What Are the Real Costs of Sexism in Science?

By Sheeva Azma

Sexism in science takes a financial, emotional, mental, professional, and social toll on women scientists.

I recently saw an article published in Nature talking about sexism as not only bad for science but also a waste of public funding. You can read the article here; there’s also a commentary on the paper, including policy recommendations, in The Conversation. It’s a common-sense argument, if you ask me. The authors write that sexual harassment in the sciences is second only to that in the military – though I am curious where politics fits in there, at least in the US, which has a dearth of women in political leadership positions.

The authors of the Nature paper state that sexism exacts a “physical, mental, financial and professional toll,” even when it does not lead to women leaving academic science. Having lived that, I agree 100%. What’s more, toxic science culture doesn’t even just affect marginalized people; it affects everyone and makes work life miserable.

It’s pretty clear to me that women navigate a complicated path to succeed in science. I know that because I have traveled that same path, and it was tough. After graduating from MIT, I worked in a brain imaging lab at Harvard Medical School, and I was lucky to work with a brilliant and fearless woman investigator. Though she was my science role model, I knew I could never be like her and make the same sacrifices she did to become a scientist. Amazingly, she also talked openly about sexism in science. In fact, many of the investigators where I worked were women, and I saw how hard they worked to balance their work and life. It seemed like they were always working. They worked so much that I did not want to be like them, as much as I admired them.

They joked about sexism, but what seemed to motivate them was their love of science, so even though they weren’t as “big name” as their male counterparts, they were doing what they loved. They were also just super fun people to be around, baking delicious food and bringing it in for the research assistants, and being great to work with. My supervisor even boosted my pay by a couple of thousand dollars because she said I was more qualified and should get paid more, which was awesome.

Unfortunately, I could not keep up with the pace of science at Harvard Medical School. The hours were long, the tasks were never-ending, and I felt like I rarely had time to do “normal” things like go run errands. It did not help that I was the sole research assistant in the lab when I first joined it, as my boss worked to collect data so we could apply for an NIH grant to do more work. Luckily, we did get the NIH grant, in part due to my copyediting skills.

One day, not even a year into that job, which was my first “real” job as a college grad, I was drinking coffee all week, and ended up in the hospital due to stress. I had to take some time off of work, which was a mess. Years later, I learned that when you don’t drink enough water, this apparently mobilizes your fight-or-flight response, which explains why I felt like I had stress coursing through my veins in the days leading up to that event.

After my experience with overwork, I decided I would get more serious about work-life balance. I opted for a grad school in DC that was still a top grad school, but would also allow me to pursue a healthy work-life balance and help me fulfill my dreams of working in science policy by virtue of its proximity to Capitol Hill.

I started grad school in 2008 and left in 2013. In those five years, I did a lot to advance my professional life. Some highlights: I was the only student in my class to do an external research rotation, which I did at the Washington, DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center, troubleshooting their visual presentation software so they could do a study on eye movements in Veterans with schizophrenia. I taught about the brain as much as I could, and my students (middle schoolers through Georgetown medical and grad students) liked me! I interned at a think tank where I channeled my inner Tony Stark to solve problems with science. At the same time, I completed my research project and submitted a paper for publication (which, sadly, did not get accepted). I visited Capitol Hill twice to advocate for science funding. As vice president of our local Society for Neuroscience chapter, I organized professional development events for my fellow scientists. My professors happily obliged to write me letters of recommendation for the science policy and science writing opportunities I dared to pursue. Thanks to them, I interviewed for a prestigious internship at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, which I ultimately did not get, but that experience could be a whole other blog post by itself. LOL!

Ultimately, I left science because my research projects did not work out. When I say they did not “work out,” I mean that I conducted one study, and published it and submitted it to a journal, and it got rejected. After that, I actually tried to do a second research project based on the same theoretical framework as my first project. I spent hours in meetings, explaining a research paradigm to my advisor, who successfully landed a grant on the topic. However, by that time, it was six years into my PhD program, and I got the feeling that my thesis committee did not believe me when I said I could do the research analyses I said I could – that I had learned at Harvard – which, incidentally, is the birthplace of functional MRI imaging.

The bright spot in the chaos of it all was that I figured out what I would be willing to put up with (and not put up with) in my work life. Literally the day I left grad school, I went home and posted my skills on a freelance writing website. I became a science writer, and I couldn’t be happier. Let’s face it, a science job isn’t a 9-to-5; it’s a 9-to-9, as one of my MIT professors once said when I interviewed him as an undergrad. I still have days where I am thankful and excited that I get to set my own hours and don’t have to run into the lab to pull an all-nighter for data that may or may not be useful. That was tough!

I am very lucky to have had these experiences. In fact, I am still working with my advisor and my collaborators, as of this writing, to publish my graduate work (no loss of taxpayer dollars here!). I am a scientist at heart, but my experience has redefined, to me, the role of science within society.

I don’t think it makes sense to compare my experience in science to that of anyone else’s, but I definitely agree with the authors of the Nature paper when they talk about the costs of women leaving science. Even if women are leaving their PhD programs because their supervisors feel they are no longer “qualified” (what would that mean, after being admitted to a PhD program, anyway?), the costs of a leaky pipeline include:

• Fewer cures for diseases, including diseases relevant to women, who may choose to study things that are personally relevant to them
• Less accessible science because there are fewer scientists working on more topics, and don’t have time to tackle it all
• Being forced to navigate a “publish or perish” system that scientists do not like (no joke, I once met a successful scientist that advised my fellow grad students and me to NOT do science – yikes!)
• Toxic, including sexist, culture that is reinforced when women are forced to sacrifice everything to succeed in academic science, and even more so when women are forced out
• The emotional, mental, and physical toll on women, themselves, who are forced to navigate a broken system, and may feel that they have no choice but to stay in science because they feel that they have no other skills
• Money and time lost by women who are pursuing PhDs, as well as mental health struggles dealing with sexism and the destruction of their science careers
• Less research being done, overall, due to people leaving science
• A whole swath of brilliant, science-minded women being forced to find another job, rendering them unable to fulfill their dreams

That’s all I could think of right now, writing this post. If you have anything to add, feel free to chime in in the comments.

I am not unique in my experience, by the way. I recommend you check out this post I did interviewing four people, including two women, who “Mastered out” of their PhD programs, to read about their experiences leaving science as well.

So, any time I see someone talking about how sexism in science is a huge waste of taxpayer dollars (and women scientists’ time), I can’t help but want to give them the Nobel Prize of economics. In the US, science research is funded entirely by taxpayers, and as a science policy professional, I believe it’s important that we give people in the US their money’s worth when it comes to science breakthroughs. If that involves making science more inclusive, then, as scientists, we have to deliver.

Of course, the above discussion doesn’t even include all of the people who never were able to work towards their goals of becoming a scientist in the first place. If science is supposed to serve all of society, it should include all of society, and it must work better as a system of understanding the world.

If you’re interested in how the social structure of science influences scientific research, check out my article, “Science Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum,” where I talk about science in the greater context of society. Also check out my article with sociologist Kelly Tabbutt, called “Better Science Through Sociology,” in which I talk about why we should, as scientists, care about the sociology of science.

In what ways has sexism in science affected you? What do you see as the tangible impacts of sexism in science? Feel free to chime in below in the comments (you can do so anonymously).