Equity for Women in Science: Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Advancement

“Women are underrepresented in almost every field of science,” contend Sugimoto, a public policy professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Larivière (Measuring Research), an information science professor at the University of Montreal, in this damning study of gender inequities in the sciences. Women, the authors find, lag behind men on publication productivity, career advancement, funding, and related metrics, with negative consequences for research (women’s greater likelihood to sustain injuries in car crashes has been partially attributed to male engineers testing car safety using only dummies modeled on men). Sugimoto and Larivière highlight the setbacks women scientists have faced throughout history and recount the stories of such trailblazers as paleontologist Mary Anning, astronomer Annie Jump Cannon, and industrial engineer Lillian Gilbreth, whose publisher refused to credit her for cowriting the influential 1912 Primer of Scientific Management with her husband. The authors’ sensible list of solutions include creating “institutional report cards for gender equity,” conducting salary equity reviews, and devoting resources to help women obtain grants. The empirical analysis of disparities in funding, impact indicators, and institutional mobility provide rigorous evidence for the obstacles that continue to hamper women scientists. The result is a scathing indictment of scientific institutions’ failure to promote gender equity. (Mar.)