Professor Nalini Joshi, mistaken for wait staff at functions, highlights gender bias in Australian science.

By political reporter Eliza Borrello

One of the country’s most senior mathematicians addressed the National Press Club in a cotton shirt on Wednesday, because when she wears suits at work functions she is often mistaken for a member of the wait staff.

Professor Nalini Joshi said she was not alone, and blamed the culture of the sciences.

“Of the professors of the mathematical sciences in Australia, only 9 per cent are women,” the Sydney University Professor said.

“Why? How did we, as a modern, progressive society, let this happen? And what effect does this have on our scientific achievements as a nation?”

These are questions Professor Joshi, University of New South Wales marine ecology and ecotoxicology professor Emma Johnston and University of South Australia research and innovation vice chancellor Tanya Monro spent an hour at the Press Club trying to answer.

Their theories were not surprising — policies that saw women forced to leave the workforce once they married, women in later generations juggling work and family, women feeling isolated in male-dominated classrooms and faculty offices, underpinned by an overall bias against women in science.

Professor Johnston outlined what she argues are simple solutions.

“[Make] regulatory changes, structural changes increasing early career job security, providing parental care that is available to both parents, creating flexibility in the workplace, enable career breaks with guaranteed re-entry.”

She also made a case for grant and journal submissions to be made anonymously.

“We now have quite a few international journals that have adopted blind review processes,” she said.

“Which isn’t that when the paper is published there’s no name on it … it’s that through the process of review where a decision is made as to the quality of the work and the appropriateness of that work for the journal … the identity of the authors of that grant proposal or that journal are removed.”

Professor Johnston argued eliminating bias was one of the biggest tasks the science community faced because it required people to admit it exists.

Professor Monro offered a helpful tool for identifying double standards, noting that she was often introduced as the “wearer of shoes that I design or the mother of three boys.”

“Try it out with your male colleagues and you’ll see how strange it feels,” she said.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.