Please cite an info-source supporting your view.
Many thanks for sharing your thoughts/expertise.
Stay safe,
Ale
Health care appears to be well represented by both genders. Biological positions are being compromised since the beginning of the ongoing financial crises. I believe this is making it difficult for any new entrants to environment health related jobs, not any gender in particular.
I would argue that it's not necessarily more male dominated than other fields (in Ecology). I don't have a citation for this, but I have been thinking for a while that it would be interesting to analyze this. Perhaps having in mind gender representation in specific conferences like Neobiota or EMAPi, and the Journals like Biological Invasions and Neobiota. Again, without any review on this, what I can say is that as in other fields the papers that are supposed to represent experts opinions on something related to biological invasions tend have only 1-3 women as co-authors (if any). However, I think that this probably just reflects the inequalities of academia, i.e. more male representation in higher positions,. Because then these professors, etc. will be the "experts" in these papers. Here is one of many studies analyzing the gender-bias: Article Unravelling the gender productivity gap in science: A meta-a...
Many thanks Florencia Yannelli for your insight! spearheading this sensitive and complex debate! I have a story to tell you: While organizing the Xth Int Conference on Marine Bioinvasions (2018), we set ourselves the goal of achieving gender (and geographic) equality in the Keynote Speakers invited, and in as many other aspects of the meeting as possible. We succeeded in that. Technical Report International Conference on Marine Bioinvasions Xth Edition ...
. However, I can tell you that it took us too many times the effort we thought it would take us. The number of male researchers leading teams, labs, groups and any other organization in the field worldwide, simply overwhelmed us. We worked tirelessly to accomplish our goal, but if we had been looking for speakers independently of their gender, the search would have finished a lot faster (meaning several months earlier). In part, that was the reason why we strive to achieve our goal more than ever before. But we are pending the compilation of strategies to change that pattern.... and so here I am. First, trying to trigger debate, in order to slowly unveil the pattern (which although clear to me, as you saw, it is not formally reported yet) and see what others in the field think. Second, start compiling ideas, and expertise, about what to do in order to actually revert that pattern (not literally, but in the sense of reaching some sort of balance if possible). Muchas gracias again Florencia for sharing your thoughts and expertise in the field.Abrazos
Ale
Hi Ale! I am not surprised. In the recent WISE conference, we talked about this. One of the reasons that cam out for the struggle to find women is as you mentioned, that more labs led by male researchers, but the other is that the few women that are in those positions tend to be overwhelmed with responsibilities (not even including household things). That is, we have fewer women than men to try to get the 50% representation in committees, journal editorial boards, conferences, etc. This is also a problem. Thank you for opening the debate!
Health care appears to be well represented by both genders. Biological positions are being compromised since the beginning of the ongoing financial crises. I believe this is making it difficult for any new entrants to environment health related jobs, not any gender in particular.
64% of the colleagues voting in a quick poll I did on Twitter think the study of Biological Invasions is dominated by male-gender researchers, and 8% of them added a "but" comment/explanation. On the other hand, 36% of the voting colleagues think the field is not dominated by male-gender researchers. Not one person in the later group added a "but" comment or explanation. Polls like these, where voters may be or feel themselves in a conflict of interest, show how complex, sensitive, and uncomfortable this issue is. It stirs some of our most (modern) internal fears, including fear to be: misjudged, discriminative or considered discriminative, unfair, shallow, etc.
We all know this is a problem affecting the International Scientific Community as a whole across all disciplines, and so people tend to think it is impossible to do something about it. However, it will be a lot easier if each one of us looks for a way to help within its own discipline, institution, organization, or lab. I am aware of the fact that "easier" doesn´t mean "easy". But we have to start doing something about it. This poll -as this RG debate- may be too quick or small. But still, I think it points us in the right direction to advance.
Ale
See the poll here: https://twitter.com/Ale_Bortolus/status/1326973067780907008?s=20
I think the study of everything is dominated by men. I have to be honest, some men believe that there are more women researchers than men (at least in Argentina) but most of them have the lowest positions (assistant), which means we're not able to be the "head" of the laboratory. It's difficult to struggle with motherhood and gender stereotypes, and this indeed reflects in our careers, no matter what we study.
I've even witnessed some interviews where researchers chose men over women because "we have plenty of women working here, we need more men" totally unfair if we deserve it. I believe in what we can achieve in equal conditions.
Dear I find this question very interesting but as mentioned by many of first answers, I also believe that men are more involved in any kind of research than women expect for gender related researches. But, I suggest you to download a number of "Biological Invasions" related studies and see how many are men compared to women;
Best,
Legrand Cirimwami.
PhD Candidate in Biodiversity management.
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