Volume 93, Issue 8

We describe our work on The Global Survey of Scientists and examine men’s and women’s experiences with sexual harassment. We use multivariate models in our analyses to account for possible confounding variables. Our model accounts for gender, discipline, age, employment sector, geographic region, and level of human development. Taking all these factors into consideration, we find that women are 14.4 times more likely than men to indicate having personally encountered sexual harassment at school or work. We take a closer look at potential differences in discipline, employment sector, geographic region, and level of development.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) is the scientific union representing identified physics communities from all over the world. It currently has 60 country members and is organized and run by the physics community itself. About to turn one hundred years old, the IUPAP has taken several actions for over 20 years to increase the participation and improve the situation of women physicists. The creation of its Working Group on Women in Physics in 1999 has had an enormous impact on the physics communities giving visibility to a problem that had often gone unnoticed, raising awareness and, most importantly, creating a very active network of women physicists in more countries than IUPAP members. The Working Group has also had a direct impact on the IUPAP’s organization and on the activities it sponsors. In this paper I give a brief account of the actions of the Working Group and of the measures that the IUPAP has taken since 1999 to help reduce the gender gap in physics and in STEM. I then focus on the many activities that it led to in Latin America, the region of origin of three of the five chairs of the Working Group.

In today professional world and especially in STEM related fields, gender balance (or the lack thereof) remains a hotly debated topic. Gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls is the fifth goal set by the United Nations in 2015 (out of 17 Sustainable Development Goals in total) that is intended to be achieved by the year 2030. It is in fact fully understood that we cannot simply afford missing out on half (actually more) of the human capital and potential and one of the key factors to achieve this is education for all. Together with broader themes like diversity and inclusion, gender equality has also made it to the top of many institutions/organizations agendas, because diverse teams are more creative, more productive and improve the working experience and environment for everybody. To this end, a significant push has also come from regular reports published by international or consultancy agencies like the World Economic Forum (WEF) or Mc Kinsey that have often made the news headlines with highly visible and provocative titles. The most recent WEF Global Gender Gap Report 2020 clearly states that “It will take us another 99.5 years to reach gender parity” and that “It will be the year 2277 when the gender pay gap will close”. In this review, the focus will be on a specific STEM field that has always fascinated generations of people, just by looking up at the peaceful beauty of a night sky: astronomy.

Access to scientific careers for women has never been easy, but as biases and barriers slowly begin to diminish, women are becoming more and more involved in science, especially Biological Sciences. Some of the reasons why women do not have the same opportunities to achieve career pathways equal to those of men are discussed. We conclude that there is an ongoing need to design and apply new policies to effect a gender balance throughout the career path. This is seen not simply as an equitable outcome – it is a moral imperative.

This article complements the coverage of the status of women in ocean science as contained in the recently published Global Ocean Science Report 2020  – Charting capacity for ocean sustainability . Using the seven Science, Technology and Innovation Gender Objectives (STI GOs) of UNESCO’s SAGA (STEM and Gender Advancement) project, it reviews available information on women’s education and careers in ocean science for some of the countries with the highest numbers of ocean scientists in order to highlight STI GOs of concern. It also provides some information on resources for each STI GO to help institutions to achieve gender equality amongst their ocean science research staff.

ACM-W is the community within the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) that is dedicated to issues of gender equality in Computer Science. ACM-W works globally to support, celebrate and advocate for the full participation of women in all aspects of the computing field. This article presents a brief history of ACM-W with an emphasis on the global growth of the organization. A summary of the primary programs of ACM-W is provided to further highlight the global impact of our work. Also included are examples of how ACM-W is partnering with other computing and scientific organizations to realize greater impact in the arena of gender equality.

Science in Africa is expanding, but it is important to establish whether the scientific community experiences a gender gap. Where survey results from the project “A Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical, Computing, and Natural Sciences: How to Measure It, How to Reduce It?” are available for Africa, they indicate that the gender gaps in science are comparable to those in other regions of the world. The major significant survey result for Africa is that approximately 22% of respondents who are women, and 4% of men, report first-hand experience of sexual harassment. Recommendations are quoted from the regional meeting of African scientists at the final conference of the project. The activities of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), and the International Mathematical Union (IMU) in Africa are described, and ways of working for change are recommended.

The gender gap in science is intrinsically linked to gender-based violence in academia. Gender-based violence is a form of discrimination against women that occurs in an academic environment, and it often takes the form of sexual harassment. Some European countries, such as France, Italy, and Ireland, have solid legal systems in place to address sexual harassment in academia. However, as the report of the European Research Area and Innovation Committee Standing Working Group on sexual harassment points out, not all European countries have legislation in this area, or if they do, it is often ineffective. While national surveys generally show that it is difficult to prevent or combat sexual harassment in universities, practices related to corporate social responsibility could be used to start the conversation about the social responsibility of universities to fight against sexual harassment, which is reflected in this article.

Women have not been represented enough in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines in most countries around the world, despite their advancements in these areas. Unfortunately, they continue to represent only a small proportion of faculty members in science and technology fields, especially at more prestigious research institutions. Women still need to cope with discrimination, with an unconscious bias, as well as with family demands. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, fewer than 30 % researchers from all over the world are women. Analysis of “ A Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical, Computing, and Natural Sciences, How to measure it? How to reduce it?” survey advanced our understanding of this phenomenon and identified various factors that cause it . The recommendations address a variety of groups: instructors and parents of girls in primary, secondary, and higher education, educational organizations, scientific unions. and other worldwide organizations. This paper will describe the situation of women scientists in Israel, with examples of chemistry women in the academia.

We consider various factors impacting the participation of women in science throughout the world, with a particular emphasis on developing countries. For the world as a whole, we find that when the percentage of women working in science in a country is plotted vs. the per capita GDP of the country (adjusted for purchasing power parity) the data fall on an inverted U-shaped ‘boomerang’ curve. Thus, as per capita wealth increases, the percentage of women in science first increases and then falls. This is in marked contrast to the (right-side-up) U-shaped curve that is well-established for the participation of women in the labor force as a whole, suggesting that there are factors in the culture of science that result in opposing trends to those observed in the general workforce. This also results in many developing countries having a much higher participation of women in the scientific workforce than is seen in economically developed countries. Contradicting previous reports to the contrary, we find a positive correlation between gender equality in science and the degree of overall gender equity in the country. Thus, we do not find evidence for the claim that greater gender equity results in the manifestation of innate gender differences in preferences for science. We find differing patterns of retention in science for women in developing and developed countries. We also briefly discuss other factors that make it difficult for women in developing countries to follow a scientific career, or to advance in their careers.

This essay contextualizes recently measured global gender gaps in science and mathematics within three different themes relevant for enhancing equity in science: journal peer review policies, academic service at US higher education institutions, and parental leave policies and usage. The article aims to problematize potential approaches for reducing such gender gaps, and thus build capacity to advance evidence-grounded transformative change. Framed as an equity provocation for the science community, this piece hopes to elicit productive thought and evidence-based action through informed perspective taking. The vision is not just to enhance gender equity in science and mathematics, but also to ensure the continued quality and relevance of our scientific endeavors for today’s diverse and global world.

Despite the efforts of the Korean government to implement gender mainstreaming in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), the gender gap remains intact. The low rank of Gender Gap Indices (GGI) of Korea is mainly due to the low economic participation of women, especially in STEM. However, Korea has been steadily advancing in terms of government policies for women in STEM. The enactment of the law on fostering and supporting women in science and technology in 2002 is attributed to the collective efforts of women scientists and engineers through a women in STEM organization. The next task for women’s networks would be to identify the barriers of gender disparities by gathering the voices of women in STEM.

It is now generally recognised that to get the very best scientific outputs we need a diversity of inputs and talents however, progress is still slow. Whilst we have made some progress to improve equality, diversity and inclusion in the chemical sciences in relation to gender, there is still a long way to go. Today chemistry does not yet welcome everyone—but it should, and it will.

From 2017 to 2019 the International Science Council funded a project investigating the gender gap in science disciplines. The aim of the project was to collect and analyse data on the gender gap and to create a database of good practices for encouraging girls and young women to study and pursue education and careers in the mathematical, computing, and natural sciences. In this article, we draw on our work in the Gender Gap in Science project to (1) explain the nature of the gender gap problem, (2) give examples of initiatives that scientists can take to help solve the gender gap problem, and (3) offer guidelines on how to evaluate the effectiveness of interventions designed to address the gender gap in science.

In recent decades research in the social sciences, including in the history of science, has shown that women scientists continue to be depicted as exceptions to the rule that a normal scientist is a man. The underlying message is that being an outstanding scientist is incompatible with being an ordinary woman. From women scientists’ reported experiences, we learn that family responsibilities as well as sexism in their working environment are two major hindrances to their careers. This experience is now backed by statistical analysis, so that what used to be regarded as an individual problem for each woman of science can now be identified as a multi-layered social phenomenon, to be analysed and remedied as such. Over the last five years, international scientific unions have come together to address these issues, first through the Gender Gap in Science Project, and recently through the setting up of a Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science (SCGES) whose task is to foster measures to reduce the barriers that women scientists have to surmount in their working lives.