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Women from some under-represented minorities are given too few talks at world’s largest Earth-science conference

Researchers from racial and ethnic groups that are under-represented in US geoscience are the least likely to be offered opportunities to speak at the field’s biggest meeting.
  1. Heather L. Ford

    1. Heather L. Ford is a lecturer at the School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London, UK.

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  2. Cameron Brick

    1. Cameron Brick is a research associate in the Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, UK, and an assistant professor of social psychology in the Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

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  3. Margarita Azmitia

    1. Margarita Azmitia is a professor in the Psychology Department, University of California Santa Cruz, USA.

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  4. Karine Blaufuss

    1. Karine Blaufuss is director of business intelligence and data at the American Geophysical Union, Washington DC, USA.

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  5. Petra Dekens

    1. Petra Dekens is a professor in the Department of Earth & Climate Sciences, San Francisco State University, California, USA.

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Biases — structural, implicit and explicit — exclude many people from science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education and employment, and devalue their contributions1,2. Most studies focus on bias against women. Few data sets offer enough generalizability or statistical power to evaluate the representation of minority ethnic and racial groups, or to examine intersectionality3. The latter describes the interwoven forms of discrimination that affect a person from multiple marginalized groups (such as racism, sexism, classism or ageism), locate them in systems of oppression and limit their upward mobility — as might be experienced by a young African American woman in science in the United States.

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Nature 576, 32-35 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03688-w

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