In response to a recent poll, Biophysical Society members who are also members of underrepresented minority groups offered sage advice (edited here for brevity and clarity) to their younger selves about how to thrive in the workplace:
“Be more active in getting credit for all the work you do. I did an endless amount of work without recognition.”
“Ask for everything said during job negotiation in writing, particularly regarding salary and teaching commitments.”
“Research should come first and not last; and it’s okay to say no to some things.”
“Find out how funding agencies work and choose your projects accordingly.”
“Grant reviews are somewhat arbitrary, so submitting as many as possible is the best strategy.”
“Ask to be nominated for awards, use your contacts, and ask for input. Call editors and funding agencies. Get a clear tenure track contract.”
When asked, overwhelmingly, young BPS members want evaluations that are fair and transparent. They want to learn how better to advocate for themselves, to navigate the job market, and to build a supportive mentoring network. BPS is listening!
The newly formed BlackInBiophysics network (@BlackInBiophys), founded by BPS student member Whitney Stevens-Sostre, University of Wisconsin–Madison, held their first event at the 2021 Annual Meeting. The Black in Biophysics Happy Hour was a great success, and BPS is encouraging participation in the upcoming Black in Biophysics Week, May 10–16. Allies are very important and warmly welcomed!
The 2021 President’s Symposium “Building an Inclusive Biophysical Society” featured David Asai, HHMI, Senior Director of Science Education; Bil Clemons, Cal Tech, Professor of Biochemistry; Yadilette Riviera-Colón, Bay Path University, Assistant Professor of Biology; and Billy Williams, American Geophysical Union, Senior Vice President, Ethics, Diversity, and Inclusion. Highlights included:
What are the greatest challenges to inclusion?
Williams: “Awareness and commitment to be dissatisfied with the status quo and the commitment to make change by using resources to understand the issues and to support and advance for the long term.”
How do you respond to the idea that increasing diversity is antithetical to excellence?
Asai: “From game theory, there is a zero sum game and a positive sum game. Science is a positive sum game. Every time a new discovery is made, we add to that new discovery without throwing away the old discovery. Diversity leads to creativity and innovation. Inclusion is key to keeping these excellent people. By embracing diversity, we are adding knowledge by bringing people into science.”
Williams and Rivera-Colón: “We had advocates who told us to apply to graduate school when we didn’t think this was a viable career path.”
How do we promote diversity without giving the impression that we are reducing merit?
Williams: “Our current criteria for ‘merit’ are very narrow. Being a well-rounded person or overcoming barriers and still succeeding are not being considered in judging merit. We need to get better at judging what merit really means.”
What are the best ways to overcome racism, classism, sexism, etc.?
Rivera-Colón: “Position yourself to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Look for mentors, including those who are very different from you—for example, those who are a little bit ahead of you.”
Often left out of marginalized awareness discussions are our disabled community. BPS reached out to Peg Nosek, Baylor College of Medicine, who made recommendations for immediate, no-cost/low-cost accommodations such as training in slide and poster presentations that can be understood and followed by people who are colorblind, and inclusion of automatic closed captioning. Dr. Nosek passed away shortly after and in her honor, BPS is beginning to apply these improvements to BPS activities.
Just acknowledging bias helps to blunt it (Régner et al. 2019). We must keep talking and writing about bias. If you do not speak up, or do not report bias, you are inadvertently condoning, sustaining, and amplifying it (Merrill 2017). If you need suggestions on how to speak up, there are excellent tools available online, including Willoughby et al. (2018). Be aware of the extent of harassment and discrimination our marginalized communities may have already endured (Moss-Racusin et al. 2012; Pickett 2019).
The importance of diversity and inclusion extends beyond ensuring fair and equal representation; diverse teams are better performing teams. The positive performance effects are seen in terms of both financial and innovation gain. For example, companies with racially and ethnically diverse employees see increased financial performance, pre-tax and interest earnings increase linearly for organizations with increased senior management diversity, and companies with at least one woman board member enjoy higher net income growth than those with no women board members (Hunt et al. 2015). Increased diversity also leads to increased innovation (Hofstra 2020). Companies that have teams with more women members and more racially diverse members bring more innovations to market (DÃaz-GarcÃa 2013; Lee 2015). Consequently, revenue from new innovations is also higher for diverse companies (Lorenzo et al. 2018).
Keep making it clear to everyone that bias is pervasive (Iverson 2013; Moss-Racusin et al. 2012; NAS Report 2018; Oliveira et al. 2019). Bias holds back innovation, and society loses out. If you are not part of a marginalized group, use your authority to open doors for others. If you are part of a marginalized group, you can relate to others and find common ground for lifting them up, too.
Together, let’s strive to allow individuals, no matter their gender, sex, race, color, culture, sexual orientation, disability, country of origin, state in which they live, or institution in which they work, to be free to do do their best work for the best of our society. As summarized by a poll respondent, “Don’t be discouraged, don’t quit, and don’t let others get you down.”
Christopher Bassey, Walter J. Chazin, Samuel S. Cho, Stephen D. Jett, Nagarajan Vaidehi, Carlos A. Villalba-Galea, and Lynn Zechiedrich, representing the Committee for Inclusion and Diversity and the Committee for Professional Opportunities for Women
References Cited
DÃaz-GarcÃa, C., A. González-Moreno, and F. J. Sáez-MartÃnez. 2013. Gender diversity within R&D teams: its impact on radicalness of innovation. Innovation 15:149–160.
Hofstra, B., V. V. Kulkarni, S. Munoz-Najar Galvez, B. He, D. Jurafsky, and D. A. McFarland. 2020. The diversity-innovation paradox in science. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 117:9284–9291.
Hunt, V., D. Layton, and S. Prince. 2015. Why diversity matters, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-diversity-matters#, April 9, 2021.
Lee, N. 2015. Migrant and ethnic diversity, cities and innovation: firm effects or city effects? J. Econ. Geogr. 15:769–796.
Lorenzo, R., N. Voigt, M. Tsusaka, M. Krentz, and K. Abouzahr. 2018. How diverse leadership teams boost innovation, https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/how-diverse-leadership-teams-boost-innovation, April 9, 2021.
Merrill, D. G. 2017. Speak up. JAMA 317:2373–2374.
Moss-Racusin, C. A., J. F. Dovidio, V. L. Brescoll, M. J. Graham, and J. Handelsman. 2012. Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 109:16474–16479.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Policy and Global Affairs, Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and Committee on the Impacts of Sexual Harassment in Academia. 2018. Sexual Harassment of Women: Climate, Culture, and Consequences in Academic Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC.
Oliveira, D. F. M., Y. Ma, T. K. Woodruff, and B. Uzzi. 2019. Comparison of National Institutes of Health grant amounts to first-time male and female principal investigators. JAMA 321:898–900.
Pickett, M. 2019. I want what my male colleague has, and that will cost a few million dollars. The New York Times Magazine, April 18, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/magazine/salk-institute-discrimination-science.html.
Régner, I., C. Thinus-Blanc, A. Netter, T. Schmader, and P. Huguet. 2019. Committees with implicit biases promote fewer women when they do not believe gender bias exists. Nat. Hum. Behav. 3:1171–1179.
Willoughby, B., N. Brakke, and V. D’Egidio. 2018. Speak up at school: how to respond to everyday prejudice, bias, and stereotypes (A Teaching Tolerance Publication, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center), https://www.learningforjustice.org/sites/default/files/2019-04/TT-Speak-Up-Guide.pdf, April 9, 2021.