Jennifer Garrison’s Post

Today, on the #internationaldayofwomenandgirlsinscience , the Global Consortium for Reproductive Longevity and Equality (GCRLE) is celebrating the fact that 18 of our 22 talented and pioneering GCRLE Grantees are female, and they serve as fierce role models in science for people around the world! Their research on understanding how and why women go through reproductive decline in mid-life has the potential to dramatically improve the health and well-being of women worldwide. We are so proud to support these amazing women in science:   Amanda Kallen Arjumand Ghazi Bérénice Benayoun Bikem Soygur Coleen Murphy Cristina Quesada Candela Farners Amargant Riera Ingrid Fetter-Pruneda Ivana Celic Lynae Brayboy, MD Mary Zelinski Min Joo Kim Yousin Suh Holly Ingraham Olfat MALAK Polina Lishko Zijing Zhang Zita Carvalho Santos   But we still have a lot of work to do. Systemic discrimination and biases against women in science persist and are evidenced by their disproportionate attrition from STEM careers. The so-called ‘leaky pipeline’ refers to the fact that although women make up over half of all PhD recipients in the life sciences they are vastly underrepresented at the senior tenured faculty/C-suite level. “Pipeline” is a misleading concept because the path to becoming a leader in STEM fields is not fixed – rather it is flexible and varied with many possible entry points and routes to success. But the fact remains -- most scientific leadership positions in academia and industry are still held by men. There are major discrepancies in salary, advancement, and funding access between the sexes in STEM. The diminishing number of women in science with seniority directly mirrors the societal imbalance in equality for women that the GCRLE aims to address.   It is our responsibility to bridge this gap to create lasting change. Part of this is building awareness, providing opportunities, and elevating women in science into positions of leadership wherever possible. Pushing leadership in academic and commercial science to recognize the importance of developing inclusive environments that guard against biases, explicit and implicit. Changing the culture by building programs and infrastructure to keep women from leaving science at every career stage. Part of it is enhancing equity by providing greater reproductive equality. Studies show many women delay their career to have children, often at a time critical to advancement. True reproductive justice means parity in healthy aging, family planning, and healthcare over a lifespan.    At the GCRLE we are working to alter the balance toward equality for women in science and in society. Our goal is to understand the basic biological mechanisms that trigger female reproductive aging, from the earliest stages through to menopause, and ultimately leverage this understanding to intervene and balance the scales.  We believe in #science and #femaleempowerment. For more information, please visit https://gcrle.org/