Take one of the ASBMB surveys evaluating gender issues in academic science. 

BY ANGELA HOPP

An American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology task force has launched two surveys about the roles of gender and family in the lives of biochemistry and molecular biology faculty members.

Led by Elizabeth C. Theil of Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, the task force designed the fi rst survey for department leaders to collect information about the gender composition of both programs and candidates for academic positions advertised between 2005 and 2010.

“These new numbers will build on and contrast with an informal analysis ASBMB conducted in 1986,” Theil explains. “That data made clear that a disproportionately small number of female ASBMB members held faculty positions.”

In the decades that have followed, the loss of women from the academic science pipeline has been widely documented, and various mechanisms have been implemented to plug the leak, Theil says.