Don’t believe the Big Bang Theory! Female scientists are close to equality, study saysBy Rikki Schlott
May 5, 2023
Headlines like “It’s Still Hard for Women in Science,” “Read The Nasty Comments Women In Science Deal With Daily,” and “Sexism in paleontology is so bad female scientists are donning fake beards” paint a nightmarish picture for women in science.
But a new academic paper from Ivy League academics challenges this narrative.
The study, published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, reveals female scientists are approaching parity with their male counterparts — and in some cases actually have a leg up on their competition.
“Just as there are negative consequences of not acknowledging bias, there are also costs of believing that sexism in academic science is pervasive when it is not — key among them that women will be discouraged from choosing academic careers in science,” the report argues.
Husband and wife professors Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams of Cornell University and Boston University professor Shulamit Kahn spent five years pouring over hundreds of studies on gender differences to determine how female scientists fared in six important metrics.
They found women have reached parity with their male coworkers on measures like the quality of recommendation letters, funding for grant proposals, and getting published in academic journals.
And yet the mainstream narrative, they say, hasn’t caught up to this reality.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2023/05/05/female-scientists-are-close-to-equality-study-says/