Inclusivity

Inclusivity Project Overview

As a team of rising teenagers aiming to influence a greater public, we highly value the inclusion of people with different backgrounds and identities in the synthetic biology community and science as a whole. In this year’s project, our inclusivity goal is to empower female in scientific research and eliminating barriers of their participation. We conducted surveys and browsed literatures to target some major factors hampering female’s science passion and participation. After identifying gender-science stereotype as a major negative impact, we thoroughly studied stereotypes in our local community, issued surveys on the internet, and interviewed faculty members/students. Finally, we made promotion campaigns on multimedia platforms and the local community to eliminate gender-science stereotypes to our best.

Problem Status Quo

In the SynBio community, and the science community as a whole, the productivity is hampered by the limited participation of female scientists. The unequal gender-science participation rate varies with research focus. While life sciences have a relatively high female participation rate (49%),^[1] female in other STEM field is vastly outnumbered and outperformed.^[2] Generally speaking, Male have more opportunity to lead research projects than female, and the first authors are mostly male. Many factors lead to this gender gap, while our literature research and questionnaire have showed the most prominent factor being gender-science stereotype. Stereotypes that women are not as gifted as men in STEM fields can hamper the confidence, passion, and eventually the academic performance ^[3] of female STEM practitioners and students.

Background Research

There are many factors that impairs women’s passion, participation, and performance in the STEM field. Before engaging this broad problem, we have conducted background research to bolster our understanding of it. We have created a questionnaire to target the reasons of gender gap in sciences and then concentrate our effort on one of them.

Questionnaire

To investigate the problem and causes of gender gap in science, we have designed a questionnaire and disseminated it online. More than 200 people of different age, gender, education background, and current occupation have been investigated. Based on the data, we made following analysis:

(i) The overall data have shown stereotype being the second biggest reason; If we also consider traditional notion as stereotypes, it would become the most important reason for the gender gap.

(ii) Males and females had very different answers to this problem. Males tended to underestimate the impact of gender stereotypes. Females, in most cases the victim of gender-science stereotype, identified stereotypes as a very harmful factor to their science passion.

(iii) Although the gender gap has many causes, we want to focus on problems within our capabilities. We therefore picked stereotypes, not the family responsibility (the most important reason), as our target. We knew that balancing family responsibility require collective effort from all social members, and we could not succeed by ourselves alone. Stereotypes, on the other hand, could be impaired and even eliminated with our promotion projects, and we are confident about our results.

Literature Research

After setting gender-science stereotypes as our target, our team started literature research. We hoped to know the well-established theories and research programs about stereotypes, so we could approach the stereotypes with proper methodology and preparation. We held three in-team literature sharing sessions, one session per week. In each session, every team member shared one previous research program on gender-science stereotypes with the rest of the group.

Investigating Gender-Science Stereotypes

We started to investigate the examples, frequency, and impact of gender-science stereotypes at local communities and schools. We designed two online surveys and disseminated them through the internet. We also interviewed students and faculty members of BJEA to hear from their opinion on gender-science stereotype. Finally, we focus on local communities in Etown, so we conducted a field investigation to collect data from local people in Etown.

Online Survey

After group brainstorming, we designed a 20-questions survey to gather information of our interest. The questionnaire includes background information (age, gender, education, and occupation), their experience of gender-science stereotype, their opinion on the stereotypes, causes of stereotypes, and other supporting questions that provide an insight on the connection between people’s background and gender-science stereotype. For the sample questionnaire, see SurveyResult

A total of 1,025 responses are collected, and we discussed the results to highlight the problem. Through the analysis of the results, we concluded several guidelines for our promotion plan and to-dos for the next step:
1. The promotion plan should focus on local communities.
2. The target population are students under 18 and adults over 40.
3. The promotion plan should raise the public awareness of gender stereotypes before making an effort to eliminate them.

Interview with the faculty members

The limitation of the questionnaire is its lack of interaction. To receive opinion from more viewpoints, as well as to provide more insights into the problem, we came up with an interview plan. All interviewees are BJEA students or faculty members with different academic focus (natural science, social science, or arts), and we prepared one set of interview questions for each academic field. Over the course of 3 months, we held online and face-to-face interviews with 6 faculty members and 5 students. Interviews were recorded with interviewees’ consent. During the interviews, some interviewees talked about their experience as a victim of gender stereotypes and how they confront the prejudices; We were also glad to see interviewees come up with different suggestions and proposals to eliminate the gender gap;

To raise the public awareness of the gender gap in science, we posted the interview videos available on the internet, our team’s WeChat official account, and our team’s TikTok account. Our videos successfully drew the attention of the public and sparked people’s discussion. We are much encouraged to see the debates, comments, and discussions under our videos and WeChat posts.

Field investigation and Promotion

Although in previous surveys we have collected enough opinions and statistics for designing our promotion campaigns, we highly value our bond to local communities in Etown, and we hope to hear their voice. Concerning that our promotion projects will be held in Etown, gathering advice from our community members is helpful for us to tailor the promotion campaign. During the summer break, our team conducted field investigations in neighborhoods, research institutions, office buildings, traffic centers, and local communities in Etown. We invited people from the local communities to vote on some preselected, intensively debated topics from our previous questionnaires and investigations. We also prepared stickers for people to leave their comments on the issue. We are very excited to have these discussions with our community members and see that they are very concerned about the gender gap in sciences. We hereby express our gratitude to local community members for their advice, comments, and support for our project.

Research Report on Gender-Science Stereotype in Etown

After collecting data from all different sources (Online questionnaire, interviews, literature research, and field investigation), we decided to integrate all the information we have and formulate a guideline for our promotion campaign. We wrote a 13-page research report on the background, status quo, reasons, and solutions for the gender-science stereotype in Etown communities. The paper is currently set for publication, and we hope it can help more researchers who share our goals in the future. Learn more

Cooperation with Zirstory

In March 2022, our team started a long-term cooperation with Zirstory, a group of senior students from Beijing National Day School who are also highly concerned with the problem of gender inequality and social minorities. In April, we held an online discussion session with Zirstory members to introduce our inclusivity project and promotion campaigns. We exchanged our experience and opinion in the session, and Zirstory provided us useful advice to improve our projects. Cooperation with Zirstory also allowed us to cast influence to a greater public. Since Zirstory members are from Haidian district in Beijing, we were able to present our project and promotion campaigns in more communities.

Promotion Campaign

In March 2022, our team has designed a draft for our long-term propagation campaign. The 6-months campaign consists of different sub-projects, each lasting 1-2 months. Over the course of the campaign, we continuously evaluate the effectiveness of our projects and use the feedback and advice to improve it. At the end of the campaign, we summarized our work and discussed potential improvements that could have been made. We created a summary for our work, so other people who share our goals may benefit.

“Female Scientists” Project

Starting from late March, the “Female Scientists” project is the first part of our promotion campaign. Based on our knowledge of stereotypes, we realized that an important reason for stereotype is the lack of counter-stereotypical models and examples. Therefore, we designed the Female Scientists project that feature the story of brilliant female biologists and their great contributions to the humanity. Over the course of 2 months, we created 5 posts highlighting Rosalind Franklin, Tu Youyou, Barbara McClintock, Dorothy C. Hodgkin, and Rita L. Montalcini respectively. We want their work to be recognized and noticed by the public, and their success will encourage more girls to engage in STEM fields.

“We can do it!” Self-Narrative

In May 2022, we launched the second sub-project of our promotion campaign: “We can do it!” self-narrative. In the first part of this project, we invited BJEA faculty members and professionals in STEM fields, mostly females, to talk about their road to success and experience. They encouraged girls to endeavor into STEM fields and pursuit their dream fearlessly, and we are very excited to see teachers talking about how they confronted with stereotypes and defeated them, or professionals disproving stereotypes with their personal experience. In the second part of this project, as future scientists who are influenced by stereotypes, we want us and our peers’ voice to be heard by the public. We made the self-narratives of the professionals and our classmates into videos and posted them on social media platforms.

Community Promotion Project

We highly value our bonds to local communities, and we consider it a responsibility to promote positive value in the community. After the field investigation in the local community, we designed this exclusive promotion campaign and presented it in office buildings, shopping malls, traffic centers, institutions, schools, and neighborhoods. We designed and issued a gender stereotype checklist that introduces common stereotypical opinions and how to identify stereotypes. It also allows people to self-check to recognize their implicit stereotypical opinions. We made a poster to introduce our project to the local communities and raise their awareness of the gender gap issue, and we created a leaflet teaching people how to eliminate stereotypes, or at least protect themselves from gender stereotypes.

Inclusivity Project Conclusion

Through 8 months of intensive brainstorming, discussion, and cooperation, our team is satisfied to present this meaningful inclusivity project. Over the course of the project, we enhanced our bonds to the local community, and we are very excited to see that our campaigns have received great responses from the community and the internet. We successfully raised the social awareness of the gender gap in STEM fields, and our promotion campaigns have encouraged aspirant girls to pursue their science dream and contribute to the humanity. We hope to extend this project after the iGEM competition by starting a school club dedicated for eliminating gender-science stereotypes.

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References

1. https://www.proclinical.com/blogs/2018-9/3-ways-life-science-companies-can-engage-female-employees
2. Cimpian, Joseph R., Taek H. Kim, and Zachary T. McDermott. "Understanding persistent gender gaps in STEM." Science 368.6497 (2020): 1317-1319.
3. Spencer, Steven J., Claude M. Steele, and Diane M. Quinn. "Stereotype threat and women's math performance." Journal of experimental social psychology 35.1 (1999): 4-28