A St. Albert Catholic High student has helped shape a national study on how race and gender may keep women and minorities out of the top tiers of science.
St. Albert Catholic High Grade 12 student Barrett Groves presented her work on equity, diversity, and inclusion research Aug. 13 during the online wrap-up conference for the 2021 Women in Scholarship, Engineering, Science, and Technology (WISEST) summer research program at the University of Alberta.
The program encourages Grade 11 female and non-binary students to get into science and engineering by offering them paid summer jobs as research assistants to U of A scientists. It also includes health-related placements for young men.
This year saw some 39 students do research related to brain-computer interfaces, prosthetic hips, 3D printing with recycled plastics, paleontology, and other fields, said WISEST team leader Fervone Goings.
While WISEST typically sees students working hands-on in the field or the lab, this year’s program, like last year’s, was all virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Goings said. That meant a heavy emphasis on virtual tours, Zoom calls, and data analysis.
The science of equality
Groves said she got into science through her interest in sports.
“I’ve been athletic all my life, so I’ve dealt with a lot of injuries,” she explained, which piqued her interest in the human body.
Groves said she applied to WISEST at the suggestion of a career counsellor and was surprised she got in, as she is more into track and field than the sciences. She ended up working with U of A glycobiologist Lisa Willis to work on one of the first equity, diversity, and inclusion studies offered through WISEST.
Researchers have long known that women and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in science and engineering. Women represented just 30 per cent of Canada’s post-secondary students in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), and just 23 per cent of the U of A’s engineering students, Goings noted.
While more women are getting into STEM fields, Groves said very few are advancing into PhD or tenure-track positions. Stereotypes may be to blame. For example, one study Groves found asked people to list traits associated with women and scientists. The study found no overlap between the two lists. Another study determined that the more feminine a scientist looked, the less likely people were to believe they were a scientist.
“If you’re told throughout your life that you’re not as competent as a male in math or sciences, it’s kind of hard not to get that into the back of your head and believe it over time,” Groves said.
Groves spent her summer assembling the databases, charts, and questionnaires for a national gender and ethnic bias study set to launch later this month.
Previous studies have found that female, Black, and Latinx candidates were considered less skilled than male, Asian, and white ones, Groves said.
This study will ask up to 1,700 people to examine about eight resumes to determine which applicant is the most skilled, Groves said. The resumes will be the same apart from the names, which will imply specific genders and ethnicities.
Groves said the experiment team predicted that reviewers will rank female applicants below males, Black and Latinx ones below Asian and white ones, and Black/Latinx females lowest of all. The team will also test if removing names from the resumes or showing reviewers a video on implicit bias beforehand will affect rankings.
Groves said she hopes to study physiology in university and possibly enter medical school. She encouraged others to give WISEST a shot.
“If you’re interested in STEM and you want to learn more and explore your options, you should definitely go for it.”
Visit www.ualberta.ca/services/wisest/index.html for details on WISEST. Goings said footage of the Aug. 13 wrap-up conference will be posted to WISEST’s social media sites later this month.
