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Diversity begets diversity: A global perspective on gender equality in scientific society leadership
Research shows that gender inequality is still a major issue in academic science, yet academic societies may serve as underappreciated and effective avenues for promoting female leadership. That is, society membership is often self-selective, and board positions are elected (with a high turnover com...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5976142/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29847591 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197280 |
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author | Potvin, Dominique A. Burdfield-Steel, Emily Potvin, Jacqueline M. Heap, Stephen M. |
author_facet | Potvin, Dominique A. Burdfield-Steel, Emily Potvin, Jacqueline M. Heap, Stephen M. |
author_sort | Potvin, Dominique A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Research shows that gender inequality is still a major issue in academic science, yet academic societies may serve as underappreciated and effective avenues for promoting female leadership. That is, society membership is often self-selective, and board positions are elected (with a high turnover compared to institutions)—these characteristics, among others, may thus create an environment conducive to gender equality. We therefore investigate this potential using an information-theoretic approach to quantify gender equality (male:female ratios) in zoology society boards around the world. We compare alternative models to analyze how society characteristics might predict or correlate with the proportion of female leaders, and find that a cultural model, including society age, size of board and whether or not a society had an outward commitment or statement of equality, was the most informative predictor for the gender ratio of society boards and leadership positions. This model was more informative than alternatives that considered, for instance, geographic location, discipline of study or taxonomic focus. While women were more highly represented in society leadership than in institutional academic leadership, this representation was still far short of equal (~30%): we thus also provide a checklist and recommendations for societies to contribute to global gender equality in science. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5976142 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-59761422018-06-17 Diversity begets diversity: A global perspective on gender equality in scientific society leadership Potvin, Dominique A. Burdfield-Steel, Emily Potvin, Jacqueline M. Heap, Stephen M. PLoS One Research Article Research shows that gender inequality is still a major issue in academic science, yet academic societies may serve as underappreciated and effective avenues for promoting female leadership. That is, society membership is often self-selective, and board positions are elected (with a high turnover compared to institutions)—these characteristics, among others, may thus create an environment conducive to gender equality. We therefore investigate this potential using an information-theoretic approach to quantify gender equality (male:female ratios) in zoology society boards around the world. We compare alternative models to analyze how society characteristics might predict or correlate with the proportion of female leaders, and find that a cultural model, including society age, size of board and whether or not a society had an outward commitment or statement of equality, was the most informative predictor for the gender ratio of society boards and leadership positions. This model was more informative than alternatives that considered, for instance, geographic location, discipline of study or taxonomic focus. While women were more highly represented in society leadership than in institutional academic leadership, this representation was still far short of equal (~30%): we thus also provide a checklist and recommendations for societies to contribute to global gender equality in science. Public Library of Science 2018-05-30 /pmc/articles/PMC5976142/ /pubmed/29847591 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197280 Text en © 2018 Potvin et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Potvin, Dominique A. Burdfield-Steel, Emily Potvin, Jacqueline M. Heap, Stephen M. Diversity begets diversity: A global perspective on gender equality in scientific society leadership |
title | Diversity begets diversity: A global perspective on gender equality in scientific society leadership |
title_full | Diversity begets diversity: A global perspective on gender equality in scientific society leadership |
title_fullStr | Diversity begets diversity: A global perspective on gender equality in scientific society leadership |
title_full_unstemmed | Diversity begets diversity: A global perspective on gender equality in scientific society leadership |
title_short | Diversity begets diversity: A global perspective on gender equality in scientific society leadership |
title_sort | diversity begets diversity: a global perspective on gender equality in scientific society leadership |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5976142/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29847591 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197280 |
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