Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Sunday April 23 2017, @01:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-step-in-the-right-direction dept.

Invited speakers at neuroimmunology conferences in 2016 were disproportionately male, and not because male scientists were producing higher quality work, according to a new study. Instead, qualified female scientists were overlooked by organizing committees. Robyn Klein, MD, PhD, a professor of medicine, of neuroscience, and of pathology and immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, discussed the findings, published online April 18 in Nature Immunology.

[...] There's a growing body of research showing that female scientists' contributions to their fields are often not reflected in the number of speaker invitations they receive, and that this under-recognition hurts their careers and slows the pace of scientific progress. While this bias may be unconscious, data from sources such as BiasWatchNeuro -- founded in 2015 to track the proportion of female conference speakers relative to the proportion of female faculty in the relevant field -- show that it is widespread. Encouragingly, the data also show that bringing such biases to light helps to reduce their impact.

Robyn S Klein, et al. Speaking out about gender imbalance in invited speakers improves diversity. Nature Immunology, 2017; 18 (5): 475 DOI: 10.1038/ni.3707


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday April 23 2017, @05:00PM (6 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Sunday April 23 2017, @05:00PM (#498395) Journal

    You're confusing gender with sex again. I'm with the radfems on one thing: gender identity is partly social and partly external. It emerges from not only someone's chromosomes, hormones, and phenotype, but also how society expects people with said chromosomes, hormones, and phenotype to behave. This is why in some societies you get "third gender" categories like the two-spirited concept, and in others you don't.

    And before you ask, this is coming from a cisgender woman here who is perfectly happy to be as femme as society says. I like it. But others don't, and that's okay.

    Does this help any? Do you even care? Or are you just punching down at something you don't and won't make even a little effort to understand for some reason?

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 23 2017, @09:10PM (5 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Sunday April 23 2017, @09:10PM (#498516) Journal

    I think there's two genders in the majority of cases, let's say 98%. Then occasionally the mix of genes, phenotype, hormones, environment (stress) and social cues will enter the unlikely but not impossible territory. Especially stress during pregnancy seems to mess with hormones and thus the fetus get a hormone mix of another sex but still not enough to actually become that sex.

    The above reason may be why some females actually think like a man and why some men think in a feminine way but is a man. When it comes to science, male thinking usually pays of because of visual, spatial and item thinking. And thus why some but not so many females are really successful in science. Another factor is what area is closest to ones core and which will aid it. Such that many males go into say mechanical engineering (things) while females tend to lean on say biology (caring).

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday April 24 2017, @04:26AM (4 children)

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday April 24 2017, @04:26AM (#498649) Journal

      Oh yeah, my mother was stressed as hell when she was carrying me and kind of ill too. And voila, I'm into other women and I love traditionally male pursuits like STEM and computers...BUT, also have a maternal streak a mile wide and am heavy into cooking and cats and babysitting etc. So...correlation maybe isn't causation but it's probably not insignificant either.

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by kaszz on Monday April 24 2017, @08:34AM (1 child)

        by kaszz (4211) on Monday April 24 2017, @08:34AM (#498713) Journal

        I read about a maths professor that noticed many of his female students at advanced level had small breasts. Which in turn is dependent on estrogen levels. I had similar hints in night life too in regards to life priorities etc.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Soylentbob on Monday April 24 2017, @01:12PM

          by Soylentbob (6519) on Monday April 24 2017, @01:12PM (#498813)

          Or maybe the more attractive men and women (assuming here that most men prefer bigger secondary sexual characteristics) get more distractions during their education and therefore sometimes drop out earlier :-)
          Most people crave some recognition, and it seems reasonable that attractive people might be less inclined to earn such recognition by hard studies.

          Regarding influence of pre-natal testosterone-exposure, here [plos.org] is an interesting article. (I didn't read it thoroughly enough to say anything about the validity, but looked interesting.) It compares not only math-ability and 2D:4D (index- to ring-finder ratio, as a potential indicator of testosterone-exposure) separated by gender, but also separated by different cities (Manila/Philippines vs. Moscow/Russia).

          We have shown in both Moscow and Manila that the degree to which prenatal testosterone is linked to academic achievement exhibits some nonlinearity, and the precise relationship is dependent on gender, faculty, or subject choice, and on which hand is used to proxy for prenatal testosterone.

          To the extent we do not yet understand the precise mechanism through which prenatal androgens manifest themselves in the right versus the left hand, this suggests that much more needs to be done to learn how we can use these measures to study the effects of prenatal testosterone on achievement. Our research combined with the findings of [17] make clear that the potential nonlinearity in prenatal testosterone’s effects coupled to the differential benefits of abstract reasoning in different contexts would lead to highly particular links of 2D4D to achievement depending on field or choice of achievement measure. We might speculate for example that the strong results in sports or in financial trading are in areas where there is no tradeoff to greater abstract reasoning combined with greater risk taking. In other situations, nonlinearity is more likely to emerge and it might be harder to discern these interactions without further identifying restrictions.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @01:22PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @01:22PM (#498817)

        heavy into cooking and cats

        These are material traits?
        I know nature versus nurture makes things hard to track down, but these seem much more cultural.

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday April 24 2017, @05:35PM

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Monday April 24 2017, @05:35PM (#498954) Journal

          Maybe? I know I see food as an expression of love, like my mother does, but I'm also heavily into nutrition and organic chem so that gets refined into "healthy, cost-effective, well-prepared food in the proper portion sizes." Really, I've got this weird mix of masculine and hyper-feminine traits. Ever see someone wearing steel-toed workboots, blue jeans and a black lace bra at the same time?

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...