THE MAYA EFFECT AND WHO GETS CREDIT IN SCIENCE
NEW BLOG | THE MAYA EFFECT AND WHO GETS CREDIT IN SCIENCE Ethel Mickey, Joya Misra, Laurel Smith-Doerr and Ember Skye Kane-Lee introduce the "Maya effect" to describe how gendered and racialized disadvantages accumulate across every stage of scientific collaboration, leaving women of color scientists disproportionately overlooked despite their contributions.
, Joya Misra, Laurel Smith-Doerr, and Ember Skye Kane-LeeCollaboration among scientists bolsters innovation and pushes the boundaries of science. We can look back to 2020 and consider how a research team from the National Institutes of Health collaborated to develop a vaccine to protect against COVID-19. The team rapidly deployed the mRNA-based vaccine concept to Moderna for a Phase 1 clinical trial just66 daysfrom viral sequence release – an unprecedented time frame. At the same time, race and gender shape how people experience research collaboration, including career outcomes for scientists and what scientific knowledge is produced. While Moderna quickly became a household name during the rollout of the vaccine in 2020, it tooklongerfor the public to recognize and celebrate one of the immunologists who played acentral scientific rolein its development: Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett-Helaire. Unfortunately, women of color scientists like Dr. Corbett-Helaire may often remain invisible – while in plain sight – in collaborative work. The story of Dr. Corbett-Helaire aligns with what we call theMayaeffect: the gendered and racialized disadvantages that accumulate throughout the process of research collaboration to systematically disadvantage many women of color. While collaboration is central to science, academic scientists are evaluated and rewarded as individuals both informally and in formal performance reviews. Assigning credit is a decision-making process with remarkably inconsistent practices and norms, and status often shapes who gets credit for ideas and outputs. Sociologist Robert Merton named theMatthew effectin 1968 to explain unequal credit in collaboration, observing how more credit is given to already-famous coauthors while sidelining lesser-known scientists, regardless of the importance of their role. Women, for example, are more likely than men to be treated asriding on collaborators’ coattails, their ideas systematically subsumed under their better-known men mentors and coauthors. This was Margaret Rossiter’s idea behind theMatilda effect, which names how crediting collaborative work contributes to the patterned exclusion of women from science. Women scientists have had their contributionsdowngraded or erased, in some cases being left off as coauthors on projects despite performing most of the work. Less is known about how race and its intersection with gender shapes research collaboration. We analyze the accounts from academic scientists from different departments in the same research-intensive university about their research collaboration experiences. In each department, our sample includes four faculty members from the same rank: a woman of color, a man of color, a white woman, and a white man. This research design allows us to focus on how race and gender condition collaboration, while holding rank, discipline, and workplace somewhat constant. Ourqualitative interview studycaptures narratives about processes throughout the collaboration lifespan, and we delve into how gendered and racialized inequalities are baked into collaboration at all phases – not just publication credit. We find a “Maya effect,” and show that it occurs in three stages: 1) developing collaborations, 2) engaging in teamwork, and 3) seeing work credited in publication and personnel processes. We find that women of color and white women STEM faculty have some parallel collaboration experiences, including being allocated more work and receiving less credit for their contributions. However, research collaboration is particularly marginalizing and exploitative for women of color. Developing CollaborationsWhen it comes to who can access collaborations, women of color are the most constrained. Men typically rattled off names of collaborators, starting with “esteemed” graduate school advisors and later faculty colleagues. White men like Kurt emphasize “luck” in developing collaborations: “Frankly, I showed up in academia, I had no idea how to behave. Like I lucked out. I caught a break. ” Asian, Black, and Latino men also see collaboration as key to their experience. White women describe being included in the culture of collaboration, even if their collaborations had mixed results. Instead of “lucking out,” women of color exert more effort to locate respectful collaborators compared with other groups, including giving regular research talks, inviting potential collaborators to campus, or using cold outreach. To identify potential collaborators, science plays a role for most faculty. Yet women of color, particularly Black women, prioritize trust over status and express that knowing collaborators beforehand is important to ensuring smooth and respectful collaborations. Jasmine, who is Black, emphasizes having clear conversations about how the collaboration will work before it takes off: “You do have to have conversations because this matters to people’s careers, you know, like, who’s doing what on this project, who is, if you’re doing more, are you first author? . . . Things you don’t necessarily want to have to start off talking about, but you have to get clear. ” Women of color strategize as they aim to avoid unpleasant surprises. TeamworkAll collaborations present challenges, including issues of time, logistics, and team dynamics. At the same time, interactions among a team reflect gendered-racialized inequalities and contribute to unequal credit. High-status team members discount or ignore the ideas of women faculty of color. Women, especially untenured women, describe being treated like students by collaborators and being assigned more administrative, traditionally feminized tasks like sending emails or tracking deadlines. Lack of respect from collaborators was another key team dynamic for women of color. Some women of color describe collaborations that broke down in ways that suggest racialized stereotyping. Tiana, a Black woman, describes “frictions” with her postdoc sponsor and collaborator who made several impossible-to-fulfill requests, calling on “stereotypes of an angry Black woman. ” Tiana tried to address her collaborator’s concerns calmly and professionally “in a way that wasn’t super confrontational,” but this lack of respect made her feel “less invested” in the relationship. Many foreign-born women express concern that their intellectual contributions may not be fully heard by team members or may even be confiscated by other researchers. Hiromi, a foreign-born Asian woman, expected to be one of the corresponding authors on a collaborative paper as a graduate student. When another student sent out the paper as the sole corresponding author, Hiromi’s advisor suggested that she “deal with it” on her own. She notes, “Looking back, I should have argued,” but “People from some particular culture may feel uncomfortable to argue. ” Hiromi thinks her position as a foreign-born Asian woman made it more difficult to assert her contribution to the project, and assumptions about cultural norms likely made it easier for her advisor to take advantage of her. While collaborating with a senior scholar can help gain a foothold in the field, it may work against researchers from minoritized groups. Crediting CollaborationsAt all faculty ranks, women of color report having their ideas stolen or being pressured to over-credit coauthors who did little work. Several women note the importance of being careful when collaborating with colleagues because external reviewers might assume the senior person is the intellectual leader. Courtney, who is white, describes how gender biases shape how collaborations are counted: “Women who are in a collaboration are there because we’re weak, and we need collaborators; men who are in collaboration are there because they’re brilliant and needed. How do you fight that?”Women of color learn to protect themselves by carefully documenting their work and specifying unique contributions. Kerri, a Black woman, says, “What I’ve been told . . . is that I should not be afraid to collaborate. . . as long as you’re able to explain what input I had in that collaboration. ” Kerri feels that collaborations are more likely to get “counted” when she clearly indicates her specific contribution like a technical skillset. Jasmine similarly says, “My feeling is that you are discounted more as an author. Or I would be as a Black female, unless I specifically had, you know, documentation from my coauthors, this person did this. Prove it. ”Collaboration as Key to InclusionUnderstanding how gender and race shape different stages of collaboration is an important step for linking individual experiences to structures of power and inequality in the academy. Modern instances of the Maya effect include troublesome stories of idea theft. The Maya effect also encompasses a credibility gap: when women propose ideas, they are ignored; when men repeat the same ideas, they are adopted. Women’s contributions are also diluted, with credit going to their team, PI, or lab. Charting how women of color end up less involved in collaborations and experience exclusionary interactions with team members allows us to see how gender and race shape scientific careers. Analyzing the Maya effect also reveals how women of color resist oppressive collaborations. Women of color faculty appear aware of processes working against them and develop effective career strategies. Resistance also may look like engaging in community-engaged work,collaborating with local communities of colorto make research more useful for the public. During the pandemic, Dr. Corbett-Helaire engaged inpublic outreach, virtually speaking at Black churches and community gatherings to talk about vaccine science, answer questions, and address concerns. By making scientific research accessible to communities of color, she aimed to ease pandemic-related health disparities. This type of collaboration centers reciprocal and respectful relationships, democratizes science, and provides contextual solutions to social problems. Yet these collaborations may be even less likely to berecognized or rewarded by universities, representing forms of extra, uncompensated labor. Increasing diversity and inclusion in STEM is often paramount to many universities, yet progress cannot happen without understanding the systematic barriers that women of color face. University interventions may offset the need for women of color’s extra strategizing. Universities can train faculty members in equitable practices for collaborative work, including ensuring fair distributions of labor and equitable interactions with diverse collaborators, documenting contributions consistently, and training evaluators to more fairly credit collaborations. Recognizing collaborations as key to full inclusion in academic life positionsefforts to create equitable collaborationsas key to the retention and success of women in STEM, especially women of color faculty. And as we see with Dr. Corbett-Helaire’s vital work protecting our public health during a global pandemic, we cannot afford to do without their contributions to science. Ethel Mickey is an assistant professor of sociology at California State University, San Bernardino. Her research spans the areas of workplace inequalities, organizations, gender, and intersectionality, with a focus on innovation industries. Joya Misra is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She studies the intersectional inequalities affecting workers, as well as workplace and societal policies that can mitigate these inequalities. Laurel Smith-Doerr is Provost Professor at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her scholarship investigates the organization of science and technology in order to understand how knowledge production can serve people more broadly. Ember Skye Kane-Lee is a research manager in the Donahue Institute’s Economic and Public Policy unit at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Their research explores gendered and racial inequalities within organizations.