We’ve been treating women badly for centuries. Not just through bias and unequal pay, but in genuine medical terms. Only recently did we realise that women aren’t just “small men” physiologically—take, for example, the fact that the genders experience heart attacks differently, and as a consequence a greater proportion of women’s are fatal because they’re less well understood.
Women have often been ignored in clinical studies. That means they have not been properly catered for with treatments; in 2007, US researchers had to recall 80 per cent of drugs when they repeated trials to include women. Even worse, women’s diseases are also dismissed as some sort of hormone problem or womb-induced fantasy. “I think you’re imagining it, love” is an attitude too many endometriosis sufferers have had to deal with. And for that reason, endometriosis takes an average of eight years to diagnose, while male diseases are much better understood—more than 80 per cent of prostate cancers are caught in the early stages, for example.
These imbalances are among many that will be discussed, dissected and dismantled at this year’s For Women in Science Festival, hosted by the Fondation L’Oréal and UNESCO. “As a woman, part of half of the world's population, you do not receive the right treatments, you do not receive the right diagnosis, you do not receive the right innovations, because science is gendered,” says Alexandra Palt, Fondation L’Oréal executive vice president. “When young people become aware of that, I think that will lead to more interest in science from that generation.”
The For Women in Science Festival will highlight “why and how women scientists will make the difference to science,” through a mixture of TED-style talks, intimate interviews, debates and panel discussions. the latter of which will tackle two key themes: Advancing Global Health and Decoding the Tech Revolution, two areas where gendered science has already had strong consequences.
It’s not just women’s health that’s impacted by gendered science. Our world is quickly becoming managed by algorithms built by men—with male bias built in. According to UNESCO data, just 22 per cent of professionals working in the AI field are women. This is troubling for all minorities. “AI is an extension of our own culture,” says ethics and technology professor Joanna Bryson, one of 40 speakers at the festival. “Implicit biases reflect our lived experience.” So, no matter how hard they try to self-correct, male dominated research teams cannot completely integrate the experiences of women, transgender people or people of colour into the algorithms they're building.
The technology we are becoming ever-increasingly dependent on, from voice recognition and image search to the way the Metaverse is structured, are built to work for guys (and if the current, always-five-degrees-too-cold, open-plan office is anything to go by, the virtual environment isn’t going to be comfortable for women either).
The myriad problems with these biases are well-publicised, but the knock-on effects from having too few female voices reverberate far further than you’d think. As festival speaker Dr Ndoni Mcunu, founder of Black Women in Science South Africa, points out: “The lack of voices from women, especially women from the Global South, is hampering the global understanding of climate change.” Yet, these voices are still being largely ignored. The For Women in Science Festival is looking to change that. Its speakers span 30 countries and regions of the world, and multiple generations, and they’re all exposing a different crack in the system. “What we’re aiming for with this is to create awareness, create passion, and encourage future generations,” says Palt, “because the pressure to change will come from society as a whole.”
The representation of women in science has progressed over the past century, but it still has a long way to go. “We tend to focus on getting students to university, then we leave them,” says Mcunu. “It gets lonelier and lonelier and the [women scientists] staying in the system are getting discouraged.” This frustration has only been exacerbated by the pandemic, but taking two steps back is not an option. “There is more awareness now on gendered science and what consequences come from the absence of women in research and innovation,” says Palt. “But there is still a lot of work to be done.”
Women have long been kept out of the upper echelons of the science world. Less than four per cent of Nobel Prizes for science have been won by women. Female scientists find it hard to progress because they are denied credit for their work, because they can’t effectively bond with their male counterparts, or both. As NASA research scientist Africa Flores, who is also speaking at the festival, says: “In this field, you may feel like you don’t belong, like it’s a boys club out there.” This is a complaint often heard from women across all fields of science, but not enough has been done to address these systemic issues.
In fact, many still assume that women just don’t have science-y brains. Funnily enough, the one place science has always greatly distinguished between men and women is the brain. Women are from Venus, men are from Mars. Women’s brains are biologically programmed to love knitting and cry during rom-coms, while men’s brains are better suited to scientific experiments and making deals in the boardroom.
But, festival speaker professor Gina Rippon says that’s all made up rubbish. As a neuroscientist, she assures everyone that she can’t tell the difference between a male and female brain. “The myth of the female brain is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says Rippon. The countless studies pointing to slight differences are all flawed, meaning the biological basis we’ve always blamed for the gender imbalances doesn’t exist. But those facts won’t matter until the world acknowledges them.
For all these reasons, it’s essential that discussions, like those that will be had at the For Women in Science Festival, take place. “If diverse stories can be told, we can weave a stronger global scientific fabric,” says speaker and molecular engineer Dr Juliana Chan. “We will see all sorts of people: women, minorities, people with disabilities and underrepresented groups, consider science and technology as a career.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
