Oceanography | Vol. 38, No. 3
52
303 Early Career Participants
36 Former Participants turned Leaders
101 Senior Leaders
440 Total early career and senior leader
participants (2008-2023)
In 2007, women were also less well represented in physical ocean-
ography faculty positions (21%) than in other fields of oceanog-
raphy (31%) (Ranganathan et al., 2023). Nonetheless, the gender
ratios have improved in all subdisciplines and at all levels compared
to earlier data (Orcutt and Cetinić, 2014; O’Connell, 2014). For
non-faculty positions, data are less readily available, but globally,
the proportion of women ocean science researchers has increased
slightly from 38% to 39% from 2013 to 2020 (IOC-UNESCO,
2020). Women’s representation at leadership levels shows variable
improvement over the past few years—notably, three out of six US
oceanographic institutions were led by women in 2014,1 four out
of seven presidents of the American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Ocean Sciences section have been women since 2010,2 and five out
of 21 presidents of the American Meteorological Society (AMS)
have been women since 2004.3 The proportion of women co-chief
scientists of International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP)
expeditions was 32% between 2014 and 2018, and only two out
of 23 presidents of the International Association for the Physical
Sciences of the Oceans (IAPSO) have been women. According to
the 2019 annual report on the federal workforce published by the
US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, only 25.9% of
all leaders in STEM are women (EEOC, 2019). This scarcity of
senior women creates dual challenges—those who achieve leader-
ship positions face isolation while bearing disproportionate men-
toring responsibilities for the next generation.
In 2005, under the leadership of Susan Lozier, 29 senior leaders
came together to collectively address the so-called “leaky pipeline”
of women in physical oceanography, whereby large fractions of
women trained in physical oceanography were not obtaining per-
manent positions in the field (Mackenzie, 2015). Several senior
leaders faced systemic barriers in their own careers while simulta-
neously needing to develop mentoring approaches without estab-
lished models. They hosted a workshop and conducted a com-
munity survey to assess mentorship needs of women in physical
oceanography (Lozier, 2006). Survey participants answered ques-
tions about their mentoring experiences, including when in their
career paths they obtained mentors, whether their mentors were
also their advisors, the genders of their mentors, and areas of
advice they received from their mentors. Lozier (2006) reported
that results of this survey highlighted differences between males
and females in relation to mentoring experiences: “All of the male
respondents had male mentors, while only 12% of the women
had female mentors. Twenty-four percent of the female respon-
dents said the gender of the mentor was important to them, while
none of the male respondents did.” Generally, female respondents
acquired mentors later in their careers than male respondents, typ-
ically finding mentors while in postdoctoral positions (Mackenzie,
2015). While many factors impact women’s career paths, it became
apparent that mentorship is one way forward for improvement
in gender equity because women, who were often geographi-
cally isolated from one another, lacked access to mentors and role
models. MPOWIR was established to address these mentoring
gaps, providing much-needed support for both early-career scien-
tists and their overburdened mentors. Within a decade of its incep-
tion, MPOWIR’s impact on mentees (late-stage graduate students
and early career professionals) was already notable (Clem et al.,
2014; Mouw et al., 2018).
The program serves as a powerful platform for professional
growth and career advancement. By cultivating mentoring rela-
tionships, MPOWIR provides invaluable opportunities for knowl-
edge transfer, career guidance, and emotional support—benefits
that flow both ways. For senior leaders, it offers solutions to
long-standing challenges: lack of access to women mentors, geo-
graphic isolation, lack of resources, harassment, and care-giving
responsibilities, among others (Figure 1). While mentees gain
access to seasoned perspectives, mentors report refined leadership
skills, including heightened awareness of systemic barriers and
stronger advocacy for equity in hiring and retention.
MPOWIR measures its success through longitudinal tracking
of participants’ appointments and broader field-wide trends. An
analysis conducted by Thompson et al. (2011) for physical ocean-
ography PhDs from six institutions from 1989 to 2009, showed
that whereas 25% of graduating men eventually obtained faculty
positions, the percentage of women PhDs obtaining faculty posi-
tions decreased from 23% in the first decade to 8% in the sec-
ond. Those who persisted to achieve senior roles often did so
1 Margaret Leinen was the Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography,
Virginia Armbrust was Director of the University of Washington College of
Oceanography, and Susan Avery was President and Director of the Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution.
2 https://connect.agu.org/oceansciences/about/leadership/past-leaders
3 https://www.ametsoc.org/index.cfm/ams/about-ams/
ams-organization-and-administration/past-presidents-directory/
FIGURE 1. MPOWIR’s model
of mentoring and support.