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Women: Latent bias harms careers

Nature volume 479, page 299 (2011)Cite this article

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Ed Rybicki's Futures story describes his own helplessness in the face of everyday obstacles (Nature 477, 626; 2011). Although he sees himself as supportive of women scientists, an unintentional, subconscious bias is implied. Such bias can subvert the career path of women — something our community must get to grips with.

The story places women and men in fundamentally different categories: women are well organized and domestically oriented, whereas men are useless in everyday life but come up with theories about the Universe. It is this subconscious categorization that can hurt women as they climb the academic ladder.

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  1. Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

    Pieter van Dokkum

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  1. Pieter van Dokkum
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Correspondence to Pieter van Dokkum.

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van Dokkum, P. Women: Latent bias harms careers. Nature 479, 299 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/479299c

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  1. Ed Rybicki

    "Although he sees himself as supportive of women scientists, an unintentional, subconscious bias is implied"
    Where? Only if certain attitudes and motives are assumed for me, which are almost certainly not true. So, in the absence of any subconscious bias...?

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