Matthew vs Matilda

Hate to break it to you, but I won't be discussing Matthew McConaughey or Matilda the musical in this post. I'm instead talking about the Matthew effect and the Matilda effect - two terms you may be familiar with if you work in science research.

The Matthew Effect refers to the concept that more famous scientists receive more credit and recognition for certain discoveries than fellow, lesser known scientists. Essentially, it is "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer" but on the grounds of science. Unfortunately, there also exists the Matilda Effect - the concept that women in science often go unnoticed, and rather credit goes to their male colleagues. This isn't to say in any way that the scientific community is outright sexist, but rather that some kind of implicit bias exists, and that actually makes it harder to fix. My belief is that this bias is rooted in the history of male-dominated discoveries. Since women weren't originally allowed to have the same status as men, the acknowledgment of women's achievements was a difficult concept to grasp. The earlier groups of men and women scientists who worked together were potentially likely to leave out the women's names in published papers and awards because they knew that having the women's names may hinder their ability to become rewarded and recognized. This train of thought continued, and by the time it became acceptable to publish women scientists' names next to their male colleagues, there were probably hundreds - maybe thousands - of papers the preceded them that had only male authors. This then could have turned into believing that men have consistently had more validity in their findings than women, because the history of science says that men have hundred to thousands of sets of valid data and research and discoveries, while women hold little to none (that they have proof of). So where do we go from here? How do we undo a subconscious thought that an entire group of people have had for decades? It really starts on both sides. We have to be willing to share credit (or even sometimes just hand the credit rightfully over) with women who deserve the recognition. We also have to be willing to compare the works of women fairly with the works of men. We have to work on undoing this bias - almost so that the process of addressing validity and awards becomes gender-blind. We have to learn to trust the work they show - not the gender they have. And from there - let the better scientist win!