Science & Society
Addressing the Gender Gap in Research: Insights from a Women in Neuroscience Conference

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There has been growing interest in quantifying the proportion of women participating in scientific conferences, publications, and committees. Numbers reveal persistent disparities, but offer few cures to the root causes of the gender gaps in research. Toward remediation, we outline five lessons learned through organizing two conferences for Women in Neuroscience (WiN). These recommendations build on participants’ comments, and aim to better support women in their scientific paths and help provide equal opportunity.

Section snippets

Lesson 1: Networking Opportunities

Women’s networks predict women’s future professional success. Those women with a female-dominated inner support network tend to obtain job placements [6]. The postconference feedback consistently highlighted the perceived value of interacting with women scientists from other institutions, and from listening to women who were more advanced in their careers. Importantly, attendees noted that this experience ‘helps me to feel like I am not alone’. Other comments illuminated existing gaps in

Lesson 2: Mentoring and Environment

Attendee comments also converged on the issue of the training environment and mentoring. Gender inequalities persist in the areas of hiring [8], scientific citations [9], grant funding [10], and the extent and burden of assigned service [11]. The latter can be due to a well-intentioned attempt to balance committee membership but select from a smaller pool of available women.

Several opinion articles and research papers emphasize the role of mentorship in the experiences of women in STEM [12,13].

Lesson 3: Know Your Options

Female faculty members are regularly asked by trainees considering academic paths whether raising children is possible in parallel to pursing a research career, and how to navigate career and family responsibilities. The issue was also a topic of discussion at WiN. Policies vary tremendously across universities and research institutions regarding maternity leave, childcare availability, tenure clock pauses, and so on. One of the most highly ranked suggestions for future conference discussions

Lesson 4: (Constructive) Feedback Matters

Both the 2018 and the 2019 WiN conferences required trainees to present their work to scientists from different subfields and receive feedback. In 2018, there was also a workshop guided by a public-speaking expert. Participants identified practicing presentations and receiving supportive feedback as one of the most useful and confidence-building aspects of the conference. One participant noted that, ‘seeing the features that made a presentation really smooth and common pitfalls people make were

Lesson 5: Self-Advocacy

The intended theme for the cancelled 2020 WiN conference was self-advocacy. One reason why women may sometimes refrain from submitting applications or asking for resources is because they believe themselves to be less qualified than their male counterparts. Participant comments from previous conferences indicated that they want strategies to approach challenging conversations and to get what they need without being perceived as difficult. This propagates through many aspects of science, such as

Concluding Remarks

Gender equity in science must surpass simply balancing the numbers of women and men in the department. We have summarized five lessons derived from feedback provided by WiN participants. These lessons apply generally to women in STEM fields. We also highlighted the importance of work-related network and sense of community; constructive feedback and strengthening presentation skills; mentoring and career advice; and building competency in self-advocacy. Undoubtedly, the post-COVID-19 world will

Acknowledgments

We thank Peter Tse, PI of the NSF Track II EPSCOR OIA 1632738, which supported this work, and our collaborators within the Attention Consortium (Kelsey Clark, Jeremy Manning, Patrick Cavanagh, Alireza Soltani, Barbara Jobst, David Sheinberg, Barry Connors, Charles Gray, James Mazer, and Gideon Caplovitz), administrative assistance from Natalie Stephenson and Cody Plante, Participants of WiN 2018 & 2019, and Sage Fox Consulting.

Declarations of Interests

The authors declare no competing interests in relation to this work.

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