Matters of Ethics

While there has certainly been attention and discussion around the underrepresentation of women in chemistry graduate programs (Bertozzi, C. R. Achieving Gender Balance in the Chemistry Professoriate Is Not Rocket Science. ACS Cent Sci 2016, 2, 181-182), as faculty in academia (Wang, L. D.; Widener, A. The struggle to keep women in academia. Chemical & Engineering News 2019, 97, 18-21), and the leaky professional pipeline for women (Grogan, K. How the entire scientific community can confront gender bias in the workplace. Nature Ecology & Evolution 2019, 3, 3-6), an effective solution is yet to be found to encourage and retain women in chemistry, particularly in leadership positions. One piece of the puzzle likely lies in better preparing students and academic faculty to recognize and address gender bias and harassment that occurs. Efforts to address bias can occur on an individual, personal level, but will be most effective when combined with systematic, institutional efforts. In this chapter, we aim to discuss the ethical issues that surround gender bias and harassment, and provide recommendations for introducing these ethical issues, and especially the role of power imbalances in relationships vis a vis bias and harassment, to faculty/staff, and to students early in their higher education journey. Specifically, working with academic institutions, particularly within historically male-dominated departments (such as science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM departments) to include ethics curricula comprised of both formal coursework and interactive activities that address gender bias and inclusion best practices. Additionally, we will discuss some of the challenges that women will face as they navigate the beginning of their chemistry education, careers, and personal lives, and provide recommendations for the faculty and mentors who support them. Personal anecdotes will help establish the realities of today, can help enable victims to feel their voices are heard, and convince everyone that this is indeed a serious problem that happens all around us. However, rather than fixating on the challenges that we face, the goal of this chapter is to start a conversation, propose a framework, and establish potential guidelines that can be implemented in higher education to improve gender bias and its negative impact. The expectation is not that these challenges may be solved by focusing only at this level, but that earlier educational discussions regarding gender bias and ethics are both feasible and impactful.