The "Other" Gap

Within STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), there is more than just a pay gap: there’s a representation gap. People of color are underrepresented across all fields, women (of all ethnicities and races) often earn less, and little analysis is done on the representation of disabled and LGBTQ+ scientists.

In this blog post, we will explore the representation gap and the biases it’s baking into science. I will provide a summary of my conversation on the subject with Dr. Felicity Enders, Professor of Biostatistics at Mayo Clinic, Rochester. Dr. Enders is also the Director of the Office of Research Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity.

Check out the audio recording of the interview here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10hNTnyD1gPDRk1ShHWf0skPK9rZV-1HG/view?usp=sharing

The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

ISHA: Hello everyone, my name is Isha Kapoor, and today I'm joined by Dr. Felicity Enders. Dr. Enders, could you please start by telling me a little bit about your background, your training, and your current role at Mayo?

DR. ENDERS: Sure. I am a professor of biostatistics. I've been at Mayo since 2004. As for my background, actually, I did not intend to go into biostatistics. I had an undergraduate degree as a biology major and worked for a couple of years and then went back to school for a Master of Public Health degree. And I was applying to a Ph.D. program in epidemiology. But my statistics professor said, “What about applying to biostatistics?” And I thought about it and decided that that would be interesting and fun, mostly because those were courses that I had really fallen in love with along the way.

Then I went and did that Ph.D. program and eventually wound up at Mayo. But as a professor of biostatistics, I have, over time, developed expertise and really shifted my work to be in equity topics. That's a combination of workforce diversity, equity, and inclusion, which is about how we diversify our workforce. And then health equity- how do we help the health of people around the nation?

ISHA: Yeah, that's really nice. So on the heels of your equity background, within STEM, there is more than just a pay gap. There's a representation gap as well, and people of color are consistently underrepresented across all fields. Women of all ethnicities and races often earn less, and there's little analysis done on the representation of disabled and LGBTQ scientist populations. Can you speak to the representation gap in STEM, specifically with regard to women, people of color, LGBTQ members, and those who are underrepresented? How dire is the situation really as it currently stands, would you say?

DR. ENDERS: So you really described it quite well. There's underrepresentation in terms of numbers and differences in salary. There are, however, some [other issues]. It's not that people are always being held back. There are other factors at play, and I think when we talk about this, people tend to presume that this is solely because of bias, and I don't think that's entirely right. I tend to think of this as a Venn diagram. Bias is one component, and bias can be conscious or unconscious. What I see is that there are big impacts of unconscious bias that are not intentional and that that's an area where we can make strides by helping people become aware of their unintended biases. This is also called implicit association. There is a test for this, the Harvard Implicit Association Test. It's actually multiple different tests. It's a way to identify how well you or how quickly you associate words with particular ideas. So if you have a bias that women should not really be in careers, you tend to associate words with women with more activities that might be in the home, and career activities might be better associated or more quickly associated with men.

I actually carry that bias myself, which is very frustrating. There's a number of these biases that I carry, and I think almost all of us do, because they are inherent in the society that we grew up in. And there's actually research that you can behave in a manner that is in opposition to your own bias and overcome it through your behavior, even while you continue to have that implicit bias. As a side note, I find it very upsetting that I have a bias towards women in the workplace when I'm a woman in the workplace, and yet I know that that's deeply ingrained and hard for me to get rid of. But I do work in opposition to that on a regular basis.

I mentioned that I think of this as a Venn diagram, and to me, that's very important because it's not just bias. Bias is one of the circles. Another one is what I will call “network gap.” When you do not have family or friends who are in a particular field, then you don't know what's involved in that field. You don't know what it looks like. You don't know what salaries might be likely in that field, and that makes it very hard to be in that field, and to get into that field. You may not even really know the steps that are needed to get into the field. So that is another aspect where there has not been much work. The third one is “culture gap” where you are outside of the dominant culture at the institution, and therefore behaviors that are natural to you may not fit in in the institution, and we don't necessarily want to change people to suddenly be like they are in the institution. But we need to find ways to overcome that. These three things can overlap, and that makes it very challenging. But I think my overall message is that there are many more things than intentional bias that are leading to these issues.

And there is hope. There is starting to be a lot of work around these topics, in part because people have really come to recognize these issues much more than even five or ten years ago. And because of that, I see things where there are changes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where they are pushing for a lot more of both inclusion, and work specifically to better understand these issues so we can get past them. So I apologize that was a really long-winded answer, but it's a very big question!

ISHA: Yeah, I completely agree. I'd say, even with myself, I think the issue of implicit bias is one that comes up so frequently, and phrases like “women in the kitchen,” for example, are so commonplace and they're used so frequently. And I feel like that in and of itself is harmful. I mean, even if we don't necessarily believe it, I think it comes to a point where it gets so ingrained in our mentality that we begin to subconsciously kind of adapt and almost normalize it in a sense.

DR. ENDERS: Absolutely! So I actually went through this within my own career—some of that internal bias. I had internalized many behaviors [that are taught unconsciously to girls] about how women are supposed to act, and it took me a long time to get past that. And there were two aspects. I was frustrated at how others were acting towards me, but I eventually realized that I had some control over that because I was behaving in ways that were not necessarily conducive for my own career. That led others to behave toward me in certain ways. So I do want to share how I got past that because it was a really big stumbling block. There was a book called Nice Girls Still Don't Get the Corner Office by Dr. Lois P. Frankel.

Dr. Frankel is a coach, a career coach, who has coached women in countless industries and over many, many years. And this book is really about coaching tips. Now I don't agree with everything in there because every person has to decide for themselves about how they will portray themselves. The premise of the book is that we are trained as girls to behave in certain ways as “nice girls” and that we should be a “nice girl” and not speak up and not advocate for ourselves. And we are taught that the opposite of a “nice girl” is a “mean girl.”

The book changes that framing and says that the opposite of a “nice girl” is not a “mean girl,” but a “winning woman,” a woman who knows how to advocate and to speak up on behalf of herself, but also on behalf of others. So anyway, that book was really transformative for me.

ISHA: Yeah, that's really interesting. I have to check it out soon. This is a follow-up question to one of your previous comments about the “network gap.” How would you go about addressing that? Because a lot of that is about exposure, right?

DR. ENDERS: Learning about those other options is the first key to really exploring things outside of your own network, and I would say that discussions, one-on-one discussions, with people are extremely useful. Doing internships or shadowing are other things that can be very, very useful. And I think being explicit with people as you are doing any of those activities that you are trying to learn about this career to decide if it's a great fit for you because it may be a great fit for them and not be a great fit for you. And having an understanding of what the pros and cons are, and why it might be useful for you is really key.

Now I do have a line of research on something called hidden curriculum. Hidden curriculum is what institutions need us to learn but don't typically teach us, and this is actually one of the aspects that learning about different options is critical for making choices into the future about what you will do. And opening up those doors explicitly, in my case from a programmatic perspective, to a group of people, is very similar to what you did for yourself at the individual level. So, kudos!

ISHA: That's nice! So my next question is: In your role, what challenges do you see the underrepresented people in STEM facing, specifically with regard to women, people of color, LGBTQ individuals, and disabled persons? Are there any specific examples, and how do you specifically, in your role, help them or advocate for them?

DR. ENDERS: Absolutely! So, I see many issues here. I've talked about them at a large level already, so I'm going to go into a little bit of detail. I would say that in women and people of color, the issues are now fairly well recognized. That the issues exist, not necessarily what the issues are, but that they exist. For those groups, I would say that there is a key issue about mentoring in that mentors often lack the lived experience to help trainees know what a woman or a person of color may be facing in order to help guide them through it. I think a lot of people have the conception that the mentor has to be a woman or a person of color in order to mentor a woman or a person of color. I actually don't think that's true. Some of my best mentors have been white men, but they were people who really understood the world from my perspective and some of the things that I was facing and helped me with it. And so, they can be very helpful without having that lived experience, but not everyone is able to view the world from someone else's perspective.

Now you also asked about LGBTQ and people with disabilities. I'm going to talk about those separately. I'm going to start with people with disabilities. I think we still face huge challenges there. It is recognized as an issue at the national level in that it is a priority population from the National Institutes of Health, but that doesn't mean we're dealing with it well. And in particular, for people with disabilities, there's often a need for accommodation and changes within the institution, and right now, a lot of that is expected to come from the person with the disability. And it would be much better to flip that and say that the institution will automatically reach out and ask and know what to ask about based on the type of disability. We are definitely not there yet, and there are a lot of hidden closed doors for that group, which is very frustrating. I will say, there's more advocacy coming on from that group. I have been very disappointed as Twitter has fallen by the wayside. That means that one of the networks where people were sharing ideas and information and just telling their stories to raise visibility is in many ways gone, and that's been very upsetting. I hope that there will be a real replacement in the future.

So, sexual and gender minorities, LGBTQ. First, I will say sexual minorities and gender minorities are really quite different now, and we still tend to group these groups together, and that's a little bit disheartening. But there is a shared problem, which is that we don't have solid data because of the laws being so problematic in multiple states in the sense of rights for people who are sexual and gender minorities. People do not feel safe saying that they are a sexual or gender minority. And as such, we don't have the data to show where there are issues. So for instance, I sit on a study section at the National Institutes of Health, which means I review grants, and we see grants coming in from time to time that are trying to help members of these populations, but that's not a priority population from the NIH perspective. I think because NIH doesn't have the data to show that it should be. So there's a little bit of a cyclical problem there that is very concerning. And it is absolutely true that we want to protect members of this population. And so we don't want to ask outright and collect data. And yet that means that we don't have the data that we need to show that help is needed.

I'm going to add there that for people who are gender non-conforming, we do see ongoing issues of mental health and concerns. And it looks to me like that population is growing with each additional generation essentially, and I think it's growing pretty fast. And so I am worried at a national level that we're not keeping up with the needs because of this lack of data.

You came at this from the workforce perspective, but I've been talking about it more from a health perspective. Let me come back to the workforce perspective. For the LGBTQ population, I think, and this is me speculating now, I think that one of the key issues is feeling safe in being one's authentic self within the workplace, and depending on the workplace, the person may or may not feel safe. And not being one's authentic self in the workplace is a huge driver of feelings [about lack of belonging and safety]. There are many aspects that are influenced by that, but I don't know of really good data relating to that, to be able to state it with confidence. These are wonderful questions!

ISHA: Thank you! I think I can see how that can be a difficult area to tread because obviously, you want the data that represents all the populations that we're serving. But at the same time, you also want to be mindful of the safety and wellbeing of those populations whom you're surveying. I can see how that'd be difficult.

So my next question is, why do you think we need diversity in STEM?

DR. ENDERS: So there is research, and I apologize, I can't come up with the authors’ names right now, but there is research [to show] that teams that are diverse actually have better outcomes in a couple of different ways. One is being able to deal with at-risk issues and be more able to withstand riskiness. Another [benefit] when we talk about science is higher publications, higher numbers of citations, and a higher impact factor of the journal that the article is published in. So I actually strongly believe that diversity can help research tremendously, but I think it only helps when people are able to bring their authentic selves to the team. And so actually having people from different groups is not enough. It's a starting point, but we need to get to a point where everyone feels comfortable within that setting to say what they really think. And part of that is the ability to cope with exposure to risk when people can talk about their different understandings.

ISHA: That's a really good response. My final question is, what advice would you give to young individuals from underrepresented groups who are interested in pursuing careers in STEM and may face obstacles along the way?

DR. ENDERS: So my advice is to keep going. I think it does get disheartening, particularly early in the career. One of the reasons is that it tends to feel very personal, and with my comments before, it's really not personal in many ways. It's a shared experience, and it's not intended toward you. And so for people who stick it out, my experience has been that it gets much better.

And it's not a problem for everyone. I also want to emphasize that I've been talking about it as though everyone faces these issues, but different people have different experiences. I do think it's important to learn to both be resilient, but also decide what your level is, because you don't have to stay in a particular area if things really are not going well, but I think it's best not to jump out immediately. It's really good to find someone who's within the area who you can talk with for real honest and transparent advice.

ISHA: Yeah. I think that really goes back to the whole mentorship issue and the importance of finding a mentor who you know can support you and guide you through those kinds of testing times because they do come up, I would say. I obviously haven't worked, but I've interviewed some other women who've noted the importance of having a mentor and what that's meant to them. So I think it's really important.

Well, that was my final question of the day. Thank you so much for making the time for this. I know you are very busy!

DR. ENDERS: Thank you so much! This was a great set of questions. Thank you for doing this.