Lisa M.P. Munoz: Women in Science Now

Women in Science Now

Women in Science Now (Columbia University Press, 2023) examines solutions to the persistent gender gap in science, offering new perspectives on how to make STEM fields more equitable and inclusive for all. This book shares stories and insights of women from a range of backgrounds working in various disciplines, illustrating the journeys that brought them to the sciences, the challenges they faced along the way, and the important contributions they have made to their fields. Lisa M. P. Munoz combines these narratives with a wealth of data to illuminate the size and scope of the challenges women scientists face, while highlighting research-based solutions to help overcome these obstacles. The book is the Silver Medal winner in Social Change and Social Justice for the 2024 Nautilus Book Awards.

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What People Are Saying About the Book

“This book is an exhilarating antitoxin to the tragic, long term exclusion of women from science. Munoz presents the data and gives us the voices and personal stories of those who inhabit this only recently liberated realm. It makes you feel what a tragic squandering of talent these last couple of millennia have been, and joy, that it finally seems to be ending.”

Ann Druyan, cocreator, Contact, and Emmy and Peabody Award-winning writer/producer/director, Cosmos

“This first engaging and consequential book for science writer Munoz summarizes recent research and public conversations about the challenges women scientists still face. This book is essential reading for faculty, administrators, potential students, and the entire scientific community. The focus is on higher education, but the book also looks at multiple research studies and proven interventions in science programming for younger students.”

Library Journal (starred review)

“Women in Science Now is be both rigorous and intimate. Munoz flawlessly combines first-person accounts of scientists with empirical research to illuminate the problem of representation in science and offer multi-tiered solutions. The result is an invaluable resource that I will refer to often as a mentor, administrator, and a woman in science myself.”

Vanessa Bohns, Department Chair and Professor of Organizational Behavior, Cornell University, author of You Have More Influence Than You Think

“Munoz intertwines stories of women in science with compelling research that informs the transformations needed to support equity and excellence in science. Women in Science Now is inspiring and informative, and its powerful stories will propel us forward.”

Shirley Malcom, Senior Advisor and Director of SEA Change, American Association for the Advancement of Science

“In this practical analysis, complementing it with female scientists’ vivid career stories. 'No single intervention, policy, or law is enough,' [Munoz] rightly notes.”

Nature, recommended book

“Think you know what it's like to be a woman in science? Lisa M.P. Munoz's Women in Science Now brings the scientific method to the role of misogyny in STEM, and the results will make you reconsider your assumptions about science. Munoz lays bare the reality of systemic bias and makes a rousing call to arms for changing the culture of science.”

Jay Van Bavel, coauthor of The Power of Us

“It's never been easy to be a woman in science, smashing stereotypes and balancing family and laboratory. But it's especially frustrating that so many obstacles and biases still stand in the 2020s. Women In Science Now maps the problems, and roads to success. I wish Lisa Munoz's book had been available when I was starting out.”

Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

“Women in Science Now touched my soul and deepened my toolkit. Surprisingly personal while deeply evidence-based, this book belongs on the shelf of every person in the sciences.”

Dolly Chugh, author of The Person You Mean to Be: How Good People Fight Bias, Jacob. B. Melnick Term Professor, NYU Stern School of Business

Blog

October 30, 2024

On Tour: University of Maryland

October 29, 2024

On Tour: Bowdoin College in Maine

October 12, 2024

STAT News Spotlight on Gender Gap in Science

About Lisa M.P. Munoz

Science writer and content strategist. As president of SciComm Services, Inc., Lisa develops, leads, and executes communication strategies for science groups, including VC funds, sci-tech startups, scientific societies and academic research groups, international organizations, and other institutions. She has more than 20 years of experience translating complex science into digestible stories for broad audiences.

Lisa started her career in radio and then print journalism, as a reporter and then managing editor of Geotimes, a geoscience magazine. She is a former Press Officer for the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, former Public Information Officer of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and former Chief of Staff and Communications Director for the OS Fund. She is Public Information Officer for the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. Lisa has an engineering degree from Cornell University with a specialty in science writing.

Lisa’s expertise spans cognitive neuroscience and the behavioral sciences, synthetic biology, climate and energy, and the geosciences. She has extensive experience developing, writing, editing, and placing Op-eds and articles in high-profile publications, such as the New York Times, USA Today, Huffington Post, and Scientific American. Lisa has created videos showcasing cutting-edge science, and has developed content for a European royal, a UN secretary general, and others.

Lisa was was the publicist and outreach producer for the Emmy-nominated documentary film Picture a Scientist. Her book about gender equity in science, Women in Science Now (2023), combines her passion for telling the stories of individual scientists with her drive to share groundbreaking research studies and help to effect change in the culture of science.

Lisa lives in the Washington, D.C., area with her husband and two daughters. She loves exploring new places, listening to radio in all forms, and consuming sci-fi/fantasy books and movies.