Departmental-level approaches to gender equity in biology
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Science and Medical Education, Science Policy
- Keywords
- Gender equity, recruitment, biology, positive change
- Copyright
- © 2018 McDonald-Spicer et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. Departmental-level approaches to gender equity in biology. PeerJ Preprints 6:e27325v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27325v1
Abstract
Gender equity remains a large issue in academia, with women comprising only about one fifth of professors in the US. There are many changes that can be made to increase equity, including institutional policies, cultural change and bottom-up strategies, but these can be difficult or slow to implement at a departmental level. Hiring is one area that can be easily tackled at a departmental level and is strongly influenced by implicit and systematic bias. Here we focus on two methods of tackling bias in recruitment – redefining merit and identified positions.
Author Comment
Here we describe the current issue of gender inequity at the independent group leader level in many biology departments. We provide evidence-based insight into the causes of current gender imbalances while focusing on implicit bias and the redefning of 'merit'. We conclude with five specific suggestions that can be implemented at the departmental level to improve gender balance and diversity in biology.