Beyond Pink Microscopes: How Two Researchers are Changing the Culture of Science
Time and time again, studies have shown that diverse teams of scientists come up with more innovative solutions, produce better results, and publish articles that are cited more often. Yet despite these advantages, and big-budget campaigns to push more girls into scientific fields, there is still a shocking lack of gender diversity in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and medicine). In physics, for example, 84 percent of the faculty and 94 percent are white. What needs to be done? According to Dr. Jess Wade, a physics postdoc at Imperial College London, and Dr. Clara Barker, a materials scientist at Oxford University, glossy diversity campaigns won’t work unless the culture of science changes first.
Jess Wade calls herself “the least useful doctor in my family”; both her parents are medical professionals. The journal Nature begged to differ, declaring Dr. Wade one of the “ten people who mattered” in science in 2018. She writes one biography of a woman scientist a day for the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, where women scientists are vastly underrepresented. She has added over 750 biographies and counting. “Do pink campaign videos or girls-only science days have any real impact?” Wade wonders. “Many campaigns broadcast the message that there is something wrong with girls for not choosing STEM. But girls don’t need fixing, it is the way we talk about and teach science that must change. Academia has to become a more equal place that welcomes underrepresented groups.”
That’s easier said than done. There are huge differences in quality and prestige between universities that can make or break scientific careers. “Top scientists most often start their careers at Cambridge, Oxford, Yale, MIT or Harvard,” says Wade. “Imagine if you're a woman of color at a university that people haven't heard of in a country where the first language isn't English. The structure is set up to not support you to get great jobs, even if you have the most incredible ideas in the world. That structural inequality is hard to change.”
Power imbalances within academia also set students back. Universities rely heavily on the prestige and research funding attracted by top professors. “In that sense, academia is a bit like Hollywood,” Wade observes. “It makes it difficult to tackle misconduct.”
The success of young PhD students depends largely on their relationship with their supervisors. Wades notes that to obtain references and contacts, PhD students often go along with what their supervisors tell them. “Because students are so dependent, supervisors can get away with sexual harassment, bullying and discrimination. It’s a difficult problem to tackle, because when a supervisor has to leave because of [power] abuse, their postdocs and PhD students lose their research money. One solution would be to put teams in charge of research groups rather than almighty individuals. If someone is suspended, the group can continue their work.”
“It would also enable people to take parental or sick leave, which is difficult today, because of the strong dependence on individuals,” says Wade. It is an implicit standard that academic staff work more hours than their contracts require and don’t take leave. Shrinking research budgets increase the pressure: researchers increasingly have to gather their own salary in the form of temporary grants and subsidies.
A 2018 global survey of physicists found that after becoming a parent, women were significantly more likely to spend less time at work (43% of women), choose a more flexible schedule (42%), and feel their career or promotion rate slowed (30%). Wade believes that a better work-life balance is key in solving science’s diversity problem. “I don't think we have to have quotas,” she says. “So much can be done to enable scientists to live a connected life with their family, friends, and community. Dads could be made more aware that they can take paternity leave. Parents could be supported to put their kids in university nurseries. We could move away from short-term contracts and the idea that you must work abroad to become a great scientist. We can employ technology to work together internationally without having to move and uproot each time. If we make science a better place for everyone, it will lead to more diversity.”
According to Wade, homogeneity in scientific fields is also caused by a persistent stereotype of what a scientist looks like. When school children around the world are asked to draw a scientist, for instance, the majority still draw an old white man in a lab coat. Role models can help challenge such unconscious biases. This is the domain of Dr. Clara Barker, a materials scientist at Oxford University. In addition to her academic work, she leads eight LGBT+ youth groups and speaks regularly in schools to show students that not all scientists look like Albert Einstein. “Young people don't expect to see an Oxford scientist with tattoos; their first question is usually where I got my tattoos! Older LGBT+ students have more serious questions: they want to know whether there is a place for them in science. The truth is that I can't answer that everything will be great for them,” Barker says.
According to a 2019 study by the Institute of Physics, the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry, LGBT+ scientists indicate that they have experienced higher levels of “exclusionary, intimidating, offensive or harassing behaviour” than their straight, cisgendered counterparts. This is especially true for trans people in physics, half of whom have experienced harassment, according to a survey by the American Physical Society's Ad Hoc Committee on LGBT+ Issues. Additionally, scientists belonging to a sexual minority are more likely to leave their field. Barker has experienced this firsthand, having at times considered ending her own scientific career. She has a working class background and is transgender, two aspects of her identity that for many years made her feel alone in the academic world. In the first 14 years of her career, she met only two people who openly identified as LGBT+ in STEM.
“I spent so long thinking that I couldn't be a scientist if I transitioned, so I tried very hard to sabotage my own career. When I eventually transitioned, I experienced some discrimination, but honestly, most people didn’t care. However, since we don't talk about sexuality in academia, these assumptions persist and people feel pushed out,” says Barker. “When I first gave a talk at Oxford as a trans woman, students came up to me telling me that until that day, they too had believed that they couldn’t be themselves and stay in academia.”
Barker stresses that while role models can empower prospective students, diversity initiatives only have a lasting effect if universities ensure that students belonging to an underrepresented group want to stay once they have found their way. She once worked in an engineering department that only had women's bathrooms on every third floor. “Small details like that can make you feel unwelcome. It is even worse when elite universities try to recruit working class people without realizing that the rents and living costs are so expensive that students can't afford to live in the area. If you're not ready to support those people when they get into university, you are doing them a complete disservice,” she says.
Like Wade, Barker denounces the lack of work-life balance and the pressure to move internationally. She points out that having to move away from your support group can take a heavy toll on minorities. “I suffered a lot from isolation when I spent four years researching in Switzerland. At the time, I was trying to decide whether to transition, but I had nobody to talk to. As a result, I was not writing up the science experiments I was doing. Being away from my support network affected my scientific output.”
Wade and Barker spend so much time campaigning that one might almost forget they both have busy scientific and private lives. To remind people of this, Barker always talks about her dog and hobbies when she gives a keynote, “because scientists are people too.” But spending a lot of time on unrewarded diversity work can damage scientific careers. In recent years Barker has focused on supporting LGBT+ students, but now she has to secure her next research grant. “I don't know how long I will be able to continue this way of working; like many scientists, I work on temporary contracts,” she says.
If universities want to increase diversity and equality without overloading role models, everyone has to make a contribution to ensure that women and LGBT + scientists feel truly at home in their workplace, says Barker. “I received an award from the university for my diversity work. One of my supervisors immediately hung it on our lab wall. I'm not being tucked away; he wanted to show people who visit our lab that I work there and what I do. That small gesture means so much to me,” Barker.
Wade made world news for two weeks in 2018 after The Guardian picked up the story of her Wikipedia work. She received responses from all ranks of the university, making her feel seen and appreciated. She also feels supported by colleagues who nominate her for awards and fellowships, who celebrate her work, and who offer to mentor her. “We can all use our privileges to support others. Black academics shouldn't be doing all the legwork to support young Black people. I also commit myself to promoting the achievements of Black and minority ethnic people. Similarly, men can promote women. It shouldn't always be the underrepresented groups campaigning for themselves,” says Wade.
Barker believes academia can make a significant leap forward if established scientists are more open to and curious about people who belong to underrepresented groups. “Sometimes people react defensively, thinking diversity advocates want to kick all old white men out of STEM. That’s nonsense. We want to work with them and come up with great ideas that will make the world a better place. Isn't that ultimately what drives all scientists?”
