With the announcement yesterday that the eight members of the new House of Commons Science and Technology Committee so far appointed are all male 鈥� and all but one white 鈥� a reaction was sure to follow. It duly did, with a .
Not only had it failed to appoint a single woman, and only one person of colour, but between the newly appointed members, only two possess a degree in a science-related subject: Labour MPs Darren Jones and Graham Stringer, in human bioscience and chemistry, respectively. Stringer, by the way, .
Committee chair Norman Lamb promptly spoke out about the membership announcement, stating it is 鈥渋mperative鈥� women are on the committee. There are still three places left to be filled 鈥� which means there is a slim space for women to potentially occupy.
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Those defending the current all-male committee line up might make one of the more common arguments that crops up in debates relating to diversity and representation in science and technology, that men dominate the roles because there are simply fewer women qualified or interested in these professions.
Reductive argument
They might seize on statistics gleaned as part of the for gender parity in science, technology and engineering in 2014, which found women made up just 14 per cent of undergraduates receiving engineering and technology degrees, and 24 per cent at postgraduate level.
But in order to make the broadly reductive argument that qualified or interested women just aren鈥檛 there, you must neglect to interrogate the barriers and structures that prevent women from seeing science or technology as an accessible and relevant career. In announcing an all-male committee charged with verifying policy-making pertaining to science and technology, you don鈥檛 just validate that argument 鈥� you reinforce it.
Those barriers and structures have been well charted of late. In 2015, the Nobel laureate and biochemist Tim Hunt made the case for single-sex laboratories, because 鈥済irls鈥� fall in love with you, and when you criticise them, they cry鈥�. Just last month Google made headlines after one of its engineers released a 10-page doctrine outlining his view that women are intrinsically less suited to a career in technology.
Women are systematically overlooked in being and are less likely to be cited as lead author in scientific journal articles. A found that interviewers for roles within academic science rated women as broadly less competent and hireable.
Gender bias
It isn鈥檛 unwarranted to suggest there is an inherent gender bias within these disciplines. It isn鈥檛 hard to imagine why fewer women seem compelled to pursue careers in a walk of life that persistently underestimates them. It is time we got wise to the trenchant sexism that exists within these sectors.
The exists to ensure any government policy or relevant decision-making is based on robust scientific advice and evidence. It plays an essential role in authenticating and scrutinising the .
It offers an opportunity for representation and visibility at a very high level. And representation matters 鈥� it informs how we see ourselves and how we see others. It makes permissible particular modes of being or avenues accessible for exploring. It legitimises ambition and aspiration.
And in sectors such as science and technology, in which the exists globally and at nearly every level, visible representation of that sort has never been more essential.
