---
title: "Women in science"
chunk: 24/25
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:51:28.816114+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Notable controversies and developments ===
A study conducted at Lund University in 2010 and 2011 analysed the genders of invited contributors to News & Views in Nature and Perspectives in Science.  It found that 3.8% of the Earth and environmental science contributions to News & Views were written by women even while the field was estimated to be 16–20% female in the United States.  Nature responded by suggesting that, worldwide, a significantly lower number of Earth scientists were women, but nevertheless committed to address any disparity.
In 2012, a journal article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reported a gender bias among science faculty. Faculty were asked to review a resume from a hypothetical student and report how likely they would be to hire or mentor that student, as well as what they would offer as starting salary.  Two resumes were distributed randomly to the faculty, only differing in the names at the top of the resume (John or Jennifer).  The male student was rated as significantly more competent, more likely to be hired, and more likely to be mentored.  The median starting salary offered to the male student was greater than $3,000 over the starting salary offered to the female student.  Both male and female faculty exhibited this gender bias.  This study suggests bias may partly explain the persistent deficit in the number of women at the highest levels of scientific fields.  Another study reported that men are favored in some domains, such as biology tenure rates, but that the majority of domains were gender-fair; the authors interpreted this to suggest that the under-representation of women in the professorial ranks was not solely caused by sexist hiring, promotion, and remuneration. In April 2015 Williams and Ceci published a set of five national experiments showing that hypothetical female applicants were favored by faculty for assistant professorships over identically qualified men by a ratio of 2 to 1.
In 2014, a controversy over the depiction of pinup women on Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor's shirt during a press conference raised questions of sexism within the European Space Agency. The shirt, which featured cartoon women with firearms, led to an outpouring of criticism and an apology after which Taylor "broke down in tears."
In 2015, stereotypes about women in science were directed at Fiona Ingleby, research fellow in evolution, behavior, and environment at the University of Sussex, and Megan Head, postdoctoral researcher at the Australian National University, when they submitted a paper analyzing the progression of PhD graduates to postdoctoral positions in the life sciences to the journal PLOS ONE. The authors received an email on 27 March informing them that their paper had been rejected due to its poor quality. The email included comments from an anonymous reviewer, which included the suggestion that male authors be added in order to improve the quality of the science and serve as a means of ensuring that incorrect interpretations of the data are not included. Ingleby posted excerpts from the email on Twitter on 29 April bringing the incident to the attention of the public and media. The editor was dismissed from the journal and the reviewer was removed from the list of potential reviewers.  A spokesman from PLOS apologized to the authors and said they would be given the opportunity to have the paper reviewed again.
On 9 June 2015, Nobel prize winning biochemist Tim Hunt spoke at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul.  Prior to applauding the work of women scientists, he described emotional tension, saying "you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry." Initially, his remarks were widely condemned and he was forced to resign from his position at University College London.  However, multiple conference attendees gave accounts, including a partial transcript and a partial recording, maintaining that his comments were understood to be satirical before being taken out of context by the media.
In 2016, an article published in JAMA Dermatology reported a significant and dramatic downward trend in the number of NIH-funded woman investigators in the field of dermatology and that the gender gap between male and female NIH-funded dermatology investigators was widening.  The article concluded that this disparity was likely due to a lack of institutional support for women investigators.