Thursday, April 17, 2008

Working Twice As Hard for Half the Credit

Here's an interesting article: A Case Study of Gender Bias at the Postdoctoral Level in Physics, and its Resulting Impact on the Academic Career Advancement of Females, by S. Towers. From the abstract:

The study finds that the female researchers were on average significantly more productive compared to their male peers, yet were allocated only 1/3 the amount of conference presentations based on their productivity. The study also finds that the dramatic gender bias in allocation of conference presentations appeared to have significant negative impact on the academic career advancement of the females.
The author has a PhD in particle physics and worked for 6 years as a postdoctoral research scientist. She is currently completing a graduate degree in statistics.


It's interesting that the author included that last statement about her qualifications. It's as if she knows that some gender-bias-denialist might question her statistical methods and what not.

Not only does this study demonstrably show gender bias, but it supports the view I've long suspected, that if you want to land a plum job, you gotta get your name out there, and the way to get your name out there is by giving talks at conferences.

Guess I ought to get moving on submitting those conference abstracts...

[hat tip: Thus Spake Zuska. cross posted at Twinke Twinkle YSO]