STEM
Battling sexism in life sciences
The success of science in finding vaccines against COVID-19 underlines the need to make STEM fields more inclusive, Christina Pagel of University College London tells Rory O’Neill.
We have perhaps never appreciated the value of science, particularly the life sciences, so much. While the global COVID-19 vaccine rollout remains beset by inequalities, the fact that we have multiple World Health Organization-approved vaccines for the disease, just a year-and-a-half after the SARS-CoV-2 virus’ genome was first sequenced, is a monumental achievement. That the genome was made publicly available in January 2020, mere weeks after the outbreak was first discovered, is something of a landmark itself.
How much better could we be doing if global science took advantage of the full pool of talent available? The problem of sexism in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects is well known, and isn’t limited to a particular field, region, or level of academia. Women are vastly under-represented in the numbers of scientific researchers worldwide, with STEM research being one of many male-dominated professions.
Women who have reached the top of STEM fields have played a key role in the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 2020, Christina Pagel, professor of operational research at University College London, has become a familiar sight to UK-based viewers on television screens and on Twitter threads. Pagel was appointed director of the UCL Clinical Operational Research Unit in 2017, and focuses on how mathematics can help inform better decision-making in healthcare settings.
She’s now embarking on one of the biggest projects of her career: CHIMERA, co-leading it with “incredible mathematician and engineer” Rebecca Shipley.
“It’s a big collaboration between my group and people from other fields such as statisticians and computer scientists to look at intensive care data,” Pagel explains.
The potential of such data is vast. “They measure stuff pretty much every second in intensive care settings, but the data doesn’t tend to be stored and doesn’t get looked at ever again. But for the past few years, we have been storing it and no-one has analysed it yet.”
Systemic sexism
Pagel is an active member of, as she calls it, “Indie SAGE”, the expert group seeking to hold the UK government to account over its strategy for dealing with the coronavirus. The group is essentially a complementary group to the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE), which has been advising the UK government on its handling of the pandemic.
The group goes further than SAGE in advocating policies based on evidence and explaining the rationale to the public. As a member of the Independent SAGE group, Pagel became a vocal critic of the UK’s coronavirus response, and the sluggish pace with which the government initially moved to implement lockdown and other public health measures. She regularly appears on the BBC and other media outlets, and offers analysis of the pandemic as it unfolds in the UK and elsewhere on social media.
It’s telling that, as a prominent female scientist active in the media and on Twitter, one of her first observations is that the abuse wasn’t as bad as she thought it might be.
“When I started doing media appearances, I thought I was going to be totally trolled—but I haven’t been,” Pagel tells WIPR.
“I got a few angry emails from people who hated lockdown, and very occasionally, more personal ones,” she continues, but she is quick to point out that that experience is far from unique.
“There are quite big differences in the way men and women approach these things, and this is mainly due to confidence. Women downplay how good they are.”
Christina Pagel, University College London
“Women who are not white, women in social science, get it way worse than I do. Men feel able to patronise them for not being ‘real scientists’,” she says. Pagel has experienced sexism throughout her life and career, she explains.
As an aspiring scientist, Pagel learned early on that it was harder to succeed if you were a woman. “I went to the University of Oxford, and we were the first year that had more than one girl in Queen’s College,” she says. As she progressed, the picture didn’t change: “When I did my MSc, and then my PhD, I was the only woman.”
Barriers are everywhere
The barriers facing women in science are the same that women face everywhere else, Pagel says.
“There are quite big differences in the way men and women approach these things, and this is mainly due to confidence. Women downplay how good they are. In the first year of my PhD, I was convinced I was one of the worst there.”
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimates that just 30% of the world’s researchers are women—although it’s worth noting that there is near parity in Central Asia and Latin America, with 48.2% and 45.1%, respectively. Gloria Bonder, coordinator of the UNESCO Regional Chair on Women, Science and Technology in Latin America, has noted that new policies in universities and research centres have helped prevent gender-based discrimination and violence.
Percentage of world’s researchers who are women
Source: UNESCO
Given the numbers on the participation of women in STEM worldwide, however, the prominence of a leading female scientist such as Pagel is particularly impressive. But the fundamental problem, she explains, is “all the talent we’re missing out on”. That counts not only for women in general, but particularly scientists and women facing other forms of discrimination.
“There are very few black academics in UK university mathematics departments, and that’s not unusual in the sciences,” she notes.
Science’s ability to fascinate and inspire is gender-neutral. There are plenty of young women and girls who have the bug for science, but somewhere their pathway is blocked.
Remembering what first sparked her passion, Pagel says: “I got into it because my older brother would tell me cool things about science. It seemed like such a mind-blowing thing. I loved the idea that science could explain things, I thought it was beautiful.”
As for so many, space was the first area of science that really captivated her imagination. “It didn’t seem like a big noble purpose, but in the late 1990s I watched ‘Independence Day’ and I wanted to get into space and save the world.”
“I’ve heard girls say that they’re kind, they’re a good listener, a good friend. Boys say ‘I’m good at maths’, and ‘I’m good at sport’. I think the problem is getting worse.”
A growing problem
When remembering her early love for all things cosmic Pagel becomes increasingly frustrated at how gendered people’s childhoods are. She notes that it’s not just about the issue of different Lego sets for boys and girls—”when I was young, my Moonbase Lego set was my pride and joy”—it’s also the way children think about themselves.
Having done plenty of outreach work in schools, Pagel has noticed that girls still describe their qualities differently from how boys do.
“I’ve heard girls say that they’re kind, they’re a good listener, a good friend. Boys say ‘I’m good at maths’, and ‘I’m good at sport’. I think the problem is getting worse,” she says. Her experience at Oxford did little to dispel her sense that a career as a scientist was always going to be more difficult as a woman.
“My college was two-thirds men, and during my undergraduate degree the boys had a book in the common room where they had a league table ranking who the hot girls were,” she remembers. In her experience, it’s not so much someone telling you that women can’t be scientists, but more a general feeling that you don’t really belong there that puts women off.
“After my MSc, I left academia for two years, because the field was dominated by men. I felt I did not fit in at all,” she says. Thankfully, her passion won out—“I really missed science”—and Pagel began a distinguished career which has led her to applying her expertise in mathematics to public health problems.
Impact of #MeToo
As a prominent female scientist, Pagel is becoming a role model for young girls who, like her, are fascinated by the ability of science to solve problems. “I’ve had lots of emails and tweets from people saying I’ve inspired their daughters. And not just me, other women as well. That’s been really positive.”
Some have argued that the pandemic should be a cause to reflect on the many ills affecting society which hold us back from achieving as much as we could. It’s worth recognising the work of women such as Özlem Türeci, the German physician, scientist and entrepreneur. In 2008 she co-founded the German biotechnology company BioNTech which developed the first approved messenger RNA-based vaccine against COVID-19 in 2020.
As long as there are barriers to women thriving in STEM, the world is missing out on a huge pool of talent that has the potential to make life-saving and world-changing discoveries.
“A lot of women don’t go back to science after they leave,” Pagel says, remembering how she nearly abandoned science after her MSc. “What makes me sad is that we’re missing out on so much.”
The past few years have opened up a major opportunity to address the problem. In particular, Pagel was inspired by the #MeToo movement, a global grassroots campaign against sexual abuse and harassment that began in 2018. What initially began as an examination of misogyny in the entertainment industry has spun out into a society-wide revolt against sexual abuse, harassment, and violence with relevance for virtually every sector.
“#MeToo had quite a big impact on me, because it made me look back on my life and career, and all the stuff that you just live with,” Pagel says. “If we can confront sexism, rather than live with it, society will surely reap the benefits.”
Images, from top: Shutterstock / Suwit Rattiwan, Marton Kerek, Julian Leshay