‘Women in Science’ Group Tackles Sexism, Other Issues The Martinos Center’s “Women in Science” seminar series brings together investigators, staff and others from throughout the community for a host of important and thought-provoking discussions. The organizers have held several iterations of the series since launching in 2018, while also expanding the resources available to women in the Center and elsewhere.
hoped speaking with each other could help us come up with solutions for when we would inevitably face the same issues again.”
The roots of these efforts can be traced to early 2017. On the heels of that year’s “Women’s March” in Boston (as well as in Washington, DC, and in many other cities around the world) Allison Stevens, senior lab manager with the Center’s Laboratory for Computational Neuroimaging (LCN), also known as the FreeSurfer group, organized a meeting with several female colleagues to talk about their experiences with sexism in their careers. She did so, she says, as a response to stories she was hearing from women in the Center about the issues they encountered. “I thought if everyone shared those stories with each other, they would see they were not alone. I also
“It is important to shine a light on the issues women in science face, for a few reasons,” says Emma Boyd, a research technician in the LCN group who was part of those early discussions and an organizer of the first couple of “Women in Science” series. “First, because awareness of what sexism looks like is lacking. As a consequence, not everyone is aware of their own biases and the harmful behaviors they may be unintentionally supporting. Catching these behaviors may immediately help create a more inclusive work environment. Second, because awareness of how and why science can (and does) exclude women and other minority groups is also lacking.
Allison Stevens (left) and Emma Boyd
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In hearing about one another’s experiences Stevens and her colleagues in the meeting began to realize just how widespread the problem is in the science community. They decided to do something about it.
