gender distribution in microscopy

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Phillips, Thomas E. Phillips, Thomas E.
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gender distribution in microscopy

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Another quantitative measurement would be to look at gender distribution on the editorial boards of microscopy journals. Microscopy Research & Techniques, Microscopy Today, Microscopy & Microanalysis, Microscopy & Analysis, Journal of Histochemistry & Cytochemistry are obvious choices. It can admittedly be sometimes hard to judge gender from the listings but I have made my best effort with 3 of these journals.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will note that I am on the "Editorial Staff" of Microscopy Today (an MSA publication) which has 12 member of which 2 are women. Its "Editorial Board" has 3 women and 20 men.

The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Microanalysis (An MSA publication) seems to me to have 18 males, 3 females. It has 14 individuals listed as "Editors" in various subcategories and these include 11 males and 3 females. It would be interesting to know the gender distribution of MSA.

The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Analysis (A Wiley publication) seems to me to have 11 males, 0 females.

I will leave it to someone else to count the MRT and JHC editorial board members.

 I have changed the title of this tread to de-emphasize the implied flaw in any one meeting or meeting organizer. The point should be that more effort has to be made and if the discussion is never initiated, progress won't happen.





Thomas E. Phillips, Ph.D
Professor of Biological Sciences
Director, Molecular Cytology Core
2 Tucker Hall
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211-7400
573-882-4712 (office)
573-882-0123 (fax)
[hidden email]

http://www.biology.missouri.edu/faculty/phillips.html
http://www.biotech.missouri.edu/mcc/

-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Alessandro Esposito
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 12:47 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: Bioimaging in Genoa - Open access - Great Talks, No women ?

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
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*****

The microscopy community is a small one, with its members often helping each other to solve issues. It is actually this sense of community that keeps me (hopefully others as well) going also in moments of struggle. Therefore, it saddens me to see this discussion taking the way it has.

I have nothing to argue against the original criticism/question submitted by Jeremy Adler. Gender bias is an important issue that the scientific community has to address. WISE estimates that only 13% and 6% of the STEM and engineering workforces is female in the UK. Of course, we should all contribute to remove the causes for this bias at the root. When scientists and engineers are formed we work with the gender imbalance that we get and we should always select the best people irrespective of their gender. We know however from data that there are serious obstacles in the career progression of women in academia.

I have no idea about the proportion of women working in microscopy either as developers or expert users; I guess the ratio will change significantly and I believe it will even change between different sub-disciplines. I promise to come back to you with some numbers, but I had a look to the
MMC2015 organized by the RMS, event that I believe was not biased overall.

You will forgive me if the numbers are not precise as I had to browse through a lot of names in short time, but among the plenary lecturers, moderators and selected speakers, it appears that around 30% of people are females. The proportion of invited speakers (in parallel sessions) were at a smaller proportion of 20% indicating, perhaps, that at least unconscious bias is present among moderators (36% were females) or that the conference programme merely represented a bias in the progression of careers of female scientists (very likely, but of course not very good).
However, I find that that programme was rather balanced and I hope you will agree with me.

Therefore, I have the impression that in some specialist areas we could have as few as 10% (or less) female scientists working but in microscopy overall a third of all microscopy related workforce may be female. This is somehow consistent with figures published again by WISE stating that less than 10% engineering professionals are female but in science overall, balance between the two genders have been achieved (in the UK). Of course, these numbers will be pushed down or up by countries with better or worst statistics and specific topics. Bottom line, the analysis of specific small events is, in my opinion, very difficult and we should move on to understand what we can do in the microscopy community (and the academic world in general) to remove any conscious or unconscious bias.
The debate should be decent and constructive in order to not damage the good cause some of you aimed to support.

The latter post of Jeremy Adler could have been avoided; the sarcastic tone and the accusation of using the memory of a departed female colleague and friend to somehow distract from this thread are regrettable and appeared aiming to provoke an emotional response only rather than a useful debate. That I do not endorse.

Therefore, could we please discuss about numbers and propose solutions like we can usually do in this community? For instance, it would be interesting if organizations that manage important conferences could adhere to the Athena SWAN Charter, but this is not within the remit of this charter. Do you know of any alternative initiative? Perhaps, such a subscription may help to raise awareness within the panels that select speakers. Also, some links to lists of female speakers have been circulated; some of these links are broken, and lists are anyway not specific to microscopy. Do you think we should organize to curate such a list as a community resource? Suggestions are welcome. I personally prefer to work on raising awareness rather than compiling these lists, but whatever tool is useful is welcome.

Cheers,

Alessandro
Wert, Susan (Susan Wert) Wert, Susan (Susan Wert)
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Re: gender distribution in microscopy

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Based on name recognition, approximately 14 females out of 52 total on the editorial board of J Histochem Cytochem.

____________________________________________________________________

Susan E. Wert, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Department of Pediatrics
Perinatal Institute
Divisions of Neonatology, Perinatal and Pulmonary Biology
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
3333 Burnet Avenue, MLC7029
Cincinnati, Ohio 45229-3039
TEL: 513-636-4297 (office, voice mail)
513-636-2295 (laboratory)
FAX: 513-636-7868
E-mail:  [hidden email]

Member – Ontology subcommittee, NHLBI Molecular Atlas of Lung Development Program (LungMAP) Consortium.  The LungMAP is a cooperative research project tasked with building an integrated, open-access database that will characterize the molecular anatomy of the later stages of lung development in both mice and humans.  For more information, go to: www.lungmap.net<http://www.lungmap.net/> .



From: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> on behalf of "Phillips, Thomas E." <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Reply-To: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 2:17 PM
To: "[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>" <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: gender distribution in microscopy

*****
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Post images on https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=Bg0N8dtCCJgZA2wZFc127n3nIb0f3iZEGUaaEBA-wLA&e=  and include the link in your posting.
*****

Another quantitative measurement would be to look at gender distribution on the editorial boards of microscopy journals. Microscopy Research & Techniques, Microscopy Today, Microscopy & Microanalysis, Microscopy & Analysis, Journal of Histochemistry & Cytochemistry are obvious choices. It can admittedly be sometimes hard to judge gender from the listings but I have made my best effort with 3 of these journals.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will note that I am on the "Editorial Staff" of Microscopy Today (an MSA publication) which has 12 member of which 2 are women. Its "Editorial Board" has 3 women and 20 men.

The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Microanalysis (An MSA publication) seems to me to have 18 males, 3 females. It has 14 individuals listed as "Editors" in various subcategories and these include 11 males and 3 females. It would be interesting to know the gender distribution of MSA.

The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Analysis (A Wiley publication) seems to me to have 11 males, 0 females.

I will leave it to someone else to count the MRT and JHC editorial board members.

I have changed the title of this tread to de-emphasize the implied flaw in any one meeting or meeting organizer. The point should be that more effort has to be made and if the discussion is never initiated, progress won't happen.





Thomas E. Phillips, Ph.D
Professor of Biological Sciences
Director, Molecular Cytology Core
2 Tucker Hall
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211-7400
573-882-4712 (office)
573-882-0123 (fax)
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.biology.missouri.edu_faculty_phillips.html&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=9qo4AYMG449Bd_5t8SHjNkUo9yuOJzqVQgYzzdomCIE&e=
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-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Alessandro Esposito
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 12:47 PM
To: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: Bioimaging in Genoa - Open access - Great Talks, No women ?

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
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Post images on https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=Bg0N8dtCCJgZA2wZFc127n3nIb0f3iZEGUaaEBA-wLA&e=  and include the link in your posting.
*****

The microscopy community is a small one, with its members often helping each other to solve issues. It is actually this sense of community that keeps me (hopefully others as well) going also in moments of struggle. Therefore, it saddens me to see this discussion taking the way it has.

I have nothing to argue against the original criticism/question submitted by Jeremy Adler. Gender bias is an important issue that the scientific community has to address. WISE estimates that only 13% and 6% of the STEM and engineering workforces is female in the UK. Of course, we should all contribute to remove the causes for this bias at the root. When scientists and engineers are formed we work with the gender imbalance that we get and we should always select the best people irrespective of their gender. We know however from data that there are serious obstacles in the career progression of women in academia.

I have no idea about the proportion of women working in microscopy either as developers or expert users; I guess the ratio will change significantly and I believe it will even change between different sub-disciplines. I promise to come back to you with some numbers, but I had a look to the
MMC2015 organized by the RMS, event that I believe was not biased overall.

You will forgive me if the numbers are not precise as I had to browse through a lot of names in short time, but among the plenary lecturers, moderators and selected speakers, it appears that around 30% of people are females. The proportion of invited speakers (in parallel sessions) were at a smaller proportion of 20% indicating, perhaps, that at least unconscious bias is present among moderators (36% were females) or that the conference programme merely represented a bias in the progression of careers of female scientists (very likely, but of course not very good).
However, I find that that programme was rather balanced and I hope you will agree with me.

Therefore, I have the impression that in some specialist areas we could have as few as 10% (or less) female scientists working but in microscopy overall a third of all microscopy related workforce may be female. This is somehow consistent with figures published again by WISE stating that less than 10% engineering professionals are female but in science overall, balance between the two genders have been achieved (in the UK). Of course, these numbers will be pushed down or up by countries with better or worst statistics and specific topics. Bottom line, the analysis of specific small events is, in my opinion, very difficult and we should move on to understand what we can do in the microscopy community (and the academic world in general) to remove any conscious or unconscious bias.
The debate should be decent and constructive in order to not damage the good cause some of you aimed to support.

The latter post of Jeremy Adler could have been avoided; the sarcastic tone and the accusation of using the memory of a departed female colleague and friend to somehow distract from this thread are regrettable and appeared aiming to provoke an emotional response only rather than a useful debate. That I do not endorse.

Therefore, could we please discuss about numbers and propose solutions like we can usually do in this community? For instance, it would be interesting if organizations that manage important conferences could adhere to the Athena SWAN Charter, but this is not within the remit of this charter. Do you know of any alternative initiative? Perhaps, such a subscription may help to raise awareness within the panels that select speakers. Also, some links to lists of female speakers have been circulated; some of these links are broken, and lists are anyway not specific to microscopy. Do you think we should organize to curate such a list as a community resource? Suggestions are welcome. I personally prefer to work on raising awareness rather than compiling these lists, but whatever tool is useful is welcome.

Cheers,

Alessandro
Haller, Edward Haller, Edward
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Re: gender distribution in microscopy

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*****

I find this discussion interesting. I currently manage an electron microscope Core facility, and did a head count of users. Of the 34 current users, our breakdown is 19 males and 15 females, not quite 50:50. We have users from the Biology Department, Chemistry, Physics and Engineering, so a cross-section of the sciences. Our users are younger, though, mostly graduate students, which may be why we are running closer to an even distribution of genders.

Ed Haller

Edward Haller, Lab Manager
University of South Florida
Department of Integrative Biology
Electron Microscopy Core
SCA 110
4202 East Fowler Avenue
Tampa, FL 33620
(813)974-2676
[hidden email]
Office: ISA 1046
 http://biology.usf.edu/ib/research/facilities/

________________________________________
From: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]> on behalf of Wert, Susan (Susan Wert) <[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 4:08 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: gender distribution in microscopy

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Based on name recognition, approximately 14 females out of 52 total on the editorial board of J Histochem Cytochem.

____________________________________________________________________

Susan E. Wert, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Department of Pediatrics
Perinatal Institute
Divisions of Neonatology, Perinatal and Pulmonary Biology
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
3333 Burnet Avenue, MLC7029
Cincinnati, Ohio 45229-3039
TEL: 513-636-4297 (office, voice mail)
513-636-2295 (laboratory)
FAX: 513-636-7868
E-mail:  [hidden email]

Member – Ontology subcommittee, NHLBI Molecular Atlas of Lung Development Program (LungMAP) Consortium.  The LungMAP is a cooperative research project tasked with building an integrated, open-access database that will characterize the molecular anatomy of the later stages of lung development in both mice and humans.  For more information, go to: www.lungmap.net<http://www.lungmap.net/> .



From: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> on behalf of "Phillips, Thomas E." <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Reply-To: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 2:17 PM
To: "[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>" <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: gender distribution in microscopy

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__lists.umn.edu_cgi-2Dbin_wa-3FA0-3Dconfocalmicroscopy&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=pbKlEBq2PQtd2UMIlnV0YAQSr24aM1WzAped9Fcp-x4&e=
Post images on https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=Bg0N8dtCCJgZA2wZFc127n3nIb0f3iZEGUaaEBA-wLA&e=  and include the link in your posting.
*****

Another quantitative measurement would be to look at gender distribution on the editorial boards of microscopy journals. Microscopy Research & Techniques, Microscopy Today, Microscopy & Microanalysis, Microscopy & Analysis, Journal of Histochemistry & Cytochemistry are obvious choices. It can admittedly be sometimes hard to judge gender from the listings but I have made my best effort with 3 of these journals.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will note that I am on the "Editorial Staff" of Microscopy Today (an MSA publication) which has 12 member of which 2 are women. Its "Editorial Board" has 3 women and 20 men.

The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Microanalysis (An MSA publication) seems to me to have 18 males, 3 females. It has 14 individuals listed as "Editors" in various subcategories and these include 11 males and 3 females. It would be interesting to know the gender distribution of MSA.

The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Analysis (A Wiley publication) seems to me to have 11 males, 0 females.

I will leave it to someone else to count the MRT and JHC editorial board members.

I have changed the title of this tread to de-emphasize the implied flaw in any one meeting or meeting organizer. The point should be that more effort has to be made and if the discussion is never initiated, progress won't happen.





Thomas E. Phillips, Ph.D
Professor of Biological Sciences
Director, Molecular Cytology Core
2 Tucker Hall
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211-7400
573-882-4712 (office)
573-882-0123 (fax)
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.biology.missouri.edu_faculty_phillips.html&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=9qo4AYMG449Bd_5t8SHjNkUo9yuOJzqVQgYzzdomCIE&e=
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.biotech.missouri.edu_mcc_&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=VkHAE1Kj_071TN6uKA_qKbSVT3Fo256jv7zNFmo5kR0&e=

-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Alessandro Esposito
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 12:47 PM
To: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: Bioimaging in Genoa - Open access - Great Talks, No women ?

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
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Post images on https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=Bg0N8dtCCJgZA2wZFc127n3nIb0f3iZEGUaaEBA-wLA&e=  and include the link in your posting.
*****

The microscopy community is a small one, with its members often helping each other to solve issues. It is actually this sense of community that keeps me (hopefully others as well) going also in moments of struggle. Therefore, it saddens me to see this discussion taking the way it has.

I have nothing to argue against the original criticism/question submitted by Jeremy Adler. Gender bias is an important issue that the scientific community has to address. WISE estimates that only 13% and 6% of the STEM and engineering workforces is female in the UK. Of course, we should all contribute to remove the causes for this bias at the root. When scientists and engineers are formed we work with the gender imbalance that we get and we should always select the best people irrespective of their gender. We know however from data that there are serious obstacles in the career progression of women in academia.

I have no idea about the proportion of women working in microscopy either as developers or expert users; I guess the ratio will change significantly and I believe it will even change between different sub-disciplines. I promise to come back to you with some numbers, but I had a look to the
MMC2015 organized by the RMS, event that I believe was not biased overall.

You will forgive me if the numbers are not precise as I had to browse through a lot of names in short time, but among the plenary lecturers, moderators and selected speakers, it appears that around 30% of people are females. The proportion of invited speakers (in parallel sessions) were at a smaller proportion of 20% indicating, perhaps, that at least unconscious bias is present among moderators (36% were females) or that the conference programme merely represented a bias in the progression of careers of female scientists (very likely, but of course not very good).
However, I find that that programme was rather balanced and I hope you will agree with me.

Therefore, I have the impression that in some specialist areas we could have as few as 10% (or less) female scientists working but in microscopy overall a third of all microscopy related workforce may be female. This is somehow consistent with figures published again by WISE stating that less than 10% engineering professionals are female but in science overall, balance between the two genders have been achieved (in the UK). Of course, these numbers will be pushed down or up by countries with better or worst statistics and specific topics. Bottom line, the analysis of specific small events is, in my opinion, very difficult and we should move on to understand what we can do in the microscopy community (and the academic world in general) to remove any conscious or unconscious bias.
The debate should be decent and constructive in order to not damage the good cause some of you aimed to support.

The latter post of Jeremy Adler could have been avoided; the sarcastic tone and the accusation of using the memory of a departed female colleague and friend to somehow distract from this thread are regrettable and appeared aiming to provoke an emotional response only rather than a useful debate. That I do not endorse.

Therefore, could we please discuss about numbers and propose solutions like we can usually do in this community? For instance, it would be interesting if organizations that manage important conferences could adhere to the Athena SWAN Charter, but this is not within the remit of this charter. Do you know of any alternative initiative? Perhaps, such a subscription may help to raise awareness within the panels that select speakers. Also, some links to lists of female speakers have been circulated; some of these links are broken, and lists are anyway not specific to microscopy. Do you think we should organize to curate such a list as a community resource? Suggestions are welcome. I personally prefer to work on raising awareness rather than compiling these lists, but whatever tool is useful is welcome.

Cheers,

Alessandro
George McNamara George McNamara
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Re: gender distribution in microscopy

In reply to this post by Phillips, Thomas E.
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Hi Thomas,
Great way to move forward forward with this thread. Alby does not need
to limit himself to slide carrying women microscopists: there are plenty
of excellent women scientists who have used microscopes.

Hi Alby for next year: Yes, Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, Claire
Waterman, Rebecca Richards-Kortun, Sally Ward and Xiaowei Zhuang come to
my mind as easy choices to invite (if Alby can afford the travel). A lot
closer (by Texas distances), Melody Swartz, Katrin Willig. I am taking
this opportunity to suggest Alby invite to his 2015 meeting Evelin
Schrock to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Evelin's (and
collaborators) Science paper next year:

Multicolor spectral karyotyping of human chromosomes.
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8662537>

Schröck E, du Manoir S, Veldman T, Schoell B, Wienberg J, Ferguson-Smith
MA, Ning Y, Ledbetter DH, Bar-Am I, Soenksen D, Garini Y, *Ried T*.

Science. 1996 Jul 26;273(5274):494-7.

PMID:
    8662537


Evelin is now at:
Institut fuer Klinische Genetik, Medizinische Fakultaet Carl Gustav
Carus, Technische Universitaet Dresden, Dresden, German
http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/fakultaeten/medizinische_fakultaet/inst/kge/

spectral karyotyping    921 PubMed hits (yes some are reviews) ... 5
fluorophores simultaneously for 19+ years.
spectral confocal       1071 PubMed hits ... with a much larger
installed base and applications. but very rarely more than four colors.

best wishes,

George
p.s. disclosure: I am a former employee and former customer of Applied
Spectral Imaging, the company that codeveloped spectral karyotyping with
Evelin Schrock and Thomas Ried and their colleagues. Dresden-Genoa is
1,049 km. Texas 1,332 km (east-west on I-10).

On 10/13/2015 1:17 PM, Phillips, Thomas E. wrote:

> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Another quantitative measurement would be to look at gender distribution on the editorial boards of microscopy journals. Microscopy Research&  Techniques, Microscopy Today, Microscopy&  Microanalysis, Microscopy&  Analysis, Journal of Histochemistry&  Cytochemistry are obvious choices. It can admittedly be sometimes hard to judge gender from the listings but I have made my best effort with 3 of these journals.
>
> In the spirit of full disclosure, I will note that I am on the "Editorial Staff" of Microscopy Today (an MSA publication) which has 12 member of which 2 are women. Its "Editorial Board" has 3 women and 20 men.
>
> The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Microanalysis (An MSA publication) seems to me to have 18 males, 3 females. It has 14 individuals listed as "Editors" in various subcategories and these include 11 males and 3 females. It would be interesting to know the gender distribution of MSA.
>
> The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Analysis (A Wiley publication) seems to me to have 11 males, 0 females.
>
> I will leave it to someone else to count the MRT and JHC editorial board members.
>
>   I have changed the title of this tread to de-emphasize the implied flaw in any one meeting or meeting organizer. The point should be that more effort has to be made and if the discussion is never initiated, progress won't happen.
>
>
>
>
>
> Thomas E. Phillips, Ph.D
> Professor of Biological Sciences
> Director, Molecular Cytology Core
> 2 Tucker Hall
> University of Missouri
> Columbia, MO 65211-7400
> 573-882-4712 (office)
> 573-882-0123 (fax)
> [hidden email]
>
> http://www.biology.missouri.edu/faculty/phillips.html
> http://www.biotech.missouri.edu/mcc/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Alessandro Esposito
> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 12:47 PM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: Bioimaging in Genoa - Open access - Great Talks, No women ?
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> The microscopy community is a small one, with its members often helping each other to solve issues. It is actually this sense of community that keeps me (hopefully others as well) going also in moments of struggle. Therefore, it saddens me to see this discussion taking the way it has.
>
> I have nothing to argue against the original criticism/question submitted by Jeremy Adler. Gender bias is an important issue that the scientific community has to address. WISE estimates that only 13% and 6% of the STEM and engineering workforces is female in the UK. Of course, we should all contribute to remove the causes for this bias at the root. When scientists and engineers are formed we work with the gender imbalance that we get and we should always select the best people irrespective of their gender. We know however from data that there are serious obstacles in the career progression of women in academia.
>
> I have no idea about the proportion of women working in microscopy either as developers or expert users; I guess the ratio will change significantly and I believe it will even change between different sub-disciplines. I promise to come back to you with some numbers, but I had a look to the
> MMC2015 organized by the RMS, event that I believe was not biased overall.
>
> You will forgive me if the numbers are not precise as I had to browse through a lot of names in short time, but among the plenary lecturers, moderators and selected speakers, it appears that around 30% of people are females. The proportion of invited speakers (in parallel sessions) were at a smaller proportion of 20% indicating, perhaps, that at least unconscious bias is present among moderators (36% were females) or that the conference programme merely represented a bias in the progression of careers of female scientists (very likely, but of course not very good).
> However, I find that that programme was rather balanced and I hope you will agree with me.
>
> Therefore, I have the impression that in some specialist areas we could have as few as 10% (or less) female scientists working but in microscopy overall a third of all microscopy related workforce may be female. This is somehow consistent with figures published again by WISE stating that less than 10% engineering professionals are female but in science overall, balance between the two genders have been achieved (in the UK). Of course, these numbers will be pushed down or up by countries with better or worst statistics and specific topics. Bottom line, the analysis of specific small events is, in my opinion, very difficult and we should move on to understand what we can do in the microscopy community (and the academic world in general) to remove any conscious or unconscious bias.
> The debate should be decent and constructive in order to not damage the good cause some of you aimed to support.
>
> The latter post of Jeremy Adler could have been avoided; the sarcastic tone and the accusation of using the memory of a departed female colleague and friend to somehow distract from this thread are regrettable and appeared aiming to provoke an emotional response only rather than a useful debate. That I do not endorse.
>
> Therefore, could we please discuss about numbers and propose solutions like we can usually do in this community? For instance, it would be interesting if organizations that manage important conferences could adhere to the Athena SWAN Charter, but this is not within the remit of this charter. Do you know of any alternative initiative? Perhaps, such a subscription may help to raise awareness within the panels that select speakers. Also, some links to lists of female speakers have been circulated; some of these links are broken, and lists are anyway not specific to microscopy. Do you think we should organize to curate such a list as a community resource? Suggestions are welcome. I personally prefer to work on raising awareness rather than compiling these lists, but whatever tool is useful is welcome.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alessandro
>
>    


--



George McNamara, Ph.D.
Single Cells Analyst
L.J.N. Cooper Lab
University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Houston, TX 77054
Tattletales http://works.bepress.com/gmcnamara/42
lechristophe lechristophe
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Re: gender distribution in microscopy

In reply to this post by Haller, Edward
*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

I just would like to say that I find this discussion very interesting, and
consider this mailing list to be a very appropriate place to have it given
its subject. People that don't want to discuss gender diversity in the
microscopy community can just ignore the replies instead of trying to
silence people that want.

As regards the community, in the super-resolution subfield we are blessed
with many outstanding women scientists: Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz and
Xiaowei Zhuang as earlier cited by George, and also Katharina Gaus from
Sydney, Melike Lakadamyali from Barcelona, Suliana Manley from Lausanne,
Ilaria Testa from Stockholm, Jie Xiao from Baltimore, Julie Biteen from Ann
Harbor, Diane Lidke from Albuquerque, Catherine Galbraith from Portland,
Katrin Willig from Göttingen (and this is just from a rapid browse of my
"SR reviews" folder and surely has overlooked many others to which I
apologize).

Christophe

--
Christophe Leterrier
Researcher
Axonal Domains Architecture Team
CRN2M CNRS UMR 7286
Aix Marseille University, France



On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 10:58 PM, Haller, Edward <[hidden email]>
wrote:

> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> I find this discussion interesting. I currently manage an electron
> microscope Core facility, and did a head count of users. Of the 34 current
> users, our breakdown is 19 males and 15 females, not quite 50:50. We have
> users from the Biology Department, Chemistry, Physics and Engineering, so a
> cross-section of the sciences. Our users are younger, though, mostly
> graduate students, which may be why we are running closer to an even
> distribution of genders.
>
> Ed Haller
>
> Edward Haller, Lab Manager
> University of South Florida
> Department of Integrative Biology
> Electron Microscopy Core
> SCA 110
> 4202 East Fowler Avenue
> Tampa, FL 33620
> (813)974-2676
> [hidden email]
> Office: ISA 1046
>  http://biology.usf.edu/ib/research/facilities/
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]> on
> behalf of Wert, Susan (Susan Wert) <[hidden email]>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 4:08 PM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: gender distribution in microscopy
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Based on name recognition, approximately 14 females out of 52 total on the
> editorial board of J Histochem Cytochem.
>
> ____________________________________________________________________
>
> Susan E. Wert, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Pediatrics
> University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
> Department of Pediatrics
> Perinatal Institute
> Divisions of Neonatology, Perinatal and Pulmonary Biology
> Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
> 3333 Burnet Avenue, MLC7029
> Cincinnati, Ohio 45229-3039
> TEL: 513-636-4297 (office, voice mail)
> 513-636-2295 (laboratory)
> FAX: 513-636-7868
> E-mail:  [hidden email]
>
> Member – Ontology subcommittee, NHLBI Molecular Atlas of Lung Development
> Program (LungMAP) Consortium.  The LungMAP is a cooperative research
> project tasked with building an integrated, open-access database that will
> characterize the molecular anatomy of the later stages of lung development
> in both mice and humans.  For more information, go to: www.lungmap.net<
> http://www.lungmap.net/> .
>
>
>
> From: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]<mailto:
> [hidden email]>> on behalf of "Phillips, Thomas E." <
> [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
> Reply-To: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]
> <mailto:[hidden email]>>
> Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 2:17 PM
> To: "[hidden email]<mailto:
> [hidden email]>" <[hidden email]
> <mailto:[hidden email]>>
> Subject: gender distribution in microscopy
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__lists.umn.edu_cgi-2Dbin_wa-3FA0-3Dconfocalmicroscopy&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=pbKlEBq2PQtd2UMIlnV0YAQSr24aM1WzAped9Fcp-x4&e=
> Post images on
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=Bg0N8dtCCJgZA2wZFc127n3nIb0f3iZEGUaaEBA-wLA&e=
> and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Another quantitative measurement would be to look at gender distribution
> on the editorial boards of microscopy journals. Microscopy Research &
> Techniques, Microscopy Today, Microscopy & Microanalysis, Microscopy &
> Analysis, Journal of Histochemistry & Cytochemistry are obvious choices. It
> can admittedly be sometimes hard to judge gender from the listings but I
> have made my best effort with 3 of these journals.
>
> In the spirit of full disclosure, I will note that I am on the "Editorial
> Staff" of Microscopy Today (an MSA publication) which has 12 member of
> which 2 are women. Its "Editorial Board" has 3 women and 20 men.
>
> The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Microanalysis (An MSA publication)
> seems to me to have 18 males, 3 females. It has 14 individuals listed as
> "Editors" in various subcategories and these include 11 males and 3
> females. It would be interesting to know the gender distribution of MSA.
>
> The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Analysis (A Wiley publication) seems
> to me to have 11 males, 0 females.
>
> I will leave it to someone else to count the MRT and JHC editorial board
> members.
>
> I have changed the title of this tread to de-emphasize the implied flaw in
> any one meeting or meeting organizer. The point should be that more effort
> has to be made and if the discussion is never initiated, progress won't
> happen.
>
>
>
>
>
> Thomas E. Phillips, Ph.D
> Professor of Biological Sciences
> Director, Molecular Cytology Core
> 2 Tucker Hall
> University of Missouri
> Columbia, MO 65211-7400
> 573-882-4712 (office)
> 573-882-0123 (fax)
> [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
>
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.biology.missouri.edu_faculty_phillips.html&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=9qo4AYMG449Bd_5t8SHjNkUo9yuOJzqVQgYzzdomCIE&e=
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.biotech.missouri.edu_mcc_&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=VkHAE1Kj_071TN6uKA_qKbSVT3Fo256jv7zNFmo5kR0&e=
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]]
> On Behalf Of Alessandro Esposito
> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 12:47 PM
> To: [hidden email]<mailto:
> [hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: Bioimaging in Genoa - Open access - Great Talks, No women ?
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__lists.umn.edu_cgi-2Dbin_wa-3FA0-3Dconfocalmicroscopy&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=pbKlEBq2PQtd2UMIlnV0YAQSr24aM1WzAped9Fcp-x4&e=
> Post images on
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=Bg0N8dtCCJgZA2wZFc127n3nIb0f3iZEGUaaEBA-wLA&e=
> and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> The microscopy community is a small one, with its members often helping
> each other to solve issues. It is actually this sense of community that
> keeps me (hopefully others as well) going also in moments of struggle.
> Therefore, it saddens me to see this discussion taking the way it has.
>
> I have nothing to argue against the original criticism/question submitted
> by Jeremy Adler. Gender bias is an important issue that the scientific
> community has to address. WISE estimates that only 13% and 6% of the STEM
> and engineering workforces is female in the UK. Of course, we should all
> contribute to remove the causes for this bias at the root. When scientists
> and engineers are formed we work with the gender imbalance that we get and
> we should always select the best people irrespective of their gender. We
> know however from data that there are serious obstacles in the career
> progression of women in academia.
>
> I have no idea about the proportion of women working in microscopy either
> as developers or expert users; I guess the ratio will change significantly
> and I believe it will even change between different sub-disciplines. I
> promise to come back to you with some numbers, but I had a look to the
> MMC2015 organized by the RMS, event that I believe was not biased overall.
>
> You will forgive me if the numbers are not precise as I had to browse
> through a lot of names in short time, but among the plenary lecturers,
> moderators and selected speakers, it appears that around 30% of people are
> females. The proportion of invited speakers (in parallel sessions) were at
> a smaller proportion of 20% indicating, perhaps, that at least unconscious
> bias is present among moderators (36% were females) or that the conference
> programme merely represented a bias in the progression of careers of female
> scientists (very likely, but of course not very good).
> However, I find that that programme was rather balanced and I hope you
> will agree with me.
>
> Therefore, I have the impression that in some specialist areas we could
> have as few as 10% (or less) female scientists working but in microscopy
> overall a third of all microscopy related workforce may be female. This is
> somehow consistent with figures published again by WISE stating that less
> than 10% engineering professionals are female but in science overall,
> balance between the two genders have been achieved (in the UK). Of course,
> these numbers will be pushed down or up by countries with better or worst
> statistics and specific topics. Bottom line, the analysis of specific small
> events is, in my opinion, very difficult and we should move on to
> understand what we can do in the microscopy community (and the academic
> world in general) to remove any conscious or unconscious bias.
> The debate should be decent and constructive in order to not damage the
> good cause some of you aimed to support.
>
> The latter post of Jeremy Adler could have been avoided; the sarcastic
> tone and the accusation of using the memory of a departed female colleague
> and friend to somehow distract from this thread are regrettable and
> appeared aiming to provoke an emotional response only rather than a useful
> debate. That I do not endorse.
>
> Therefore, could we please discuss about numbers and propose solutions
> like we can usually do in this community? For instance, it would be
> interesting if organizations that manage important conferences could adhere
> to the Athena SWAN Charter, but this is not within the remit of this
> charter. Do you know of any alternative initiative? Perhaps, such a
> subscription may help to raise awareness within the panels that select
> speakers. Also, some links to lists of female speakers have been
> circulated; some of these links are broken, and lists are anyway not
> specific to microscopy. Do you think we should organize to curate such a
> list as a community resource? Suggestions are welcome. I personally prefer
> to work on raising awareness rather than compiling these lists, but
> whatever tool is useful is welcome.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alessandro
>
Andreas Bruckbauer Andreas Bruckbauer
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Re: gender distribution in microscopy

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

Just a few thoughts: There could be an open call for keynote talks at conferences. This way the organisers could see who is available and get a fair picture of the whole field. I understand this is additional work but might be worth trying. Furthermore it would be good to aim for a 50:50 gender ratio on the advisory board which selects the talks. Furthermore aim for representation from all parts of the community which are currently  underrepresented. Sponsors could do their bit by increasing sponsorship when a fair representation of women is achieved. Lots of microscopy applications are in biology which has a more equal gender balance, so I don't see why we have to end up with so few women speakers. There is a long way to go, but it is worth it and would solve other problems as well. Men also have  childcare responsibilities, so any suggestions are welcome.

Best wishes

Andreas

-----Original Message-----
From: "Christophe Leterrier" <[hidden email]>
Sent: ‎14/‎10/‎2015 13:23
To: "[hidden email]" <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: gender distribution in microscopy

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
*****

I just would like to say that I find this discussion very interesting, and
consider this mailing list to be a very appropriate place to have it given
its subject. People that don't want to discuss gender diversity in the
microscopy community can just ignore the replies instead of trying to
silence people that want.

As regards the community, in the super-resolution subfield we are blessed
with many outstanding women scientists: Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz and
Xiaowei Zhuang as earlier cited by George, and also Katharina Gaus from
Sydney, Melike Lakadamyali from Barcelona, Suliana Manley from Lausanne,
Ilaria Testa from Stockholm, Jie Xiao from Baltimore, Julie Biteen from Ann
Harbor, Diane Lidke from Albuquerque, Catherine Galbraith from Portland,
Katrin Willig from Göttingen (and this is just from a rapid browse of my
"SR reviews" folder and surely has overlooked many others to which I
apologize).

Christophe

--
Christophe Leterrier
Researcher
Axonal Domains Architecture Team
CRN2M CNRS UMR 7286
Aix Marseille University, France



On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 10:58 PM, Haller, Edward <[hidden email]>
wrote:

> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> I find this discussion interesting. I currently manage an electron
> microscope Core facility, and did a head count of users. Of the 34 current
> users, our breakdown is 19 males and 15 females, not quite 50:50. We have
> users from the Biology Department, Chemistry, Physics and Engineering, so a
> cross-section of the sciences. Our users are younger, though, mostly
> graduate students, which may be why we are running closer to an even
> distribution of genders.
>
> Ed Haller
>
> Edward Haller, Lab Manager
> University of South Florida
> Department of Integrative Biology
> Electron Microscopy Core
> SCA 110
> 4202 East Fowler Avenue
> Tampa, FL 33620
> (813)974-2676
> [hidden email]
> Office: ISA 1046
>  http://biology.usf.edu/ib/research/facilities/
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]> on
> behalf of Wert, Susan (Susan Wert) <[hidden email]>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 4:08 PM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: gender distribution in microscopy
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Based on name recognition, approximately 14 females out of 52 total on the
> editorial board of J Histochem Cytochem.
>
> ____________________________________________________________________
>
> Susan E. Wert, Ph.D.
> Associate Professor of Pediatrics
> University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
> Department of Pediatrics
> Perinatal Institute
> Divisions of Neonatology, Perinatal and Pulmonary Biology
> Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
> 3333 Burnet Avenue, MLC7029
> Cincinnati, Ohio 45229-3039
> TEL: 513-636-4297 (office, voice mail)
> 513-636-2295 (laboratory)
> FAX: 513-636-7868
> E-mail:  [hidden email]
>
> Member – Ontology subcommittee, NHLBI Molecular Atlas of Lung Development
> Program (LungMAP) Consortium.  The LungMAP is a cooperative research
> project tasked with building an integrated, open-access database that will
> characterize the molecular anatomy of the later stages of lung development
> in both mice and humans.  For more information, go to: www.lungmap.net<
> http://www.lungmap.net/> .
>
>
>
> From: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]<mailto:
> [hidden email]>> on behalf of "Phillips, Thomas E." <
> [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
> Reply-To: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]
> <mailto:[hidden email]>>
> Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 2:17 PM
> To: "[hidden email]<mailto:
> [hidden email]>" <[hidden email]
> <mailto:[hidden email]>>
> Subject: gender distribution in microscopy
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__lists.umn.edu_cgi-2Dbin_wa-3FA0-3Dconfocalmicroscopy&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=pbKlEBq2PQtd2UMIlnV0YAQSr24aM1WzAped9Fcp-x4&e=
> Post images on
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=Bg0N8dtCCJgZA2wZFc127n3nIb0f3iZEGUaaEBA-wLA&e=
> and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Another quantitative measurement would be to look at gender distribution
> on the editorial boards of microscopy journals. Microscopy Research &
> Techniques, Microscopy Today, Microscopy & Microanalysis, Microscopy &
> Analysis, Journal of Histochemistry & Cytochemistry are obvious choices. It
> can admittedly be sometimes hard to judge gender from the listings but I
> have made my best effort with 3 of these journals.
>
> In the spirit of full disclosure, I will note that I am on the "Editorial
> Staff" of Microscopy Today (an MSA publication) which has 12 member of
> which 2 are women. Its "Editorial Board" has 3 women and 20 men.
>
> The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Microanalysis (An MSA publication)
> seems to me to have 18 males, 3 females. It has 14 individuals listed as
> "Editors" in various subcategories and these include 11 males and 3
> females. It would be interesting to know the gender distribution of MSA.
>
> The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Analysis (A Wiley publication) seems
> to me to have 11 males, 0 females.
>
> I will leave it to someone else to count the MRT and JHC editorial board
> members.
>
> I have changed the title of this tread to de-emphasize the implied flaw in
> any one meeting or meeting organizer. The point should be that more effort
> has to be made and if the discussion is never initiated, progress won't
> happen.
>
>
>
>
>
> Thomas E. Phillips, Ph.D
> Professor of Biological Sciences
> Director, Molecular Cytology Core
> 2 Tucker Hall
> University of Missouri
> Columbia, MO 65211-7400
> 573-882-4712 (office)
> 573-882-0123 (fax)
> [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
>
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.biology.missouri.edu_faculty_phillips.html&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=9qo4AYMG449Bd_5t8SHjNkUo9yuOJzqVQgYzzdomCIE&e=
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.biotech.missouri.edu_mcc_&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=VkHAE1Kj_071TN6uKA_qKbSVT3Fo256jv7zNFmo5kR0&e=
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]]
> On Behalf Of Alessandro Esposito
> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 12:47 PM
> To: [hidden email]<mailto:
> [hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: Bioimaging in Genoa - Open access - Great Talks, No women ?
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__lists.umn.edu_cgi-2Dbin_wa-3FA0-3Dconfocalmicroscopy&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=pbKlEBq2PQtd2UMIlnV0YAQSr24aM1WzAped9Fcp-x4&e=
> Post images on
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=Bg0N8dtCCJgZA2wZFc127n3nIb0f3iZEGUaaEBA-wLA&e=
> and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> The microscopy community is a small one, with its members often helping
> each other to solve issues. It is actually this sense of community that
> keeps me (hopefully others as well) going also in moments of struggle.
> Therefore, it saddens me to see this discussion taking the way it has.
>
> I have nothing to argue against the original criticism/question submitted
> by Jeremy Adler. Gender bias is an important issue that the scientific
> community has to address. WISE estimates that only 13% and 6% of the STEM
> and engineering workforces is female in the UK. Of course, we should all
> contribute to remove the causes for this bias at the root. When scientists
> and engineers are formed we work with the gender imbalance that we get and
> we should always select the best people irrespective of their gender. We
> know however from data that there are serious obstacles in the career
> progression of women in academia.
>
> I have no idea about the proportion of women working in microscopy either
> as developers or expert users; I guess the ratio will change significantly
> and I believe it will even change between different sub-disciplines. I
> promise to come back to you with some numbers, but I had a look to the
> MMC2015 organized by the RMS, event that I believe was not biased overall.
>
> You will forgive me if the numbers are not precise as I had to browse
> through a lot of names in short time, but among the plenary lecturers,
> moderators and selected speakers, it appears that around 30% of people are
> females. The proportion of invited speakers (in parallel sessions) were at
> a smaller proportion of 20% indicating, perhaps, that at least unconscious
> bias is present among moderators (36% were females) or that the conference
> programme merely represented a bias in the progression of careers of female
> scientists (very likely, but of course not very good).
> However, I find that that programme was rather balanced and I hope you
> will agree with me.
>
> Therefore, I have the impression that in some specialist areas we could
> have as few as 10% (or less) female scientists working but in microscopy
> overall a third of all microscopy related workforce may be female. This is
> somehow consistent with figures published again by WISE stating that less
> than 10% engineering professionals are female but in science overall,
> balance between the two genders have been achieved (in the UK). Of course,
> these numbers will be pushed down or up by countries with better or worst
> statistics and specific topics. Bottom line, the analysis of specific small
> events is, in my opinion, very difficult and we should move on to
> understand what we can do in the microscopy community (and the academic
> world in general) to remove any conscious or unconscious bias.
> The debate should be decent and constructive in order to not damage the
> good cause some of you aimed to support.
>
> The latter post of Jeremy Adler could have been avoided; the sarcastic
> tone and the accusation of using the memory of a departed female colleague
> and friend to somehow distract from this thread are regrettable and
> appeared aiming to provoke an emotional response only rather than a useful
> debate. That I do not endorse.
>
> Therefore, could we please discuss about numbers and propose solutions
> like we can usually do in this community? For instance, it would be
> interesting if organizations that manage important conferences could adhere
> to the Athena SWAN Charter, but this is not within the remit of this
> charter. Do you know of any alternative initiative? Perhaps, such a
> subscription may help to raise awareness within the panels that select
> speakers. Also, some links to lists of female speakers have been
> circulated; some of these links are broken, and lists are anyway not
> specific to microscopy. Do you think we should organize to curate such a
> list as a community resource? Suggestions are welcome. I personally prefer
> to work on raising awareness rather than compiling these lists, but
> whatever tool is useful is welcome.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alessandro
>
Masur, Sandra Masur, Sandra
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Re: gender distribution in microscopy

What an excellent discussion, valid concerns and good suggestions!

An article I wrote recently focused on resources to identify excellent women speakers with various expertise's including microscopy :
"Invisible woman?" S.K.Masur Trends in Cell Biology 25(8) 437–439 (2015) doi:10.1016/j.tcb.2015.06.001<http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tcb.2015.06.001>

These are readily available in the downloadable Speakers Referral list from the Women in Cell Biology committee of the ASCB http://ascb.org/wicb-committee/
or the NSF supported Synberc http://www.synberc.org/diversity/speaker-suggestions

The article also has a checklist for organizing an outstanding gender-balanced meeting.

Best regards,

Sandy,
Sandra K. Masur, PhD
________________________________
Chair, Women in Cell Biology (WICB) of
American Society for Cell Biology

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Director, Office for Women's Careers
Professor, Ophthalmology
Box 1183, 1 Gustave Levy Place
New York NY 10029-6574

telephone: 212-241-0089
fax: 212-289-5945
cell: 646-245-5934

email: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>





On Oct 15, 2015, at 3:21 AM, Andreas Bruckbauer wrote:

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*****

Just a few thoughts: There could be an open call for keynote talks at conferences. This way the organisers could see who is available and get a fair picture of the whole field. I understand this is additional work but might be worth trying. Furthermore it would be good to aim for a 50:50 gender ratio on the advisory board which selects the talks. Furthermore aim for representation from all parts of the community which are currently  underrepresented. Sponsors could do their bit by increasing sponsorship when a fair representation of women is achieved. Lots of microscopy applications are in biology which has a more equal gender balance, so I don't see why we have to end up with so few women speakers. There is a long way to go, but it is worth it and would solve other problems as well. Men also have  childcare responsibilities, so any suggestions are welcome.

Best wishes

Andreas

-----Original Message-----
From: "Christophe Leterrier" <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Sent: ‎14/‎10/‎2015 13:23
To: "[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>" <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: gender distribution in microscopy

*****
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Post images on https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=AwIFaQ&c=4R1YgkJNMyVWjMjneTwN5tJRn8m8VqTSNCjYLg1wNX4&r=-IxDc1mKyG4s6IOkmHpTKwx5fYsX5uTafOilRcvxO0M&m=0BAZq76dVV2_M5TFTgn8Di6BCJpgxhj6ISKt0qDyNrg&s=VY35ma80l77me8xbpl6LwC-L3lAL-g_SaLySRT3Fies&e=  and include the link in your posting.
*****

I just would like to say that I find this discussion very interesting, and
consider this mailing list to be a very appropriate place to have it given
its subject. People that don't want to discuss gender diversity in the
microscopy community can just ignore the replies instead of trying to
silence people that want.

As regards the community, in the super-resolution subfield we are blessed
with many outstanding women scientists: Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz and
Xiaowei Zhuang as earlier cited by George, and also Katharina Gaus from
Sydney, Melike Lakadamyali from Barcelona, Suliana Manley from Lausanne,
Ilaria Testa from Stockholm, Jie Xiao from Baltimore, Julie Biteen from Ann
Harbor, Diane Lidke from Albuquerque, Catherine Galbraith from Portland,
Katrin Willig from Göttingen (and this is just from a rapid browse of my
"SR reviews" folder and surely has overlooked many others to which I
apologize).

Christophe

--
Christophe Leterrier
Researcher
Axonal Domains Architecture Team
CRN2M CNRS UMR 7286
Aix Marseille University, France



On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 10:58 PM, Haller, Edward <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
wrote:

*****
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*****

I find this discussion interesting. I currently manage an electron
microscope Core facility, and did a head count of users. Of the 34 current
users, our breakdown is 19 males and 15 females, not quite 50:50. We have
users from the Biology Department, Chemistry, Physics and Engineering, so a
cross-section of the sciences. Our users are younger, though, mostly
graduate students, which may be why we are running closer to an even
distribution of genders.

Ed Haller

Edward Haller, Lab Manager
University of South Florida
Department of Integrative Biology
Electron Microscopy Core
SCA 110
4202 East Fowler Avenue
Tampa, FL 33620
(813)974-2676
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
Office: ISA 1046
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__biology.usf.edu_ib_research_facilities_&d=AwIFaQ&c=4R1YgkJNMyVWjMjneTwN5tJRn8m8VqTSNCjYLg1wNX4&r=-IxDc1mKyG4s6IOkmHpTKwx5fYsX5uTafOilRcvxO0M&m=0BAZq76dVV2_M5TFTgn8Di6BCJpgxhj6ISKt0qDyNrg&s=YLQJCp8sBktuYgRE3UOE6PMcsSP7b3xhyi27SRzeULc&e=

________________________________________
From: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>> on
behalf of Wert, Susan (Susan Wert) <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 4:08 PM
To: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: gender distribution in microscopy

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
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Post images on https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=AwIFaQ&c=4R1YgkJNMyVWjMjneTwN5tJRn8m8VqTSNCjYLg1wNX4&r=-IxDc1mKyG4s6IOkmHpTKwx5fYsX5uTafOilRcvxO0M&m=0BAZq76dVV2_M5TFTgn8Di6BCJpgxhj6ISKt0qDyNrg&s=VY35ma80l77me8xbpl6LwC-L3lAL-g_SaLySRT3Fies&e=  and include the link in your posting.
*****

Based on name recognition, approximately 14 females out of 52 total on the
editorial board of J Histochem Cytochem.

____________________________________________________________________

Susan E. Wert, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pediatrics
University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Department of Pediatrics
Perinatal Institute
Divisions of Neonatology, Perinatal and Pulmonary Biology
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
3333 Burnet Avenue, MLC7029
Cincinnati, Ohio 45229-3039
TEL: 513-636-4297 (office, voice mail)
513-636-2295 (laboratory)
FAX: 513-636-7868
E-mail:  [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>

Member – Ontology subcommittee, NHLBI Molecular Atlas of Lung Development
Program (LungMAP) Consortium.  The LungMAP is a cooperative research
project tasked with building an integrated, open-access database that will
characterize the molecular anatomy of the later stages of lung development
in both mice and humans.  For more information, go to: www.lungmap.net<http://www.lungmap.net><
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.lungmap.net_&d=AwIFaQ&c=4R1YgkJNMyVWjMjneTwN5tJRn8m8VqTSNCjYLg1wNX4&r=-IxDc1mKyG4s6IOkmHpTKwx5fYsX5uTafOilRcvxO0M&m=0BAZq76dVV2_M5TFTgn8Di6BCJpgxhj6ISKt0qDyNrg&s=WMSj1UTE2LFsSoQ-hS65SkA472Fw3ETFeZrpzf7zDlk&e= > .



From: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>> on behalf of "Phillips, Thomas E." <
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]>>
Reply-To: Confocal Microscopy List <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 2:17 PM
To: "[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>" <[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: gender distribution in microscopy

*****
To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__lists.umn.edu_cgi-2Dbin_wa-3FA0-3Dconfocalmicroscopy&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=pbKlEBq2PQtd2UMIlnV0YAQSr24aM1WzAped9Fcp-x4&e=
Post images on
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and include the link in your posting.
*****

Another quantitative measurement would be to look at gender distribution
on the editorial boards of microscopy journals. Microscopy Research &
Techniques, Microscopy Today, Microscopy & Microanalysis, Microscopy &
Analysis, Journal of Histochemistry & Cytochemistry are obvious choices. It
can admittedly be sometimes hard to judge gender from the listings but I
have made my best effort with 3 of these journals.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will note that I am on the "Editorial
Staff" of Microscopy Today (an MSA publication) which has 12 member of
which 2 are women. Its "Editorial Board" has 3 women and 20 men.

The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Microanalysis (An MSA publication)
seems to me to have 18 males, 3 females. It has 14 individuals listed as
"Editors" in various subcategories and these include 11 males and 3
females. It would be interesting to know the gender distribution of MSA.

The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Analysis (A Wiley publication) seems
to me to have 11 males, 0 females.

I will leave it to someone else to count the MRT and JHC editorial board
members.

I have changed the title of this tread to de-emphasize the implied flaw in
any one meeting or meeting organizer. The point should be that more effort
has to be made and if the discussion is never initiated, progress won't
happen.





Thomas E. Phillips, Ph.D
Professor of Biological Sciences
Director, Molecular Cytology Core
2 Tucker Hall
University of Missouri
Columbia, MO 65211-7400
573-882-4712 (office)
573-882-0123 (fax)
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:[hidden email]>


https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.biology.missouri.edu_faculty_phillips.html&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=9qo4AYMG449Bd_5t8SHjNkUo9yuOJzqVQgYzzdomCIE&e=

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-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]]
On Behalf Of Alessandro Esposito
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 12:47 PM
To: [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]><mailto:
[hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
Subject: Re: Bioimaging in Genoa - Open access - Great Talks, No women ?

*****
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Post images on
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and include the link in your posting.
*****

The microscopy community is a small one, with its members often helping
each other to solve issues. It is actually this sense of community that
keeps me (hopefully others as well) going also in moments of struggle.
Therefore, it saddens me to see this discussion taking the way it has.

I have nothing to argue against the original criticism/question submitted
by Jeremy Adler. Gender bias is an important issue that the scientific
community has to address. WISE estimates that only 13% and 6% of the STEM
and engineering workforces is female in the UK. Of course, we should all
contribute to remove the causes for this bias at the root. When scientists
and engineers are formed we work with the gender imbalance that we get and
we should always select the best people irrespective of their gender. We
know however from data that there are serious obstacles in the career
progression of women in academia.

I have no idea about the proportion of women working in microscopy either
as developers or expert users; I guess the ratio will change significantly
and I believe it will even change between different sub-disciplines. I
promise to come back to you with some numbers, but I had a look to the
MMC2015 organized by the RMS, event that I believe was not biased overall.

You will forgive me if the numbers are not precise as I had to browse
through a lot of names in short time, but among the plenary lecturers,
moderators and selected speakers, it appears that around 30% of people are
females. The proportion of invited speakers (in parallel sessions) were at
a smaller proportion of 20% indicating, perhaps, that at least unconscious
bias is present among moderators (36% were females) or that the conference
programme merely represented a bias in the progression of careers of female
scientists (very likely, but of course not very good).
However, I find that that programme was rather balanced and I hope you
will agree with me.

Therefore, I have the impression that in some specialist areas we could
have as few as 10% (or less) female scientists working but in microscopy
overall a third of all microscopy related workforce may be female. This is
somehow consistent with figures published again by WISE stating that less
than 10% engineering professionals are female but in science overall,
balance between the two genders have been achieved (in the UK). Of course,
these numbers will be pushed down or up by countries with better or worst
statistics and specific topics. Bottom line, the analysis of specific small
events is, in my opinion, very difficult and we should move on to
understand what we can do in the microscopy community (and the academic
world in general) to remove any conscious or unconscious bias.
The debate should be decent and constructive in order to not damage the
good cause some of you aimed to support.

The latter post of Jeremy Adler could have been avoided; the sarcastic
tone and the accusation of using the memory of a departed female colleague
and friend to somehow distract from this thread are regrettable and
appeared aiming to provoke an emotional response only rather than a useful
debate. That I do not endorse.

Therefore, could we please discuss about numbers and propose solutions
like we can usually do in this community? For instance, it would be
interesting if organizations that manage important conferences could adhere
to the Athena SWAN Charter, but this is not within the remit of this
charter. Do you know of any alternative initiative? Perhaps, such a
subscription may help to raise awareness within the panels that select
speakers. Also, some links to lists of female speakers have been
circulated; some of these links are broken, and lists are anyway not
specific to microscopy. Do you think we should organize to curate such a
list as a community resource? Suggestions are welcome. I personally prefer
to work on raising awareness rather than compiling these lists, but
whatever tool is useful is welcome.

Cheers,

Alessandro


George McNamara George McNamara
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Re: gender distribution in microscopy

In reply to this post by Andreas Bruckbauer
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this recent news story on two JAMA articles, and an editorial (see
below) show science gender inequities is not just a challlenge for
Alby's meeting:


http://www.dddmag.com/articles/2015/10/shocking-jama-studies-offer-key-grasping-science-gender-inequities


  “Shocking” JAMA Studies Offer Key to Grasping Science Gender Inequities

Fri, 10/02/2015 - 10:00am
Cynthia Fox, Science Editor

Two /JAMA/ studies on female scientists and bias are eliciting stunned
reactions.

One /JAMA/ <http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441254>
study, which found women launching labs receive almost three times less
funding than men, was “totally shocking” to Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT) emeritus professor Nancy Hopkins, M.D., she told /Drug
Discovery & Development/.  Hopkins was uninvolved in that study.

The other <http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441260>
/JAMA/ study, which found females aren’t becoming full professors as
fast, or often, as men, took its own investigators aback, lead author
Harvard University Medical School health care policy expert Anupam Jena,
M.D., Ph.D., told /Drug Discovery & Development/.

“The biggest surprise for us was that, despite accounting for a rich set
of productivity measures and physician characteristics like age, years
of experience, and specialty, we found women were less likely to hold
the rank of full professor in U.S. medical schools,” Jena said. “We
expected to see lower numbers of publications and National Institutes of
Health (NIH) grants, which reflect the known fact that institutional
support for women in academic medicine still lags that for men. But we
did not expect to see large differences once equal productivity was
demonstrated between the sexes.”

Said Jena, “I think our study provides strong evidence that
discrimination exists.”

*One study: bias in startup funds*

The first study, by Health Resources in Action’s Medical Foundation,
looked at 219 scientists (from 55 Boston-area institutes) seeking
start-up aid from the Medical Foundation.

The self-reported study found employers gave newly hired male scientists
a median of $889,000 to purchase equipment and set up their labs. Women
scientists were given only $350,000 for this.

More dramatic—so statistically significant—was the gap between
applicants with Ph.D.s. Male Ph.D.s received $936,000 to start labs,
while female Ph.D.s received $348,000. A full 40 percent of men—versus
12 percent of women—were given over $1 million.

Four of the five Boston institutes receiving the most NIH funds were
worst of all, the report showed. (The five: Harvard, the University of
Massachusetts, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Children’s
Hospital, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.)

...

One more section I felt worth pasting here - Nancy Hopkins was only
shocked by start up funding disparity study:


Hopkins was less “shocked” by this /JAMA/ study. “Does this result
surprise me? No,” she told /Drug Discovery & Development/. “When I was
visiting a medical school a few years ago, there were large divisions
that had one or two female professors—ever! Female heads of anything
were rare. Pediatrics can have female heads—that's about it, it seems.”

Hopkins suspects reasons for this, “are the sum of all the things we
know, starting with less money out of the gate. We have known for a
long, long time that children are not the full explanation.” Women with
and without children “experienced the same issues in terms of bias.”

...

Please go to the ddd page for the rest of the dddmag news article,

http://www.dddmag.com/articles/2015/10/shocking-jama-studies-offer-key-grasping-science-gender-inequities

the direct URL's for the JAMA studies are:


http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441254


  Sex Differences in Institutional Support for Junior Biomedical Researchers

Robert Sege, MD, PhD^1 ; Linley Nykiel-Bub, BA^1 ; Sabrina Selk, ScD^2
/JAMA. /2015;314(11):1175-1177. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.8517.

This study uses application data from 2 US biomedical research programs
to analyze institutional funding support for men and women overall, and
by scientific focus, terminal degree, and years since receiving terminal
degree.

Women are underrepresented in the biomedical research workforce. Only
30% of funded investigators are women.^1
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441254#jld150030r1>
^,2
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441254#jld150030r2>
Junior faculty women have fewer peer-reviewed publications than men^3
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441254#jld150030r3>
^,4
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441254#jld150030r4>
and are more often on clinician-educator (vs traditional) tracks.^5
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441254#jld150030r5>
One reason may be differences in early-career institutional support,
which to our knowledge has not been previously examined.


http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441260


  Sex Differences in Academic Rank in US Medical Schools in 2014

Anupam B. Jena, MD, PhD^1,2,3 ; Dhruv Khullar, MD, MPP^4,5 ;
Oliver Ho, BA^1 ; Andrew R. Olenski, BA^1 ; Daniel M. Blumenthal, MD,
MBA^5,6
/JAMA. /2015;314(11):1149-1158. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.10680.

Abstract

*Importance* The proportion of women at the rank of full professor in US
medical schools has not increased since 1980 and remains below that of
men. Whether differences in age, experience, specialty, and research
productivity between sexes explain persistent disparities in faculty
rank has not been studied.

*Objective* To analyze sex differences in faculty rank among US academic
physicians.

*Design, Setting, and Participants* We analyzed sex differences in
faculty rank using a cross-sectional comprehensive database of US
physicians with medical school faculty appointments in 2014 (91 073
physicians; 9.1% of all US physicians), linked to information on
physician sex, age, years since residency, specialty, authored
publications, National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding, and clinical
trial investigation. We estimated sex differences in full professorship,
as well as a combined outcome of associate or full professorship,
adjusting for these factors in a multilevel (hierarchical) model. We
also analyzed how sex differences varied with specialty and whether
differences were more prevalent at schools ranked highly in research.

*Exposures* Physician sex.

*Main Outcomes and Measures* Academic faculty rank.

*Results* In all, there were 30 464 women who were medical faculty vs 60
609 men. Of those, 3623 women (11.9%) vs 17 354 men (28.6%) had
full-professor appointments, for an absolute difference of −16.7% (95%
CI, −17.3% to −16.2%). Women faculty were younger and disproportionately
represented in internal medicine and pediatrics. The mean total number
of publications for women was 11.6 vs 24.8 for men, for a difference of
−13.2 (95% CI, −13.6 to −12.7); the mean first- or last-author
publications for women was 5.9 vs 13.7 for men, for a difference of −7.8
(95% CI, −8.1 to −7.5). Among 9.1% of medical faculty with an NIH grant,
6.8% (2059 of 30 464) were women and 10.3% (6237 of 60 609) were men,
for a difference of −3.5% (95% CI, −3.9% to −3.1%). In all, 6.4% of
women vs 8.8% of men had a trial registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, for a
difference of −2.4% (95% CI, −2.8% to −2.0%). After multivariable
adjustment, women were less likely than men to have achieved
full-professor status (absolute adjusted difference in proportion,
−3.8%; 95% CI, −4.4% to −3.3%). Sex-differences in full professorship
were present across all specialties and did not vary according to
whether a physician’s medical school was ranked highly in terms of
research funding.

*Conclusions and Relevance* Among physicians with faculty appointments
at US medical schools, there were sex differences in academic faculty
rank, with women substantially less likely than men to be full
professors, after accounting for age, experience, specialty, and
measures of research productivity.

//

Editorial

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441243


  Addressing Disparities in Academic MedicineMoving Forward

Carrie L. Byington, MD^1 ; Vivian Lee, MD, PhD, MBA
/JAMA. /2015;314(11):1139-1141. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.10664.
The potential of women in medicine and science, like those in many other
professions, has not been fully realized.^1
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441243#jed150080r1>
When compared with men, women in these fields are paid less,^2
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441243#jed150080r2>
^,3
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441243#jed150080r3>
have higher rates of attrition,^4
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441243#jed150080r4>
have fewer scientific publications,^5
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441243#jed150080r5>
and are less likely to apply for NIH funding and to be principal
investigators.^6
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441243#jed150080r6>
It is not surprising therefore, that women are less likely to advance to
the highest ranks in academic medicine.^7
<http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2441243#jed150080r7>


Unfortunately, the authors failed to make the full text open access.


See also Nancy Hopkins co-chaired 1999 study at MIT:

http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html



I encourage Alby to write an (open access, please) editorial in his
journal addressing the issue(s). This could also be an opportunity to
make use of Andreas' recommendation for an Open Call for Keynote talks
to Alby's 2016 meeting (plus free advertising for the meeting).



Sincerely,

George


On 10/15/2015 2:21 AM, Andreas Bruckbauer wrote:

> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> Just a few thoughts: There could be an open call for keynote talks at conferences. This way the organisers could see who is available and get a fair picture of the whole field. I understand this is additional work but might be worth trying. Furthermore it would be good to aim for a 50:50 gender ratio on the advisory board which selects the talks. Furthermore aim for representation from all parts of the community which are currently  underrepresented. Sponsors could do their bit by increasing sponsorship when a fair representation of women is achieved. Lots of microscopy applications are in biology which has a more equal gender balance, so I don't see why we have to end up with so few women speakers. There is a long way to go, but it is worth it and would solve other problems as well. Men also have  childcare responsibilities, so any suggestions are welcome.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Andreas
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Christophe Leterrier"<[hidden email]>
> Sent: ‎14/‎10/‎2015 13:23
> To: "[hidden email]"<[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: gender distribution in microscopy
>
> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
> *****
>
> I just would like to say that I find this discussion very interesting, and
> consider this mailing list to be a very appropriate place to have it given
> its subject. People that don't want to discuss gender diversity in the
> microscopy community can just ignore the replies instead of trying to
> silence people that want.
>
> As regards the community, in the super-resolution subfield we are blessed
> with many outstanding women scientists: Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz and
> Xiaowei Zhuang as earlier cited by George, and also Katharina Gaus from
> Sydney, Melike Lakadamyali from Barcelona, Suliana Manley from Lausanne,
> Ilaria Testa from Stockholm, Jie Xiao from Baltimore, Julie Biteen from Ann
> Harbor, Diane Lidke from Albuquerque, Catherine Galbraith from Portland,
> Katrin Willig from Göttingen (and this is just from a rapid browse of my
> "SR reviews" folder and surely has overlooked many others to which I
> apologize).
>
> Christophe
>
> --
> Christophe Leterrier
> Researcher
> Axonal Domains Architecture Team
> CRN2M CNRS UMR 7286
> Aix Marseille University, France
>
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2015 at 10:58 PM, Haller, Edward<[hidden email]>
> wrote:
>
>    
>> *****
>> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
>> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
>> *****
>>
>> I find this discussion interesting. I currently manage an electron
>> microscope Core facility, and did a head count of users. Of the 34 current
>> users, our breakdown is 19 males and 15 females, not quite 50:50. We have
>> users from the Biology Department, Chemistry, Physics and Engineering, so a
>> cross-section of the sciences. Our users are younger, though, mostly
>> graduate students, which may be why we are running closer to an even
>> distribution of genders.
>>
>> Ed Haller
>>
>> Edward Haller, Lab Manager
>> University of South Florida
>> Department of Integrative Biology
>> Electron Microscopy Core
>> SCA 110
>> 4202 East Fowler Avenue
>> Tampa, FL 33620
>> (813)974-2676
>> [hidden email]
>> Office: ISA 1046
>>   http://biology.usf.edu/ib/research/facilities/
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: Confocal Microscopy List<[hidden email]>  on
>> behalf of Wert, Susan (Susan Wert)<[hidden email]>
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 4:08 PM
>> To: [hidden email]
>> Subject: Re: gender distribution in microscopy
>>
>> *****
>> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
>> Post images on http://www.imgur.com and include the link in your posting.
>> *****
>>
>> Based on name recognition, approximately 14 females out of 52 total on the
>> editorial board of J Histochem Cytochem.
>>
>> ____________________________________________________________________
>>
>> Susan E. Wert, Ph.D.
>> Associate Professor of Pediatrics
>> University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
>> Department of Pediatrics
>> Perinatal Institute
>> Divisions of Neonatology, Perinatal and Pulmonary Biology
>> Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
>> 3333 Burnet Avenue, MLC7029
>> Cincinnati, Ohio 45229-3039
>> TEL: 513-636-4297 (office, voice mail)
>> 513-636-2295 (laboratory)
>> FAX: 513-636-7868
>> E-mail:  [hidden email]
>>
>> Member – Ontology subcommittee, NHLBI Molecular Atlas of Lung Development
>> Program (LungMAP) Consortium.  The LungMAP is a cooperative research
>> project tasked with building an integrated, open-access database that will
>> characterize the molecular anatomy of the later stages of lung development
>> in both mice and humans.  For more information, go to: www.lungmap.net<
>> http://www.lungmap.net/>  .
>>
>>
>>
>> From: Confocal Microscopy List<[hidden email]<mailto:
>> [hidden email]>>  on behalf of "Phillips, Thomas E."<
>> [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>>
>> Reply-To: Confocal Microscopy List<[hidden email]
>> <mailto:[hidden email]>>
>> Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 2:17 PM
>> To: "[hidden email]<mailto:
>> [hidden email]>"<[hidden email]
>> <mailto:[hidden email]>>
>> Subject: gender distribution in microscopy
>>
>> *****
>> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>>
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__lists.umn.edu_cgi-2Dbin_wa-3FA0-3Dconfocalmicroscopy&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=pbKlEBq2PQtd2UMIlnV0YAQSr24aM1WzAped9Fcp-x4&e=
>> Post images on
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=Bg0N8dtCCJgZA2wZFc127n3nIb0f3iZEGUaaEBA-wLA&e=
>> and include the link in your posting.
>> *****
>>
>> Another quantitative measurement would be to look at gender distribution
>> on the editorial boards of microscopy journals. Microscopy Research&
>> Techniques, Microscopy Today, Microscopy&  Microanalysis, Microscopy&
>> Analysis, Journal of Histochemistry&  Cytochemistry are obvious choices. It
>> can admittedly be sometimes hard to judge gender from the listings but I
>> have made my best effort with 3 of these journals.
>>
>> In the spirit of full disclosure, I will note that I am on the "Editorial
>> Staff" of Microscopy Today (an MSA publication) which has 12 member of
>> which 2 are women. Its "Editorial Board" has 3 women and 20 men.
>>
>> The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Microanalysis (An MSA publication)
>> seems to me to have 18 males, 3 females. It has 14 individuals listed as
>> "Editors" in various subcategories and these include 11 males and 3
>> females. It would be interesting to know the gender distribution of MSA.
>>
>> The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Analysis (A Wiley publication) seems
>> to me to have 11 males, 0 females.
>>
>> I will leave it to someone else to count the MRT and JHC editorial board
>> members.
>>
>> I have changed the title of this tread to de-emphasize the implied flaw in
>> any one meeting or meeting organizer. The point should be that more effort
>> has to be made and if the discussion is never initiated, progress won't
>> happen.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Thomas E. Phillips, Ph.D
>> Professor of Biological Sciences
>> Director, Molecular Cytology Core
>> 2 Tucker Hall
>> University of Missouri
>> Columbia, MO 65211-7400
>> 573-882-4712 (office)
>> 573-882-0123 (fax)
>> [hidden email]<mailto:[hidden email]>
>>
>>
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.biology.missouri.edu_faculty_phillips.html&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=9qo4AYMG449Bd_5t8SHjNkUo9yuOJzqVQgYzzdomCIE&e=
>>
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.biotech.missouri.edu_mcc_&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=VkHAE1Kj_071TN6uKA_qKbSVT3Fo256jv7zNFmo5kR0&e=
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]]
>> On Behalf Of Alessandro Esposito
>> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 12:47 PM
>> To: [hidden email]<mailto:
>> [hidden email]>
>> Subject: Re: Bioimaging in Genoa - Open access - Great Talks, No women ?
>>
>> *****
>> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>>
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__lists.umn.edu_cgi-2Dbin_wa-3FA0-3Dconfocalmicroscopy&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=pbKlEBq2PQtd2UMIlnV0YAQSr24aM1WzAped9Fcp-x4&e=
>> Post images on
>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.imgur.com&d=BQIFAg&c=P0c35rBvlN7D8BNx7kSJTg&r=gTiMNnUY_WQ0o1Pm4wF3M9AK1jT9G1jaGrUpHVi23I8&m=cUr_CZSNJhi8el_BLpxlbNqHs16ZGY8jlpd1WUKpaAI&s=Bg0N8dtCCJgZA2wZFc127n3nIb0f3iZEGUaaEBA-wLA&e=
>> and include the link in your posting.
>> *****
>>
>> The microscopy community is a small one, with its members often helping
>> each other to solve issues. It is actually this sense of community that
>> keeps me (hopefully others as well) going also in moments of struggle.
>> Therefore, it saddens me to see this discussion taking the way it has.
>>
>> I have nothing to argue against the original criticism/question submitted
>> by Jeremy Adler. Gender bias is an important issue that the scientific
>> community has to address. WISE estimates that only 13% and 6% of the STEM
>> and engineering workforces is female in the UK. Of course, we should all
>> contribute to remove the causes for this bias at the root. When scientists
>> and engineers are formed we work with the gender imbalance that we get and
>> we should always select the best people irrespective of their gender. We
>> know however from data that there are serious obstacles in the career
>> progression of women in academia.
>>
>> I have no idea about the proportion of women working in microscopy either
>> as developers or expert users; I guess the ratio will change significantly
>> and I believe it will even change between different sub-disciplines. I
>> promise to come back to you with some numbers, but I had a look to the
>> MMC2015 organized by the RMS, event that I believe was not biased overall.
>>
>> You will forgive me if the numbers are not precise as I had to browse
>> through a lot of names in short time, but among the plenary lecturers,
>> moderators and selected speakers, it appears that around 30% of people are
>> females. The proportion of invited speakers (in parallel sessions) were at
>> a smaller proportion of 20% indicating, perhaps, that at least unconscious
>> bias is present among moderators (36% were females) or that the conference
>> programme merely represented a bias in the progression of careers of female
>> scientists (very likely, but of course not very good).
>> However, I find that that programme was rather balanced and I hope you
>> will agree with me.
>>
>> Therefore, I have the impression that in some specialist areas we could
>> have as few as 10% (or less) female scientists working but in microscopy
>> overall a third of all microscopy related workforce may be female. This is
>> somehow consistent with figures published again by WISE stating that less
>> than 10% engineering professionals are female but in science overall,
>> balance between the two genders have been achieved (in the UK). Of course,
>> these numbers will be pushed down or up by countries with better or worst
>> statistics and specific topics. Bottom line, the analysis of specific small
>> events is, in my opinion, very difficult and we should move on to
>> understand what we can do in the microscopy community (and the academic
>> world in general) to remove any conscious or unconscious bias.
>> The debate should be decent and constructive in order to not damage the
>> good cause some of you aimed to support.
>>
>> The latter post of Jeremy Adler could have been avoided; the sarcastic
>> tone and the accusation of using the memory of a departed female colleague
>> and friend to somehow distract from this thread are regrettable and
>> appeared aiming to provoke an emotional response only rather than a useful
>> debate. That I do not endorse.
>>
>> Therefore, could we please discuss about numbers and propose solutions
>> like we can usually do in this community? For instance, it would be
>> interesting if organizations that manage important conferences could adhere
>> to the Athena SWAN Charter, but this is not within the remit of this
>> charter. Do you know of any alternative initiative? Perhaps, such a
>> subscription may help to raise awareness within the panels that select
>> speakers. Also, some links to lists of female speakers have been
>> circulated; some of these links are broken, and lists are anyway not
>> specific to microscopy. Do you think we should organize to curate such a
>> list as a community resource? Suggestions are welcome. I personally prefer
>> to work on raising awareness rather than compiling these lists, but
>> whatever tool is useful is welcome.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Alessandro
>>
>>      
>    
mcammer mcammer
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Re: gender distribution in microscopy

In reply to this post by George McNamara
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I say look harder when looking for speakers.

I don't want to get involved in identity politics  debates, but I do have a problem with lists such as these because I suspect they tend to skew towards a power distribution of exposure.  Snowballing.  Kind of like tv/film celebrity.  Are certain actors the best, or is it that they are the most recognizable and, hence, marketable?  And think capital attracts capital regardless of actual production.

At least in science all (or most?) of the people who get nominated to lists in the first place are deserving, but the lists may be eliminating people or ideas that really could use exposure and that we would benefit from hearing.  


=========================================================================
 Michael Cammer, Microscopy Core & Skirball Institute, NYU Langone Medical Center
                      Cell:  914-309-3270     ** Office: Skirball 2nd Floor main office, back right **
          http://ocs.med.nyu.edu/microscopy & http://microscopynotes.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: Confocal Microscopy List [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of George McNamara
Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 10:32 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: gender distribution in microscopy

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Hi Thomas,
Great way to move forward forward with this thread. Alby does not need to limit himself to slide carrying women microscopists: there are plenty of excellent women scientists who have used microscopes.

Hi Alby for next year: Yes, Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, Claire Waterman, Rebecca Richards-Kortun, Sally Ward and Xiaowei Zhuang come to my mind as easy choices to invite (if Alby can afford the travel). A lot closer (by Texas distances), Melody Swartz, Katrin Willig. I am taking this opportunity to suggest Alby invite to his 2015 meeting Evelin Schrock to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Evelin's (and
collaborators) Science paper next year:

Multicolor spectral karyotyping of human chromosomes.
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8662537>

Schröck E, du Manoir S, Veldman T, Schoell B, Wienberg J, Ferguson-Smith MA, Ning Y, Ledbetter DH, Bar-Am I, Soenksen D, Garini Y, *Ried T*.

Science. 1996 Jul 26;273(5274):494-7.

PMID:
    8662537


Evelin is now at:
Institut fuer Klinische Genetik, Medizinische Fakultaet Carl Gustav Carus, Technische Universitaet Dresden, Dresden, German http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/fakultaeten/medizinische_fakultaet/inst/kge/

spectral karyotyping    921 PubMed hits (yes some are reviews) ... 5
fluorophores simultaneously for 19+ years.
spectral confocal       1071 PubMed hits ... with a much larger
installed base and applications. but very rarely more than four colors.

best wishes,

George
p.s. disclosure: I am a former employee and former customer of Applied Spectral Imaging, the company that codeveloped spectral karyotyping with Evelin Schrock and Thomas Ried and their colleagues. Dresden-Genoa is
1,049 km. Texas 1,332 km (east-west on I-10).

On 10/13/2015 1:17 PM, Phillips, Thomas E. wrote:

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> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
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> *****
>
> Another quantitative measurement would be to look at gender distribution on the editorial boards of microscopy journals. Microscopy Research&  Techniques, Microscopy Today, Microscopy&  Microanalysis, Microscopy&  Analysis, Journal of Histochemistry&  Cytochemistry are obvious choices. It can admittedly be sometimes hard to judge gender from the listings but I have made my best effort with 3 of these journals.
>
> In the spirit of full disclosure, I will note that I am on the "Editorial Staff" of Microscopy Today (an MSA publication) which has 12 member of which 2 are women. Its "Editorial Board" has 3 women and 20 men.
>
> The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Microanalysis (An MSA publication) seems to me to have 18 males, 3 females. It has 14 individuals listed as "Editors" in various subcategories and these include 11 males and 3 females. It would be interesting to know the gender distribution of MSA.
>
> The Editorial Board of Microscopy and Analysis (A Wiley publication) seems to me to have 11 males, 0 females.
>
> I will leave it to someone else to count the MRT and JHC editorial board members.
>
>   I have changed the title of this tread to de-emphasize the implied flaw in any one meeting or meeting organizer. The point should be that more effort has to be made and if the discussion is never initiated, progress won't happen.
>
>
>
>
>
> Thomas E. Phillips, Ph.D
> Professor of Biological Sciences
> Director, Molecular Cytology Core
> 2 Tucker Hall
> University of Missouri
> Columbia, MO 65211-7400
> 573-882-4712 (office)
> 573-882-0123 (fax)
> [hidden email]
>
> http://www.biology.missouri.edu/faculty/phillips.html
> http://www.biotech.missouri.edu/mcc/
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Confocal Microscopy List
> [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Alessandro
> Esposito
> Sent: Tuesday, October 13, 2015 12:47 PM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: Re: Bioimaging in Genoa - Open access - Great Talks, No women ?
>
> *****
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> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
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> *****
>
> The microscopy community is a small one, with its members often helping each other to solve issues. It is actually this sense of community that keeps me (hopefully others as well) going also in moments of struggle. Therefore, it saddens me to see this discussion taking the way it has.
>
> I have nothing to argue against the original criticism/question submitted by Jeremy Adler. Gender bias is an important issue that the scientific community has to address. WISE estimates that only 13% and 6% of the STEM and engineering workforces is female in the UK. Of course, we should all contribute to remove the causes for this bias at the root. When scientists and engineers are formed we work with the gender imbalance that we get and we should always select the best people irrespective of their gender. We know however from data that there are serious obstacles in the career progression of women in academia.
>
> I have no idea about the proportion of women working in microscopy
> either as developers or expert users; I guess the ratio will change
> significantly and I believe it will even change between different
> sub-disciplines. I promise to come back to you with some numbers, but
> I had a look to the
> MMC2015 organized by the RMS, event that I believe was not biased overall.
>
> You will forgive me if the numbers are not precise as I had to browse through a lot of names in short time, but among the plenary lecturers, moderators and selected speakers, it appears that around 30% of people are females. The proportion of invited speakers (in parallel sessions) were at a smaller proportion of 20% indicating, perhaps, that at least unconscious bias is present among moderators (36% were females) or that the conference programme merely represented a bias in the progression of careers of female scientists (very likely, but of course not very good).
> However, I find that that programme was rather balanced and I hope you will agree with me.
>
> Therefore, I have the impression that in some specialist areas we could have as few as 10% (or less) female scientists working but in microscopy overall a third of all microscopy related workforce may be female. This is somehow consistent with figures published again by WISE stating that less than 10% engineering professionals are female but in science overall, balance between the two genders have been achieved (in the UK). Of course, these numbers will be pushed down or up by countries with better or worst statistics and specific topics. Bottom line, the analysis of specific small events is, in my opinion, very difficult and we should move on to understand what we can do in the microscopy community (and the academic world in general) to remove any conscious or unconscious bias.
> The debate should be decent and constructive in order to not damage the good cause some of you aimed to support.
>
> The latter post of Jeremy Adler could have been avoided; the sarcastic tone and the accusation of using the memory of a departed female colleague and friend to somehow distract from this thread are regrettable and appeared aiming to provoke an emotional response only rather than a useful debate. That I do not endorse.
>
> Therefore, could we please discuss about numbers and propose solutions like we can usually do in this community? For instance, it would be interesting if organizations that manage important conferences could adhere to the Athena SWAN Charter, but this is not within the remit of this charter. Do you know of any alternative initiative? Perhaps, such a subscription may help to raise awareness within the panels that select speakers. Also, some links to lists of female speakers have been circulated; some of these links are broken, and lists are anyway not specific to microscopy. Do you think we should organize to curate such a list as a community resource? Suggestions are welcome. I personally prefer to work on raising awareness rather than compiling these lists, but whatever tool is useful is welcome.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alessandro
>
>    


--



George McNamara, Ph.D.
Single Cells Analyst
L.J.N. Cooper Lab
University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Houston, TX 77054 Tattletales http://works.bepress.com/gmcnamara/42

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