Give up on the gender gap in science?

The chances of flipping a coin ten times always on the same side are the same of working in a field related to Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics (STEM).

Only 0.2% of the world population thrives in STEM.

We associate these subjects with difficult degrees and men dominated professions. In fact, women are less than 30% of that workforce.

This imbalance triggered many countries to coach girls a set of skills designed to master technology in school. Even the world’s richest women began to support girls’ STEM ambitions with huge sums. Yet, keeping women in STEM is challenging as they progress. Large organisations already offer women-only grants in response to the continuous loss.

Three years ago, I parked my academic career in physics because I wanted to look after my child in his “First 1000 days”. As I gradually began to sense the exertion of combining parenthood with doing (independent) research, I realized the problem with the gender gap in STEM: It is not a problem; it is the expression of the problem.

STEM-careers are not beds of roses. More often than not, they blossom on rocky paths. To mistake difficulty for sexism would depict a perverse idea about the obstacles in the way. As self-motivation is key to long-term success, we should rather focus on why smart women (and men) stop pursuing STEM-careers. Attempts to close the gender gap will otherwise fail. For example, asking young women to correct quotas in boards, commissions and selection committees adds more burden to her. 

We know from studies that women are more interested in people than things [Connellan & Baron-Cohen, Su & Rounds, Lippa]. For example, women often rely on social support more than men do. Men instead feel more responsible for providing for their families. So, if they strive for the greatest rewards by working longer and harder, women must endure a strong desire to compete with men over long times. Eventually, they may quit scientific careers. The term “leaky pipeline” describes this observation. The higher dropout rate also applies to fields in which women are well-represented or over-represented; namely psychology, life sciences and the social sciences.

Still, biological differences do not explain the gender gap in STEM conclusively. In contrast, a study of 1.6 million grades shows that girls get significantly higher school grades than boys. The gender ratio thus is even for the top 10% in STEM classes, with only a 7.6 % gender difference in variability.

A more coherent picture only emerges when we look at our sociocultural beliefs. For example, from birth, we are tagged with gender-specific qualities based on two sets of opposing ideals. Media messages reinforce those gender attributes – while controlling what we should not think.

So, why do the imageries, from children’s books to Hollywood screens, not play a part in the persistent gender gap in STEM? Since evidence from 66 nations can link women’s representation in science with their stereotypes, large gender gaps are by-products of strongly held views of gender traits. Closing gaps thus cannot be as important as breaking entrenched conceptions about the human psyche.

Stereotyping cuts through career opportunities in three important ways:

1. Firstly, gender biases impede aspirations to success. They act as barriers for girls to access quality education and to pursue careers in valued (male-dominated) professions. Artificial Intelligence remarkably shows how developers formalise their gender bias into algorithm. For example, one of the largest software communities in the world, GitHub, more likely approves a code from a man than a woman.
2. Secondly, gender bias impedes access to the resources for success. Once we saw women as “the intellectual inferiors of men” (Charles Darwin) and denied their education. Today, besides facing more stress and less flexibility in their careers, 60% of managers (who are men) feel uncomfortable taking part in a common work activity with a woman. This reaction may protect men from false perceptions. But if the ability to network becomes critical for success, gender misconceptions will hurt women’s career advancements more, because men keep hold of the more senior-level positions.
3. Finally, gender bias also impedes recognition of success. Historically, we often portrayed women’s involvement as “undesirable”. We even played their importance down by using remarks such as “housewife”, “refrigerator lady” and “ecstasy girl”. Despite many breakthroughs rested on their shoulders, most female scientists never received recognition for their hard work in their lifetimes. Men gained all the fame for inventing the computer-software, the Wi-Fi and thermonuclear warhead; men won all the laurels for the discovery of DNA’s double helix, pulsars and nuclear fission; men earned all the credits for the success of astronautics, GPS, and IVF. Yet, we keep ignoring women’s major contributions. For example, Donna Strickland deserved her Wikipedia entry only after she won the Nobel prize in physics last year.

We risk repeating our old gender debates with new variables if we only accept women as equals in the world of ideas. While extensive data paints the scale of our gender bias in everyday lives,

“in general, men don't give a damn” (Jimmy Carter, 39th US President)

• that America is failing mothers, who have the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. Yet, the U.S. spends more per capita on maternity care than any other nation.
• that women are 17% more likely to die, 47% more likely to be seriously injured and 71% more likely to be moderately injured in a car crash, because we design its interior for male bodies.
• that neuroscientists typically exclude female animals/candidates from experiments, leading to drugs which work less well for women. Yet, this practice is entirely unjustified by scientific evidence.

Perhaps, we can try to grasp gender equality by shifting the focus from paid to unpaid agenda: Let us compare the GDP of 76 countries with their citizens’ share of unpaid responsibilities. The citizens’ share is the male (m) to female (f) ratio of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work, quoted as m/f, see Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 below.

As expected, the GDP per working hour (h) increases when women spend less time on unpaid tasks at home. Paradoxically, the GDP/h increases faster the more men take over these unpaid duties.

Though countries with m/f > 0.4 only count for 20% of world’s population, they contribute 80% towards the global GDP/h.

Figure 1. Comparing the GDP of 76 countries with their citizens’ share of unpaid domestic and care work. All data were averaged over the years from 2000 to 2015. Data Source: worldbank.org, gapminder.org.

Figure 2. Countries’ GDP/h in relationship to the women`s (left) and men`s (right) proportion of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work. All data were averaged over the years from 2000 to 2015. Data Source: worldbank.org, gapminder.org.

Consequently, we must stop pushing women into paid professions. We must instead pull men into unpaid social, educational and domestic responsibilities. Although this strategy could boost a nation’s economy more effectively, we will not embrace human’s capacity if our culture remains ambiguous about gender and work.

Is there such a thing as a shared humanity?

Today, women in STEM have the highest rate of sexual harassment of any profession outside the military. STEM work is also less tolerant of caregiving responsibilities than other occupations: 23% of men and 43% of women leave full-time employment after the birth of the first child. In general, men spend considerably less time on child rearing than women do. They are also less likely to sacrifice their career for eldercare. Could it be out of fear that such decisions mean a lack of passion for career? Could the psychological brutality in academia play a part? Or does the critical moment for career success just overlap with the timing of having children?

Parenthood is a workforce problem in STEM. Generous leave policies, however, did not address the problem as they interfered with economic and cultural perceptions. For example, Sweden is ranked as the best country for its commitment to reducing inequality. Yet, a three year-long study of the 200 largest Swedish companies highlights the conservative attitude held towards fatherhood: Most companies took for granted that men leave the lion’s share of responsibility for their children to their wives/partners. Only 3% of the companies were actively supporting fathers in taking parental leave.

Since the commitment to reducing inequality does not quantify inequality, it is not a paradox that even Sweden has a large gender gap in STEM. Fatherhood still signals greater work commitment, stability, and deservingness. Motherhood contrary leads to a workplace discrimination that is inversely proportional to her wage.

The findings show that gender equality is about our views and perceptions, that rely on an analysis of certain approaches and different life experiences.

Sex may influence but does not fix gender traits. The brain did not evolve to think or feel, but to control complex movements, such that it would be neuro-foolishness to define gender on motions. Each human brain is unique and changes its structure all the time.

The findings also signal that gender equality is about recognising the inter-dependence between paid and unpaid work. By declaring the family as the cornerstone of society, our society mirrors its families. Though we see political and public strides towards gender equality balanced on a “male norm”. We keep the focus on women and on increasing their time in paid labour. But both times, we not break deep-seated conceptions about gender norms (that may be arbitrary and useless).

Gender equality, however, is about so much more than a binary view of norms. It is the right of a child to flourish in diverse environments, to explore the world with no scrutiny from others and, at least, to have the opportunity to pick up the skills it may later need for discovering its own full (multi)potential in life.

It takes a village to raise a child, an African saying goes. But while parenting is an amazing and rewarding experience, the first years need enormous physical and mental efforts. This exertion is often underestimated by those who have not experienced such a life-changing period themselves. In effect, many fathers are now under pressure to not be fathers in the proper sense. Divorced fathers in particular can even be devalued, disparaged, and sometimes forcefully disengaged from their children’s lives.

Do we respect the “powerful connection from children’s early beginnings to where they end up”?

Perhaps, if we were to achieve equal responsibility at home, we could move towards equality of opportunity. We shall start liberating men to take their entitled paternity leave. The father's parenting style is not only beneficial for a child's physical, cognitive and behavioural development. His additional involvement is also “the single most important childhood factor in developing empathy.” Often, the mother’s influence prevails over the father's one in the traditional family structure with a stay-at-home-mum. Yet, their influences become equally strong in the stay-at-home-dad arrangement (with a mother-at-work). Some studies go so far to suggest that children benefit the most from the stay-at-home-dad arrangement.

“Understand the lives behind numbers” was a life lesson from Hans Rosling. Closing gender gaps is thus neither about genders nor numbers, but about our shared humanity. It is about recognizing that diversity yields superior outcomes to the world’s most difficult problems.

The persistent gender gap in STEM reminds us that our society is changing much faster than our own perceptions and structures, that may well stem from a conservative family arrangement and traditional share of domestic work.