Hello Cryosphere Community,
Recently the AGU Cryosphere Fellows Selection Committee released a statement announcing that they declined to recommend nominees to the AGU Union Fellows committee due to the remarkable lack of diversity within the applicant pool. Only 6% of applicants identified as female (no data was present for non-binary identifying individuals or racial demographics). The gender inequity was a result of a pronounced decreasing trend in applicant diversity since at least 2016. Pride in Polar Research commends the selection committee's decision to highlight this issue and bring equity and diversity to the forefront of community discussion.
Gender inequity is a serious problem in cryospheric sciences and the broader Earth science community. As others have pointed out, only 17% of "Experienced" and 28% of "Mid-Career" researchers within the AGU Cryosphere section identify as female (https://honors.agu.org/files/2018/09/2018-section-membership-by-gender-and-career-stage_Sept12.pdf). This is compared to the near gender parity within the graduate student body (Bernard and Cooperdock, 2018). Similarly, Earth Science authorship teams which were racially/ethnically diverse saw a 5.5% reduction in acceptance rates of papers and fewer citations (Lerback et al. 2020). Alongside these direct career-related disadvantages, female-identifying researchers often have to navigate environments with extensive harassment. While likely underreported, a 2017 survey, for example, found that 63% of female-identifying researchers in Antarctica experienced unwanted sexual remarks or abuse (Nash et al., 2019). These statistics emphasize how the structure of promotion and retention of early career researchers within cryosphere-related academia disproportionately favors men, especially white men. This "leaky pipeline" has significant impacts on both the careers of minority researchers but also the credibility of our field. We see this play out across several aspects of academia. For example, papers from female presenting researchers (let alone non-binary or queer authors) are less likely to be accepted by prestigious journals. Just 22% of the authors from the top 100 most-cited climate science papers over 2016-2020 were female (https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-the-lack-of-diversity-in-climate-science-research). This is even less than the 30% of scientists who identify as female worldwide according to UIS data (http://uis.unesco.org/en/topic/women-science). Additional obstacles faced by early career researchers including stresses from maintaining a work-life balance and retaliation for voicing opposing opinions have been outlined in Brasier et al. (2020). This inequity results in us as scientists producing information that disproportionately addresses issues facing white men (Strawhacker et al., 2018). Our mission as scientists is to answer the key questions facing society. However, if the demographics of our senior members in no way reflects those of the general public, we will continue to have a skewed view of the problems facing society.
One aspect of this conversation that we at Pride in Polar Research feel has been largely unaddressed is how the issues presented for female researchers are compounded for members of the queer and non-binary community. Queer researchers are frequently the victims of exclusionary policies within polar science including demographics data that does not include their identity, field equipment that does not fit their body type, and the perpetuation of workplace cultures that do not penalize perpetrators of harassment and discrimination. On top of these struggles, many queer researchers struggle with intersectional discrimination when factors such as their race, physical or mental ability, nationality, or religion compound the challenges they face within academia.
Awards and fellowships like the AGU Union Fellows program are important tools for highlighting female and minority researchers who do not receive the spotlight that they deserve. We need to build upon these opportunities and make sure that selection committees recognize the inherent additional burden imposed by identifying as anything besides a white cisgender male. Any applicant pool whose demographics differ significantly from the group which it draws from fundamentally is not drawing from the most qualified individuals in the field. The structure of the application process and the culture surrounding the Fellows program are systematically favoring white cisgendered men. This needs to be dramatically restructured to have any semblance of an inclusive fellowship program. The application process is arduous and time consuming, privileges those with knowledge of the inner workings of AGU, does not explicitly incorporate activism and service work into its review process, and dissuades individuals contending with imposter syndrome. Pride in Polar Research was disheartened that the announcement to decline recommending fellows did not include a thorough outline of steps the committee intends to enact to remedy this issue. We are hopeful, however, that the continued discussion of this topic will lead to fruitful suggestions and a publically available plan in the near future.
The members of Pride in Polar Research were disappointed that so many members of the Cryosphere community, including senior scientists, did not recognize that an award system that is significantly skewed towards one demographic is fundamentally broken. Instead, many used their time to criticize the selection committee for not awarding fellowships to an overwhelmingly white-male group. We need to acknowledge that this data highlights that the barriers to the fellowship application disproportionately privilege some while further marginalizing others.
Improving the AGU Fellowship program requires input from all members of our community. This includes taking active measures to reach out to researchers from historically marginalized groups and working with them to create a more equitable application process. Additionally, demographic data needs to be collected more extensively in order to characterize the scope of the problem we face. Importantly, diversity does not equal inclusion and AGU needs to take steps to make sure that its fellowship applicant pool not only is representative of the demographics of the broader scientific community but also that those applicants feel welcomed and free from discrimination. Pride in Polar Research hopes that this is an opportunity for us to be a resource to the community and draw from the experiences of queer researchers. The application process needs to be simpler, actively take measures to encourage members of marginalized groups to apply, and advertise the application in forums predominantly composed of marginalized researchers. Contributions to the cryosphere community through activism and work on diversity, equity, and inclusion issues should be a focal point of the application process so that this type of work is seen as an asset rather than a burden within our field.
We look forward to participating in further discussion about this topic and encourage anyone interested in building a more inclusive cryosphere community to reach out to Pride in Polar Research for more information.
-Pride in Polar Research Executive Committee
