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IWB Book Club: Equity for Women in Science (Tips for Being a Good Ally Outside the Institution)

5/12/2025 10:12 am

This is the third entry in a series based on the book Equity for Women in Science. For the first two entries in this series, see our previous blogs here and here.

 

Nominate women for prestigious awards

In the chapter on Scientific Impact, the book uses the recent example of Donna Strickland, who was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (in 2018) for her graduate work on high-powered lasers with Gérard Mourou. She joined the University of Waterloo as an Assistant Professor in 1997, and was still an Assistant Professor >20 years later when she was awarded the Nobel Prize, never having applied to be a full Professor. The chapter concludes by suggesting that the scientific community doesn’t know how to categorise the achievements of women because our achievements fall outside of the traditional, male-focused, “brilliance.” Even though the way science is done has changed (e.g., less single authorship, more interdisciplinary), our notions of excellence have not. If we don’t know how to recognise the achievements of women, how can we nominate them for awards?

 

The book describes the astonishing gender imbalance for the Nobel Prize (25 women from 714 distinct individuals, 3.5%). This is at least partially due to the low number of women nominated - only 2.2% of Nobel nominees are women (1). In a similar vein, IWB’s 2023 paper highlights the gender disparity across the major biomechanics awards, showing how women had received as few as 5-17% of the societies’ major awards (2). In 2022, despite representing ~30% of the regular membership, only 14% of Professors nominated for major ASB awards were women (3). Nominating women for prestigious awards can help redress this balance and change our perspective on excellence. Led by Katie Knaus and Anne Koelewijn, the IWB Nominate Women initiative is working to ensure that a woman is nominated for every individual award in biomechanics across the major conferences. So far they have nominated 9 women for ASB awards, 2 women for ESB awards and 1 woman for an ISBS award. You can use the Award Table to search awards and inclusion criteria, and you can submit nomination ideas. If you submit a nomination idea, the Nominate Women committee will facilitate the process and paperwork required. 

 

Follow and Engage with Women on Social Media

Part of the underrepresentation problem are the still-prevalent sexist stereotypes of what a "scientist" looks like in the media. Women are frequently underrepresented, and when they are portrayed, they are depicted in communal roles rather than emphasising their individual brilliance (3,4). But representation matters - both underrepresentation and gendered representation in media reinforce biases against women in science. In the chapter on Social Institutions, the authors highlight studies that demonstrate gender biases negatively affect the evaluation of women's work in the classroom (both in peer and teaching evaluations), software publishing, scientific abstracts, and funding (5–9).

 

Social media initiatives, including the hashtag #womeninSTEM, have aimed to increase visibility of women in STEM and to challenge gender stereotypes of the scientist. Similarly, IWB's Social Media committee aims to increase the visibility of women in biomechanics and engage with our community. In addition to amplifying posts highlighting the work of women in biomechanics and sharing resources, the committee releases "Paper of the Quarter" threads to promote our members' research to a broader audience (see an example on X or LinkedIn). Finally, it is important to note that women are much more likely to experience harassment, particularly sexual harassment, in online spaces when compared to men. The authors suggest that including more women in online spaces and amplifying their voices may aid in creating more equitable and hospitable environments. Beyond inclusion, social media platforms need to provide robust and timely moderation and privacy options (e.g., blocking and reporting features) to mitigate online harassment. For particularly egregious behavior on social media (towards yourself or others) posted by those using accounts that are associated in any way with their institutions, you may consider documenting the behavior and reporting the individual to their employer. 

 

Create safe spaces for networking, avoiding environments that have higher chances of sexual harassment and gender discrimination for women

 

Women deserve safe spaces online and offline. Chapter 7 discusses masculine stereotypes of science, typified by Mead and Métraux’s classic survey of high school students in the 1950s who were asked to draw a scientist, and overwhelmingly drew a man with a white coat and glasses. Unfortunately, this issue remains pervasive. A 2018 analysis of written and visual (including advertisements and stock photos) depictions of women in Nature and Science found men were far more often included. Only 15% of corresponding authors were women, less than a third of ‘featured scientists’ were women, and advertisements only featured women 5% of the time! On GitHub, a platform that many biomechanists use, code written by people with a first name suggesting they were female was more likely to be rejected, while the opposite was found when just an initial was used (8).

 

Whilst biomechanics doesn’t often require fieldwork, it can require solitary working or relative isolation in laboratories. The book tells the worrying story of Professor Jane Willenbring (now Professor of Earth and Planetary Science at Stanford University). Jane experienced sexual harassment at the hands of her faculty adviser as a graduate student whilst on field-work trips in Antartica. Jane did not report these assaults until she was tenured due to feeling professionally vulnerable as a graduate student. Once reported, her complaint was corroborated by other women, and her advisor was fired by Boston University.

 

Creating safe spaces for women to network and creating environments with less chance of sexual harassment or gender discrimination is an important action that women and allies can contribute to. Ideas for overcoming gender discrimination include:

 

Authors

Olivia Bruce, Ph.D. (Stanford University)

Fraje Watson, Ph.D. (Imperial College London)

 

References

  1. Mahmoudi M, Poorman JA, Silver JK. Representation of women among scientific Nobel Prize nominees. The Lancet. 2019 Nov 23;394(10212):1905–6.
  2. Ebrahimi A, Daniels KAJ, Gaffney BMM, Banks CL, McDonald KA, Kessler SE, et al. International Women in Biomechanics: Promoting, supporting, and sustaining the careers of women in biomechanics. Journal of Biomechanics. 2023 Jan 1;146:111419.
  3. American Society of Biomechanics. 2022 ASB Awards Demographics Report. 2022 May.
  4. Loverock B, Hart MM. What a scientist looks like: Portraying gender in the scientific media. FACETS. 2018 Oct;3(1):754–63.
  5. Mendick H, Moreau MP. Monitoring the presence and representation of women in SET occupations in UK based online media. Bradford: UKRC; 2010.
  6. Grunspan DZ, Eddy SL, Brownell SE, Wiggins BL, Crowe AJ, Goodreau SM. Males Under-Estimate Academic Performance of Their Female Peers in Undergraduate Biology Classrooms. PLOS ONE. 2016 Feb 10;11(2):e0148405.
  7. Mengel F, Sauermann J, Zölitz U. Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations. Journal of the European Economic Association. 2019 Apr 1;17(2):535–66.
  8. Witteman HO, Hendricks M, Straus S, Tannenbaum C. Are gender gaps due to evaluations of the applicant or the science? A natural experiment at a national funding agency. The Lancet. 2019 Feb 9;393(10171):531–40.
  9. Terrell J, Kofink A, Middleton J, Rainear C, Murphy-Hill E, Parnin C, et al. Gender differences and bias in open source: pull request acceptance of women versus men. PeerJ Computer Science. 2017 May 1;3:e111–e111.
  10. Knobloch-Westerwick S, Glynn CJ, Huge M. The Matilda Effect in science communication an experiment on gender bias in publication quality perceptions and collaboration interest. Science communication. 2013;35(5):603–25.

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