Why gender science matters

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Create Account See Subscription Options. Continue reading with a Scientific American subscription. Subscribe Now You may cancel at any time. We probably should have used male and female stem cells. Including gender in research could attract more women to science as well, Schiebinger says, because careers and avenues of research suddenly can become relevant to women. She says that as more women get involved in the sciences—or any field historically dominated by men—the general knowledge in that field tends to expand.

It's an idea that dovetails with a major shift that has taken place in how scientific inquiry is being carried out by research teams. In science, the stereotypical image of research geniuses making discoveries while working solo has given way to a more collaborative model, in which research is done by teams.

Increasingly, these teams are being made up of scientists from different fields. That's what happened on the Human Genome Project, whose goal was the complete mapping and understanding of all the genes of human beings.

It drew researchers from fields that included biology, chemistry, genetics, physics, mathematics, and computer science. Involving more qualified women, as well as additional "social identities"—gay people, African Americans and Latinos, those with physical disabilities, and others—can enrich the creativity and insight of research projects and increase the chances for true innovation, says Scott Page, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies diversity in complex systems.

According to the Atlantic Monthly magazine's cover story in May, "Half a dozen global studies, conducted by the likes of Goldman Sachs and Columbia University, have found that companies employing women in large numbers outperform their competitors on every measure of profitability.

Computer science is one field with very low participation by women. Half or more Internet users are women, and women are known to be early and enthusiastic adopters of most technologies. But the number receiving related bachelor's degrees, for example, actually has been declining; women now make up less than 20 percent of such graduates, based on the latest data analyzed by the National Science Foundation.

As a result, the Internet is being built primarily by white and Asian men. Much of the industry supporting it involves a "bro-coding," Silicon Valley culture in which you're expected to be working even when you're not working. Even if the programmers carefully study the best science they can find, he says, "it's hard to imagine that how they interpret it isn't gendered in some way.

There aren't a lot of women in engineering either though the numbers vary by subdiscipline, with electrical and mechanical engineering reflecting few women and civil, biological, and chemical engineering showing more.

Women received 45 percent of all math- and science-related doctoral degrees in ; only 22 percent were in engineering. What we think of as "science problems" affect everyone—children, women, and men. What science decides to solve and for whom things are designed have a lot to do with who's doing the scientific inquiry. Will there be more push to develop drugs for male-pattern baldness or for a seat belt that won't cause further injury, or death, to pregnant women and their fetuses in car crashes?

Analysts say that more women are needed in research to increase the range of inventions and breakthroughs that come from looking at problems differently than men typically do. They're all about control. It's not like what a woman might want"—or be more likely to think of. It's certainly not that men couldn't invent a house that cleans itself, she says.

They just may be less likely to rank it as high as women might in the hierarchy of possibilities, if they think of it at all. That women are also raised to be more socially aware than men points to another largely untapped quality in women, particularly in the realm of leadership. What difference might broader emotional intelligence make? As a rule, says Gross, the Stanford psychologist, women tend to exhibit more "communal" qualities fostering good relations to build community, creating an inclusive environment , while men tend to exhibit more "agency" qualities taking leadership, making things happen.

Having women's emotional skills in the mix, he says, can yield "immensely positive" results in scientific research. Women are well-represented in biological sciences, psychology, and medicine especially the "three p's"—pediatrics, primary care, and psychiatry, branches that typically involve lower pay and more contact with patients than other medical professions. Iranian-born American mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani of Stanford recently became the first woman to win the world's "Nobel Prize" of mathematics, the Fields Medal, since it was established in But even in areas in which the number of women in science is high, they are not proportionally represented among its leaders.

We don't want to just have more talented women, Gross says. We want to make sure that women with well-developed skills don't end up—and it happens all the time—stuck at lower levels working in labs.

James Gross, the Stanford psychology professor, has a vision. It's of a world in which talented girls and boys feel free to pursue lives historically perceived as not appropriate for their gender—"for the simple reason that it's better for them and it's better for society. In the meantime, he's doing what he can to encourage his year-old daughter to remain open to developing all of her math and science talents—even as she comes to realize how unusual it is for a girl to choose that path, and how lonely it might be.

All rights reserved. Share Tweet Email. The percentage also varies by field, with the highest percentage of women in health and life sciences and the lowest in engineering and computer science. The report reveals the cause of that shortfall:. So why do we want more women in STEM? With this level of gender imbalance, we are not properly exploiting the UK scientific talent base.

If we want more high-quality scientists, I am absolutely convinced that we will find them amongst the female population, and that is why encouraging more young women into STEM and supporting them properly is so vitally important. Indeed, more STEM professionals are needed in the workforce.

If that trend continues, the US will have a shortage of 1. And in engineering — a field particularly in short supply — the UK will need an additional 20, engineering graduates every year to meet demand, according to the EngineeringUK report. Still, universities are having a hard time retaining and, in some cases, recruiting women for STEM programs. Stirling said Imperial colleges faces two main challenges:. Stirling said an important way to address this problem is to encourage more young women to go into STEM by combatting gender bias in children.

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