Short Wave - Pandemic Could Roll Back Advancements For Women in STEMM

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

In general, there are more men in STEMM fields than women. Representation in science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine is even lower for women of color — facing racial discrimination on top of gender discrimination. And then, the pandemic hit. Short Wave reporter Emily Kwong speaks with Dr. Eve Higginbotham about our earliest understandings of how the pandemic has impacted women in STEMM, and what support institutions can offer to make it easier for women in stay in the workforce and progress in their careers. You can download a free PDF of the 2021 study here. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, everybody, Emily Kwong here. So the academic year is winding down in the U.S. And it's been a rough year for women who work in academic science, engineering, and medicine. I mean, before the pandemic even began, it was clear there were generally more men in STEM than women. And that's STEM with 2Ms, by the way. so science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine. Representation in these fields was even lower for women of color,

facing racial discrimination on top of gender discrimination. Optomologist Dr. Eve Higginbotham faced it in her career, too. Not being asked to present at a national meeting, not having access to a particular sponsor who could help me gain access to major appointments and committee, having challenges of getting publications done, you know, and juggling with a number of the social stressors that as a woman of color, you often do experience.

Eve is a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania and the Vice Dean for Inclusion, Equity, and Diversity at Penn Medicine. And I'm a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics. And she says when they, there's a family emergency or disaster, it's that much harder for women in STEM. Her career was affected by Hurricane Katrina. Well, I'm from New Orleans, and during Katrina, my parents who were in their 90s at the time were there alone in the city. While her parents' home was okay, her parents came to stay with Eve and her husband in Maryland,

so she had to juggle caretaking with academia. of my parents was in the emergency room one day and another parent was in the emergency room another day. And it just happened to be at a time when I was being asked to leave and speak at a conference. Of course, I wasn't able to do so. And it was at that moment, I realized, well, this is really a moment when my career could suffer. Eve says this is exactly how it happens. Something totally totally out of your control, like a hurricane or a pandemic or some other event, it can have a long-lasting impact on your career path as work-life boundaries evaporate. And Eve wanted to know what impact is this pandemic having on women?

And so since we already had so many women having challenges in their academic progress, the pandemic just added just another challenge. So on behalf of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Eve chaired a whole committee that investigated this question. And today on the show, we're going to talk about what she found through this study. And what kind of support institutions can offer to help women in the sciences. I'm Emily Kwong, and this is Shorewave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR. So how do we even make sense of how the pandemic is affecting women's careers in STEM?

In Eve's case, it was through the tools of science. She worked alongside study director Maria Lund Dahlberg and a whole committee and research staff. They crafted a 250-page report looking into this, which included data from a survey of more than 900 women, including those early in their careers, like grad students, postdocs, and those teaching without the security of tenure, basically the next generation. Here's my conversation with Dr. Eve Higginbotham. In moments of your career when you face stress and challenge, what were you told within the institutions about how to handle those? Yes, we were often told, well, you need to be resilient. You need to actually step back.

And if you have a disappointment, come back the next day and just dig in again. You have to be able to manage on your own the hustle culture. But one of the things that I think our committee really wanted to drill down on is the fact that you can't leave this up to the individual. There's an institutional responsibility. Yeah. So I know the report involved a survey that was distributed in October. What did you learn from that, Dr. Higginbotham, about some of the challenges that women were facing at home and what was expected of them at home? Well, certainly they had challenges in their work-life balance, trying to integrate their professional lives as well as their home life because there was no boundary control there.

Oftentimes, there was competition for the Internet or space at home to have quiet time, to have office hours. It was also increased workload and ours worked. And these women actually share it with us their decreased productivity that occurred. They weren't able to write as many papers or grants. They had difficulty interacting with colleagues. Yeah. Women had fewer citations in papers, fewer papers, just less representation overall in science literature, which is a big part of growing in your career as a scientist, right?

Yes, this has a significant impact on one's career trajectory. And so that's one of the highlights that we wanted to put forward for institutions to recognize that, sure, you can extend the tenure clock, but that may not be enough for many women, particularly given the fact that so many women certainly do not have full-time, faculty positions and will only be adjunct faculty. They're the most vulnerable in this space. And how has the pandemic kind of derailed the tenure track for some women? To get to tenure, you oftentimes have to have a certain number of publications. The quality of those publications are judged. The quality of your scholarly relationships

is often judged as well as part of the criteria. You have to have so many grants in some institutions. That's external funding for your research. And you have to show your ability to get those grants. And so think about it. In this period of the pandemic, we had women who didn't have time to be able to apply for these grants and didn't have the opportunity to actually write the papers that they needed to write. And so these are the early predicament.

that we may be experiencing a gender recession in academia unless institutions step forward and apply the necessary infrastructure so that we can secure these trajectories for women in academia. Yeah. So, I mean, like, ultimately this impacts, and this is another very jargony word, but it has a lot of weight. This impacts retention, right? Which basically means we may see fewer women in STEM as a result. So do you have any insight into how the pandemic could affect people who can stay in this field? Well, we're already seeing a higher turnover of junior faculty generally as well as postdocs.

So if you're a young mother who's just starting her family, it's been a major challenge to judge. your caregiving responsibilities. There is no boundary at home between your professional and home life. And so many women who can certainly afford it are dropping out of the academic arena. How does that make you feel as someone who's been in science for so long that there has been turnover? It saddens me because there's so much loss of their intellectual contribution to this great field. You know, we as a country have, we've led in so many scientific fields and to not have these young women be part of that growing body of knowledge, it really saddens me. Certainly doesn't mean that they can't come back later. But in many ways, it's often harder when you

come back. And one of the things your report is really asking is for institutions to change their relationship to caregiving and caregiving support for those who are on staff. How is caregiving seen now? And how would you like to see it change? Because that seems really key here. Generally, caregiving is, again, the responsibility of the family and the individual. But what we're suggesting is that it's the institution's responsibility to set up caregiving or daycare. centers on campus. That would make it easier for young mothers and young fathers, of course, to spend time with their children while they're working in a lab on campus. Yeah. I mean, has the pandemic helped accelerate that conversation at all?

Well, or are we in the same place as we were before? Well, it's, I think we're transitioning. I think this report just came out in the last two months. And so I think it's too early to tell what the impact is going to be fully. But we're actually trying to highlight the important points that need attention. And what part of the study most surprised you? What most surprised me about this report was just the intensity of mental health issues and how those mental health issues actually affects the total well-being of women. And I know that's something we talk about, but it is such a major issue that was cross-cutting. One of the things that was noted in the report

and has been actually observed in what we call pre-COVID-19 pandemic times that is that women across the globe are more likely to have depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and insomnia. So it's staring us in the face, we need to pay attention because we're losing real talent here if we allow them to leave academia. Broadly speaking, what would need to change in institutions so that women can be a part of STEM's future? So in some of the scientific disciplines, we have very much a hustle culture, if you will, where You just have to make it on your own.

That's what I had to do, so you have to do it. We live in a different time where people have so many different responsibilities, and we're more diverse institution generally across this nation. So there's got to be the recognition that institutionally we have a responsibility. And I'm saying we, because I'm also an administrator in an academic institution. And if we can enhance the vitality of faculty, we enhance our innovation capacity in science for everyone. You can find the National Academy's full report,

the impact of COVID-19 on the careers of women in academic sciences, engineering, and medicine. Add a link in our feed description. This episode was produced by Thomas Liu, edited by Giselle Grayson and fact-checked by Rasha Airedi. The audio engineer for this episode was Josh Newell. I'm Emily Kwong, and this is Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR.