-
Asked by anon-253415 to Sylvia on 19 May 2020.
-
Sylvia Soldatou answered on 19 May 2020:
That is a great question!
I believe that things have started to change in the last few years as we can see numerous successful female scientists doing amazing research. However, the percentage of female scientists having position of power is still a lot lower than that for females. In the academic sector where I belong, there are a lot of female PhD students, less female lecturers and even less professors. I want to believe that there is no gender discrimination, but female scientists have to get support from their work and family environment to try and find this precious work-life balance. However, not every female scientists has that opportunity and sometimes they have to choose between career and family.
-
Comments
Kirsty commented on :
Yes, unfortunately I think it still is.
There are studies where they ask primary school children to “draw a scientist” and they nearly always draw a male scientist (with glasses and a lab coat!) rather than a female one, so even primary school children associate science with men more than women. Which is a result of the media and society, I guess…
There is some work being done to try to address this. One thing is to try and increase the visibility of female scientists – if we see female scientists on the TV and news more it becomes more normal and will help to erode the stereotypes.
Some people are looking back in history and finding female scientists that did amazing work but didn’t get the recognition that they deserved, so they are trying to re-write history to add in the women that were left out! I think it’s a fascinating subject.
In my personal experience, I find Environmental Science is a really inclusive community, and people really want gender balance and to support everyone, so there is a real desire to do better on this. So I am hopeful for the future!
Emily commented on :
I think this is perhaps the public perception but not actually the reality but it is definitely changing and moving in the right direction. In my team for example there are 17 members and only 4 are male and the team leader is female! More and more the scientists we are starting to see in the media are female, you may have noticed this in the daily government briefings at the moment, so this is helping to change perceptions.
Emily commented on :
I think the answer will change a bit depending on who you ask. For example, my school was single sex, only one science teacher was male and a lot of our teachers had PhDs and/or some research background either in a university or in industry.
So in ‘modern real life’ I never particularly thought it was, but a lot of the science history is very male-heavy because there were fewer women making discoveries in the past. That’s why it’s really important to highlight the ones there were.
I think the others are right and it is changing, but there is still (especially in universities) the “leaky pipeline” effect, where you lose women at each stage, and it’s important that people look into why that is still happening.
Sophie commented on :
Yes and no…
Yes, because I think the public generally perceives science as a subject for boys. I’m not sure that the media does much to change this either – any stories you read online about girls working in Science and Engineering tends to focus on how many obstacles girls have had to overcome to work in their chosen field and how men treat women differently in the workplace.
However, I think that generally the reality is that, yes there are less women in science and engineering but that is changing and we certainly are not any worse than our male counterparts!
I’ve never found that being a girl has held me back in anyway and barely notice it when I am the only female in a room with 15-20 men. At my company, where I work as a Civil Engineer, we take on 40% female graduates every year! Furthermore, my team (where I work in Flood Risk and Coastal Engineering) is 50% females and 50% males! The camaraderie and support between women in my industry is amazing!
Hope this answers your question!
alinefornear commented on :
Great question! I would say it’s happening less and less in more mature countries.
There’s still a glass ceiling for women in several industries but we’re getting there !
I see more and more girls applying for science jobs – in fact in my old department we were 6 girls (including the boss) to one male colleague. At university there were not many girls in my class – that never stopped us though!
From an early age some girls may be encouraged to take parts in more “social” activities rather than science, and be encouraged to take up more “typical feminine” roles. That also happens in academia. But the more successful role models there are out there, the more normalised the topic of girls in science will be and girls who like should feel more comfortable in following their passion.