There are a lot of studies that attest to the gender gap in STEM fields and the sexism that exists in the hiring process. And I mean a lot of studies.
For example, in 1999, a study showed that even with the same credentials, a male candidate was more likely to be hired than a female candidate.
But, you may be thinking, that was over 15 years ago, it must have changed. Unfortunately, it really didn’t.
Take, for example, a study from 2012 where science faculty members were asked to rate two hypothetical applications for lab manager. These applications were identical except one was submitted by a female applicant and one by a male applicant. Not only did (both male AND female) faculty view the male applicant as more competent, they were more likely to hire that applicant and mentor him. The kicker? They offered a starting salary that was $4,000 higher than that offered to the female applicant.
Just last year, a study showed that even when offered demonstrated ability of a candidate’s proficiency, the male applicant in the mathmatics industry was still chosen over the female applicant.
And if you think it’s restricted to just the job market, think again. A study in 2012, showed that female and minority students were less likely to be mentored than white males.
Even when the students rate themselves, women still come in last. In 2013, a group of grad students was asked to rank abstracts for a conference. Abstracts attributed to a woman ranked lower than the same abstracts when they were attributed to men.
So we should probably just point out these differences and everyone will get on board with fixing them right? Wrong again.
Studies conducted in 2003 and 2013, respectively, showed that claims of sexism in STEM were met with amusement and trivialization.
So what’s the point?
But, I can sit here and list studies all day, because the point is that even when presented with this information and evidence of a gender bias, these journals are often dismissed online.
The real crux of this issue is actually a study, but it’s a student that looks at how studies about gender bias were accepted online. The researchers looked at a sample of 831 comments responding to articles about social scientific, experimental evidence of bias in STEM. (Just as a side note, each comment was counted as a unit of analysis versus the commenter, himself.)
The three articles used were taken from The New York Times website, Discover Magazine science blog, and IFL science. The researchers took each of the comments and tried to decipher gender and if the person was in a STEM-related field. Each of these things was coded independently by two researchers who agreed in 99 percent of cases. This means things like unisex names and people where gender couldn’t be confirmed by self-identification, a picture or clearly gendered name, were not used for the study. Of the 831 original comments, 423 were coded for gender. Of those, 240 were from women. As far as STEM-affiliation, 170 were confirmed as STEM-related and the remaining 661 were undetermined.
The study being discussed in these articles was a paper on STEM gender bias published in 2012. This is the study about the lab manager selection process.
The results
So what were the results? Not so great.
While 67.4 percent of comments agreed that the gender bias exists, only 29 percent of those were men. Meanwhile, 100 percent of the people expressing gratitude for the student were women. About 9.5 percent of comments argued sexism doesn’t exist and about 68 percent of those were men.
Related: Why being a female writer in tech doesn’t make me an idiot
Alarmingly, 22 percent of the comments justified the existence of a gender bias with between 79 and 99 percent of that being men. As an added (insulting) bonus, 59.8 percent justified gender bias via biological explanations, 29.6 cited non-biological reasons and 10.6 percent said women perpetrate it by discriminating against other women.
About 5 percent of the comments were sexist comments against women. About 24 percent totally disagreed with the results and said either the bias didn’t exist at all, insisted the bias was against men, or criticized the method of research.
I could go on and on about this fascinating, if not horrifying study, but science shows it will all be explained away in the comments anyway. I should note, however, that comments are notorious for being extremely polarizing and also full of terrible people. However, they can also suggest a lot about the general attitude of the population.This is something we’ve discussed a lot at ECN because while we have a great community, we also have a few very opinionated commenters. This study showed that only .5 percent of commenters noted their opinion was changed by the article, but I hope that the number will be a lot higher on ECN.
The takeaway here, is that a problem exists and it exists in multiple layers of society from the classroom to the lab to the boardroom and it must change.
