Science and Development Network addresses the global issue of women in science

By Steven T. Corneliussen

In recent articles from Nairobi (“Fellowships for African women scientists a big hit,”) and Beijing (“China aims to boost number of women scientists”), the Science and Development Network has continued building on its June 2011 anthology of women-in-science articles.

Under the headline “Overcoming gender barriers in science,” that anthology looked at women in science in terms of mentoring, incentives, networking, Arabs, Muslims, Mexico, Jordan, Chile, India and South Africa.

The more recent Nairobi piece reports that a fellowship program called African Women in Agricultural Research and Development “has been inundated with applicants.” Over the course of three years, about 2200 women have applied for 250 slots. Hopes for the coming five years are to double the number of fellowships, which involve 16 fields of agricultural R&D. About half of the fellows’ mentors are men. Funders are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the US Agency for International Development.

SciDev.net quotes Isibhakhomen Shirley Ejoh of Nigeria, one of this year's winners: “The food basket in Nigeria is shrinking because of an over-dependence on a few promoted crops. I want to assess how indigenous plant foods can contribute to the protein and macro-nutrient intake of children and women of reproductive age.”

The Beijing article reports that the number of women scientists in China could rise as part of a ten-year plan called Outline for the Development of Chinese Women 2011–2020, which “aims to increase the proportion of women in the professions, including science and technology, to 35 percent.” For women scientists, the program will take place mainly at national laboratories.

SciDev.net quotes Li Zhenzhen, a researcher at the Institute of Policy and Management at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who is concerned about employment discrimination: “Women have more family duties than men, which affects women in all fields of work.”

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Steven T. Corneliussen, a media analyst for the American Institute of Physics, monitors three national newspapers, the weeklies Nature and Science, and occasionally other publications. His reports to AIP are published in "Science and the media." He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA's history program, and is a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.