I'm sure you've read the recent post by Nicole Neuman, editor of Trends in Biochemical Sciences, titled "How can scientific publishers combat implicit gender bias?" and you're probably wondering—what does another Trends editor have to say about it? Well, the truth is, Trends editors in particular, and reviews editors in general, play a very important role in identifying not only which topics should be reviewed but also who should write those articles. Like Nicole, I started noticing that the gender distribution both of the senior authors who were invited to write for Trends in Parasitology and of the referees was clearly skewed toward male researchers. Et tu, Brute? I remember thinking. Yes, even women can fall into the trap of implicit gender bias. Coming on the heels of a disheartening study recently published in Science that demonstrated that girls as young as 6 years old are less likely than boys to believe that members of their gender are "really, really smart," I can't say my realization was surprising. It was, however, very disappointing.

Having acknowledged that, I decided it was time to feature outstanding female scientists in Trends in Parasitology, and in 2016 the journal published a series of interviews with 12 leading female parasitologists, one per month. I spoke to scientists from different subfields within parasitology, at different stages in their careers and from several countries around the world. They told me about their work and about their personal experiences as women in science.

What struck me the most was that when asked if they had experienced any extra hurdles as female scientists, only two researchers replied with an unambiguous "yes." Five leaned clearly toward "no," and the remaining five were somewhere in between. As Kathy Ralston pointed out, it is not an easy question to answer because it is not easy to know whether one has faced more hurdles than anyone else.

However, Ralston, who is a young assistant professor at UC Davis, also recognizes that we all have implicit biases. As an example, she notes that since becoming a professor, many people assume that she is a student or a postdoc, not a professor. By contrast, her male peers are generally not mistaken for trainees. Similarly, Flaminia Catteruccia noticed that when she started out she "had to struggle a bit more than my male colleagues to be noticed and taken seriously," and Maria Mota shared an episode in which she was asked how serious she was about her career soon after getting married. "Needless to say, nobody approached my husband in any way similar, in spite of us both being at the same stage of our PhDs," Mota said.

Although the interviews did not specifically address it, the majority of interviewees explicitly expressed concerns related to work-life balance and/or raising a family. Rose Leke is of the opinion that support from her family, good planning, and management skills are essential for a female scientist to keep the lab and family thriving as well as possible. Jetsumon Sattabongkot Prachumsri adds that because of the importance of the family support system in Asian culture, she was lucky enough to avoid some of the issues that may afflict her Western counterparts. Nonetheless, both Prachumsri and Nicola Harris, based in Asia and Europe, respectively, agree that the best way in which institutions can support women is to ensure they are family friendly. "This means supporting both men and women during pregnancy and maternity/paternity leave, to help create or access childcare structures, and to respect the needs of young parents," said Harris.

But this may not be enough. Institutional support for women is clearly needed at a global level, but institutions should play a role in changing how modern societies view women. "Scientific institutions play their role, and are very relevant nowadays, in the sense that people in general respect science and believe researchers," said Denise Valle. Crushing gender bias is, however, a two-way street, and the role of scientific institutions may be that of getting the conversation going until change is achieved at the level of society.

"The best way to do that is to bring people together who think about these issues from different perspectives... Any institution should do that," offers Mota. Catteruccia adds that, even though this may take decades, "It is important to change the mentality so that these types of questions don't need to be asked any more!"

I accept the challenge. Do you?