Scientific excellence has been and remains a core value and a guiding principle for the Biophysical Society. In its service, the Society is committed to attracting, engaging, and fostering talent and passion from individuals across the globe and to creating a diverse and inclusive community where scientific discovery can flourish. Recognizing the many barriers that deter the career advancements of women across professions, and especially in STEM fields, in 1972 the BPS Council established the Committee for Professional Opportunities for Women (CPOW) to take on the specific challenges faced by girls and women in pursuing successful scientific careers in biophysics. Specifically, CPOW was charged with raising awareness of the scientific contributions of women in biophysics; promoting their fair and equitable treatment, and improving the climate for women in biophysics in all stages of their careers.
As a member of the Biophysical Society you have likely noticed many concrete actions that the Society has taken and events that CPOW has organized and sponsored to this end. Several years ago, the Society developed and publicized a clear policy for conduct at its events; it sponsors travel awards to facilitate conference attendance; and you may have seen profiles of women biophysicists publicized during Biophysics Week. Several years ago, CPOW asked whether specific barriers exist for women in receiving recognition for their work, such as exemplified by Society Awards. The literature on the issue, and anecdotal information from the BPS Awards Committee, hinted at the possibility that the pool of women nominees may be inadequately small to reflect the true contributions of women.
For the past four years CPOW has identified women with competitive contributions, solicited them to stand as candidates, and coordinated their nomination packages. Despite specific successes, it didn’t seem that this intentional and concerted CPOW effort bore the fruit we were looking for.
We are indebted to the Biophysical Society staff for collecting and sharing with us data that may guide the development of more effective interventions to facilitate appropriate recognition of women biophysicists. So what do these results reveal? Overall the trend is positive on several aspects (see table). First, the number of female nominees has doubled (from 16 to 32), and the number of female nominators has also doubled (from 14 to 29). Yet the percentage of female winners (and nominators) has increased only slightly, likely because the number of awards has increased, and the total nominations increased significantly (from 60 to 97). One conclusion may be that increasing the pool of women nominees may continue to be an effective intervention towards increasing the fraction of female awardees, with the desirable side effect that the overall competitiveness and prestige of the awards will increase. CPOW will continue to identify qualified women and coordinate their nominations. An interesting observation is that the success rate for women applicants is slightly higher than for men; this fact can have many causes, and it is consistent with literature that suggests that women don’t apply for awards until they feel highly competitive. As such, continuing to raise awareness about increasing success rates for women may encourage qualified award applicants to throw their hat in the ring, regardless of gender!
Will you nominate a woman colleague? Or, contact any member of the CPOW with your suggestion! We will gladly do the leg work!
—Gabriela Popescu, CPOW Chair