

Quick quiz: was it a woman or a man who discovered the composition of stars?

You’d be sitting in the majority if you said it was a man and not British-American astrophysicist Cecilia Payne.

We often talk about how to get more women into the STEM workforce, and much column space and airtime is devoted to identifying potential barriers such as personal and institutional gender bias (conscious and unconscious), incompatibility of science and motherhood, and the lack of engagement with girls and young women about STEM, but what about how we perceive women's contribution to science?

The L’Oréal Foundation recently released a report on the global perceptions of women in science. While the survey is not without its flaws, it does provide some data that might help us address this question quantitatively.

The report (run by Opinionway for L’Oréal and released on September 16) surveyed about 6,000 people, about 1,000 each from the UK, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and China. The data are broken down by gender and location.

Some of the findings may not come as a much of a surprise

When asked to think about what job a woman scientist would do, 15% to 16% of people said biologist, 10% physicist, and 3% said mathematician, regardless of gender.





When asked to name three scientists who made a big breakthrough, 75% of men and 68% of women gave the names of male scientists, with the overwhelming majority choosing Marie Curie as the sole female name (apart from in Italy, where neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini is more well-known).





When asked about whether a particular breakthrough was from a man or a woman, 77% of people (78% of men, 75% of women) thought a man, rather than Cecilia Payne, discovered that the composition of stars is 98% helium and hydrogen. But interestingly, only 52% of people (54% of men, 49% of women) thought that a man, and not Mary-Claire King, discovered the BRCA genes (though throwing the word ‘breast’ into the question might’ve thrown people off).

But what surprised me (though perhaps it shouldn’t have) was the almost total lack of a difference in the men and women’s answers.

The only obvious place there was a significant difference was when people asked which gender they associated with each scientific profession. 29% of male respondents chose a woman, which is almost expected, but only 52% of female respondents responded for their gender. I find this shocking because our perception that scientists are male is so entrenched that almost half of all women still did not immediately think of a woman scientist.

Perhaps most worth noting is that, when asked to identify a field that women are well-suited for, only 10% of respondents, regardless of gender, picked science.

Taking the results with a heavy pinch of salt

Though it does seem to me that these data can be useful, perhaps the way the survey was organized and the data presented create a skewed impression. The statistic being most quoted is that 67% of Europeans don't feel women have the skills to be scientists, but the question asked was "what abilities do women lack that stops them from becoming high-level scientists?" (which is misleading in itself). 67% of people noted one of several abilites, including: sensitively (5%), intuition (5%), analytical ability (6%). 33% of people said none of the above. Only 7% of people felt women didn't have sufficient scientific ability to become high-level scientists.



I also want to note the first question. People were asked if a woman who does everything in her power to advance her career is (1) a woman with something to prove, (2) a woman who puts her work before her family, (3) a woman who loves money, (4) a woman who is prepared to walk all over other people, or (5) a woman who thinks she's a man. The options "normal" or "a good role model" were markedly absent.

What can we learn from this study?

What the study most indicates it that public perception of STEM and the contribution of women in STEM fields could do with some help.

There are also some interesting geographical differences if you want to delve into the report further. As a community, we probably already knew that we needed to change the perception of scientists and women scientists, but this report gives us some numbers to work with when making the case for acquiring the resources to do so.

As a final note, when asked to what extent gender equality in high-level scientific posts warrants people taking action, 79% of men and 89% of women that agree it does.