Transcript: EMILY KWONG, HOST: Hey, everybody. Emily Kwong here. So this is a Back To School episode where we revisit something you may have learned in school. And this time, we are focusing on conception, using all of the medical terminology you might expect in an episode about how babies get made. So just… Read More Dr. Virginia Hayssen on NPR’s Shortwave: “Is The Sperm Race A Fairy Tale?”

Jack Hruska in the EurekAlert (7 November 2019) reports on a study from the Biological Conservation journal regarding sex-based differences in bird conservation. Hruska’s article ‘Study finds sex bias in bird conservation plans,’ explores gender biases within bird conservation plans. Hruska’s article suggests that researchers and conservation planners should make an effort to understand and… Read More Gender biases in the field of bird conservation research

  Jessica He in the Daily Trojan (12 Feb 2020) reports on a study led by Kathrin Koch regarding sex-based differences in neurological activity. He’s article ‘Gray Matter: Gender bias in neuroscience has repercussions for feminism,’ explores gender biases within neuroscience and the impact that these biases posses. He’s article suggests that misogynistic studies regarding… Read More Do sex based studies reinforce gender sterotypes?

Max Lambert and Melina Packer report on the language used to describe the effects of endocrine-disrupting contaminants on amphibians.  Much of the media attention on the effects of these pollutants fixates on reproduction consequences and often uses imprecise language.  Our use of language, even some scientific terminology, brings in cultural bias.  For instance, as Lambert and… Read More How gendered language leads scientists astray

Fighting the Gender Stereotypes That Warp Biomedical Research JoAnna Klein (NY Times, May 2019) reported that just added females to research studies without examining the underlying historic biases that caused females to be neglected in research will not improve the science.  Instead we need to ‘stop looking through a male lens’.  She continues ‘In the… Read More Fighting the Gender Stereotypes that Warp Biomedical Research

Kathi Borgmann provides a useful timeline of prominent women in North American Ornithology, but not until after she provides a brief but entertaining foray into the Victorian ara fervor over Darwin’s theory of sexual selection.   Here are just 2 notable quotes:  “Seldom or never does the female exert any choice. She is not the awarder… Read More The Forgotten Female: How a Generation of Women Scientists Changed Our View of Evolution

Amy Fleming in the Guardian (23 Oct 2019) reported on a study of sex bias in natural history collections by Dr Natalie Cooper from the Natural History Museum in London (NHM).  Dr Cooper’s group investigated sex rations in over 2 million bird and mammal specimens from the NHM, the American Museum of Natural History, the Field… Read More Why sexist bias in natural history museums really matters

Coiro and Pollak in a 2019 reviewed 432 articles examining the effects of infection during gestation on the behavior of offspring.  They found that research preferentially studied male offspring.  Of these studies, ~40% examined only male offspring, 40% examined both female and male offspring, and <3% examined only female offspring (many studies did not report… Read More Gender bias in experimental neurosciences

In May 2019, Rebecca M. Shansky wrote that outdated gender stereotypes influence neuroscience research, especially that using laboratory animals.  The stereotype is that circulating ovarian hormones make data more variable.  However meta-analyses of studies in both mice (Prendergast et al 2014) and rats (Becker et al 2016) showed no differences in variability between the sexes. … Read More Are hormones a “female problem” for animal research?