Kayden Yoni

One simple fix could improve the visibility and opportunities of women in science, a new study finds — possibly combating the "leaky pipeline" that moves female PhDs out of academia.

When a woman is part of the organizing team that invites speakers to scientific conferences, the number of female speakers in the session shoots up by 72 percent, according to the new research.

"Since talking at meetings is really, really important for a career in science; you can imagine that this would be a very simple mechanism for increasing female participation in meetings," said study researcher Dr. Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. "That could translate to making it much more likely they're going to make it through the glass ceiling."

Women in science
Women gain about half of the science and engineering doctorate degrees in the United States, and in many fields, they outnumber men in graduate schools. But only 21 percent of full professors in the country are female. The fact that women drop out of academic science faster than men has been dubbed the "leaky pipeline," and studies suggest unconscious bias plays a role. (Other structural problems include the long road to a full-time position for scientists. Science trainees are expected to complete doctorate programs that take five years, minimum, and then to work in largely low-paying postdoctoral research positions throughout their 20s and 30s in order to have a shot at a faculty job. These positions often require moving to different cities. This time coincides with the period when many women want to have children, and family responsibilities can clash with this early-career lifestyle.)

"I've become much more sensitized to the fact that it's not really an even playing field," Casadevall told LiveScience. "It's not only for women in science, but also for underrepresented minorities."

As the chair of the planning committee for the American Society of Microbiology (ASM) annual meeting, Casadevall noticed a gender imbalance in the scientists speaking at the meeting. Most were male, far above what would be expected if speakers were representative of meeting attendees.

"ASM, to their credit, pretty much opened up the archives," Casadevall said. The organization sent him lists of speakers in p