Sex bomb
| 15 September, 2010 | Richard P. Grant |
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If I were a visitor from another world, what would be my impression of how we do science?
First the good news. As we noted yesterday, the number of PhDs achieved by women in the US, across all disciplines, exceeded the number obtained for men. The distribution is reasonably field specific, as you can tell from page 47 of the Council of Graduate Schools report [PDF]. Many fields have a fairly even mix, although business and maths/computer sciences are male-dominated, whereas health sciences and education are strongly female. Biology and agriculture, lumped together as one, is pretty well-balanced (M/F = 49.1/50.1). In the UK, women tend to be over-represented in biological sciences, at least at the junior (grad/post-grad) levels.
As these women come up through the ranks, we might hope to see a more even gender distribution at the higher levels of research, too.
But then our hypothetical alien visitor takes a look at, oh I don’t know, perhaps The Times‘ “monthly magazine of science”, Eureka. When Eureka was launched last year, one of my friends pointed out that the coverage would lead a naif to assume that all research was carried out by men, and that women existed only to add a bit of
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I’d like to just wade in here on behalf of The Guardian.
I was the first blogger on board at The Guardian, and involved in the process of selecting the other bloggers. I was very conscious of the gender divide at ScienceBlogs. We tried to get an even number of men and women (and a diverse set of voices in general, which I think is at least as important if not more so). The reason we don’t is through really no fault of our own – we tried hard, and 1 in 4 is what we ended up with (although we do still hope to address that in the coming months as more bloggers join).
I can’t speak for the others, but it’s very easy (and a bit lazy) to throw around accusations of gender bias when you’ve not actually talked to the people at these networks and asked them how the current situations have come about. Some of them might just be unthinkingly biased, but I suspect some of them have tried to recruit more women, and struggled just as we did.
Thanks for your comments, Martin. It’s heartening to hear that people are trying, but like science itself, one is going to be judged on the results, not one’s effort.
Martin, can you elaborate on what you mean by “struggled” to find women bloggers?
Well, I think the make-up of blogging networks is symptomatic of a wider gender bias in science blogging, in which women seem to struggle to get the same recognition as men, and a number of those who do end up clustered around certain topics. That’s problematic because for a new network at a national newspaper you need reasonably high profile names and a variety of topic coverage. Add to that in the Guardian’s case the desire for a largely British voice, and the fact that there are very few *really* good science bloggers to begin with, and the options shrink quite quickly. Even with all of that we had a pretty good balance, but there were various (quite reasonable) issues with the specific people we approached – one was concerned about retaining an independent voice for example (this may be bias on my part).
It’s something we’re actively fighting, and I want to try and give a platform especially to some of the newer, less recognized women in science blogging – I’ve had a lot of success at lay science with that approach.
So possibly a constructive way of dealing with this would be for people to start championing under-recognized women science bloggers and writers. I don’t have time this week, but if anyone is willing to help put together a list, I’ll certainly put it up at the Guardian blog as a guest post.
Sure. There are few really good science writers period, but I think there are plenty of (British) women the Guardian could have asked. Maybe the other networks also did this, and maybe the women said ‘no’, as you say.
(I think ‘high-profile’ names is a red herring, to be honest. On average, nobody reads blogs, so national papers can choose who they like and then they become famous, not vice versa.)
You’re way off the mark there. Someone like Ed Yong draws 200,000 readers a month – that’s the circulation of a small magazine. High profile names are important for the audience and credibility they bring, but also because they tend to be much better writers on average.
As for British women, I’d be interested to see you put together a list of ‘plenty’ who are very good, available, and reasonably well-known. Or even scratch the last part of that and let’s just go with good and available.
You can’t use Ed Yong as an example! He’s already got the exposure. Even so, comparing The Guardian’s 37 million monthly unique hits with that 200k doesn’t really make your point.
Martin, I’m sure you don’t mean to imply that because ‘there are very few *really* good science bloggers’ you’ll have to give a platform to ‘newer, less recognized women’ to overcome the gender divide. Quite apart from the insulting assumption that the mark of a good blogger is an invitation to the Guardian’s platform, you are seemingly suggesting that women don’t fit that criteria, an innocent mistake I’m sure, and thus need a special helping hand from yourself. Besides, given that many bloggers are pseudononymous you can’t always identify gender (although please assume I’m male).
I would argue that the problem is the narrow pool and criteria from which the Guardian consult. I wouldn’t dispute that many of their chosen writers are worth reading – but I’d read all of them before. While it’s tempting to think that the Guardian shares my exquisite taste it’s more likely that it moves in the same narrow social media/blogging pool as I do, therefore it has not discovered any new voices, so much as given a different platform to existing ones, and only identifiable names at that. Like it not, the internet, and even parts of skepticism can be unpleasantly sexist and this presumably has an effect on gender ratios amongst named and pseudononymous bloggers. It’s interesting to note that the only pseudononymous blogger at the guardian – grrlscientist – is open about her gender but not her name.
“First the good news. As we noted yesterday, the number of PhDs achieved by women in the US, across all disciplines, exceeded the number obtained for men.”
As an aside, why is this “good news”..? the number of men and women in the population is roughly equal. Surely this just means that men are now suffering discrimination rather than women? If that is, you were attributing the disparity as discrimination?
Because there are more women than men in the US, and we’re never going to see exactly equal numbers. Overshooting is to be expected, it means that various efforts to redress the balance are working out.
What I would like to see now is the ratio wobble around the 50% mark. It was never going to be an asymptotic curve.
Just on the issue of female scientists in Eureka, this isn’t simply a case of choosing between male/female scientists to interview. Most of the papers I have to report on have as their contact a male scientist. Is this because female scientists are less confident talking to the media (and therefore prefer not to be the media contact) or because they’re not getting published as much? Probably a combination of the two. (I’d like to see some studies though). I do relish the odd opportunity I get to talk to a female scientist. But is it my responsibility as a journalist to be constantly chasing after one particular gender?
(NB: I am a girl.)
I think a lot of the ‘blame’ (if we can say that) must lie with journalists. Your ‘contact’ might be male, but it’s pretty easy to track down anybody these days. I try to get a good mix when I’m figuring out who to call, and I’ve not come across the attitude you allude to, and that I’ve seen elsewhere, that women don’t want to talk to the media as much as men.
I’m not saying that is “the attitude” – I’m just wondering whether this is the reason women aren’t as often listed as media contacts. I tend to call the media contact first because there must be a reason they have been nominated – either they’re more likely to be available on the necessary day, or they have a better overview of the subject etc… Of course, when I’m tracking down an independent researcher, I try to get an even mix.
Right. For the work I do for F1000 I tend to avoid media contacts: I’d rather speak to the scientist who did the work. (And I’m deliberating not expanding on your ‘etc.’ here…)
We are talking about the media contact on the paper here, right? (I’m not talking about the press release).
(I don’t know why your comments are being held for moderation, Hayley.)
I look at the author list, and contact the corresponding author. Is that bad of me?
Yes, that’s what I do – okay, wires crossed. Sorry, when I said “media contact” I meant the same as “corresponding author”.
(to be fair, when you only have four bloggers, it’s pretty easy to randomly get a skewed gender distribution. The other networks are larger, and I think there’s less excuse. Nice to see the call for women science bloggers on twitter.)
RPG: “You can
Martin, what I mean is that Ed’s 200,000 readers come as a result of his exposure through Discover magazine. His blog is already outside the pool of talent I’d have thought the Guardian would be looking at.
Gimpy: “Like it not, the internet, and even parts of skepticism can be unpleasantly sexist and this presumably has an effect on gender ratios amongst named and pseudononymous bloggers.”
That’s exactly my point, yes. I suspect if we were to go through your blog roll, or links out from your blog to other skeptic/science bloggers, we’d find a huge gender bias there too (that’s not a pop, been having the same discussion with Ed on Twitter, and I’m probably the same too).
Gimpy: “I would argue that the problem is the narrow pool and criteria from which the Guardian consult.”
The problem with this sort of statement is that it’s meaningless unless you’re willing to identify which groups are being excluded. One criticism I made is that I think there could be more engagement with the feminist end of the science blogosphere. But across mainstream blogging, well this is why we have initiatives like the festival, which has a very big and diverse selection of names involved. It’s also up to people like you to lobby and tell people who’s being overlooked. Saying “you’re missing people” isn’t helpful, saying “you’ve missed these people” is much more constructive…
Martin, Ed gets that traffic partly because he is an incredible writer, and partly because he is already part of a high-traffic network. So you can’t say “where are the women in Ed’s league?” because the absence of women in Ed’s league is precisely what Jenny was pointing out.
I’m happy that you recognise the problems here, but I’d stil be interested to know what your “struggling to include women” actually consisted of. It can’t even have been “coming up with a list of British women science bloggers and reading them,” because you’re asking us to do that.
Richard P Grant: Martin, what I mean is that Ed
The relevant stats would be Ed’s readership before he joined Scienceblogs – at WordPress, wasn’t it?
Again, ScienceBlogs is (was) a huge network.
Anyway, I still don’t think your argument holds water. If someone like Ed, who has come up through Scienceblogs to Discover, still only gets 0.5% of the monthly readership of the Guardian, doesn’t that strengthen the point that hardly anyone in the outside world reads blogs? So choosing bloggers on the basis of their exposure within the blogging community is a little bit near-sighted?
MissPrism: It can
ratio of 1 in 4 doesn’t really reflect our efforts
Martin, it sounds like you’ve been having trouble with the 3rd reviewer 😉
Richard P. Grant: You’re not making any sense – 0.5% of the Guardian’s monthly readership is an enormous amount, probably more than many writers at The Guardian manage to achieve. That’s a big addition to traffic for a single blog to generate, hence the attraction.
Or to put it another way, you might as well say that hardly anyone reads columns, since few individual ones are likely to get more than 0.5% of the total audience of the newspaper.
Hrm, obviously I’d like to see the data but that doesn’t sound like the reading habits of people I know: just for reference, the average daily distribution of the Grauniad is 302,285, and I suspect that most of those read everything, and probably the columns are the most read.
Read everything? But that would leave no time to do the crossword!
Maybe one of the problems is that commenters can be harsh, and in some cases, harsher on women because they have trouble acknowledging women’s expertise. At an independent blog, you only have ten regular readers, but they are there because they know and like you, and when they disagree they do so politely – it’s only the drive-bys who are rude. It might not be tempting to move to a platform where you’ve seen commenters ripping other women to shreds.
That’s very true actually. Although I think if someone, say, offered me a guest post at Comment is Free I’d run away screaming for that very reason. And I’m male, last time I checked.
Gimpy:
Further to my last comment – if newspaper blogs are perceived as somehow being a marker for quality – something which I would dispute, and on which I invite Martin to defend his comment – then there is a real danger that a very narrow selection of individuals become gatekeepers for a previously egalitarian phenomenon. There is nothing to stop anyone from having a blog if they have access to the internet, but the small numbers of newspaper blog staff and their personal prejudices have the potential to cause vast distortions in the perception of who is and is not a quality blogger. Say, and I very much doubt this is the situation at the guardian, the overall editor of a newspaper blog didn’t like blogs from women, ethnic minorities or individuals whose names begin with ‘B’ and selectively chose writers that did not fit these categories. This would have a much wider impact on blogging than if blogs merely depended on the prejudices of their audience.
@Gimpy:
Regarding your first comment, that’s actually kind of my point, and what I’m arguing with Richard about – a specialist blogger (I used the example of Ed) has more traffic than many mainstream media journalists and columnists probably do, which is why media companies looking to set up blogging networks are attracted to “big” names. I’m not really sure what you mean about newspaper blogs being a marker for quality – I think you’re reading something into what I’m saying that I don’t mean so I’m not really sure what I’m defending!
In the case of GSB we want to strike a balance between bringing in new traffic to justify to Rusbridger et al what we’re doing, but also acting as a platform to help new or unrecognized bloggers (and other talents) get hopefully wider attention. At the moment none of the bigger picture re: our aims is particularly visible because the first few months are basically about getting something up and working without any drama, and then we’ll slowly build over the next year or more.
Gimpy: “My point is that we move in the same small blogging pool so my frame of reference is going to be remarkably similar to yours.”
Totally, and everyone has their own biases. We can make an effort to consult as widely as possible, which is happening, but there are always gaps. The problem is, as you neatly demonstrate, it’s a community issue as much as a Guardian issue – you can only reach out to people if you know they exist. Which isn’t to say I’m shrugging my shoulders and saying “meh”, just that aside from making an effort to talk to as many different people as possible over the next few months, constructive ways forward are thin on the ground.
At the moment none of the bigger picture re: our aims is particularly visible because the first few months are basically about getting something up and working without any drama, and then we’ll slowly build over the next year or more.
This, actually, makes me feel a whole lot better about the Guardian’s sciblogs.
Thanks for engaging, Martin. Useful.
What I haven’t heard yet is exactly *how* hard the Guardian – or any other network – actually looked for women science bloggers. How many did you invite, exactly? How many turned you down? And how many male science bloggers were invited that said no? If you want to talk effort, be specific. You don’t have to name names – I’m just curious how many people said no to you, and how many you actually asked.
And… in response to “Maybe one of the problems is that commenters can be harsh, and in some cases, harsher on women because they have trouble acknowledging women
I’m a PhD biologist (w/ an undergrad degree in English) and a woman and I blog. But my blog is a newbie one, although I’ve got a lot of science writing of the print variety on my CV. Perhaps “we” are out there in greater numbers than suspected, and some day, we’ll be in the scientific blogging circle of trust, too.
@Christie I can’t speak for any other network. Probably not much more than about a dozen people were ever approached in total. Of those around half were women, I think. Two or three turned us down for various reasons – moving to a different network or valuing their independence too much to join any network, for example. One has joined, I think one is hopefully joining us in the near future, and there are others who we’ll probably try and nab next year.
Reading this thread reminds me strangely of sitting in the back of the car and listening to my parents talk about me up front 😉
One quick point about comparing audience sizes: I always think you need to account for the confounding factors of staff and output. My traffic figures are based on me writing 5 posts a week. It’s a bit of a false comparison to look at those numbers in the context of a gigantic media organisation with hundreds of writers who probably produce 5 pieces an hour. The last time I spoke to Alok about this, we worked out that my page views per article aren’t too far off those of an average Guardian science piece – lower by a small factor, but certainly not an order of magnitude.
But really, what I take away from this discussion is that it’s always worth reflecting on insularity or disparity within this community and making active efforts to address it. I’m glad Martin asked me to look at the gender balance of my weekly links and blogroll because frankly they’re much lower than I would have assumed.
Heh.
Thanks for that, Ed: really useful.
cant we all agree to blame this inequity on George W Bush?
I’ve been doing some research lately on the gender divide, specifically as it relates to compensation and advancement. While my area of interest has been fairly narrow, several of the papers I’ve read on the topic have come to conclusions that are broadly applicable across most, if not all, professional areas in which we see this gap.
The primary factor that keeps cropping up is that women are far less likely to put themselves forward. This translates into not asking for recognition, responsibility, or additional compensation, with the final result that we tend to remain in the background. Men ask. They may or may not get what they want, but they are far less hesitant to at least make it clear what they want or think they deserve. Women expect that their effort will be recognized without having to point it out personally.
Since men are still in charge, and they think that a lack of requests/demands means the women are happy with their lot in life as a junior participant in the workplace, it will continue to largely be men who are promoted to higher levels and greater recognition/reputation. I absolutely don’t believe this is any type of conspiracy or conscious act of oppression. I think it is clear that it’s merely a difference in cultural expectations and communication styles. At the same time, I would challenge men in positions of authority to actively seek out their high-performing female employees and colleagues and recognize their contribution in a more active way, even if they aren’t asking. Only when a realignment of expectations and communication occurs will we see the cream rise to the top without regard to gender.