Let Us Together Shine a Light on Women in STEM

Abstract

Chemistry, as part of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) disciplines, is one of many areas where women’s potential is often still being “STEMmed”. In other words, women receive fewer opportunities both as students and in leadership positions, and hence the entire community loses out on this vast pool of talent. This ACS Omega Virtual Issue on “Women at the Forefront of Chemistry” is our way to celebrate women’s talent in chemistry and its interfacing areas by giving the floor to 50 outstanding women scientists from all over the world who have published in ACS Omega as corresponding authors. It is well-known that women are under-represented in the STEMs. 1 The data presented in the latest report “She Figures 2018,” one of a series of publications released since 2003 by the European Commission, offer an overview of gender (in)equality in Research and Innovation at the pan-European level. In most European Union countries examined, while the percentage of STEM female Ph.D. graduates between 2013 and 2016 grew slightly in fields such as biological sciences, environmental science, and information and communication technologies, their numbers grew at a lower rate compared to their male counterparts in several other STEM fields. The document additionally shows that the proportion of women becomes smaller and smaller, as they climb the academic career ladder. While this disparity does not only apply to STEMs, the gender gap here is even more severe, where the numbers reveal the following: women make up 32% of students and 36% of B.Sc. and M.Sc. graduates, and they make up 37% of Ph.D. students and 39% of Ph.D. graduates. As they move into academic careers, they make up 35% assistant, 28% associate, and 15% full professors, respectively. The percentage of women full professors in Europe for all the disciplines in 2016 was 24%. In 2013, these latter figures were lower, at 14% for the STEMs and 22% for all disciplines. So, while the gender gap in the academic leadership positions has reduced, this is progressing slowly, and gender parity remains far from balanced. The increase of the share of women full professors since 2003 and over the last three years might indicate that the gender gap will close fairly quickly in Europe. 1 However, prominent studies on a broader global scale are not that optimistic. For instance, The Global Gender Gap Report 2017 3 stated that, globally, gender parity is shifting into reverse this year for the first time since the World Economic Forum started measuring it and states more specifically “on current trends, the overall global gender gap can be closed in exactly 100 years across the 106 countries covered since the inception of the Report, compared to 83 years last year”. Additionally, the same report suggests that with the continued widening of the economic gender gap it will now not be closed for another 217 years. 3 Along the same lines, a report by the United Nations Development Programme Gender Social Norms Index, 4 published in 2020 that gathers data from 75 countries, covering over 80% of the world’s populations, highlights how the progress toward gender equality is slowing down since 2013. The world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030, as foreseen 25 years ago by the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action. 4 More regretfully, the analysis reveals that despite decades of progress close to 90% of men and women hold some degree of bias against women, thus suggesting that there still are invisible barriers that women face in achieving equality. 4 Without the pretense to be able to analyze in the short space of an Editorial, the complex reasons why this is happening, the low share of women full professors in European academia, and their slight increase in the last three years call for two comments. The first observation is that very few women reach top academic positions. It is noteworthy that there is a similar occurrence with roughly the same share, in many different sectors of civil society, from public administration to the magistracy and in the private sector. This means that the talents of a large fraction of women that are not given the opportunity to sit in decision-making bodies and/or to shape a research group activity according to their own vision are lost. It is therefore not surprising that a variety of models and empirical studies suggest that improving gender parity may result in significant economic dividends, which vary depending on the situation of different economies and the specific challenges they are facing. The world as a whole could increase global Gross Domestic Product by US$5.3 trillion by 2025 by closing the gender gap in economic participation by 25% over the same period. 3 Second, and importantly for this Editorial, increasing the number of women in leadership positions could enhance the “role-modeling” influence on younger women so that they consider leadership roles to be achievable and are encouraged to strive for them. For this reason, in my role as an Associate Editor at this scientific journal, ACS Omega, I advocate that everyone make an effort to shine a light on successful women in STEM, as in a sort of giant virtual resonator. Here, ACS Omega showcases the contributions to the chemistry enterprise of 50 brilliant women scientists from all over the world, some at the beginning of their career and some already established. We hope to inspire other women, and men as well, to think of Chemistry and STEM subjects as fields where everyone can contribute fruitfully and encourage those in decision-making positions to implement concrete actions aimed at speeding up the closing of the gender gap in research and innovation.