An apercu of the current status of women in ocean science

Numbers by seniority level

Considering career progression, the scissor effect is as pertinent for ocean science as it is for S&E more generally. Both age distributions and seniority level distributions still demonstrate highest percentages for women at the student and recent graduate levels, with lower percentages at the oldest or most senior levels. For example, from the subset of 15 GOSR2020 countries that provided information on both age distribution and gender of ocean science researchers, the common pattern, most visible in the countries with the largest overall numbers, was to see the most equal participation by men and women in the age classes under 25; 25–34 and 35–44 years. Exceptions, as in S&E more generally, are Japan and Republic of Korea. Both countries graduate high numbers of women in STEM but still employ very low numbers of women in their fields of study [25] (see Table 2).

In 2014 Orcutt and Cetinić’s analysis of women in oceanography (primarily in the US) demonstrated women dropping out along the trajectory from graduate school to full professor in ocean science and, importantly, that the median percentage of women at all faculty levels was lower than would be expected by the number of doctoral degrees awarded by an institution. They looked at the numbers of students, as well as assistant, associate and full professors at the 26 major oceanography programs in the US. For the three seniority levels the averages were 40, 30 and 15 % women, although they noted that this was a slight improvement over percentages in earlier years. They also found 30 % of chief scientists on research vessels to be female, with a doubling of the percentage over the previous decade. They further noted that the percentage of female chief scientists for University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System vessels was roughly equal (20 %) to the percentage of women in full professor or senior researcher positions. Finally, they suggested that the ratio of female to male cruise participants roughly matched the ratio in the pool of applicants [26].

Looking at the AGU’s section membership for 2018, the Ocean Sciences section demonstrates the typical pattern of higher percentages of women at earlier career stages: graduate students are 51 % female, early career members 43 %, mid-career 32 %, experienced 18 % and retired 4 % female. In the Paleoceanography and Paleoclimate section the percentages are students 54 %, early career 43 %, mid-career 32 %, experienced 17 % and retired 14 %; and the Physical Oceanography section reports students 45 %, early career 36 %, mid-career 35 %, experienced 12 % and retired 5 % female [27].

This leaky pipeline also exists in the Pacific island nations, with high numbers of female students and graduates not transitioning to research positions, despite the importance of ocean science to the region [6]. The Baltic Consortium on Promoting Gender Equality in Marine Research Organisations (Baltic Consortium) had similar results—fewer women at more senior levels—for its European institutions [28].

Subfields

With respect to the subfields of ocean science where women were more or less prevalent, extrapolations from conference attendance may serve to give an indication, and this was presented in the GOSR2020, using sex-disaggregated data extracted from 37 selected international conferences and symposia held from 2015 to 2018.

Women constitute 43 % of the total number of participants attending international conferences/symposia considered in Figure 4.6. However, the gender distribution varies considerably according to the subject of the conference, as well as the region. Female participants account for 29 and 53 % of the participants in all ocean science categories and regions respectively. Women represent 48 % of the participants in conferences on ocean science in general. Although close to parity, there is a stronger representation of women in two of the ocean science categories (Human health and well-being and Ocean health). For Marine ecosystem functions and processes, the gender representation of participants is roughly equal. In terms of regions, parity is only achieved in the Mediterranean area (51 % female participants).

It is encouraging that at least one region is at gender parity and that conference participation overall is also within the range for parity, although female scientists remain underrepresented in many categories of ocean science, such as ocean crust and marine geohazards, and ocean observations and marine data. Also, women’s participation has increased in all ocean categories and regions since the GOSR2017. The three areas of ocean science where women are most highly represented are no surprise. In 2014 O’Connell’s review of the top six US oceanographic institutions found women to be most prevalent amongst full professors in biological oceanography, followed by geological oceanography [29].

Barriers

Although discrimination and harassment, including sexual harassment, during field work has been reported as a serious problem in the geosciences in general [30] before 2020 there was no published survey on its prevalence during ocean research cruises [26]. An informal social media survey in 2020 by Bate-papo com Netuno (“Chat with Neptune”) to map harassment of women on research vessels in Brazil found that the 67 % of respondents had been harassed while onboard and 71 % knew at least one woman who had suffered harassment on a vessel, with the perpetrators being male in 99 % of cases. The study reported different types of harassment: sexual (31 %); moral (30 %); and discrediting physical capacity (>15 %), although 12 % of women identified more than one type of harassment. The study demonstrated that harassment situations can occur regardless of hierarchical differences between those involved, reporting very different professional profiles of aggressors [31].

For many years women who experienced discrimination or harassment simply accepted it or left the profession, particularly as there were few functional reporting mechanisms. It is difficult to know how many women abandoned their scientific careers for this reason. Clancy noted in 2019 that the US legal system is inadequate to address sexual harassment of women in academia and research, according to the consensus study report by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which included women participating on cruise ships [32]. This report found that half of female scientists have been victims of some form of sexual harassment, and that this is particularly so for isolating environments.

Recently two cases of harassment have made the news. One case mentions lavatory peepholes, suggestions of being unfit for the job, and groping aboard ship. Fortunately, this report led to changes in the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) policy for cruise ships [33]. In late 2019 a revised dress code was instituted aboard the Akademik Fedorov, a Russian vessel involved in the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) project run by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) for Polar and Marine Research in Germany. The dress code banned tight or revealing clothing on board, and came in to force following a complaint concerning male technical contractors harassing women aboard ship. Eighteen of the 20 students participating in the MOSAiC cruise wrote afterwards that, “In response to certain policies made on this cruise, or at least the communication of those policies, we reject the implications that: (1) women’s dress may invite or justify experiencing harassment or misconduct; (2) women cannot perform—or are less capable at—certain jobs because of their gender” [34]. AWI had not designated a senior female point of contact aboard ship to whom women could report problems. Normally such a role is filled by people such as the ship’s captain or the senior scientist.

Certainly there are inconveniences related to parenting, including the likely lack of private space for lactation, nurseries or childcare on board, and the question of whether pregnant women may participate on a cruise from a medical perspective often goes unanswered if no policy is in place.

Childcare and breastfeeding space also has been mentioned as a hindrance to women’s attendance at conferences [35, 36]. To their credit, many scientific unions and associations have updated their codes of conduct to strengthen their content addressing gender discrimination in any way, including sexual harassment [37]. The strongest relevant example is that of the AGU, contained in its most recently revised ethics policy [38].

Almost all institutions have codes of conduct, but the procedures to follow in the case of sexual harassment may not be clear and well communicated, as was found at GEOMAR and Kiel University in the context of the Baltic Consortium [39]. This is an example of how although good policies may exist on paper, they also need instruments for their implementation, with clearly identified mechanisms and responsible parties.

Conference speakers and organizers

In addition to looking at conference participation, the GOSR2020 looked at the sex of those who were featured speakers at conferences for which such data was available:

One way of illustrating the ‘glass ceiling’ – a perceived barrier to advancement in a profession particularly affecting women – is through the participation of female scientists as featured speakers in international conferences and symposia. The gender of invited and other speakers in plenary sessions was identified for a total of 414 speakers participating in 12 international conferences. […] only 29 % of the total featured speakers were women.

The GOSR2020’s data demonstrated that when more women are involved in conference organization, women are more likely to be selected as speakers, panel members and keynote speakers, as had been noted elsewhere [36].

Salaries

According to the US NSF [40] the median salary of doctorate holders in the geosciences, atmospheric, and ocean sciences is US$102 000, with the median annual salary for men being US$110 000 while that for women is US$90 000. Women thus earn 81.8 % of what men earn in the US. It would be illuminating to see such data for other countries.

Continuous professional development

The GOSR2020 provides information on one regional example of the OceanTeacher Global Academy, run by IOC-UNESCO, for continuous training. In the Latin America and Caribbean region, half of the participants are women by design, following gender policies of UNESCO and INVEMAR (Colombia’s Marine and Coastal Research Institute). Unfortunately, there was no data presented on other regions or other training centers. The United Nations-Nippon Foundation Fellowship strongly encourages applications from women, and recent years’ awardee lists demonstrate parity between the sexes in awards. On-line training increases access to women if provisions for family travel and childcare are not included in awards [41].

Funding success

Orcutt and Cetinić [26] reported on the funding success rate of women compared to men in the US NSF’s OCE for 2012, using data from the Committee of Visitors (COV) Review (an external evaluation of the award-making process). At that time, women’s success rates had improved from one in five in 2002 to one in four in 2012 and the percentages of female proposal reviewers were roughly the same as the percentages of female faculty. In the same special edition of Oceanography O’Connell [29] called for greater attention to be given to women and minorities in NSF awards in the Division. In 2015 the COV for OCE cited O’Connell and wrote at length on the low percentages of awards to women principal investigators, with men receiving 2.5–3 times as many awards, which they attributed to the low numbers of women faculty in ocean science. NSF was commended for two programs, Mentoring Physical Oceanography Women to Increase Retention (MPOWIR) and ADVANCE, which aim to increase parity in physical oceanography and S&E respectively, and encouraged to continue such mentoring programs. Despite these two Reviews of OCE, in 2019 the COV Review provided this recommendation: “III.1.6: The program should prioritize any institutional effort to enhance diversity because women and people of color continue to remain significantly underrepresented in the ocean sciences.” To which the NSF responded, “We agree and acknowledge that the lack of diversity is a persistent issue for OCE. We will report back on our plans to address this.” It should be noted that MPOWIR is also supported by the US Office of Naval Research, Department of Energy, NOAA and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in addition to the NSF.

For the EU, funding success rates in the natural sciences were higher for women than for men in only seven countries for 2017, and overall for the sciences men were three percentage points above women for the EU-28 [22].

As noted elsewhere, the percentages of female grant reviewers are important to women’s success, and should be audited [42].

It has been suggested that funding sources need to extend the age of “young researchers” or even eliminate any age limits, given the career breaks made by both men and women for childrearing. For example in China, where 39.1 % of Ph.D. graduates are women, only 14 % of distinguished young scholar’s awards went to women [16]. By increasing the age limit from 35 to 40 for women and adding more women to review panels, China expects to see increased funding awarded to women. The European Research Council has made efforts to ensure gender balance in its grants, and recently instituted a policy of 18 month’s extension per new child, for age-related grants [43]. Despite audience requests during recent events on women and science, most funders are unwilling to eliminate age-related awards, as it remains a strong policy tool to encourage young scientists to form their own research teams [44].

Publications/productivity

Huang et al. [45] show that women researcher’s publications in STEM have about the same impact as those of men and that gender differences in career impact are due to shorter career duration and higher dropout rates by female scientists. They also noted that the average male researcher publishes 13.2 papers compared to a women’s 9.6 over a career lifetime, with this gap in publications between the sexes being true of all scientific disciplines and in all regions. Finally, they noted the difficulty of disambiguation of the sex of authors, particularly for Asian countries.

The International Science Council (ISC)-funded “Gender Gap in Science” project attempted to identify the sex of authors of publications in the fields of mathematics, chemistry, astronomy and astrophysics, by cross-referencing specific free access archiving systems with gender assignment services, starting with Gender API, and then using genderize-io followed by the Python package gender guesser on the samples that remained ambiguous. Since they were not able to determine the sex of all authors, they discounted the publications that remained ambiguous. From the resulting data, they found that the productivity gap between men and women in the most recent cohort of graduates in these fields is so small that it is no longer significant, and that due to lack of academic posts in S&E, the dropout rate of young men and women is converging. They noted that fields with large author teams, such as astronomy and astrophysics, have significantly higher percentages of women authors. Many areas of ocean science also have large research teams, so it may be that women are more represented in team authorships than single author papers. Finally, the Gender Gap in Science project noted that renown journals still publish fewer articles with female first authors, and it was suggested that greater transparency in the submission and review process might call for double-blind reviews and changes in editorial board composition [43].

She Figures 2018, using Scopus data, reports for Europe that the overall impact of publications in all fields of research and development by male and female authorship was still not at parity in 2017, with a ratio of 0.90 (1.0 would be parity), regardless of the seniority level of the authors [22]. More narrowly, for natural sciences (which includes ocean science) the ratio was 0.91 for the period 2013–2017.

According to the editor-in-chief of Nature, commissioned pieces such as news, reviews or opinions by women were rare in the journal until more women became editors. Having more women editors also leads to more women reviewers of peer-reviewed submissions. Nature revised its in-house policy to ensure that women are at parity with men as editors [46]. An earlier Comment in Nature noted that Earth science journals used fewer women than expected to referee journals [42]. The authors looked at data from journals of the AGU, which is 59 % comprised of members located in the USA. In 2017 28 % of members were female, although younger cohorts had higher percentages of women than did older ones. One thus might expect around 28 % of reviewers to be women, but in fact they comprised only 20 % of reviewers over the period 2012–2015. Women represented 27 % of first authors, however, which is probably due to the AGU having hired more female editors in recent years.

Recognition

With over 60 000 members from 130 countries, the AGU is the largest union relevant to researchers in ocean science, so its efforts to support women can serve as a model to other unions. The AGU Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan 2018 [47] is one result of its US NSF-ADVANCE grant to address harassment in the Earth sciences, following several years of media reports of sexual misconduct in the sciences. According to the AGU Honors Diversity Report for 2019 [27], in 2018 30 % of members were women, and 41 % of non-US members were women. Fifty-one percent of union awards, medals and prizes in 2019 were awarded to women, all sharp increases from the previous years. The selection committees themselves were 40 % female in 2018.

Among schemes aimed specifically at women, the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science partnership has awarded a few laureates for ocean science topics, while the partnership’s first International Rising Talent relevant to marine science was awarded in 2016. The Central Caribbean Marine Institute launched the Women in Ocean Science Award in early 2020, while the Rachel Carson Award, for international environmental work, was created in 1991.

Leadership positions

According to GenderInSITE (Gender in science, innovation, technology and engineering), women’s participation in global scientific challenges—and many such challenges require data from ocean science—needs to happen at five different levels: i) the individual scientist and their day-to-day work, to ii) the production of science by institutions and universities, iii) professionalization of science at the national level, iv) global science coordination and v) multilateral organizations relevant to the scientific enterprise, so that enabling research networks can be formed and funding organized. It is particularly important for the scientific leadership addressing global challenges to be gender inclusive so as to ensure greater participation by women at all five levels, which will enable society to best address these challenges [48]. This need is reiterated by O’Connell [29], citing women as chief editors of science magazines, and as directors, managers and administrators of major funding and research programs or department chairs. Half of the top six US oceanographic institutions have recently had women executives. She Figures 2018 indicates that in Europe for 2017 women head 22 % of higher education institutions, represent 27 % of members of boards of research institutions, and 20 % of leaders of such boards.

Friends of Ocean Action is an informal group created under the aegis of the World Economic Forum in 2018 to stimulate progress on SDG 14. One of its 10 action tracks is “gender parity in the ocean”, with a focus on ocean and gender data. Interestingly, there are no targets with a gender indicator under SDG 14, and the SDG Gender Index of 2018 sought to redress this, so efforts by the Friends of Ocean Action to “fast-track” an ocean data platform that incorporates gender data by country is welcome. The 56 Friends of Ocean Action members come from business, civil society, international organizations and science and technology, and half of them are women (including two of the names in the first paragraph of this article), co-chaired by the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean, and the Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden. It thus serves as an excellent example of how an influencing group should be constituted from a gender perspective.

According to SAGA Working Paper 5, STI GO 4, with its numerous sub-priorities, is the GO with the largest number of extant policies and policy instruments. However, these do not always accomplish their objectives and gender equality in career progression continues to require attention [13]. In ocean science more women need to be able to reach senior and leadership levels in research and policy. This may require ensuring that continuous professional development opportunities are made more visible to female scientists, recognition of outstanding ocean research by women is increased and that barriers to career development continue to be removed.

Gender bias and implicit bias sensitivity should be part of mandatory training for new funding reviewers, journal editors and referees, research department heads, and in fact for all young scientists. Resources for such training are available from sites such as GenderInSITE (https://genderinsite.net/resources), and the World Meteorological Organization’s Good Practices from Members in Advancing Gender Equality (https://public.wmo.int/en/resources/gender-equality/good-practice-from-members-advancing-gender-equality-and-empowerment-of-women).

More women need to be involved in grant making, publishing and conference organization. It would be useful to review sex-disaggregated publication data of relevant journals and of salaries in additional countries. Finally, parity within the Ocean Decade’s Advisory Board would set a strong example.

Institutions

There are examples of good polices being instituted in many ocean science institutions. Taking one example, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, which participated in the NSF-ADVANCE program, it offers family leave to both male and female postdoctoral fellows, has made additional research assistance or workload relief plans available for faculty during family transitions, and made childcare available in the field. LDEO’s Office of Academic Affairs and Diversity also provides training on implicit bias and gender bias; and conducted a survey of employee life and work environment, with concerns raised, such as the continued presence of an employee accused of sexual harassment, and subtle gender bias, subsequently addressed.

The GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre created a Women’s Executive Board (WEB) in 2013 to support women’s retention, with incentives such as specific funding for reentry positions after family leave, an annual women’s assembly, a special lecture series by visiting women scholars, and a mentoring network scheme for graduates and postdoctoral fellows. Along with other institutions in the Baltic Consortium funded by the EU, GEOMAR established sex-disaggregated data collection for 13 indicators, instituted Gender Equality Plans, fostered structural institutional changes, such as the above-mentioned WEB and a mentoring program (via:mento_ocean), workshops and training, and created a tool to include the gender perspective in research and innovation, as called for by the EU’s Horizon 2020 program [51]. The GEOMAR example exemplifies the sorts of actions enumerated by the European Commission’s STAGES (Structural Transformation to Achieve Gender Equality in Science) project (2012–2015). Schmidt and Cacace [51] reviewed the different types of strategic interventions that institutions can take, using Danish academia and science policy-making as an example, to create a dynamic framework that enables an institution to best target actions for its specific circumstances.

Unions

Scientific unions and associations also have a strong role in supporting gender equality in ocean science. Although no relevant unions participated in the first phase of the aforementioned ISC-funded Gender Gap in Science project, any second phase is open to all scientific unions who wish to participate. The project undertook a global survey of the career experiences of over 32 000 female and male scientists, in addition to its work on publication patterns. A final 10 project recommendations to the scientific unions include ones to change the culture and norms, share best practices on addressing sexual harassment, support parenthood and welcome families to union conferences, ensure the visibility of female scientists, diversify the recipients of awards, increase the presence of women on editorial boards, use double-blind reviews of submissions to union journals, ensure gender balance at every level of the union’s organization and continue to raise awareness of the gender gap [43].

The AGU’s Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan adopted in late 2018 is a solid example of the sorts of actions a union can set as goals to improve gender equality, as demonstrated earlier. The AGU acted to address harassment and gender bias earlier than many scientific unions, with specific goals for parity in awards, publications and positions, as well as subsidized childcare at its conferences [47]. Concerning other relevant unions, the European Geosciences Union currently has a working group on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; its annual conferences provide free childcare and its code of conduct is current. The Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography provides resources for promoting inclusion and equity but has no information on how it incorporates them in its internal affairs. The Oceanography Society’s publication, Oceanography, prepared an informative special issue, “Women in Oceanography”, in 2005 and again in 2014.

In conclusion, more ocean science institutions and unions should review their polices relevant to gender equality and whether they have the requisite instruments to implement them fully. Harassment of female personnel on research cruises is one area requiring greater policy attention. The creation of gender commissions or departments is a useful tool to generate new innovative policies and policy instruments [13]. In line with the US National Academies report cited earlier [32], strong policies against harassment with effective implementation mechanisms, supported by top leadership, are the most effective tools to eliminate harassment. They should include training for all employees to create inclusive workplace environments, provide support to victims, and help to change hostile workplace cultures and norms, including by breaking the silence around the subject. Such policies are needed in universities, science institutions, unions, academies and funding bodies.