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I came of age in the late 60s and early 70s and the women’s movement was in full swing. Other men and I worked hard to ensure that future generations of women were treated equally and have the same rights and opportunities as their male counterparts. However, some of the earlier and more radical members of the moment believed that society should be genderless and that there were no differences between the sexes. While that notion was intellectually, emotionally and psychologically appealing, nobody can deny that there aren’t obvious, anatomical, hormonal and genetic differences between human males and females. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that women behave differently than men and visa versa (of course in biology there are always exceptions).

Over the years, researchers have determined that differences in female and male behavior can be attributed to a variety of things including physiological environmental, enculturative factors. Like it or not, behavioral differences between men and women have been ascribed to hormonal differences and fluctuations. For example, it is commonly accepted that higher levels of testosterone in men are thought to be responsible for male aggressive behavior whereas in women small amounts of testosterone enhance female libido. With this in mind, a new study published last week in PNAS suggests that testosterone may also play a role in a woman’s ability to trust or distrust others: most notably men.

The study was conducted by a group of Dutch researchers at the Utrecht University. Twenty-four women participated in the double-blind study over two days. On the first day, half of the women were given a dose of testosterone under their tongue, while the other received a placebo; the treatments were switched on the second day so that each participant experienced both treatments. 

After the testosterone treatment, the researchers administered a facial trustworthiness task, in which each subject was shown a series of human faces and asked to assess how trustworthy the person in the image is. Economic exchange tasks, which are usually employed in similar experiments, were not used because of the possible confounding effects of testosterone on risk-taking and reward-seeking behavior. By administering mood tests and asking participants to guess which treatment they had received on either day, the researchers reduced the likelihood that either subjective preconceptions or mood changes may have affected the outcome.

The results of the study showed that women who received testosterone were less trusting than those who received the placebo. Moreover, the study revealed that “naturally distrustful” women were affected less by testosterone as compared with “more trusting” females where hormone-induced effects were the greatest. These findings led the researchers to postulate that the trust-reducing effect of testosterone may be adaptive and especially advantageous for less-socially aware women. For example, when competition is high and resources scarce, highly trusting women may be at greater risk for being cheated or taken advantage of and might benefit from a little jolt of testosterone-induced distrustfulness.

Interesting, female levels of testosterone have been observed to peak right around ovulation. Evolutionarily, it makes complete sense that a woman’s libido (remember testosterone stimulates this) would be highest at the time that she is most likely to conceive. However, the results from the Dutch study suggest that testosterone-induced distrustfulness may actually push potential mates away (and possibly explain why there are so many discerning women out there). 

This led Nicholas Wade, the New York Times reporter who wrote a piece on the study to quip: “So guys, you knew women were complex, but it is even worse than you thought: at the moment you are most desired, you are least trusted.” Women—go figure!

Until next time.....

Good Luck and Good Hunting (for the few cavemen who still exist)

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While ‘women in the workplace’ is no longer a new or novel concept, there are still differences in the way women and men are viewed and treated at work. Lauri Buckley at Job Profiles alerted me to an interesting article that they prepared entitled “The Gender Gap: 10 Surprising Stats on Women in the Workplace."

Listed below are some startling stats about women in the workplace. 

1.  Women comprise 46% of the total U.S. labor force. With almost half of the workforce being women, female employees aren't exactly a rarity. For most women today, getting a job is an expected part of life. This is a big change from past decades. In 1900, fewer than 20% of women participated in the labor market while today the number is around 75% and growing.
2. Women make only 77.5 cents for every dollar that men earn. This figure comes from data on the 2003 census. Despite this gap, many economists feel that the gap between pay for men and women is due to different personal choices men and women make about personal fulfillment, child rearing and hours at work. Whichever you choose to believe, the reality is that the gap is slowly but surely closing as women become increasingly educated and dual income families become the norm, but this isn't much consolation to those who feel discriminated against today.
3. The more education a woman has, the greater the disparity in her wages. This certainly doesn't mean women should shy away from professional positions, but they should be aware that they may have to battle harder for equal pay. Women in professional specialty occupations were found to earn just 72.7% of what men in the same position earned, and women in upper level executive, administrative and managerial occupations earned even less at 72.3%. If you compare this against the average of 77.5%, the numbers speak for themselves, and this graphic from the New York Times makes it even easier to see.
4. Women may work longer to receive the promotions that provide access to higher pay. One example provided by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that women often have to work three years longer in a teaching position to be promoted to a principal than their male counterparts. Some studies suggest that this is because women and men adapt different strategies when it comes to management and pursuing promotions, yet other studies connect it less to work and more to gender-based biases.
5. Women business owners employ 35% more people than all the Fortune 500 companies combined. If you're like most people, you don't picture a woman when you think about a business owner. Yet there are about 9.1 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., a number that comprises nearly 40% of all businesses. The idea that women don't make good managers just doesn't hold up when you look at these kinds of numbers, with women managing a large number of employees and making healthy profits while doing so.
6. Women account for 46% of the labor force, but 59% of workers making less than $8 an hour. What does it mean? It means that many women are taking on jobs that pay well under a living wage. With nearly 16% of U.S. households having women who are divorced, widowed or never married as the sole providers, this leaves many women at a distinct disadvantage and struggling to make ends meet as they dominate jobs in low paying fields.
7. Only 53% of employers provide at least some replacement pay during periods of maternity leave. Despite the fact that the arrival of a child means extra bills and expenses, many employers don't provide women with any benefits if they to leave work temporarily to have a child. While there is no law requiring companies to offer paid maternity leave, considering it is an issue that primarily affects women, it's certainly a blow to their income potential and ability to care for their families and themselves.
8. Four in ten businesses worldwide have no women in senior management. This shouldn't be a surprise given the way many countries feel about women in the workplace. Here in the United States, however, women still feel the stress of trying to break into upper management, with 93% of the 439 senior women executives surveyed by Korn/Ferry International in 1992 feeling that a glass ceiling for women still existed. Yet new studies report that women outnumber men as managers in fields like human resources, health administration and education--perhaps stemming from reports that many businesses have seen a direct financial impact from hiring women.
9. Women earned less than men in 99% of all occupations. In virtually every field that women choose to enter, they can expect to earn less over their lifetime than their male counterparts. This means that over 47 years of full-time work, this gap amounts to an estimated loss in wages for women of $700,000 for high school graduates, $1.2 million for college grads, and $2 million for professional school grads--a staggering amount.
10. Minority women fare the worst when it comes to equal pay. African-American women earn 64 cents to every dollar earned by white men and Hispanic women just 52 cents per dollar. Whether it's attitudes about race or gender that are at play, it's clear that something needs to be done to level the playing field.

While these interesting statistics may be new to a lot of men, women have long known about the biases and inequities that they face in the workplace. The facts presented in the article suggest that while women have come a long way in the past 40 years, there is still a lot of work that must be done to achieve parity between women and men in the workplace.

Hat tip to Job Profiles!

Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!

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There was an interesting article in the New York Times this past week entitled“Do Women Need Such Big Flu Shot.” The gist of the article was that we would have more doses of influenza 2009 H1N1 vaccine if we accounted for the biological differences between the immune responses in men and women follow influenza vaccination (the article cites a study that contends that less vaccine is need to elicit an protective response in women as compared with men.

I was going to write a post about the article but I got distracted and thought I would revisit it when I had more time. Much to my surprise, Vincent Racaniello, a Bio-Crowd founder, virologist extraordinaire and host of the popular TWiV podcast series, had already “scooped” me. Professor Racaniello graciously allowed me to crib his entire post and let BioJobBlog readers decide for themselves whether or not there are real differences in the male and female immune responses to influenza vaccines or the results obtained by the scientists who conducted the study may be explain by strain to strain variation among influenza A isolates? Read Professor Racaniello’s post below and let me know what YOU think!

Do women need the same amount of influenza vaccine as men?

by Vincent Racaniello

“Do Women Need Such Big Flu Shots?” suggests that we would have more doses of influenza 2009 H1N1 vaccine if we accounted for the biological differences between men and women. The idea is that women generate a stronger antibody response than men, and therefore require less vaccine. Does this idea have scientific support?

The opinion is based in part on a study carried out in 2004-05, in which adults were immunized with full (15 micrograms) or half-doses of trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine. This vaccine, made by Aventis Pasteur, contains influenza H3N2, H1N1, and B strains. Serum samples obtained before immunization and 21 days later were assayed for antibody response to each strain of influenza by hemagglutination-inhibtion. I’ve taken the data on geometric mean serum HI titers according to age, sex, and dose and plotted them on a graph:

Based on the results the authors conclude that “Significantly higher geometric mean titer responses in women were identified for all ages, regardless of dose or influenza strain. Half-dose vaccination may be an effective strategy for healthy adults younger than 50 years in the setting of an influenza vaccine shortage.” But are these immune responses protective?

HI titers of 1:40 or more (which would be reported as 40 or higher in the graph) are believed to indicate levels of antibody that would protect against infection with influenza virus. By this criteria, the full and half dose of vaccine would provide protection agains the influenza H3N2 and B viruses in both men and women. The results confirm that females respond more strongly to the same dose of vaccine than men. But look at the results with the H1N1 strain – in all subjects, no matter the dose of vaccine or gender, the antibody response would not be sufficient to protect against infection. Furthermore, the response is only slightly better than in women.

In interpret these observations to mean that the antibody response to inactivated influenza virus vaccine is not universally more robust in women compared with men – it appears to depend on the virus strain. Clearly clinical studies are required to address this question. Even after spending millions of dollars to decide whether to give women less influenza vaccine, a new strain of influenza virus might come along that induces no better antibody response in women than in men.

My conclusion is that it would not be possible to determine conclusively that women could receive half the amount of inactivated influenza virus vaccine as men. I would rather spend money on developing new ways to produce as much influenza vaccine as needed as quickly as possible – such as by making virus-like particles in plants.

Engler RJ, Nelson MR, Klote MM, VanRaden MJ, Huang CY, Cox NJ, Klimov A, Keitel WA, Nichol KL, Carr WW, Treanor JJ, & Walter Reed Health Care System Influenza Vaccine Consortium (2008). Half- vs full-dose trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine (2004-2005): age, dose, and sex effects on immune responses. Archives of internal medicine, 168 (22), 2405-14 PMID: 19064822

 Until next time...

Good Luck and Good Reading!!!!!

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After hearing the story last night on my local late night news that scientists had discovered a “gene that causes men to cheat,” I felt compelled (as a red-blooded American male) to investigate the story in greater detail. After all, what man wouldn’t want to claim that his philandering behavior was caused by aberrant genes—“Honey, I really do love you but my genes made me do it!”

A quick perusal of several articles on the subject revealed that scientists at Sweden’s famed Karolinska Institute had previously identified a variant of a gene that may be responsible for the sexual infidelity in voles (mole-like mammals). The wild type gene is thought to encode a protein that regulates the activity of hormones involved in vole sexual fidelity.

In an attempt to extend their observations to humans, Karolinska scientists screened 1,000 couples and found that two of five (40%) males had the so-called “cheating allele (s).” Not surprisingly, the researchers didn’t disclose whether men with the variant allele(s) cheated (or were more likely to cheat) on their mates. The researches primarily focused on men because the gene is thought to play less of a role in females.

I think the results of the study are interesting—and may have some basis in fact— but I think the news media, as usual, has made a “mountain out of a mole hill (pardon the pun)!” Undoubtedly, the discovery may provide men caught cheating with an excuse albeit a feeble one. However, it is evident that the study will provide little solace for women who are caught cheating on their mates!!!!

After spending seven long years as a medical school professor listening to one immunology seminar after another, one thing is for certain--that discoveries in mice don’t always translate well in humans. That said, I think the jury may still be out on the “cheating gene.”

Until next time….

Good Luck and Good Hunting (only jobs)

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As you all know, the brackets for this year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament were revealed Sunday evening. As I have done for the past 20 years, I waited until this morning to find a detailed, printed version of the brackets to use for my office pool. That said, I was pleasantly surprised this morning to see that the sports editor of the NY Times decided to arrange the teams that did (and didn’t) make the tournament in a “basketball version” of the periodic table of the elements!

I want it on record that I am not a big fan of inorganic chemistry. However, I must admit that the New York Times rendering of team participation in this year’s tournament was innovative, creative and refreshing. Why, I bet that even Mendeleev – the guy who is credited with creating the first periodic table in 1869– would have been very pleased and proud of the NY Times’ effort! Does anybody know whether basketball was invented by 1869?

I say BRAVO to the NY Times for divining a creative way to make a connection between sports and science. I think that similar efforts ought to be attempted to convince American children (and possibly “grown ups”) that science can be “cool” and as much fun as sports! American science literacy is trending to an all time low. This trend must be reversed so that America can regain a  global competitive edge in science and engineering.

Again, kudos to the NY Times!

Until next time…

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