Science suffers from a problem of gender discrimination

According to certain indicators, the situation of women in science is actually good. Women are currently half of the recipients of doctorate degrees in the US in science (Ph.D.) and medicine (MD), and the number of professors at the beginning of their academic career is about the same. Moreover, studies show that in the US, women's chances of receiving research grants from the National Institutes for Health (NIH) is the same as that of white men, and such funding is an essential first step toward an independent career and permanent employment. However, the same study also showed that the chances of American women scientists of Asian and African American origin to obtain funding are smaller. These slight differences are important in the highly competitive environment of the scientific world that forces male and female scientists to fight for the sources of funding for their work. Only one out of three scientists (men or women) gets enough funding from the NIH to allow them to run a lab at all.

There are many more such subtle differences. For example, once funded, women may have difficulty sustaining ongoing funding long enough to make any discoveries. After three or four years of financial support, scientists must convince the NIH that they have achieved results that warrant further funding. A study based on text analysis and examining the comments written by scientists who were asked to evaluate the funding applications revealed that while they used more words of praise such as "extraordinary" and "excellent" when referring to the applications of women, they gave their applications a lower rating than they gave the applications submitted by men. These findings indicate that applications submitted by women are judged according to different standards.

Starting early in their careers, women also receive less funding from universities. The funding they receive for establishing laboratories is 40% less on average. Women are treated differently when it comes to taking vacations from work. It is common for men to take advantage of "culturally acceptable" ways to continue receiving wages during breaks in their regular work, for example sabbatical years, without this having an effect on their wages. Women also go on sabbaticals, but they go on more vacations for family reasons which are still accompanied by a negative cultural attitude; And in many cases women simply choose not to go on vacations. We need to re-examine the antiquated and family-unfriendly policies. We must also reexamine the biases in academia against part-time work. Combining work and personal life is considered a career hindrance, we must start seeing it as a career promoting factor, since it is known that flexible work arrangements can improve job satisfaction and even performance.

At least one of the problems, the differences in salary, can be corrected by assigning the responsibility for salary equality to the deans of the faculties and the presidents of the universities. Equal pay should be a central basis by which their achievements as leaders will be evaluated. When it comes to research grants, we know of a group that is discriminated against. A recent NIH analysis showed that the response rate for African-American scientists is considerably lower than the response rate for white scientists (11% vs. 17%). The NIH is currently testing whether removing all personally identifiable information from research grant applications will affect the evaluation score they receive. If it does have an effect, the removal of the personal identification marks could also affect the way in which women's applications will be evaluated. Finally, we must address the problem of sexual harassment that has recently come into the limelight. It is a problem suffered by people of both sexes, but the proportion of women affected by it is greater.

Women bring a unique perspective to research, and as a society, we need the best ideas we can get. Therefore, correcting this problem is in everyone's interest, and progress towards correcting it depends on a cultural change that must occur among both women and men. The harm to women is often not intentional, but the stereotypes that we act under the influence of unconsciously, and often without meaning to, lead to biases that have far-reaching consequences on job satisfaction, on the achievements in it and on the progress in the career. If we fail to eliminate the inequality that women face in science, it will be a failure for both women and men, as well as for biomedical research itself.