorship in Political Science journals, it is not as significant as the gap documented in similar studies conducted in other countries. Furthermore, we found no evidence that the gender gap is due to co-authorship patterns. Finally, in terms of subfield affinities, our results suggest that male and female political scientists in Argentina have different affinities for topics within the field, and that journals that emphasise topics favoured by men have a larger gender gap.

Being a woman or being a mathematician: Self and external perceptions of female early career researchers in a mathematical cluster of excellence

In Germany, equality between men and women in mathematics, particularly in scientific leadership positions, is far from being achieved. This is despite to different equality measures implemented over the last few decades. Grounded in sociology of knowledge, interaction theory, and field theory, this article analyzes possible causes and mechanisms that maintain gender differences in a mathematical cluster of excellence in which gender equality is formulated as a goal and implemented in various measures. Based on 65 semi-structured interviews, the focus is on the self-perceptions of female early career researchers as mathematicians, as well as the (gendered) attributions they have to deal with by (male and female) scientists in leadership positions against the background of the specific culture in a mathematical cluster of excellence. We highlight the tensions that female early career researchers identify in being regarded as women when they want to be perceived and recognized first as mathematicians. We shed light on how this tension is connected to the discipline and (re)produced by scientists in leadership positions in their patterns of interpretation about equality (measures).

Women authors in the first 50years of DGE-contributions and research topics.

Wilhelm Roux promoted the newly emerged field of developmental mechanics by establishing the journal 'Archiv für Entwicklungsmechanik', currently known as 'Development, Genes and Evolution'. The founder and supporters of the journal were all men, as were the authors in the first 3years of the journal's existence. We therefore addressed the question-in what ways did women scientists contribute to this new research field and what impact did they have. By investigating the careers and research environment of women authors in the first 50years of the journal, we show that women contributed to all research areas of developmental mechanics and shaped its future direction.

Gender and science: reflections of women scientists

Gender and science: reflections of women scientists

Bad-Mad-Female. Scientific Analyses of Female Violent Crime from the 1960s to the 1990s

While female capital offences have repeatedly caused astir since the beginning of the modern era at the latest, female violent crime has remained amarginal phenomenon in statistical observations for along time. Forensics, with its traditional core disciplines of psychiatry and law, also remained focused on the dangerous male perpetrator for along time in its analysis and theory development beyond infanticide: male forensic scientists analysed male perpetrators of violence.Since the 1960s, there has been an increasing number of scientific contributions on female criminality and its causes in West Germany. Women were now also analysing female criminality from aprofessional as well as from asocially critical perspective; adevelopment that gained significant momentum with the New Women's Movement and Critical Criminology.The article puts an emphasis on the discourse on female violent crime in the "old" Federal Republic of Germany. It starts out by framing the issue of women's violent crime in criminological discourse. Against this background, it examines how gender-specific constructions of criminality developed, especially in the discussion of the "dangerous mentally ill" in forensic discussion forums, how and to what extent which topoi were perpetuated and which were subject to changes. Did the analyses of female scientists differ from those of their male colleagues? What significance did critical or feminist currents or actors have?In view of social change processes (emancipation, psychiatric reform, criminal law reform), the article examines the interpretation of female violence and the connection between gender, dangerousness and mental illness. It focuses on the question of persistence, dynamisation or diversification of gender-specific constructions and normative concepts of normal/crazy in the forensic conflation of "bad and mad".

Why Science Should Have a Female Face: Female Experts Increase Liking, Competence, and Trust in Science

Historically, female experts have been perceived as less competent but more likable than their male counterparts. This experimental study ( n = 958) examines the intricate relationship between likability, competence, scientist gender, participant gender, and trust scientific expertise. Our results illuminated the mediating role of likability in shaping perceptions of competence, where heightened likability positively influenced perceived competence. Moreover, exposure to science messages from female scientists significantly increased trust in science through a serial mediation model. Notably, participants liked the scientist of the opposite gender; thus we did not observe a gender affinity effect.

Geomatics: Technology and Applications - A Training Programme for Women Scientists

Abstract. Geomatics, also known as geospatial technology and geomatics engineering, analyzes spatially referenced geographical information. Geomatics is a scientific term. It consists of tools and techniques. Technology is advancing, and modern Geomatics has the utility of maps by analyzing it with many coverages, each with interrelated themes combined to give meaningful answers for decision-makers. A multidisciplinary approach is essential to analyze spatial and nonspatial parameters together for decision-making at the local and global levels. Spatial information represented in the form of thematic maps about the respective attribute data, the system called, Geographical Information System (GIS), has been more popular during the last decades in government and private sectors. The decision support system can take input of data from these sources and analyze multiple parameters together to plan and manage available resources. This training program was intended for women scientists, researchers, academia, and professionals who were engaged and using spatial information, and who wanted to add and upgrade their skills. It was anticipated that a proportion of the trainee participants would come from research and academia. This training program helped participants generate interest in the use of GIS technology in their respective research and professional domains. This paper elaborately describes the process, and structure of the short-term capacity-building training program, and its usefulness for young scientists and professionals, specifically a target group is ‘women in science’ who have not been able to remain in the continue its use and are interested in building a career in geospatial technology field.

Marginalized and Overlooked? Minoritized Groups and the Adoption of New Scientific Ideas

The rapid diffusion and use of new ideas are critical for advancing and realizing the value of innovation. This paper explores the impact of demographic characteristics of innovators and potential adopters on the adoption of important new scientific ideas through networks. Using rich, population-level data on the biomedical researchers and their networks, natural language processing, and a novel two-way fixed effects strategy, we find that new ideas introduced by female scientists are under-utilized, which can be explain by two factors. First, female innovators are not as well-connected in networks; second, even at a short network distances, researchers (especially men) are less likely to adopt women’s ideas. Ideas from underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities are also less widely used.

Inscribing Janaki Ammal: Biographies and the Act of Remembering

Abstract This paper examines the life and commemoration of E. K. Janaki Ammal, a groundbreaking Indian botanist and cytogeneticist. By analysing three biographical sources, the paper explores how these narratives portray Ammal as an exemplary female scientist, specifically by formulating a rigid picture of an ‘ideal female scientist’. While elucidating the career and gender-specific challenges faced by Ammal as a female scientist, the paper employs the methodological framework of feminist science studies to explore the creation, dissemination, and attribution of specific subjectivities. It examines how class, gender, and caste in India affected Ammal’s scientific career. Moreover, these biographies shed light on the role played by race in her scientific pursuits in nineteenth-century British India.

“Like Us, but Not Quite Us”: Researching Gender Politics in Autocratic Contexts

What challenges do researchers encounter in authentically engaging with the field site and academia when certain aspects of their true identities diverge from the established norms within those domains? Using the case of female political scientists who conduct research on gender politics in the Middle East and North Africa, I highlight the ethical, logistical, and epistemological challenges of carrying out research in a politically and socially closed context. Few studies have investigated how the research process and the knowledge it produces are affected by the intertwinement of authoritarianism and patriarchy, and by the researcher’s positionality within this context. This study fills this gap by drawing upon interviews with feminist political scientists who were born and raised in the region but are based in Western academic institutions to examine the impact of authoritarianism, patriarchy, and the researchers’ insider/outsider positionality on the research process. The analysis shows three key findings. First, researching gender politics is a contentious topic that places researchers on the radar of the state. For scholars who are originally from the region, the issue is compounded by the fact that they are sometimes viewed as traitors by the regime in their country of origin, which accuses them of tarnishing the image of the government and scrutinizing its gender policies. Second, within the wider society, the politics of representation also impose certain limitations and expectations on female scholars. Such limitations include gendered restrictions on their access and mobility in the field. Finally, feminist researchers share how the knowledge they produce, which centers social justice demands, is not always valued in the discipline of political science. The article contributes to this discipline by expanding our understanding of the interplay between identity politics, fieldwork practices, and knowledge production in complex political and social settings.

Exploring How Female Scientists are Uplifted in Research Networks in STEM Fields in Public Universities in Uganda

Participation in research networks is inevitable for the female scientists in the Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields because they provide a platform for collaborative activities. New research communities of women are created to support each other through mentoring, advancing shared research interests, co-organizing conferences with men, participating in the editorial and the publications. It was on this basis that this study explored how female scientists were uplifted by research networks in STEM fields in public universities in Uganda. This study was anchored on the existential phenomenology by Martin Heidegger in the interpretive world view. Eight female scientists in research networks in STEM fields in public universities in Uganda were interviewed and they were selected from the hard applied and hard pure disciplines as classified in Becher and Biglan’s typology of academic disciplines. Using thematic analysis, two themes such as research collaboration activities and capacity development emerged in this study. This qualitative study set out to explore how female scientists were uplifted in research networks in public universities in Uganda.The public universities included Makerere University, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Gulu University and Busitema University. Both semi-structured interviews and document check data generation strategies were used in this study. In semi-structured interviews, a sample comprising eight female academics with not less than five years in research networks in public universities were selected, while documents such as the annual reports and strategic plans were used. This study concludes that research networks are uplifting the female scientists in STEM fields in public universities in Uganda because they were internationally exposed, networked, funded, research skills were strengthened, and progressed in career. This study concludes that it was important for female scientists to access physical and human resource in their research networks as this increased their research performance and outputs in STEM fields in public universities in Uganda. This study therefore recommends that, to uplift female scientists in research networks in STEM fields in public universities in Uganda, female scientists in the research networks and senior colleagues should act as ambassadors and mentors to young female scientists in STEM fields

Escaping the midway trap: A mixed method study highlighting roadblocks and coping mechanisms of female researchers in Cameroon.

Across the world, women make most of the health workforce, but remain underrepresented in academia. This is even worst in Sub-Saharan Africa where women are the least represented as first and last authors in publications, especially in francophone countries. However, there is a lack of data on the reason explaining this inequity. Therefore, we sought to describe challenges which hinder the growth of Cameroonian female researchers and conducted a mixed method study over one year from January 2020 to December 2020. We included Cameroonian female researchers in health. For the quantitative arm, data was collected through an online google questionnaire. In-depth interviews were organized for the qualitative arm. Data was analyzed using python software version 21 for the quantitative arm and content analysis was performed for qualitative data. A total of 119 participants were included in this study. Most participants were aged between 25 and 35 years (72%) and they were Christians (94%). The majority had at least a PhD degree (29.6%) and they came from the West region of Cameroon (34.2%) the Northern regions were grossly underrepresented. More than half of our participants faced issues with balancing career, work, and academia and this is linked to culture. Socioeconomic, sociocultural, institutional, and environmental roadblocks hinder the progress and research productivity of most female researchers. The burden of unpaid maternity leaves, and sexual harassment remains high for most women. The use of English language as lingua Franca is perceived as another barrier for one on two women. However, there are coping strategies adopted by female scientists including the development of soft skills such as self-confidence, determination, and hard work. Extrinsic factors such as global policy, international partnerships, workshops, mentorship, and networking are also supporting women in global health. Gender-based interventions are critical to support women in escaping the midway trap.

‘I want to be like you … ’ Using women scientists to challenge stereotypes and gender biases in childhood

ABSTRACT In this study, carried out in different provinces of Spain, we assess the impact of a co-educational science program conducted with children aged 3–6, whose objective is to deconstruct gender stereotypes in science by studying the biographies of female scientists. The evaluative methodology we use is based on analysing the opinions the pupils expressed at a school assembly, and we have applied content analysis to explore how much the pupils learnt about the female scientists, through 401 drawings. The main findings are: (1) 5-year-old children have sexist stereotypes related to the distribution of power between women and men; (2) the program is effective, because the pupils increase their knowledge and enrich their notions of female scientists and their contributions to science; and (3) the pupils do not illustrate situations of indirect inequality among scientists in their drawings, because they only perceive the injustice existing in situations of direct inequality.

Female-led teams produce more innovative ideas yet receive less scientific impact

Abstract Despite longstanding concerns about gender bias in science, there remains a lack of understanding regarding the performance of female scientists as team leaders compared to their male counterparts. This study explores differences between female-led and male-led teams in terms of scientific impact, novelty, and disruption, utilizing a comprehensive dataset of journal articles spanning from 1980 to 2016 across STEM fields. We employed Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) to match female and male scientists based on their characteristics. Subsequently, we applied multivariable logistic regression models to compare the outcomes of journal articles produced by female-led and male-led teams. Our analysis reveals that female-led teams generate more novel and disruptive ideas. However, they tend to produce articles with fewer scientific impact compared to their male-led counterparts. This suggests a systemic undervaluation of the contributions of female scientists. Further analysis indicates that this gender bias intensifies in later career stages and with larger team sizes. Additionally, significant field-specific heterogeneity is observed, with the most pronounced bias found in Biology and Medicine. These findings highlight the urgent need for policy adjustments to address these biases and promote a more equitable evaluation system in scientific research. Peer Review https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway/wos/peer-review/10.1162/qss_a_00335

Editorial: Women in science - emerging, major & neglected tropical diseases

Editorial: Women in science - emerging, major & neglected tropical diseases

Consistent effects of science and scientist characteristics on public trust across political regimes

Recent years have seen an increased research interest in the determinants of public trust in science. While some argue that democracy should be the political regime most conducive to science, recent debates about salient scientific findings revealed considerable cracks in the public perception of science. We argue that existing cross-national work on trust in science is incomplete because it uses an aggregate concept of “science”. People in different political environments likely have different conceptions of what science is, which can have consequences for perceptions and trust. To remedy this shortcoming, we present results from a preregistered survey experiment in ten countries (N = 8441), which covers a broad spectrum of political regimes and tests how science and scientists’ characteristics influence public trust. We find that, against expectations, female scientists and scientists engaging in public activism are both perceived as more trustworthy. High-impact research is trusted more than low-impact research, and it does not matter whether a scientist is a co-national. Overall, our experiment reveals few differences across political regimes. Additional survey results show that respondents’ education and exposure to science have similar relationships with trust across autocratic and democratic countries. A striking difference we find is that while political orientation has little impact in autocratic countries, it is strongly related to trust across democracies as perceptions of science become increasingly politicized.

Analyzing the existing programs on promoting women scientists in chemistry

Abstract Gender imbalance in science has been well documented. Possible explanations include a lack of systematic strategies or policies to support women in science in general and chemistry in particular. This article aims to analyze selected programs that advocate gender equity and inclusion in chemistry. Forty-eight initiatives were selected via several steps of screening. Following a pilot study using systematic review as a research method, the named initiatives were analyzed considering their strategies, goals, and impact. The findings reveal that acknowledging women scientists and providing funding to enable and sustain networking (such as through conferences) are crucial for women scientists to become visible and recognized in academia. In this paper, we offer recommendations for other entities who would like to develop initiatives to encourage suitable environments for gender equity.

Recruitment Strategies To Improve Gender Equity in Clinical and Translational Research Training in Ethiopia.

Women from sub-Saharan Africa, including Ethiopia, are underrepresented in biomedical research due in part to limited access to high-quality research training and mentorship. Tuberculosis (TB) is a major public health problem in Ethiopia, with a limited number of female Ethiopian scientists engaged in TB-related research. To improve access to TB-related research training among junior women scientists, our NIH Fogarty International Center-funded D43 program released an all-women request for applications (RFA), which substantially increased the number of women applying for research training and the number of women trained in our program. The impact of the all-women cohort was also bolstered by prominent female representation in mentor teams, program leadership, and program alumnae. Sustained increases in applications from women were seen in subsequent RFAs that included both women and men. Targeted leadership, mentorship, and recruitment efforts were effective in promoting improved gender equity in biomedical research training.