Talking about paternity, maternity, and scientific production is a sensitive topic. But, as a mother and a doctoral student, I think this conversation is crucial for us to have a brief dimension of how these two important roles in social life - motherhood and fatherhood - strongly impact researchers in very different ways.

 

Let's start, then, with a current fact. In May 2020 and May 2021, US researchers from the Science Opinion Panel Survey (SciOPS) asked 300 scientists from the fields of biology, engineering, and biochemistry about the impacts of COVID on their research activities. It is almost obvious to say that all participants were impacted, mainly by shutdowns at universities, interruptions in laboratory work, and collaborations with other scientists. But when the research focus is directed to domestic life, the impacts are different, with parental day care and virtual education impacting more strong women and researchers at the beginning of their scientific careers. Of the survey participants, 50% of women and assistant professors reported difficulties in concentrating on research activities, a percentage lower than that found for men (29%) and senior professors (36%). During the pandemic, women had much less time than men to work on research, a scenario that gets even worse when considering women with children. According to a survey answered by almost 3,500 Brazilian women (Staniscuaski et al., 2021), black mothers and women were the most affected in their scientific production during COVID-19.

 

But if it seems that only non-trivial facts are capable of impacting researchers differently, other contemporary studies show that gender inequality can be seen as structural in the scientific environment. Research shows that married women and women with children are less likely than childless women to move from doctoral students to a tenure track position. The same study showed that, when compared to men, female scientists are more likely to remain single, have fewer children (or fewer children than desired), have children only after securing a permanent job position, and not to participate in family events (Fox et al., 2016).

 

Focusing specifically on scientific production, the differences remain - and are even glaring in some cases. According to Ghiasi (2021), the absence of research collaborations, along with childcare, is the primary contributor to gender differences in scientific production. When this fact is added to the low inclusion of women as co-authors in collaborations by highly productive researchers, a vicious circle is perpetuated with low research outputs and collaborations that, in turn, present more obstacles for women. For example, women are involved in less than 30% of total scientific authorship, being less present in areas of exact and natural sciences, such as engineering, robotics, high energy physics, mathematics, and computer science. They are also highly underrepresented as single authors (only 17% of the total publications indexed in the JSTOR corpus) and in the patent area, which is mostly male-dominated (Ghiasi, p.195-197).

 

Finally, I bring one last example to “endorse” the structural inequality in scientific careers. In the study conducted by Al-Nashif (2021), it was found that, while in the disciplines of humanities and social sciences, women are the majority during undergraduate studies, when the focus is on graduate studies, the gender gap increases, with men being the majority to reach senior positions in these areas. According to the researcher, this is also because, normally, the beginning of the Ph.D. coincides with the time when women want to start a family, which, also according to Al-Nashif, should not be a burden, nor a fact to fall more heavily on the female back.

 

All these numbers call our attention to the immense inequalities in status, authority, and symbolic awards that mark scientific fields (Fox, 2016), but also about the scientific culture, or, in the words of Pierre Bourdieu, scientific habitus, revealing how the social structures created and maintained in the academic environment are often excluding, racist and sexist. Additionally, the institutionalization of this scientific habitus primarily contributes to the construction of women in science as non-ideal, since the primacy of work in the academic environment must overcome the demands of family and personal life. By strongly carrying the characteristic of competitiveness, the academic environment is oriented towards high performance, long hours of work, and unlimited availability, for which women do not have such a profile since “their interests are naturally different”, according to survey respondents. (Bleijenberg, 2013).

 

To speak of scientific production, therefore, is also to speak and reflect on how scientific culture is up to the present day based on meritocracy while ignoring and denying the influence of the social and cultural environments greatly intertwined with this culture. Discussions about gender inequality in science are necessary for several reasons, not just as matter of social justice, but for the promotion and advancement of science itself.

 

 

Text Written by Tatiana Zanon

Has a bachelor's in Journalism from the State University of São Paulo (Unesp-Brazil), master's in Science, Technology and Society from the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar-Brazil), and she is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Individualized Program at Concordia University (Montreal-Canada). She worked for over ten years at the University of São Paulo (USP) with science communication and dissemination. Her Ph.D. research targets Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields, addressing power relations and the marginalization of women and visible minorities in science textbooks.
 

 

References cited:

Staniscuaski, F., Kmetzsch, L., Soletti, R. C., Reichert, F., Zandonà, E., Ludwig, Z., ... & de Oliveira, L. (2021) Gender, race and parenthood impact academic productivity during the COVID-19 pandemic: from survey to action. Frontiers in psychology, 12, 1640.

Fox M. F., Whittington K. B., Linková M. (2016) Gender, (In)equity, and the Scientific Workforce. In Felt, U., Fouché, R., Miller, C., & Smith-Doerr, L. (Eds.). The handbook of science and technology studies. Cambridge: MIT Press

Ghiasi G. in Tajmel T., Starl K., Spintig S. (2021). Modelling the Human Rights Approach to Science Education. The Human Rights-Based Approach to STEM Education. Munster, New York: Waxmann. https://doi.org/10.31244/9783830992202

Al-Nashif in Tajmel T., Starl K., Spintig S. (2021). Modelling the Human Rights Approach to Science Education. The Human Rights-Based Approach to STEM Education. Munster, New York: Waxmann. https://doi.org/10.31244/9783830992202

Bleijenbergh, I. L., van Engen, M. L., & Vinkenburg, C. J. (2013). Othering women: fluid images of the ideal academic. Equality, diversity and inclusion: An international journal.