Team:Paris Bettencourt/Human Practice/Gender Study

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Introduction

Synthetic biology field : general overview of gender equality in synthetic biology

Gender repartition in synthetic biology can be looked at from different perspectives. For this study, two main ways were chosen : composition of labs and conferences. The main reasons for those choices were the accessibility of online data as well as the necessity to get information not only about the general gender repartition but also the gender ratio inside a defined category : Phd students, post docs, head of labs...

Under represented and badly represented

In order to try to better understand the dynamics of gender behind the posters numbers, the rank of authors were reported for each poster. Sex ratio were calculated for each rank, keeping in mind that in biology, the first author is often a Phd student or a post doc and the last author, the P.I. As explained above, women are generally under represented in synthetic biology labs, even less represented at conferences while presenting posters and when looking at the rank of author, another bias appears. Indeed, among the number of women present on posters, women are more likely to be present as middle authors than first or last. This bias can be found in papers of different disciplines as shown on the graph realized on the eigenfactor
The main finding considering gender in synthetic biology is that eventhough synthetic biology is new and interdisciplinary, it remains extremely representative of existing gender bias in science. Therefore it can be concluded, that the issues that have kept women out of science and especially out of top research position are still there and will not be resolved with time. A strong and active policy appears necessary to bring more mixity and therefore diversity in this field.

iGEM as a model : a fantastic database

Online Data

All the data concerning iGEM were retrieved from the website : https://igem.org List of teams were retrieved from the webpages https://igem.org/Team_List.cgi?year=2012 List of project themes were retrieved from https://igem.org/Team_Tracks?year=2012 List of prices were retrieved https://igem.org/Results List of judges were retrieved from : https://igem.org/Judge_List

Sex ratio determination :

For each team, the official team profile was open to count the number of student members, advisors and instructors. Then to determine the sex of particpants, wiki were used when names were not obvious, using pictures when they existed. When no pictures were available and names were not obviously referring to one sex, a google image search was done on the name (first and last name) and the sex was chosen as the most represented sex in the pictures (if 10 images of men come up and 30 of women, the participant was considered as a woman).

Database :

Information for the first year of iGEM were difficult to find because of the non existence of available wiki pages and it was therefore decided not to take into account this year. Teams who withdrew during the competition were not taken into account since it was most of the time impossible to know the number of participants because of the absence of wiki. In the end our data set is composed of 662 teams over 5 years. For each team were reported : Year ; region ; name of the team ; number of student members ; number of women student members ; number of advisors ; number of women advisors ; number of instructors ; number of women instructors ; participation to MIT championship ; medal ; regional prices ; championship prices ;tracks

iGEM : a mirror of main gender problems

Teams sex ratio, a very robust value

The first thing that was examined was the evolution of sex ratio of teams in iGEM across continents and throughout the years.
The striking conclusion of this comparison is that the sex ratio is iGEM teams remains constant throughough years and is the same accross continents (ANOVA's p-value for the different conditions > 0,5). This result is against what was expected, a progress with years and differences across continent. This strongly shows that women are present in iGEM but not as much as men.

Women do not supervise as much as men

The second question that was asked was the difference of sex ratios for the different categories of people participating in iGEM. Indeed, iGEM is not only undergrad students. Advisors, instructors, judges also participate representing all the professional ladder of synthetic biology. A category called Supervisors was created corresponding to instructors and advisors. Indeed, those terms are not understood and used the same way in different continents. For some "advisors" means people who directly teach the teams (mostly grad students and post docs) whereas it means general mentors for others and vice versa in other countries. Judges were also counted and sex ratio was calculated.

When executing comparisons tests , team members' sex ratio is found to be different from judges' and instructors' ones (p value < 0,01). However judges and advisors are not significantly different ( p value > 0,5). This result reveals a tendency of women to supervise less than men. Indeed, from team members to instructors, the sex ratio is divided by two. What is even more interesting is to compare those numbers to sex ratios of Phd students and post docs in labs. The sex ratio of instructors is 10 points lower. Women constitute a pool of talent that is not mobilized. They participate but do not supervise teams. They are "lost" along the way. Indeed, in a studied publied last year in PNAS, researchers showed that P.I. were less prone to have a woman mentoring students than man. This unconscious bias can be translated by a lack of encouragement from P.I.s but also by a self censorship which is not taken into account by other supervisors as explained in an recently published article by Eileen Pollack.

Women are not more prone to do applied research

The third finding goes against an often heard stereotype "women are more interested by applied research". In order to investigate this subject, tracks were reported for each project. Tracks were then looked at in terms of sex ratios. There is no significant difference between tracks. (ANOVA > 0,1).
To conlude, studying the iGEM competition gives a unique quantitative insights on existing questions in the field of gender studies. It also constitutes an amazing argument to convince scientists of the existence of a gender issue in science. As explained by Rascun et al in a recent paper published in PNAS, scientists believe that those type of bias only exist in some labs, not their own, therefore very objective studies need to be conducted to clearly show the reality of the numbers. More over , Jo Handelsman a microbiologist involved in that paper underlined in a recent interview, that people often think that there is still an issue in physics or maths but that there are no more women issues in biology, which is not true. This study supports strongly the view that this general thinking is untrue.

In iGEM, is diversity a factor of success ?

Several studies led by consulting groups (McKinsey for example) have shown that mixity in a team increases performance. The big question of what leads to success in iGEM was therefore investigated using the database with a special focus on gender. In order to be able to get a general idea about iGEM team success, a point system was put in place.
Points were attributed the following way.
For the medal: 1 point for bronze medal, 2 points for silver medal, 3 points for gold medal. For the world jamboree qualified teams: 2 points for every team taking part in 2010 and before (before regional jamborees existed) , 6 points for team qualified for world final (after 2010). For special prices (Best ...): 6 points were attributed for each regional price earned (only after 2010), 13 points for each price earned in the world final (all price worth 13 points before regional jamborees existed). For the final place in world final: 15 points for the sixth team, 20 points for the fifth team, 25 points for the fourth team, 30 points for the third team, 35 points for the second team, 40 points for the firth team. The aim was to give each team a score that is proportional to the rewards it earned, taking in account that all teams were in world jamboree prior to 2011, without having to be qualified in regional jamborees. Best score is for the Imperial College London team in 2011 (81 points). All teams (all years) average is 7.41 points, considering teams with no points (due to withdrew).
Correlations studies between this number of points and other variables show that that for all teams, the main variables explaining success in iGEM is the number of years of existence and the size of the team. It would therefore seem that mixity would not be a factor. However, when looking at correlations between variables of teams who truly succeeded (points > 20) , the variables that have a significant correlation with the number of points become the sex ratio and the number of supervisors. Therefore it could be hypothesized that beginning iGEM teams have to face major challenges but when the team existed for a few years and general organization or funding problems have been delt with , diversity could be a factor for success.
In order to check if this could be seen in the best iGEM teams that existed, the sex ratio of teams that were ranked from 1 to 6 in the different years was compared to the one of participating teams with boostrap resampling giving a p-value of 0.035 This means that the sex ratio of winning teams (45%) is significantly different from the one of participating teams (37%)

Clues to improve mixity

Women are not as represented as men in iGEM. Why should this be a problem ? Indeed, even if it might lead to succes as explained above, the need to have gender equlity could be questioned. However iGEM is an international competition. One of its main goals is to attract and educate young people as well as trying to have them solve real issues. Synthetic biology might be a key technology to solve the main challenges of the 21st century. The world will need science and if iGEM only succeeds in motivating half of the population that could be interested, this would be a major failure to achieve its mission. Therefore, the last part of the study was aimed at understanding how could iGEM improve mixity within its own ranks

From the data

By looking at correlation between sex ratios and other variables, the most striking results is the link between team size and sex ratio. Teams of 2 or 3 people are almost only male teams. Even when taking out those very small teams, out of the data set the correlations holds up. This is a first lead.
The second analysis that was amde regarding the data was comparing the descriptives statistics of the 100 most female teams and 100 male teams. Again, it is found that the total team member is lower for male team (9,7 vs 7,8 (pvalue 0,0019) but the really interesting result regards the number of female instructors. With 1,29 girls instructor for the most female teams versus 0,84 for the most male teams (P value 0,0144), this shows the importance of having women instructors. They serve as role models. Having a womeone being able of studying and realizing a synthetic biology project is a direct signal to female students that it is also possible for them to do it. Having a women advisor might also help girls better adapt in a group and reduce their fears about having to endure constant teasing or "male " ambiance.

From a survey

Finally, a survey was conducted among iGEMers and former iGEMers to understand their motivations and activities in iGEM. The study was designed to be unbiased and to avoid stereotype threat (for example by putting the question about gender in the end among many other pieces of information). It is still available here. Participants in the survey had to rank from 1 to 5 (1 being not important, and 5 very important) answers to questions regarding personnal and professional motivations for participating in iGEM as well values and on what did they spend their time. 63 people answered among whom 32% were women. It is very interesting to notice that men and women answered almost exactly the same way regarding most of the questions. Women gave a little more importance for the value of fundamental research in iGEM while men graded a bit better "Changing the world". Motivations were approximatively the same as well as time spent. Just a little fact was that men considered human practices a bit more important than women did but spent a little less time on it. There is only one main difference (more than one point out of five which is reprensed below) : the will to lead a project and lead a team. It is extremely striking to see how much men are more motivated to lead teams than women. This is definitely to put in relation with the number of women advisors found and the impact it can then have on teams mixity. This is a classical expression of women lack of self esteem in some parts of their work.

Recommandations

Considering all the results hat were presented above, here is a list of recommandations for the iGEM foundation to pursue an active policy to improve mixity in iGEM.
- Raise the number of women judges
- Promote large teams
- Write up a small paragraph to team heads to insist on the importance of motivating young women to be advisors.
- Giving Bonus point when the team have women advisors
- Add in iGEM requirements a Gender reflexion. By having teams filling out the database that was built and answering the survey and write a small paragraph about how they see mixity in their team and what it could bring, it would drastically raise the awareness of young men and women about the gender problem in science. Having an uptodate database is also a great way to see improvements in a quantitative manner. It would allow a direct assessment of the effects of an active gender policy which would be a unique example in science. iGEM could become a leader in that fight and prepare the new generation of scientists to finally get rid of the gender inequality in science

Bibliography