The latest issue of Evolutionary Applications, a journal that’s new to me, has devoted its latest issue to “Women’s contributions to basic and applied evolutionary biology.” And it’s all open access, that is, FREE.
It’s not really about women in evolutionary biology; rather, it highlights the research contributions of women in the field; so the articles, all but one solely by women or first-authored by women, are research contributions. There are some big names here, and some intriguing articles, so it’s amply clear that the purview of evolutionary biology as a male field—largely the case when I was in graduate school—has disappeared. And we’re the better for it.
Click on the screenshot below to access the table of contents containing the free articles.
There’s also an introductory article by Marion Wellenreuther and Sally Otto; you can read by clicking on the title below:
h/t: jass
I’m a little taken aback by this. Have I got this right, that this is a journal, these are publications of original research?
There’s a time and place for affirmative action; and (say) an anthology for schoolkids or maybe even undergrads on great women in science, to try to break stereotypes, would be great.
But at a research level?
How do the female researchers on here feel about this? It seems uncomfortably patronizing to me.
I’m not PhD. Only masters (and most of my colleagues were men).
I agree, on the one hand, it can look patronising,’oh look, a few women can write about this’.
On the other, how else do we let people know that women have a functional brain too?
It takes time to break into male-dominated fields.
I doubt that’s in question – certainly not among people who read research journals.
Except that’s somewhat of a monority group.
Yes, but that’s my point. If this is a journal or original research, it is specifically purposed to promulgate research to the rest of the scientific community.
I have no doubt that there’s still a big problem with sexism in the lab, and with stereotypes that discourage young women from entering the field.
But is there a problem for women who have entered the field, and are active researchers, finding that they cannot get their work published, or that other researchers will not assess their published research on its merits?
If so, it seems to me that journals should be vetting their editors and reviewers more carefully for bias and prejudice, not putting women’s papers in a distinct publication.
So how else would you advocate women get published?
Are you honestly suggesting female researchers cannot get published otherwise?
I’m not thrilled about it.
This is a bit unusual to focus a whole issue on a particular participant group in a field. I am not sure how I feel about that yet, but a definite big plus is that it is open access. One cannot have too many shots across the bow against journals that forever hide taxpayer funded research behind a ginormous paywall.
Good point. Thanks, Mark.
I’m trying to draw analogy see if it “feels” right, regardless of the specifics of one’s stance on notions of social justice, affirmative action, sterotyping or whatever. Recalling that we’re talking about a journal of original research here, how do these sound?
“Special Issue: LGBT contributions to Quantum Cosmology”
“Special Issue: African American contributions to Plate Tectonics.”
These sound ridiculous and patronizing to me. Are they false analogies because these groups are smaller than half the population?
Hey Ralph,
To the extent that African Americans and LGBT are denied access to career choices based on their race, gender identity, sexual orientation etc. it does not feel patronising to me.
Discrimination based on gender is one of the most obvious forms of bigotry and as you point out since roughly 50% of the population suffer from this it behoves us to remedy this situation using all possible mechanisms.
Lest you think that this is some form of self serving altruism on my part (actually it is), we all stand to benefit when all members of our society are free to contribute to the full extent of their ability with no artificial barriers being imposed.
There is an enormous amount of untapped human potential out there waiting to be unleashed and I for one am not willing to let the possibility that I am being “ridiculous and patronizing” stand in the way of allowing these people becoming fully participating members of our society with all the rights that we would accord any member of a secular post enlightenment society.
And going back through your previous posts I do not believe that your concern for the feelings of female researchers being patronised is what is actually motivating you.
As a woman in science, for me the question is whether having an issue dedicated to women, or LBGT, or African Americans actually contributes to us being fully participating.
I’m not convinced it does.
“And going back through your previous posts I do not believe that your concern for the feelings of female researchers being patronised is what is actually motivating you.”
Think again.
Assigning motivations to me without evidence does not reflect well on you.
I don’t doubt your noble objectives here, all of which I agree with wholeheartedly. But I am sincerely questioning whether segregated research journals for women or other underrepresented groups furthers those ends.
I think you should be able to address that bona fide question on its merits in a civil manner without assigning sinister motives to me.
+1
I did not at all get the impression that the editors of this special issue are proposing “segregated research journals for women”. Rather, they’re quite explicit that their motive is to celebrate the achievements of women who’ve succeeded in science despite pervasive institutional bias, in order to show young female scientists that it can be done and that things are changing for the better.
So I think you’re off the mark in characterizing this as “affirmative action” meant to allow more women to be published. It’s meant to demonstrate that women are already being published in numbers sufficient to fill an entire issue.
I have to say that I’m disappointed with the responses on this thread. First of all, the entire journal is not devoted to publications by women. This is, rather, a SINGLE ISSUE of the journal designed to highlight the progress of women in evolutionary biology. It is NOT affirmative action, and it’s not designed to help women publish more easily. It simply shows how far we’ve come; and perhaps that will encourage women contemplating entering the field. As I said, when I was in grad school back in the Pleistocene, there were virtually no women in evolutionary biology, and, as Joe Felsenstein notes below, many men saw women as unsuited to the field—-or to science in general.
I’ve been teaching graduate students for over thirty years, usually in small seminars where there is free discussion. Early on, I noticed in these seminars that men tended to talk over women, or interrupt them. All too often, a good idea or thought proposed by a woman, and then echoed by a male, was credited by others to the male. (I’m told by other women that this behavior is very common.) That convinced me that all too often, women evolutionary biologists weren’t taken as seriously as the men, and I instituted rules of discussion to ensure that everybody was listened to and taken seriously.
I for one was heartened to see that one could fill up an entire journal with contributions by good evolutionary biologists who were women. That would not have been possible when I started graduate school.
I’m in the computer software development field and this is exactly what I see.
This starts with early childhood education where girls are shunted out of science and mathematics based curricula and into the “soft” sciences and arts and humanities, the implication being that the sole goal of female education is marriage and child rearing.
My field has been male dominated since I entered it in the 1970s and this has been the water through which I swam.
This has been slowly changing over the years but in general software development shops cater to the habits of male programmers and female programmers either adapt to that or get out.
It should not be surprising that many of them leave or never enter in the first place.
If I sounded a bit hostile to Ralph’s comments above this is because in the past I said many of the same things, completely oblivious to a system of male privilege that simultaneously denied access to women entering the field and allowed me easy access while all the time proclaiming that I wholeheartedly agreed with the objectives of female equality.
So, you are doubling down on falsely ascribing motives to me without evidence? You are projecting your own past attitudes onto me. I said none of those things here, nor do I think them.
I do not seek to minimize the problem of sexism in science, nor to discourage those who are working to change attitudes.
I commented on the implementation. Is a segregated research journal a good approach? That’s what I’m not sure about.
Anyway, I won’t comment further, I’d like to hear other people’s opinions. I’d just be grateful if you would refrain from trying to demonize me as a sexist patriarch and consider the point I made in good faith on its merits.
“Is a segregated research journal a good approach?”
Ralph, can you point to a passage where these journal editors suggest that it is?
Ok, I’ll make one more comment to answer Greg’s question.
No, they haven’t said that explicitly, I’m raising the question.
If this is an anthology of work by great female researchers directed toward (say) students to help break stereotypes: excellent, then I have no hesitation, I’m 100% on board.
But if there’s the intention of addressing the problem of bias against women’s original research work by publishing their original research in a separate journal: that I’m less sure about.
My impression was that this seems to be the latter, but I’m open to correction.
I think we all agree on the ideal that we want to see is that all research should treated on its merits and integrated by subject matter and importance, not by the social identity of the researcher. And I fully acknowledge that this may not be happening now, and we have to take active steps to MAKE this happen. I’m not denying the problem. My question is, does a journal that publishes women’s original research separately (again, IF that’s what this is?) further that purpose effectively?
The answer to your question is #1, without a doubt: it’s an anthology of work by good female evolutionists, showing off what they can do. There is absolutely NO aim here to put together women’s contributions as a statement against bias against publishing their original work. And remember, this is a one-off thing: that is not a journal devoted to publishing work solely by women.
I’ll add: it’s often difficult to get tone across in brief internet comments. None of my questions in the comment above or other comments were intended to be rhetorical, implying the opposite. Where I asked a question, it was genuine.
And, although strictly I did not call YOU “ridiculous and patronizing”, in any event I realize that it may have come across as hostile, for which I apologize.
But if you inferred that I’m a closet patriarch, believe me, you got it badly wrong.
I’m sorry to hear so much negative reaction. It is important to hear of the experiences of women who managed to overcome the many barriers and make major contributions to evolutionary biology. I would add the name of my colleague Elizabeth Thompson, a major figure in statistical genetics, who studied at the same college as Deborah Charlesworth, Newnham College.
I was a graduate student at Jerry’s university, in a predecessor of Jerry’s department, in the 1960s. Few of the graduate students then were women. I remember one distinguished senior faculty member telling his all-male seminar that he didn’t think women should get Ph.D.s, because they would just drop out and have babies. Being cowards and being not-too-advanced in our own thinking, none of us contradicted him (fortunately, I have forgotten which senior faculty member this was).
Yes, it was 1965 when my high school chemistry teacher said much the same thing to about a hundred students in a mixed gender lecture. He didn’t even want women at the bachelor level.
Amen: “We are better for it.”
We are better for women.
I find the negative reactions a bit strange too.
It is -in our society- a good thing to highlight the contributions of a group (ic. women) that is often still not considered in full, particularly outside the lab. I mean, it shows that science is not exclusive on basis of things like sex or race. Very positive, thank you for linking Jerry.
I see icons, from Mc Clintock to Margulis and Zuk, but one could easily add a few that were not even mentioned, such as Laura Betzig, Margie Profet, Leda Cosmides, Margo Wilson, Barbara Smuts, Judith Harris and the ‘Leakey Girls”: Jane Goodall, Birute Galdikas and Diane Fossey.
They are not ‘evolutionary biologists’, but their contributions undoubtedly have had some influence in how we see evolutionary biology.
Would a list of say black or ‘Islamic’ scientists be as rich? I’d hope so.
How sad that in 2015 affirmative action is even necessary! Clearly it is still the case that for various sections of society career potential is limited not just by ability and the willingness to work hard but also by what or who they are. We should be ashamed of that.
Thanks for posting this important issue. One commonality among successful women appears to be a good support system – many such women speak of feminist spouses, as well as mentors that are supportive and aware of implicit biases. I think the review by Wellenreuther and Otto in this issue should be required reading for all evolutionary biologists – certainly beginning grad students in the field.