A new report from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine calls for systematic action to address the underrepresentation of women in these fields. The report recommends several ways for colleges and universities to improve recruitment, retention, and advancement of women in the so-called STEMM disciplines – science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine – and calls on government agencies and scientific societies to play complementary roles in promoting greater equity and diversity.
The report, entitled Promising Practices for Addressing the Underrepresentation of Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine: Opening Doors, outlines the persistence of the challenge, particularly in the physical sciences. Women in the US received fewer than 20% of bachelor’s degrees in physics and computer science and 21% of those in engineering. In contrast, women are close to parity for degrees in chemistry, biology, and medicine – although the report notes that in these fields, they nevertheless “encounter barriers that block advancement into senior positions.” These issues are more severe for women of colour, it adds.
While acknowledging that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, the report’s authors call on academic institutions to adopt a step-by-step approach: identify specific problems, collect and analyse data on gender disparities; pilot evidence-based practices to respond to the findings; repeat data collection to check and adjust these pilot schemes; and institutionalize effective changes through shifts in policy.
Societies working together
Beyond academia, the report recommends ways that government departments and professional societies can contribute to overcoming gender and colour inequities in STEMM. “Leaders at federal agencies, policymakers in Congress, scientific and professional societies, and the White House can all play a powerful role in promoting transparency and accountability and in supporting and rewarding evidence-based actions to promote greater equity in the STEMM enterprise,” says Rita Colwell, a former director of the National Science Foundation and chair of the committee responsible for the report.
Billy Williams, who served on the committee and is also vice president for ethics, diversity, and inclusion at the American Geophysical Union, notes that the report highlights some exiting scientific society initiatives. These include the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s SEA Change; the Inclusive Graduate Education Network, which Williams describes as “a partnership of more than 30 societies, institutions, organizations, corporations and national laboratories poised to lead a paradigm shift in increasing the participation of underrepresented racial and ethnic minority students who enter graduate or doctoral level programmes in the physical sciences”; and the Societies Consortium on Sexual Harassment in STEMM, which counts more than 120 scientific societies as members.
Colwell, a microbiologist at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, says the study gives her “a strong conviction that the challenge of realizing a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive science, engineering, and medical enterprise can be met with great success, if all stakeholders share the passion, will, and perseverance to achieve positive change.”
