Originally published here.
Social protest movements such as #MeToo and #BlackInSTEM have shone a light on the need for greater diversity, equity and inclusion at scientific institutions worldwide. And Nature’s 2021 salary and job satisfaction survey, which drew responses from more than 3,200 working scientists around the world, suggests that there’s much more work to do.
Just 40% of respondents felt that their employers were doing enough to promote diversity, down from 51% in 2018, when the survey last took place. A substantial minority of respondents said they had witnessed colleagues being subjected to discriminatory behaviour, and another sizeable minority said they had experienced such treatment themselves. The self-selected survey (see ‘Nature’s salary and job survey’) included a series of questions that explore attitudes and experiences relating to diversity. Follow-up interviews with selected respondents and free-text comments have helped to fill out the picture.
The respondents reflect the relative homogeneity in science in some parts of the world. Eighty-two per cent of respondents in the United Kingdom, 81% in Germany and 74% in the United States identified themselves as white.
The free-text comment section exposed conflicting viewpoints on an often polarizing topic. A late-career Asian woman working in geology and environmental sciences at a European university wrote: “Academics like to think of their community as free spirited and innovative, but there is massive systemic discrimination and power hierarchies that ruin people and careers … This is suffocating science and discouraging early-career academics.”
But a white male professor of social sciences in the United States offered a different perspective: “When I say I have experienced and seen gender discrimination, it has always been against males. For example, we were directly told during a job search that we could not hire a white male, even though our relative representation of women and minorities is higher than average for our field. White males have long felt there is little likelihood of approval for sabbaticals or positive promotion decisions from the dean and upper administration.”
Some people think that the renewed emphasis on diversity and inclusion in science is overblown and unnecessary, says Zenobia Lewis, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Liverpool, UK. She’s heard men say that gender-equality initiatives in science, such as the Athena Swan Charter, are no longer necessary because women have made gains. The charter, launched in the United Kingdom in 2005, was introduced in Ireland ten years later, with similar schemes now running in the United States, Canada and Australia. “My response is that it’s about equality for all, not just women,” says Lewis, who identifies as part Persian. “I’m a brown person in ecology, and there aren’t many of us.”
Discrimination
The survey suggests that discrimination remains common in science (see ‘Room for improvement’). Overall, 32% of respondents said they had witnessed discrimination against or harassment of colleagues in their current job. That’s up slightly from the 28% who reported observing such behaviour in 2018. Twenty-seven per cent of respondents said they had personally experienced discrimination, bullying or harassment in their present position. Again, that’s up compared with 2018, when 21% said they had such first-hand experiences.
Unsurprisingly, some groups are more likely than others to feel targeted. Women reported experiencing mistreatment more often than men: 34% to 21%. Workers in academia were twice as likely as those in industry to report such behaviour: 30% to 15%. A woman who is now a staff scientist at a US biomedical company wrote of her experience in academia: “I was bullied and harassed repeatedly at my previous job, and literally nothing there has changed or will ever change. My current job is much nicer, but I will never ever work in an academic setting again. A postdoc in the lab kept touching my hair and the university did absolutely nothing to protect me or stop it.”
Overall, 17% of the women — and 1% of the men — in the survey reported being the target of gender discrimination. Sexism remains rampant, says survey respondent Fiona Simpson, a cancer researcher at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. “Everybody talks about equality in science, but it doesn’t actually happen,” she says. “There are so many articles, so much discussion, but over my 30 years it’s gotten worse.”
Ethnicity can be an important factor too, especially in countries where the scientific workforce is predominantly white. In the United Kingdom, for example, 27 of the 54 respondents who did not identify as white said they had personally experienced discrimination, bullying or harassment on the job. That’s nearly twice the rate reported by 357 white respondents in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the 221 respondents who did not identify as white were also more likely than white colleagues to report such experiences: 33% to 25%.
Among those reporting personal experience of mistreatment, the most commonly cited instances fell under the categories of power imbalances (66%) and bullying (51%). The most commonly reported forms of discrimination were related to gender (34%), age (21%) and race (15%).
Less than 1% of respondents reported experiencing discrimination against people from sexual and gender minorities; that rate is essentially unchanged compared with the 2018 survey. A South African researcher in ecology and evolution wrote: “As a lesbian, I think my job prospects are better than they would have been just ten years ago because of cultural shifts and also legal changes in South Africa regarding employment equity.”
Only 7% of respondents reported a disability, a reflection of a widely acknowledged lack of representation of this community in scientific fields. Disabled people face particular career challenges in science, says Michelle Moram, a London-based materials scientist who is currently working remotely for Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. In 2010, Moram was diagnosed with a serious autoimmune disorder which would have qualified her for disability protection under the law. Still, she kept the illness hidden for years for fear of jeopardizing her chances of promotion.
Falling short
A slim majority of survey respondents (51%) felt that their institutions were doing enough to promote gender equity, down from 58% in 2018. Forty-one per cent thought that their place of employment was doing enough to promote ethnic or racial equality, down from 52% in 2018.
Many universities and companies have established diversity committees to improve the recruitment and retention of members of under-represented groups, but their reach remains limited. Just over 12% of respondents said that they had participated in an institution-wide diversity committee, and 21% weren’t sure if such committees even existed at their place of work. Women were more likely than men to participate in such committees: 14% to 9%.
You can read the complete report here.