Gender Equity in Oceanography

Abstract

Gender equity, providing for full participation of people of all genders in the oceanographic workforce, is an important goal for the continued success of the oceanographic enterprise. Here we describe historical obstructions to gender equity, assess recent progress and the current status of gender equity in oceanography by examining quantitative measures of participation, achievement, and recognition, and review activities to improve gender equity. We find that women receive about half the oceanography PhDs in many parts of the world, and are increasing in parity in earlier levels of academic employment. However continued progress toward gender parity is needed, as reflected by metrics such as 1st-authored publications, funded grants, honors, and conference speaker invitations. Finally we make recommendations for the whole oceanographic community to continue to work together to create a culture where oceanographers of all genders can thrive, including eliminating harassment; re-examining selection and evaluation procedures; and removing structural inequities.

Broadening inclusivity at sea

“…Researchers from minoritized communities -BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), as well as other protected classes on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, national origin, and other factors such as socioeconomic status -have been historically excluded and continue to be marginalized in these fields (e.g., Valenzuela-Toro and Viglino, 2021;Chen et al, 2022). The history of gender disparity in ocean sciences has been discussed previously, in part due to the fact that women were largely excluded from at-sea research expeditions until the second half of the twentieth century (Day, 1999;Thompson et al, 2011;Duncombe, 2019;Hendry et al, 2020;Legg et al, 2022). This exclusion has in part led to a lack of female representation in marine scientist positions (Kappel, 2014), geoscience faculty positions (Ranganathan et al, 2021), and senior leadership positions in marine science and conservation (Giakoumi et al, 2021).…”

COBRA Master Class: Providing deep-sea expedition leadership training to accelerate early career advancement

“…As such, the learning curve towards becoming a lead scientist is steep, and may indeed be too steep to enable inclusive entry for newcomers to the field without formal training in expedition leadership. Ocean sciences are among the least diverse STEM fields (Orcutt and Cetinic, 2014;Bernard and Cooperdock, 2018;Giakoumi et al, 2021;Johri et al, 2021;Legg et al, 2023), and though many countries have deep-sea ecosystems (Amon et al, 2022d;Bell et al, 2022b), few have opportunities to access them for scientific study (Osborne et al, 2022). Recent surveys show a strong interest in gaining deep-sea research capacity, (Bell et al, 2022b), but there are few, if any, training opportunities available.…”