www.montana.edu/nsfadvance ADVANCE Project TRACS
Gender Bias in STEM 
Much published research demonstrates a gender bias against 
women—or favoring men—in several STEM contexts, including hiring 
decisions for a lab-manager position, evaluations of conference abstracts, 
research citations, symposia-speaker invitations, postdoctoral 
employment, and tenure decisions.
Why do we care? Homogenous workforces (including the academic 
workplace) can deplete the creativity, discovery, and satisfaction of 
workers, faculty, and students; Yet, STEM fields are fairly homogeneously 
male (e.g., 71% at 4-year U.S. colleges).
But, are people generally (e.g., taxpayers, voters, government officials, 
etc.), and STEM practitioners in particular, “buying” the mounting evidence 
of these gender biases within the STEM community?  
There are several reasons to predict men would assess the quality of this 
evidence less favorably, and women more favorably, particularly within 
STEM areas. Why?
• Men overall, especially those who identify with STEM, might perceive 
the research as threatening.
• The research might fit with women’s expectations more than with 
men’s expectations, therefore seeming more or less legitimate.
We conducted 3 experiments to test these ideas (Handley et al., 2015).
The Experiments
In each experiment, male and female participants read via an online survey instrument 
an actual article abstract from a peer-reviewed scientific journal, accompanied by the date 
and title of the article.
Participants then evaluated their agreement with the authors’ interpretation of the 
results, the importance of the research, and how well-written and favorable they found the 
quality of the abstract.
Experiment 1: Participants came from a general sample of US adults recruited online through 
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (n = 205). They read and evaluated an abstract documenting gender 
bias in evaluations for a lab manager position (Moss-Racusin et al., 2012).
Experiment 2: Participants (n = 205) were STEM and Non-STEM faculty at MSU, who read and 
evaluated the same abstract.
Experiment 3: We randomly assigned new participants, recruited online through Amazon’s 
Mechanical Turk (n = 303), to read either an original abstract reporting a gender bias against 
women’s (relative to men’s) scientific conference submissions (Knobloch-Westerwick et al., 2013 ), 
or a version slightly altered to report no gender bias.
Experiment 1: Significant effect of participant gender, F(1, 197) = 9.85, p = .002, η2partial = .048, (d = .45). 
Experiment 2: Significant effect of participant gender, F(1, 174) = 6.08, p = .015 , η2partial = .034, (d = .40). 
Significant interaction between gender and STEM field, F(1, 174) = 5.19, p = .024, η2partial = .03
Experiment 3: Significant interaction between gender and abstract version, F(1, 299) = 4.00, p = .046, η2partial = .013 
3.6
3.8
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US Sample (Experiment 1) STEM MSU Faculty (Experiment 2) Non-STEM MSU Faculty (Experiment 2)
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Evaluations of "Lab-Manager" Research (Experiments 1 & 2)
Men
Women
3.45
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3.55
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3.65
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3.75
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3.85
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Original Abstract (Showing Bias) Modified Abstract (Showing No Bias)
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Experiment 3 (“Conference Bias,” -US Sample) Men
Women
der Bias in STEM e Ex eriments
Conclusions
Sex biases individuals’ evaluations of scientific evidence demonstrating gender biases in 
STEM fields.
• Men (Exp. 1), especially in STEM fields (Exp. 2), evaluated research demonstrating a bias 
against women lab-manager applicants in STEM less favorably than did women.
• Men (Exp. 3) evaluated research less favorably than did women if demonstrating a bias 
against women’s STEM conference submissions, but women evaluated the research less 
favorably than men if the research conclusions were doctored to report no such gender bias.
There are gender biases in many STEM contexts, yet men seem less (and women more) 
favorable to that research.
Future efforts to combat gender bias in STEM will have to mitigate this bias if we are to 
optimize equity in the academy.
References
Handley, I. M., Brown, E. R., Moss-Racusin, C. A., Smith, J. L. (2015). Quality of  Evidence Revealing Subtle Gender Biases in Science is in the Eye of the Beholder. Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences, 112(43), 13201–13206. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1510649112
Knobloch-Westerwick, S., Glynn, C. J., & Huge, M. (2013). The matilda effect in science communication: An experiment on gender bias in publication quality perceptions and collaboration
interest. Science Communication, 35, 603–625.
Moss-Racusin, C. A., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M., & Handelsman, J. (2012). Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the National Academy 
of Sciences, 109, 16474–16479.