scholarly journals Women in neotropical science: Gender parity in the 21st century and prospects for a post-war Colombia

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilo López-Aguirre

AbstractAn increasing amount of research has focused on studying the drivers shaping demographics in science. As a result, we now have a better idea of the current state of gender disparity in science, which remains widespread worldwide. However, fewer studies and limited data have restricted our understanding of this phenomenon in the Neotropics, a highly important region in terms of cultural and biological diversity. Despite a civil war that lasted more than five decades and produced eight million victims (half of them women), Colombia is the fifth country with the highest scientific production in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the second most biodiverse country in the world. In order to evaluate the status of gender parity in science in Colombia throughout the 21st century, data of science demographics was gathered covering the 2000-2017 time period. Percentage of women in science was decomposed by research area, researcher rank level and education level. Gender disparity was also estimated for changes in average age, access to scholarships for postgraduate studies, and number of doctoral graduates. Finally, using logistic function modelling, temporal projections into the future were performed, in order to estimate how long could it take to reach gender parity. Of six research fields, medical and health science is the only one to have reached gender parity (55.99%), although it is also the only one showing a steady decrease in women representation across time. On the other hand, engineering, humanities and natural sciences had the lowest percentages of female representation (19.89%, 30.02%, and 30.21%, respectively). Female researchers were on average younger than male researchers, and they also showed a decreasing presence as they move upward to more senior levels, exemplifying the ‘leaky-pipeline phenomenon’ common in science. More men were observed both as scholarship awardees for doctoral studies, and as doctoral graduates, indicating that obtaining a doctoral degree could be a major limiting factor for women in science. Possible drivers of these results are analysed, suggesting that a combination of lack of research funding, insufficient legal framework, pre-existing biases, and poor protection of women’s rights inhibits female participation in science. Based on logistic function modelling it is estimated that, without any action to change current trends, it could take between 10 (humanities) and 175 (engineering) years to reach gender parity across all research areas.

2021 ◽  
pp. 016235322110445
Author(s):  
A. Kadir Bahar

Analyzing the test scores of more than 10,000,000 students who participated in the Advanced Placement (AP) math exams from 1997 to 2019, this study examined the direction and magnitude of the trend in gender disparity by race in participation in and top achievement on AP Calculus AB, Calculus BC, and Statistics exams. The results of this study indicated that, in general, females’ representation in all three AP exams increased significantly. Although the findings indicated that the female-to-male ratios (FMRs) in participation in the AP math exams increased significantly from 1997 to 2019 and favored females for all races, the gender disparities among top achievers for all math exams are still substantial. The relationships between the FMRs in participation and top achievement for all AP math exams were also analyzed within races, and the possible impacts of these findings within the context of the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields were also discussed.


Author(s):  
Fardaus Ara

Empowerment of women is a universal slogan. Worldwide, several strategies are carried on by international organizations to ensure active participation of women in decision-making. Active participation at all level of politics is necessary in this regard. Likewise, the government of Bangladesh has adopted various programs and policies to ensure gender equality in all sectors of life. Relevant laws and ordinances are revised, and new provisions are incorporated in the laws where necessary. One-third seats are kept reserved for women to be elected at the urban local government. However, gender disparity is evident at this level. Women are mostly seen as reserved seat councilors. They are almost absent in the leadership positions. In Bangladesh, women's participation in local government politics is hampered due to multi-faceted factors ranging from socio-cultural to political. The male-dominating political parties can play a major role to bring gender parity in politics by nominating and supporting more women in the local government election.


Author(s):  
Tricia Stewart ◽  
Robin Throne ◽  
Lesley Anne Evans

Postsecondary organizational statistics show women remain limited and underrepresented within presidential and provost appointments, and progress has slowed into the 21st century. This chapter presents a critical review of the current scholarship of gender parity among higher education executive leadership specifically for a construct of voice dispossession. In past work, the authors have discussed how voice dispossession occurs among a dominant past culture and imbalanced power domains amid hierarchical structures for evolving organizational cultures as women often adopt a filtered voice or make attributional accommodations amidst challenges within these power and gendered organizational structures. This chapter extends the conversation by examining this focus within the larger body of research into women in higher education executive leadership to reveal limits of access and career success. While these power domains have historically been predominant across North America, parallels exist among other continents.


Author(s):  
Lynne Orr ◽  
Linda Weekley

The purpose of this chapter was to promote a supportive journey of the postdoc candidates to collaborate and discover a career position upon the completion of a doctoral degree. Examples of safe harbors for moving through the post-doctoral career experiences will also be provided. Specifically, this chapter will focus upon post-doctoral education program graduates, of which there are minimal research and programs available directly related to education doctoral graduates. There is a decline of PhD students entering the academic career. Additional career options beyond the academia will be discussed. Lastly, the postdoc career development plan will be recommended along with viable services for the postdoc who remains in academia.


2020 ◽  
pp. 025576142092862
Author(s):  
Rachel Howley

Gender in music has been explored over recent decades with growing recognition of the challenges that are faced by women in the field. There has been substantial work exploring the Western music canon but little that addresses the music of Australian women, and more specifically, repertoire written for the wind band genre. With thousands of Australian children every year starting their musical journey in their school band, this is an area that has potential for significant impact in addressing the continued gender disparity for composers. In addition, the substantial influence of the conductor in repertoire selection and promotion of the music of women cannot be denied. This article draws its insights from an action research project that explores the journeys and experiences of Australian women composers through interviews along with artistic collaborations between myself and these composers. Furthermore, Australian conductors of wind bands were surveyed to ascertain their understanding of the role that they may play in facilitating change in this area. This article addresses the barriers that composers and conductors experience, the benefits of networks, the generation of additional repertoire, and the subsequent implications for educational contexts.


Pathogens ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
Elizabeth R. Ballou ◽  
Sarah L. Gaffen ◽  
Neil A. R. Gow ◽  
Amy G. Hise

Despite the high prevalence of women in graduate degree programs and equal or more women earning PhDs, MDs, and MD/PhDs, and despite efforts at individual and institutional levels to promote women in STEM fields, there remains a disparity in pay and academic advancement of women. Likewise, there is a paucity of women in top scientific and academic leadership positions. The causes of this gender disparity are complex and multi-factorial and to date no “magic bullet” approach has been successful in changing the landscape for women in academic and scientific fields. In this report we detail our experiences with a novel mechanism for promoting discussion and raising awareness of the challenges of gender disparity in the sciences. The Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) launched the Power Hour at its meetings in 2016: a dedicated, scheduled session held during the scientific meeting to facilitate discussion of challenges specific to women in science. Here we share our experience with hosting the second Power Hour at the 2019 GRC Immunology of Fungal Infections (IFI) meeting held in Galveston, TX. We will discuss the overall structure, key discussion points, and feedback from participants with the aim of supporting future efforts to empower women and underrepresented minority groups in science.


Zootaxa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2707 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL F. BRABY

Taxonomy is a major scientific discipline that underpins the preservation of biological diversity, but the discipline of taxonomy itself has, until recently, remained somewhat disconnected from conservation biology. Checklists summarise available taxonomic and systematic knowledge and in part provide a framework to optimise efforts and scarce resources for biodiversity conservation. Butterflies have been identified as a key bioindicator group of invertebrates for monitoring, assessing environmental change and for biodiversity conservation. A revised checklist of the butterflies (Hesperioidea: Hesperiidae and Papilionoidea: Papilionidae, Pieridae, Nymphalidae, Riodinidae, Lycaenidae) of Australia is presented, incorporating recent changes to both the higher and lower systematic levels of classification based on review of the literature, mandatory changes of specific epithets to achieve gender agreement, together with recommended common names. A total of 1,134 available species group names are listed, of which 423 are junior synonyms. Currently, 596 valid lower taxa (i.e. species and subspecies) are recognised in the fauna. Of the valid species, 430 are recorded from Australia, of which 404 occur on the mainland and Tasmania and 26 are restricted to remote oceanic islands. Gender changes affect 40 species/subspecies group names, of which 27 are valid taxa and 13 are junior synonyms. Comments are made on the size and composition of the fauna, taxonomic impediment, species concepts and utility of subspecies. Modelling the rate of species accumulation based on taxonomic research effort over the past 100 years using a generalized logistic function suggests that about 91% of the Australian butterfly fauna has been catalogued so far. A detailed review of known problems concerning the taxonomy among the lower systematic levels (i.e. genera, species and subspecies) is presented as candidates for future systematic research. Although Australian butterflies are relatively well-known taxonomically, it is estimated that there are approximately 40 species yet to be formally recorded/recognised and more than 60 problems at the lower systematic levels in which the nomenclature, taxonomic status of species/subspecies or monophyly of genera need to be resolved.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 267-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathi N. Miner ◽  
Jessica M. Walker ◽  
Mindy E. Bergman ◽  
Vanessa A. Jean ◽  
Adrienne Carter-Sowell ◽  
...  

Increasing the representation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is one of our nation's most pressing imperatives. As such, there has been increased lay and scholarly attention given to understanding the causes of women's underrepresentation in such fields. These explanations tend to fall into two main groupings: individual-level (i.e., her) explanations and social-structural (i.e., our) explanations. These two perspectives offer different lenses for illuminating the causes of gender inequity in STEM and point to different mechanisms by which to gain gender parity in STEM fields. In this article, we describe these two lenses and provide three examples of how each lens may differentially explain gender inequity in STEM. We argue that the social-structural lens provides a clearer picture of the causes of gender inequity in STEM, including how gaining gender equity in STEM may best be achieved. We then make a call to industrial/organizational psychologists to take a lead in addressing the societal-level causes of gender inequality in STEM.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 103
Author(s):  
James T. Collins

<p>Indonesia is immensely proud of its hundreds of regional languages. This amazing diversity occurs because of the social impact in the three global eras:  ancient migration from Asian continent, trading intensification and colonial oppression five hundred years ago, and demographical and communication change in the 21st century. However, now we are witnessing the number decrease of the languages in Indonesia. The resistance and preservation of the inherited languages, which are local languages, in the Indonesian archipelago (Nusantara) language network that is indeed complex must be considered as important components in the Indonesia’s national identity.</p><p>          Along with the accelerated loss of the inherited languages, we are also dealing with the ecological crisis happening in Indonesia. In the 19th century linguistics developed in connection with the progress of biology. Hence, in the 21st century, the handling and studies of languages that are endangered are reasonably related to the contemporary focus on the global ecology studies. Nettle (1999) asserted that the world regions with the high biological diversity are also the regions with the high language diversity. Any research on Nusantara’s flora and fauna should be correlated with the study of endangered languages and dialects.</p><p>          In this paper, we review transdisciplinary planning which is capable of producing understanding and comprehension on the ecological system and regional language community as well as the perspective on the role of the knowledge in order for the academicians and members of the community to make more joint efforts to maintain the ecological system and the Nusantara language network.</p>


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