Females outnumber men in biology at the undergraduate and Ph.D. levels and have this entire century. Where do they still lag? Faculty positions.

The issue is clearly not sexism, academia prides itself on being more liberal and inclusive than private sector science, it is the tenure system. Tenured scientists are living longer, continuing to do fine work, and therefore not making way for younger female scientists who have an advantage in hiring now.

A new study in PLOS Biology (no DOI at the time of writing - PLOS will only give out embargo information to select journalists who are on a list as providing favorable coverage, much like the US FDA) found that female faculty (in six different disciplines) have as many collaborators, or co-authors, as male faculty and that female faculty tend to return to the same collaborators a little less than males, but that females less likely to do actual collaboration. Large teams in genomics (a subdiscipline of molecular biology) have fewer females, which could indicate a negative cultural milieu, or it could mean as studies have found, that women are less likely to want to collaborate or mentor - including with other women.

Luís Amaral, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern, and Teresa K. Woodruff, a Northwestern Medicine reproductive biologist, looked at the complete publication records of nearly 4,000 faculty members in six STEM disciplines at top research universities across the country and found that, broadly speaking, female faculty (for the six different disciplines in the study) have as many collaborators, or co-authors, as male faculty and that a greater willingness of men to cooperate correlates to a greater likelihood of producing work of higher impact.

Unless academic scientists are discriminating against women, which is what the authors suggest, and then the case is that men are choosing other men and benefiting from great impact factors of their work. The other analyses have found differently and instead showed a lack of willingness. Men ignored differences in rank when it comes to cooperation while women will only co-author with those of the same level or higher. That would lead to fewer opportunities.

And their results are in genomics specifically, a narrow sub-field. Perhaps academic scientists are sexist in one area of molecular biology. The STEM disciplines included in the study were chemical engineering, chemistry, ecology, materials science, molecular biology and psychology.