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Sexism in academia is bad for science and a waste of public funding

Higher education and research institutions are critical to the well-being and success of societies, meaning their financial support is strongly in the public interest. At the same time, value-for-money principles demand that such investment delivers. Unfortunately, these principles are currently violated by one of the biggest sources of public funding inefficiency: sexism.

Before she helped develop COVID-19 vaccines, going on to jointly win the Nobel Prize for Medicine, Katalin Karikó’s story was one that was familiar to many women: she faced lack of funding and recognition, demotion and was ultimately pushed out of her university1. Although Karikó managed to overcome these extraordinary barriers, many more women respond to pervasive gender discrimination and harassment by departing academia. A huge study of a quarter of a million US academics adds to the growing weight of evidence for this gender-based attrition2.

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Fig. 1: The gradual attrition of women from the academic career path.

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany

    Nicole Boivin

  2. School of Social Science, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Nicole Boivin

  3. Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Susanne Täuber

  4. Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Susanne Täuber

  5. Hamburg, Germany

    Ulrike Beisiegel

  6. Institute for Quantum Electronics, Physics Department, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Ursula Keller

  7. Swiss Federal Institute for Aquatic Science and Technology, Eawag, Dubendorf, Switzerland

    Janet G. Hering

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  1. Nicole Boivin
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  2. Susanne Täuber
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  3. Ulrike Beisiegel
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  4. Ursula Keller
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  5. Janet G. Hering
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Nicole Boivin.

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Boivin, N., Täuber, S., Beisiegel, U. et al. Sexism in academia is bad for science and a waste of public funding.
Nat Rev Mater (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-023-00624-3

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  • Published: 27 November 2023

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-023-00624-3

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