Fixing gender inequity in science: From statistics to games
We seek to understand why women are a minority in science, and we wish to spread awareness of the chilly climate they often encounter in academia. We find surprising patterns in statistics for female participation in science worldwide. Using narratives from across the world, we designed computer games that raise awareness about these issues and hope they will help improve the situation.
Focus Group: Building Bridges To Promote Gender Diversity In Science
Prof. Shobhana Narasimhan (Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research), Alumna Anna Boyksen Fellow | Prof. Gudrun Klinker, Daniel Dyrda (TUM), Collaborators | Hosts: Prof. Johannes Barth, Dr. Eva Sandmann (TUM)
(Image: Chandan Kumar)
Motivation
It is recognized today that the low numbers of women in science constitute a problem that has to be confronted and addressed. It is interesting that many developing countries have a much higher percentage of women scientists than is found in Europe or the USA [1]. However, women scientists in the developing world frequently face additional challenges due to economic and cultural factors. We wished to increase the engagement of the TUM community with these women. We also wished to use the stories and experiences collected from this group to design games that bring out the problems, challenges, and joys of being a woman in science. We note that our primary focus was active intervention, rather than academic research.
Reorientation of goals
As the initial years of the Fellowship period coincided with the pandemic, we had to reorient many of our initial goals. Travel restrictions made impossible our original plan to have a cohort of foreign women scientists visit TUM. While in lockdown, one of us (SN) instead worked on a project (described below) to compare and analyze statistics for women’s participation in science around the world. Later, a short but highly productive international workshop was held at the TUM-IAS. A major part of our effort and budget was redirected toward the development of computer games.
Statistics: Some surprising correlations
We used statistics available publicly [1]-[4] to explore whether there were hitherto undetected patterns in the worldwide participation of women in science.
We made three important findings:
1. The percentage of women in the scientific workforce of a country shows an interesting and surprising correlation with its per capita income (adjusted for purchasing power parity). The data fall on an inverted U, i.e., the poorest and richest countries have very few women in science. The largest number of women in science is found in countries where the per capita income is neither very low nor very high (see Fig. 1a).
If one looks at the countries in Europe alone, one finds an inverse correlation: The richer the country, the lower the percentage of women in science (see Fig. 1b). Some of this inverse correlation can be attributed to the the poorer economies being countries that were formerly socialist or communist, and therefore having a more firmly embedded feminist ideology.
The inverted U pattern is extremely surprising, as it is well known in labor economics that the participation of women in the workforce as a whole follows the exactly opposite trend of a right-side-up U [5],[6].
2. There have been claims in the literature that the percentage of women in science is anticorrelated with the degree of gender equity in the country. This has been used to argue that when gender biases do not operate, women exhibit their “natural” preference for non-science subjects. We do not find this; instead, we find that the percentage of women in science is positively correlated with the gender development index [2] of the country.
3. We find very different patterns of retention of women in science in countries in the Global South and Global North. In the former, the percentage of women in science is high at the school and college level, but drops significantly afterward. In the latter, however, the percentage is low at all stages, though there are exceptions.
This work was published in a special edition of the IUPAC flagship journal Pure and Applied Chemistry devoted to articles about women in science.
Figure 1
Workshops at the TUM-IAS
A workshop was conducted at the TUM-IAS on 8 and 9 May 2023. This WISTUM workshop aimed to introduce the TUM community to diverse perspectives and experiences of women in science from around the world, to create a space where these women could share their stories and form a network, and to collect insights that could contribute to the game project.
The workshop had 29 participants, of whom 16 were from outside TUM. The 11 international participants were from Argentina, Croatia, India, Italy, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, the Philippines, the USA, Ukraine, Romania, and New Zealand; the participants with German affiliations also had diverse backgrounds and nationalities. The participants included two historians of science and a drama therapist.
At the workshop, drama and dialogue were used to collect stories and experiences of women in science. In a session called Voices from the Developing World, open to the entire TUM community, Shazrene Mohamed from Zimbabwe, Marta Antonelli from Argentina, Rabia Salihu Sa’id from Nigeria, and Jinky Bornales from the Philippines shared the stories of their personal trajectories and described their research work. This session showed that while the pleasures and intellectual challenges of scientific research are universal, women scientists from the Global South have to deal with not only a paucity of resources, but often a toxic combination of sexism and racism.
Figure 2
Computer games
We have been working on developing computer games on women in science, in collaboration with Gudrun Klinker the Games Engineering Department of TUM: Daniel Dyrda (project lead, designer and programmer); Chrysa Bika, Mary Hardisty, and Lorena Kneipp Vitale (content and game designers); and Alina Fetoski, Paul Hemming, Felix Stieglbauer, and Damian Schneider (programmers).
These games can be played online using mobile phones or desktop computers, in either single-player or multi-player mode. Playing these games is intended to make one aware of what it feels like to be a woman in science, and to spark discussion when played in a group.
The game has six modules: Unconscious Bias, Journey in Science, Being a Mentor, Juggling, Discrimination and Coping, and Fuel the Fire. Each of these deals with a different aspect of the challenges faced by women in science. The first four modules are complete and have already undergone two rounds of play tests. The remaining two modules are partially complete. We are in the process of further tweaking the structure and content of the games in response to the feedback received.
We hope to launch these games and make them publicly available during 2024.
Open questions and the future
The correlations found in statistics of the worldwide participation of women in science are unexpected and fascinating. They raise obvious questions about whether there is a causal relationship, and if so, why. Further research is needed to study this; social scientists have expressed interest in exploring these issues together.
The game modules need to be refined in response to player feedback, and also be expanded to capture more diverse experiences. We are also looking for a catchy name for the game, and suggestions are welcome!
Figure 3
[1]
UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Women in Science, Fact Sheet No. 55 (June 2019). FS / 2019 / SCI / 55.
[2]
www.hdr.undp.org/gender-development-index#/indicies/GDI
[3]
Huyer, S. Is the gender gap narrowing in science and engineering? UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030. 85-103. Paris: UNESCO (2015).
[4]
Database of the World Economic Outlook reports, International Monetary Fund
www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO retrieved on 11/12/2020.
[5]
Lechman, E. & Kaur, H. Economic Growth and Female Labor Force Participation – Verifying the U-Feminization Hypothesis. New Evidence for 162 Countries Over the Period 1990-2012. SSRN (2015).
[6]
Gaddis, I. & Klasen, K. Economic Development, Structural Change and Women’s Labor Force Participation A Reexamination of the Feminization U Hypothesis. Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth, Discussion papers 71 (2011).
Selected publications
- Narasimhan, S. Participation of women in science in the developed and developing worlds: inverted U of feminization of the scientific workforce, gender equity and retention. Pure and Applied Chemistry 93, 913-925 (2021).