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Almost 300 years after Laura Maria Caterina Bassi became the first woman to earn a professorship at a university in Europe, women still comprise less than one fifth of professors across that continent.

In an opinion article published this month on F1000Research, Lynn Kamerlin, who runs a lab in the cell and molecular biology department at Uppsala University, discusses the experiences of being a female academic, the factors contributing to the academic gender gap and potential strategies to empower women in the academic world. In this blog, we cover some of her findings and spoke to her to find out what triggered her to write this article now.

Examining the current state of gender (in)equality in academia

“One of the things that I think has changed a lot for women in science is that the level of seniority at which the gender gap kicks in has increased. As a PhD student and mostly as a postdoc, even in a traditionally male dominated field, I didn’t really see these things as issues. It’s only as I’ve moved up the academic ladder that I have become aware that there is a serious problem, and also how it affects younger and younger future researchers,” Dr Kamerlin points out.

Indeed, even though Sweden, where Kamerlin’s lab is based, consistently ranks very highly on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report, this situation dramatically changes when looking at the academic world. Based on the European Commission’s She Figures 2012, not only does Sweden no longer occupy the top positions for female participation in Grade A positions, it barely makes the European Union average, coming in at 13th place.

During discussions about how gender parity in academia could be achieved, people quickly jump to the conclusion that women are leaving academia, either to work in a different field or to start a family. However, as Kamerlin states, more men are likely to leave academia than women, yet this is not reflected at the higher levels, where males dominate. Data shows that, like many other countries, Sweden has a vertical gender balance in academia. Women comprise the majority of university entrants, just slightly under the majority of doctoral and postdoctoral candidates, and even senior lecturers or associate professors, yet there is a very sharp decline to only 20% of full Professors. This can be seen across all disciplines, worryingly even in heavily female dominated fields such as pharmacology and veterinary medicine.

Implicit bias impeding female career progression

The biggest challenge with systematic bias and discrimination against the contributions of women is that its roots start at a very early age. A sociological experiment performed in 2007, where children were asked to draw a scientist, showed that children are heavily influenced by media stereotypes, with the vast majority believing that a scientist is a man in a lab coat and glasses who doesn’t smile. While this may seem whimsical, the implications are worrying: it suggests that children have a distorted image of what it means to be a scientist and consequently a distorted image of their own ability to be one. A double-blind study performed by Moss-Racusin and co-workers, in which a US-wide sample of science faculties received a hypothetical application pack for recruitment of an undergraduate laboratory assistant, disclosed rather disturbing results. The materials were randomly assigned either a male or female name, all other parameters were absolutely identical, yet both male and female faculty members consistently deemed male applicants to be more hireable, competent and worthy of mentoring. In addition, the salary gap for applicants with the same CV was in excess of $3000/year.

How can we empower women in the academic world?

It was this realisation that triggered Dr Kamerlin’s activist streak and desire to address these issues. “There is a “Women in Science and Engineering” group at the University of Southern California, USC WiSE, where I was a postdoc, that influenced me in wanting to set up something similar at Uppsala University.” As it turned out, there was already a mentorship network in place at the university’s Natural Sciences and Technology faculty, where she eventually coordinated the 18-month program between 2014 and 2016. “Through coordinating this program and other equal opportunity work I became very passionate about and involved in diversity issues; not only gender but other forms of diversity as well.”

Dr Kamerlin puts her academic success strongly down to the fact that, from an early stage, she had very strong role models that gave her support and encouragement. “I believe it is extremely important to give back to younger colleagues, to give them the same opportunities and support to succeed in a system where the odds are still stacked against female academics. To facilitate this, I actively recruit and mentor highly promising young women to my research team, and take great pleasure from watching their own career success in turn. As female academics, whatever our seniority level, we are always a role model for someone less senior than us. We therefore need to be visible but also not make it look like we swanned through with no challenges. We need to have this discussion, but even more urgently, we need to move beyond discussing and together, as a community, put in place concrete actions to close the gender gap that has remained open for far too long.”