From the Editor-in-Chief: Questions of Gender Equity in the Undergraduate Biology Classroom

I have participated in many conversations about achievement gaps and retention in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education over the years. Within these conversations, a common observation is that biology is a more equitable STEM discipline because we have an abundance of women in the field. While the presence of women is certainly a prerequisite step toward gender equity, a recent paper by Grunspan et al. (7) illustrates how female representation is not enough to promote equal treatment between genders within the undergraduate biology classroom. This new information about an old problem led me to consider what we know about gender dynamics and success in the biological sciences and to contemplate specific actions that we can take to alleviate existing problems. The reasons why students leave STEM fields are complex (13). Indeed, discipline-based science education research (DBER) has its roots in questions about training and retention; increased production of scientists and engineers was necessary to meet demands of the space race in the mid-20 th century (15). Biology came late to DBER in the 1990s and 2000s, a full 20 years after physics (15, 16). In my opinion, this was due in part to greater participation of women in biology than in other STEM fields; the need for retaining diverse biologists was not considered critical because of better gender representation. Biology lacks representation for many groups, including people of color, low socioeconomic status, disability, and first generation college students (14). We still have work to do to fix this problem. But in the case of gender, are we truly the more equitable STEM discipline? By sheer numbers, we are (at least in the United States). Women are taking advanced biology-related courses in high school at a higher rate than men (4). Women graduate with degrees in biological and biomedical sciences in equal or higher numbers than men at all degree levels (Fig. 1). Historically , women reached this threshold by the 1990s and continue to graduate with more biological science degrees today (Figs. 1 and 2). The median time to graduation with a life sciences doctorate is similar for men (8.2 years) and women (8.3 years) (10), indicating that thesis committees consider the amount of doctoral work between genders as equivalent to graduate within the same timeframe. However, we lose these women when it comes to employment upon graduation (Fig. 3). Employment as a biological or medical scientist follows …