Gender Influences Recommendations for Science Jobs
科研推荐信，也要看性别

Female applicants to postdoctoral positions in geosciences were nearly half as likely to receive excellent letters of recommendation, compared with their male counterparts. Christopher Intagliata reports.
在申请地球科学博士后时，女性获得优秀推荐信的几率几乎只有男性的一半。克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔(Christopher Intagliata)报道。

撰文/播音：克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔(Christopher Intagliata)
翻译：杨枭   
校对：丁可含

As in many other fields, gender bias pervades the sciences. Men score higher starting salaries, have more mentoring, and have better odds of being hired. Studies show they’re also perceived as more competent than women in STEM fields. And, new research reveals that men are more likely to receive excellent letters of recommendation, too.
同其它领域一样，科学领域也存在性别偏见。男人会有更高的起薪，更多的指导，更好的就业机会。研究表明，男性被认为比女性更胜任STEM（科学、技术、工程、数学）领域的工作。而如今，新研究发现男性还更易获得优质的推荐信。

"Say, you know, this is the best student I've ever had." Kuheli Dutt (koo-HAY-lee), a social scientist and diversity officer, at Columbia University's Lamont campus. Compare those excellent letters, she says, to a merely 'good' letter: "the candidate was productive, or intelligent, or a solid scientist or something that's clearly solid praise" but nothing that singles out the candidate as exceptional or one-of-a-kind.
哥伦比亚大学拉蒙特地球观测所社会学家、多元融合战略师 Kuheli Dutt，说道，一封优秀的推荐信会写“这是我教过的最好的学生”，而一封“还不错”的推荐信则会写：该申请人效率高、富有智慧，是个可靠的科学家等等这样平实的称赞，而这些根本不能使她从众多申请人中脱颖而出。

Dutt and her colleagues studied more than 1,200 letters of recommendation for postdoc positions in geoscience. They were all redacted for gender and other identifying information, so Dutt and her team could assign them a score without knowing the sex of the student. They found that female applicants were only half as likely to snag superlative letters, compared to their male counterparts. That includes letters of rec from all over the world, and written by, yes, men and women. The findings are in the journal Nature Geoscience. [Kuheli Dutt et al., Gender differences in recommendation letters for postdoctoral fellowships in geoscience]
Dutt和她的同事研究了超过1200封地球科学博士后职位的推荐信。这些推荐信隐去了性别和其他个人信息，这样Dutt和她的团队可以在不知道学生性别的情况下为推荐信评测分数。他们发现，相比男性，女性申请者只有一半的可能性拿到绝佳的推荐信。当然，这些推荐信既出自世界各地男性之手也出自女性之手。该结果发表在《自然 地球科学》期刊上。

Dutt says they were not able to evaluate the actual scientific qualifications of the applicants using the archival data. But she says the results still suggest women in geoscience are at a potential disadvantage from the very beginning of their careers—starting with those less-than-outstanding letters of rec.
 Dutt表示，他们并不能够仅仅通过档案数据就来评定申请人的实际科研资质，然而这项调查结果还是表明：在地球科学领域，女性申请者受这些较普通推荐信的影响，在职业生涯初期就处于潜在劣势。

"We're not trying to assign blame or criticize anyone or call anyone consciously sexist. Rather the point is to use the results of this study to open up meaningful dialogues on implicit gender bias, be it at a departmental level or an institutional level or even a discipline level." Which may lead to some recommendations for the letter writers themselves.
“我们并不是批评或指责任何人或称他们有性别歧视。而是我们希望这项研究结果可以令我们正视在学院、机构乃至整个学科内潜在的性别歧视。”这也许会为推荐人提供一些建议。