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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
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 24 2017, @12:13AM (1 child)
I am comfortably retired, and so can have no possible present stake in harassing anyone at work,
Yes, since you can no longer personally benefit from a return to the good old days you can't possibly be emotionally invested in a return to the old ways.
Even more revealing is that you still have yet to make a single argument as to why your interpretation of the current standards of behavior is in anyway a drag on equality.
(Score: 1) by fyngyrz on Monday April 24 2017, @12:27PM
Emotionally invested, eh? Hardly. I'm simply observing that as you people work so hard to cut yourselves off from the sexual aspects of your humanity, you're doing yourself out of a lot. I think that's sad for you and those similarly bewildered as you, but it's not sad for me in any way. You're confusing my position as an informed observer with some imaginary wish to participate – I have no wish to participate whatsoever, I am wholly content to observe. Even train wrecks are interesting.
Sorry, I thought it was blindingly obvious. But certainly I can explain.
An office environment where you can ask someone out to dinner – and they can comfortably say yes or no – is more pleasant than one where you can't. An office environment where someone doesn't come apart at the seams, possibly followed by repercussions from HR and/or management if you do ask them out to dinner is less risky for everyone. An office environment where people aren't suppressing their natural sexuality is more human. An office environment where people are confident in their self-images is healthier than one where people are frightened of their own attractiveness, and that of others.
Anything that goes against normal, non-harmful human urges in order to achieve otherwise laudable goals is a drag on actually reaching that achievement. You're in the position here of trying to accomplish laudable goal X, while requiring uncomfortable and abnormal goal Y be carried along with it. That's your drag, right there.
If equality as a movement can be mapped away from the uncomfortable and abnormal - to the needed, such as equal pay for equal work, equal opportunity for equally capable candidates, elimination of coercive behavior (which, by the way, includes telling people what they may and may not say to each other on a friendly social level), equivalent access to government, medical care, business, service... then you will be in pursuit of something uniformly valuable, laudable, worthy.
If, however, you continue to tether that to trying to make people forget that they are sexual beings during their working hours, there's your drag.
I think the fact that you need this explained to you illuminates the fundamental problem. You possess no deep understanding that healthy humanity encompasses healthy sexuality. Without that, you can't conceive of a generally human-friendly working environment, and instead wish to operate in one sterilized of personal social risk and reward, as if you were an automaton. My observation is that this is definitely not a healthy path.
The last word is yours, if you like. I've made my points.