Gender Equity in STEM: Time to Repair and Replace

The announcement of the 2019 class of ESA Fellows brought some much-needed discussion of gender diversity within the Society, including the inevitable, overly simplified, and unpleasant analogy of the “leaky pipeline.” I know that we, as a Society, are committed to improving recruitment and retention of female entomologists. For this to happen, however, we must repair a broken system. It is time to replace the leaky pipeline analogy and find a new way to discuss our colleagues who are contributing to the field outside a traditional academic role.

The STEM (science, technology engineering, and mathematics) pipeline analogy is a familiar one. It is the idea that we need to prepare individuals for...