# Gender and racial diversity socialization in science

## TL;DR

Scientists who train in diverse environments are more likely to work with diverse collaborators later in their careers, especially men.

## Contribution

A computational null model is introduced to study how early-career diversity exposure affects later collaboration diversity.

## Key findings

- Early-career collaboration diversity strongly predicts later collaboration diversity.
- The diversity-association effect is particularly strong for men.
- Homophily between advisors and advisees contributes to slow progress in workforce diversity.

## Abstract

Scientific collaboration networks are a form of unequally distributed social capital that shapes both researcher job placement and long-term research productivity and prominence. However, the role of collaboration networks in shaping the gender and racial diversity of the scientific workforce remains unclear. Here we propose a computational null model to investigate the degree to which early-career scientific collaborators with representationally diverse cohorts of scholars are associated with forming or participating in more diverse research groups as established researchers. When testing this hypothesis using two large-scale, longitudinal datasets on scientific collaborations, we find that the gender and racial diversity in a researcher’s early-career collaboration environment is strongly associated with the diversity of their collaborators in their established period. This diversity-association effect is particularly prominent for men. Coupled with gender and racial homophily between advisors and advisees, collaborator diversity represents a generational effect that partly explains why changes in representation within the scientific workforce tend to happen very slowly.

A computational null model is proposed to study the gender and racial diversity-association effects in academia. Researchers’ early training in diverse environments is strongly correlated with nurturing diverse groups in the established period.