Addressing Gender Equity in Senior Leadership Roles in Translational Science

Inequities for women exist across many leverage points of an academic career in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) disciplines, ranging from poorer success rates at promotion, reduced grant success, and a lower likelihood of invited conference presentations, to a propensity to undertake the lion's share of academic service roles. Moreover, an almost intractable salary gap exists, along with a stark under-representation of women in senior scientific leadership roles, widespread throughout the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and Australia. Numerous factors have been put forward as contributors to this disparity, including the notions that these inequities are a result of a pipeline issue and that women are less qualified or have less experience than men, implicit bias, a lack of flexibility in the work place, a lack of role models, the use of biased measures of success for promotion, and the lack of equitable parental leave programs. In this viewpoint, we address factors shown to contribute to the lack of women in leadership roles. Specifically, we look at systemic barriers, parental and carer leave, and domestic barriers, and we present solutions to address these barriers across an individual's professional and personal life. For women to achieve equity in senior scientific leadership roles, we believe that barriers across all facets of life need to be addressed and that the important contributions that women make and have made to STEMM need to be recognized.