Over the years, I attended numerous equity and diversity trainings at several universities and at the National Institutes of Health. I always believed in the existence of racial and ethnic bias, but I remained puzzled for a long time about whether there was still significant gender bias affecting women’s careers. As a scientist, I needed to see convincing, hard data to believe that the problem was real.
As Nobel Laureate Gertrude Elion said, “I hadn’t been aware that there were doors closed to me until I started knocking on them.” I became more aware of these issues when I became a professor. A Pew Research study confirmed that gender bias becomes more apparent if you’re in a male dominated field and reach the upper levels.
When I was hired, I was the only woman in the microbiology and immunology department with 16 men. A previous woman faculty member who had not received tenure had just left. While I was used to working in heavily male-dominated environments – the ratio in the department was below the national average of approximately 25% women. In fact, there were only a few tenured women in the entire medical school.
In addition, when I told friends and neighbors that I was a professor in the medical school, I kept getting asked if I was a nurse. They assumed that because I was a woman that I was a nurse. I had to explain that I was a professor in the medical school and taught future physicians.
However, I received wonderful support and mentoring from the medical school’s women faculty committee, and after I received tenure, I paid this support forward. I organized annual promotion and tenure mentoring workshops for the women faculty, and later for associate professors interested in going up for full professor. These group meetings were very successful and popular.
Gender Bias in Science
I eventually became chair of the women’s faculty committee in the medical school and then chair of the Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Women. When I sent out a campus-wide announcement about our plans for International Women’s Day, I received an email from a man who was a faculty member, asking me about when to expect an “international men’s day.” I realized that there was a serious question behind this comment: why do we still pay attention to women in this way at universities?
I wrote back a response with some references to well-designed experiments published in respected, peer-reviewed journals that showed statistically significant bias against women in science and academia. Many such studies showed that simply changing a man’s first name on a CV or article to that of a woman’s name decreases the perceived quality of identical materials. I also shared statistics on sexual assault, which was (and still is) rampant on college campuses.
I continued collecting published studies on bias against women in science and medicine and searching for a review article on this subject. I realized that many of my colleagues did not know about these studies or their results, so in 2014 I gave my first seminar on campus about bias against women and was invited by the provost to give the seminar to the deans and directors in 2015. Eventually this led to me write a 2019 review article on bias against women in STEMM and in academia entitled “Does Gender Bias Still Affect Women in Science?” I published it in a peer reviewed scientific journal so that it would reach scientists who ordinarily would not know about these data.
I have now been invited to give over 45 talks on gender and racial/ethnic bias, and I have shared this research in presentations to undergraduates, to faculty at department meetings, and to participants at national and international conferences. Audiences are amazed by the data. Fortunately, awareness of the bias makes a tremendous impact, and seeing where bias exists helps us to devise strategies to lessen it. A 2018 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine stated, “Training to reduce personal bias can cause larger-scale changes in departmental behaviors in an academic setting.”
Since bias is most often unconscious, simply discussing it can raise awareness and make a difference. As they say, “If you see something, say something!” It really can open eyes and change lives.
More Work Must Be Done
The studies captured in my review article, as well as research published since then, document bias in grading, hiring, evaluations, promotions, tenure, pay, citations, grant reviews, and letters of recommendation, and they also document persistent sexual harassment. These biases accumulate over time to affect the overall career success of women, including their chances for tenure and promotion. One measure often used in evaluating faculty productivity and prestige is the H-index which is based on the quantity of an individual’s published papers and on how many times they have been cited in other publications. Anyone looking at a candidate for promotion, should realize that a woman’s H-index is likely lower than it should be due to gender bias, as I described in my 2021 paper, “The H-Index in Medicine and Science: Does It Favor H-im or H-er? Successes and Hurdles for Women Faculty.”
Another challenge for women and historically underrepresented groups, is that they bear an extra burden of service work, both formally and informally. We are asked to serve on committees where diversity is needed, and students who are like us reach out for help and advice even when we’re not their advisors or official mentors. Often our male colleagues don’t know about this extra work that we do. This unrecognized service is sometimes called the “woman tax” or the “minority tax.” Department chairs can help by recognizing and rewarding this important work.
While these gender issues can hold women back, there is some good news. Over the years, we’ve seen a tremendous increase in women faculty in microbiology disciplines, with women assistant professors increasing from about 25% in 2006 to over 55% in 2018, but women still make up only about 25% of full professors. [Editor’s note: The author’s pre-print manuscript with this data is pending publication.]
Continuing Advocacy
To help younger women see professional women scientists as role models, I decided that any time a reporter requested a microbiologist or immunologist for an interview, I would do it. I’ve now done over 200 interviews, many for national platforms. I hope this public role helps people to see and accept women as scientists.
I have worked on many committees and initiatives focused on racial and ethnic diversity and on supporting women in STEM. I was a co-PI on an NSF ADVANCE grant for women in STEM. Over the past five years, I’ve worked on implementing equity and diversity initiatives at East Carolina University to build diversity into school and department policies and procedures—and, importantly, into promotion and tenure guidelines. We’ve had great success, and I’m preparing a manuscript on how to help others do this.
In 2022, I was selected to be on the American Society for Microbiology’s Inclusive Diversity with Equity, Access, and Accountability Committee of the Board, and I will work to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) nationally and internationally. I will continue to give seminars and lead workshops on bias and intervention strategies and for improving diversity throughout the university structure.
I hope that faculty and scientists across the country will work to improve DEI at their universities and companies. My advice for them: Get the data, form committees to support each other, and actively advocate to include DEI in all policies and procedures.
Rachel Roper, PhD, is a professor of microbiology and immunology at East Carolina University in the Brody School of Medicine. She received her BS from Texas A&M University and her MS and PhD from the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, where she received the M.A. Hare Research Excellence Award. During her postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health Lab of Viral Disease, she was awarded the NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence. Dr. Roper has studied poxvirus virulence genes, genomics, and vaccines, including oncolytic viruses, and her publications have been cited over 7,000 times. She has been funded by NIH, the National Science Foundation, and a variety of other foundations, and she is a member of the National Academy of Inventors, as well as co-chair of the Global Virus Network Monkeypox Task Force. She serves on the American Society for Microbiology’s Inclusive Diversity with Equity, Access, and Accountability Committee of the Board and is an ECU Woman of Distinction. She has served on numerous national and international grant panels and editorial boards.