Despite years of efforts to tackle gender gaps in New Zealand's science system, women remain under-represented in top-tier roles. Photo / 123rf
Despite years of efforts to tackle gender gaps in New Zealand's science system, women remain under-represented in top-tier roles. Photo / 123rf
It’s been likened to an “old boys club” where women earn less, hold fewer top roles, win fewer awards and face myriad other barriers that come with structural sexism.
More recently, however, our historically male-dominated science sector has shown promising signs of change, from research institutes forging their own plans to become more diverse and inclusive, to equity being a focus of a blueprint for its largest shake-up in 30 years.
How far do we have to go?
Still a long way, as data shows.
Kiwi women remain sorely under-represented at the highest tiers of science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM) – even in fields that are female-dominated – and there’s also a clear need to build more ethnic diversity into the system.
“However, if we look closer, employment in organisations with a strong biology base – like medical, health, veterinary and food sciences – are strongly female, whereas careers based on physical and mathematical sciences, like engineering and technology, are predominantly male.”
In the latter, she said, there’d been a slow shift to increase the percentage of females due to a deliberate effort by the engineering and technology sector to recruit women and girls early.
Still, women accounted for fewer than two in 10 of Engineering New Zealand’s membership and only about 20 per cent of the graduate engineers at the University of Auckland – a figure reflected globally.
Sector-wide, the biggest difference remained at senior level.
“Women represent only a third of senior leaders in the STEM workforce, in both businesses and academia,” she said.
“This number has significantly risen over the past 20 years: in the early 2000s, there were very few female professors in science, for example, whereas now around 30 per cent of associate professors and professors are female.”
An analysis shows that women remain sorely under-represented at the highest tiers of science, engineering, technology and mathematics (STEM).
The number of senior women was low even in fields where there were many more women, such as medicine.
“If we look at the University of Auckland’s School of Medicine – one of only two medical schools currently in the country – there are 12 female professors compared to 27 male professors.”
In the university’s School of Biological Science – another female-dominated area – women accounted for just seven out of 24 professors at the university, she said.
“Nursing is one of the only schools where gender disparity moves the other way, with School of Nursing having three female professors to one male.”
She said it was encouraging to see that, further down the tenure ladder in medicine and biological sciences, the gap was moving closer to 50-50.
“So, in subjects where women are dominating the early pipeline, there is the hope that the percentage of female senior leaders will get closer to 50 per cent over time.”
She said research by the Association of Women in Science indicated about two-thirds of senior and principal scientists at New Zealand’s seven Crown Research Institutes (CRIs) were male, with slightly more females at the research associate level.
Data provided to the Herald by sector body Science New Zealand showed females now made up about 40 per cent, 44 per cent and 53 per cent of the total workforces of Niwa, GNS Science and AgResearch respectively.
ESR last year reported about 65 per cent of its 566 staff were female, while at Rotorua-based Scion, that figure was 49 per cent, although women made up a slightly smaller proportion (43 per cent) of its science teams.
Timewell added that long-time equity issues hadn’t only been isolated to gender.
One study from 2020 showed how, between 2008 and 2018, one university reported not having employed a single Māori or Pasifika academic in its science department.
At the other seven universities it looked at, Māori comprised less than 5 per cent of total full-time equivalent roles (FTEs), with averages ranging between 4.3 per cent and 0.6 per cent, and no significant differences observed over the decade.
“Looking at high-level ethnicity data from the CRIs, there are about equal numbers of Māori men and women, accounting for between 1 and 7 per cent of scientist numbers depending on the CRI,” Timewell said.
“Most of these are at the middle tier of the scientist career pathway, with very few Māori senior leaders across the CRIs.”
There were also similar numbers of Asian men to Asian women, but at much higher levels than Māori – or between 4 and 15 per cent – with more in senior science positions.
There’d also been some recent research to demonstrate a gender pay gap in science.
One recent paper estimated that, on average, female university academics earned around $400,000 less than men over a lifetime – and last year, another pay-focused study concluded they’d keep facing inequity for decades without bold action.
Its authors prescribed a mix of solutions for universities, such as hiring more female researchers and promoting women in the same way as men.
Across the public service, the gender pay gap stood at about 7.7 per cent.
“STEM isn’t doing too badly in this, for example, Callaghan Innovation has around an 8 per cent gender pay gap,” Timewell said.
“Other CRIs are at around 12 per cent, which is where the public service was in 2018 before big steps in certain areas.”
As for what was driving gender inequity across the sector, the causes were complex and not easily tackled.
One big factor was family, with women still usually being the ones who took time out to have children.
“Even those who take the minimal time will still have a career gap of a few months, which could make all the difference to career progression,” she said.
“Even after this, the mother is usually the primary caregiver in a household.”
Secondly, she said, research had shown that women weren’t as good as men at putting themselves forward for promotion.
“This puts the onus on managers, who are often men, to take the lead on promoting women, potentially over men who are self-promoting and therefore more visible,” she said.
“There’s also evidence that women won’t apply for jobs unless they fulfil more of the criteria than men.
“This all amounts to fewer, but more qualified, women than men putting their names forward for more senior roles.”
On top of that, she said, remained old-fashioned bias.
“Whether conscious or sub-conscious, if the upper levels of a workforce look one way – and in STEM, as with many other sectors, that’s white and male – then changing the status quo is slow,” she said.
“Role models help younger people imagine themselves in a career and without the diversity at the top, it’s hard to provide that line of sight.
“It’s also hard for the few role models who are there as they often have to choose whether to be seen or to do.”
While the data suggested there was a long way to go, Timewell said it was positive the problem had been recognised and most organisations now had gender equity plans and other initiatives under way.
Universities were taking measures like targets, including for women professors; tackling unconscious biases in hiring and promotion; mentorship and other support; flexible and inclusive work arrangements; and ongoing monitoring and reporting.
New Zealand’s peak science body, Royal Society Te Apārangi, had changed its rules around certain funding – and even created special calculators – to take career gaps into account.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) opened a new fund in 2021 to help three research organisations find and then break down diversity barriers. Photo / Mark Mitchell
At an even higher level, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) had set out a path for change in its 2019 Diversity in Science Statement and in 2021 opened a new fund to help three research organisations find and then break down barriers.
Building more diversity into the system happened to be a key focus of the science sector’s ongoing reform, coming with the MBIE-led Te Ara Paerangi – Future Pathways programme.
“We have implemented a number of initiatives recently and are soon to announce the details of new workforce packages, which have a strong focus on increasing diversity as part of their design,” MBIE’s science policy manager Landon McMillan told the Herald.
Still, Timewell said, more could always be done.
“We still need to find ways to encourage more girls into those fields that have low representation, like engineering and ICT,” she said.
“Solving big issues requires a range of different skills and life experiences, so having diversity across these sectors will create new thinking and challenge old thinking.”
She noted that Te Ara Paerangi has one particular focus on funding for early career researchers, which would help keep people in the sciences at that key stage, along with a focus on Māori and Mātauranga, which she said would be “important for protecting and enhancing New Zealand’s uniqueness”.
“However, processes for progression in the sciences up to senior levels are embedded in organisational decision-making and not recognised or monitored on the national front,” she said.
“There is also limited funding for scientific research and, beyond early career funding vehicles, that funding is often dominated by the old hands who have demonstrated experience in delivering.
“More funding of research will help spread the risk and allow others in intermediate positions to step up and prove their worth.”
The public are invited to attend a STEM Diversity afternoon, held as part of next week’s conference, at Auckland’s Aotea Centre from 1.30pm to 5pm. For more information and tickets, visit the website www.icwes19.com.
Jamie Morton is a specialist in science and environmental reporting. He joined the Herald in 2011 and writes about everything from conservation and climate change to natural hazards and new technology.
