Collaborative Woman Scientist Featured by Environmental Protection Agency
Hi Friends of Women in Science,
Towards the end of March, the Environmental Protection Agency featured a woman, Noha Gaber, on their blog (http://blog.epa.gov/blog/2011/03/23/women-in-science-noha-gaber-building-bridges-of-leadership-and-collaboration/). Noha Gaber, the blogger and the featured woman, talked about showing college students slides of bridges, since she's an environmental engineer, and then transitioning to her bridge-building role at EPA. Noha is the Director of the Council for Regulatory Environmental Modeling, working with the mathematical models EPA relies on in its regulatory activities. It is important to her and her coworkers to work with international collaborators and US collaborators to promote sustainability and make sure different environmental efforts don't work against each other, but consider "the environment as an integrated whole." Thus, she builds metaphorical bridges.
In addition, Noha started up the EPA Emerging Leaders Network (ELN). In five years, the ELN has grown to 1000 members. It strives to make the EPA more collaborative, innovative, and effective.
She provided a favorite motivational statement: "Collaboration: When a collection of brilliant minds, hearts and talents come together ... expect a masterpiece." So in all aspects of her work, she acts as a bridge-builder.
Do you find that you, and perhaps other women scientists you know, tend to start up a lot of collaborations and cooperative endeavors? Is this activity particularly characteristic of women?
cheers,
Laura
I like that you have something here about an ecology-minded woman. A lot of what we read here is about medical or molecular women, which is fine, but variety is very nice. I like field biology. And, I think there is more collaboration in field biology because who wants to be all alone in the field (oh, except for Jane Goodall in her early days?) It's fun to study in the field with a group. So maybe it's more about her field than her gender?
I haven't noticed a tendency for women to collaborate more than men. I agree that collaboration is part of being a good guy of science, postdoc cat. It would be interesting to study if there is a difference overall, but I'd bet it's not an enormous difference. I had to pick the one saying both were quite variable because that's my experience. In a sense, agreeing to collaborate with someone is a scientific bond, so if men collaborate with women, that's good news for the women. They are more a part of the network of science.
Laura, are you thinking that women aren't so possessive of their work so they don't mind sharing the credit? I am not sure where this hypothesis comes from. FBP
My own lab is pretty collaborative but I've seen quite a bit of paranoia about letting out the secrets of the lab, like Small Science Woman says. I'd say women are more comfortable with collaboration in my experience, but I don't know of any study showing that.
A while back, Susan Forsburg asked if we wanted to be good guys of science. Wanting to collaborate is part of that, as far as I'm concerned.
Hi Laura,
I don't see a problem with this posting. I don't think you claimed it had to be true; you only said in your comment that your experience supported it.
I have mixed experiences, maybe because I'm not at an R1 university but at a small college. Everyone collaborates, both with other scientists inside and outside of our institution. I'm always shocked breathless when I go on sabbatical to a big place and hear, "Don't tell so and so about your experiments!" So competitive, not in tune with my experiences at home.
Hi Mad Hatter,
I think it's interesting to post things and ask people for their related experiences. I don't feel that we can't probe and explore, in addition to providing and highlighting solid data where it exists. I hope that this forum can let people know where more work would perhaps be fruitful. A social scientist looking here could get an idea to test whether natural scientist women or men initiate more collaborations. That's one way this forum could help women in science, in my view. I try to be clear about whether or not there are data supporting what I put up for discussion, though, you are right about that.
cheers,
Laura
No way. I really disagree with this one. I know of no evidence to support it other than this anecdote. It's not like you to post something based only on one person's experience and claim it's a general thing, Laura.
I see both men and women in my department collaborating all over the place, not just with their former associates either. And in most cases, it's not exploitative either. Show me the beef!
Hi Meghan,
I have seen the pattern you describe, but I also know a woman lab director who does that collaboration/credit thing with postdocs and grad students from her lab. It gets her a longer publication list and you're right, she often gets credit for their findings. I've seen men do this too, just wanted to say women participate in the somewhat exploitative behavior at times.
But in general, I agree women tend to seek a lot of collaborations and set them up, both with men and with women. Sadly, if they collaborate with a man and discover something, the man will probably get the lion's share of the credit, including being invited to speak about it at meetings. I recall Calvin Harley was invited to a bunch of aging meetings to talk about telomerase instead of his female lab director, before she won the Nobel prize.
cheers,
Laura
I see this over and over. Women initiate collaborations with both men and women. Few men are interested because, I think, they want all the credit, don't want to share. Exception: men are willing to collaborate with smart postdocs from their lab who start up their own labs. This is a ploy to help them keep getting credit for the great ideas of their former postdocs.
ME
