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Universities were established as hierarchical bureaucracies that reward individual attainment in evaluating success. Yet collaboration is crucial both to 21st century science and, we argue, to advancing equity for women academic scientists. We draw from research on gender equity and on collaboration in higher education, and report on data collected on one campus. Sixteen focus group meetings were held with 85 faculty members from STEM departments, separated by faculty rank and gender (i.e., assistant professor men, full professor women). Participants were asked structured questions about the role of collaboration in research, career development, and departmental decision-making. Inductive analyses of focus group data led to the development of a theoretical model in which resources, recognition, and relationships create conditions under which collaboration is likely to produce more gender equitable outcomes for STEM faculty. Ensuring women faculty have equal access to resources is central to safeguarding their success; relationships, including mutual mentoring, inclusion and collegiality, facilitate women’s careers in academia; and recognition of collaborative work bolsters women’s professional advancement. We further propose that gender equity will be stronger in STEM where resources, relationships, and recognition intersect—having multiplicative rather than additive effects. Keywords: collaboration; gender equity; academic STEM careers
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This content will become publicly available on August 11, 2026
Pathways to equity for academic women in science: Research-based strategies for institutional transformation toward gender equity
Women have been persistently underrepresented in science, engineering and mathematics disciplines in academic institutions, in both the United States and Brazil. Approaches that intend to solve this problem by “fixing women”–steering women to be more like men—have been unsuccessful in resolving underrepresentation, as well as biased in assuming that men’s careers are optimal models for women to adopt. We describe research findings from the US and European institutions of higher education that demonstrate systems-focused approaches to gender equity, especially approaches that seek to change structures and cultures that perpetuate barriers to women’s success and advancement in academic science. These approaches become strategic when they are selected based on data about the local situation and when they are strategically combined to push on multiple levers of change at multiple levels of the organization. https://revistacontemporaneos.com.br/pathways-to-equity-for-academic-women-in-science-research-based-strategies-for-institutional-transformation-toward-gender-equity/
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- PAR ID:
- 10627922
- Publisher / Repository:
- Contemporâneos, Revista de Artes e Humanidades: Special Issue on Women in Science
- Date Published:
- Volume:
- 26
- ISSN:
- 1932-3231
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1-25
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- women in science institutional change bias equity
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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