**Miscellanea**

**Chapter 14**

**Provisional chapter**

**Is Your Extra X Chromosome Holding You Back? An**

**Is Your Extra X Chromosome Holding You Back? An** 

**STEMM**

Catrin Sian Rutland

**Abstract**

**STEMM**

Aziza Alibhai, Mariam Moiz Saigar, Emilia Harding and Catrin Sian Rutland

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.71898

with an emphasis on gender equality.

education, STEMM

**1. Introduction**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Aziza Alibhai, Mariam Moiz Saigar, Emilia Harding and

**Insight into Female Education and Academic Careers in**

This review discusses whether gender inequality still exists within medical, scientific and engineering academia, with regards to the career development of academic staff. In the 1970s it was suggested that women who are talented and educated with family responsibilities tend to come across problems of self-confidence and identity when attempting to enhance their professional careers, and although many are successful in doing so, others find it more challenging. By the 1990s, it was indicated that the main gender inequality mechanism in academia is the commonly known fact that women's career development in the academic hierarchy is slower than that of men. In the past 50 years, laws and attitudes of many societies, industries and countries, have changed to promote gender equality. What is the impact of these changes, does inequality still exist and what mechanisms exist to address these issues? This review looks in depth at the links between gender equality and continuing personal and professional development (CPPD), in which individuals at work are educated more about the workplace environment and their job roles and performance. The different types, requirements and success rates of CPPD within the scientific (especially medical) academic community is discussed

**Insight into Female Education and Academic Careers in** 

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.71898

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution,

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

This chapter sets out to understand how continuing personal and professional development (CPPD) can play a role in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine

**Keywords:** continuing personal and professional development, gender, equality,

**Provisional chapter**

#### **Is Your Extra X Chromosome Holding You Back? An Insight into Female Education and Academic Careers in STEMM Insight into Female Education and Academic Careers in STEMM**

**Is Your Extra X Chromosome Holding You Back? An** 

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.71898

Aziza Alibhai, Mariam Moiz Saigar, Emilia Harding and Catrin Sian Rutland Catrin Sian Rutland Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Aziza Alibhai, Mariam Moiz Saigar, Emilia Harding and

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.71898

#### **Abstract**

This review discusses whether gender inequality still exists within medical, scientific and engineering academia, with regards to the career development of academic staff. In the 1970s it was suggested that women who are talented and educated with family responsibilities tend to come across problems of self-confidence and identity when attempting to enhance their professional careers, and although many are successful in doing so, others find it more challenging. By the 1990s, it was indicated that the main gender inequality mechanism in academia is the commonly known fact that women's career development in the academic hierarchy is slower than that of men. In the past 50 years, laws and attitudes of many societies, industries and countries, have changed to promote gender equality. What is the impact of these changes, does inequality still exist and what mechanisms exist to address these issues? This review looks in depth at the links between gender equality and continuing personal and professional development (CPPD), in which individuals at work are educated more about the workplace environment and their job roles and performance. The different types, requirements and success rates of CPPD within the scientific (especially medical) academic community is discussed with an emphasis on gender equality.

**Keywords:** continuing personal and professional development, gender, equality, education, STEMM

#### **1. Introduction**

This chapter sets out to understand how continuing personal and professional development (CPPD) can play a role in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine

Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons

(STEMM) subjects in academia, especially in relation to career development and progression. For many years, females in STEMM subjects have been less likely to progress through the academic ranks. The first half of this chapter explores whether this has changed over the decades. It also explores the rationale, hypotheses and interventions put into place to try and achieve equality. The second half of the chapter then explores the possible interventions and concentrates particularly on CPPD as a form of pedagogy in relation to both males and females in academia. It also seeks to understand how CPPD can be beneficial and highlights areas that might be problematic and need further development. As far as possible, examples from differing countries are used, but frequently research from Europe and North America are referred to as they have generally undertaken more published studies and reports. Naturally, variations in CPPD exist worldwide; as do the types of CPPD available, career demands and even societal and cultural differences and expectations. Therefore it is difficult to capture all practices within all universities in each country. Literature searches were carried out using PubMed and Web of Science using the following key words: women/female; academic/academia; higher education; STEMM; pedagogy; equality; career progression; gender gap. In addition the same words were used to search the internet for articles relating to the media. Results from January 1960-August 2017 were included.

had decreased down to 14.5% [2]. In 2016, this number had increased with female professors in STEMM departments accounting for 32.3% of the positions available, despite nearly equal proportions of male and female respondents [3]. It is also interesting to note that female professorial levels in SET departments were lower than that for non-SET departments in 2010, in which the figure stood at 24%, which is still lower than expected as 50.7% of academics in those subjects are female, but higher than the 14.5% observed in SET subject areas [2]. The 32.3% for the UK was relatively high when compared to European figures, which averaged just 13% female professors in STEMM despite higher numbers of females in more junior positions [6].

Is Your Extra X Chromosome Holding You Back? An Insight into Female Education…

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.71898

253

An interesting exception was observed in medicine (and subjects aligned to medicine) in which there were more female academics and students than academics and students in 2006 [1], but a difference was still observed at the professorial level. Even with the increased number of women in medicine, in 2008, women made up only 11% of the professorial level clinical academics, despite with a 40% graduation rate over the last 20 years rising to a 60% medical school entrance rate of women in 2006 [7]. In 2008, one in five medical schools did not have a female professor and there were only two out of 33 British medical schools with a female dean [7, 8]. Nursing was also considered to be slightly different to the other STEMM subjects as differences between men and women were not frequently observed in all areas investigated [3].

These statistics were mirrored in other countries. In North America, there was evidence that one in three men and one in seven women worked in an SET occupation in academia [9] and women comprised only 8% of the medical school chairs and just eight of 125 U.S medical school deans were women in 2004 [10]. Women in Mexico, by the late 1990s, comprised only 2% of the higher positions in scientific fields, similarly, Austrian women dominated the lower levels or positions, however they only represent 1.5% of the directors of research units in natural sciences [11]. This evidence indicates that in general more men than women possess higher positions in academia within the scientific disciplines. This is not only the case for the

In addition to the differences observed in career progression, inequalities in salary still exist. A salary gap of 30% between female and male medical academics was observed in the UK in 2006 [1]. The researchers noted that this difference was particularly surprising as the educational requirements and career paths were often similar between the genders, and that only those with full/time continuous employment were included in the study and that this was also much larger than the 17% pay difference seen between men and women in the rest of the UK population (from non-academic careers). In 2010, the overall difference was 18.7% when looking across all higher education subjects [2]. When put into context, this equated to a median annual income of £28,839 for women and £35,469 for male academics. In addition, the proportion of male academic staff earning over £50,000 was 31.7%, over double that of the 15% of females earning above that salary [2]. By 2015, female academics were still receiving on average £6146 less than men [12]. Similar trends were observed in America with young female career researchers (mostly doctoral graduates) paid nearly a third less than their male counterparts [13] whilst female workers in general were paid 80% of the total that males were [14].

countries in the examples given but is generally reflected in other countries too.

**2.2. An insight into income inequalities**

Throughout this chapter, a number of abbreviations are used depending on the research referenced. These include science, engineering and technology (SET), science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine (STEMM), continuing professional development (CPD) and continuing personal and professional development (CPPD). The abbreviation used in each instance reflects the abbreviation used in the reference, otherwise CPPD and STEMM are used.
