An ongoing mission of WiN is to address gender discrepancies in the sciences with the intent of facilitating a discussion around these difficult and very real issues. This term, we wanted to define and highlight power/social distance as well as emphasize the impact we all can have by empowering each other. In the article Moving closer to reach the top: approach behavior increases one’s sense of power, Smith and colleagues shed light on the influences that specific behaviors can have on an implicit sense of power. More specifically, they demonstrate that practicing an “approach*” behavior increases one’s implicit sense of power, thereby leading one to believe that he or she deserves a “higher power” job. While having power and increased social distance in relationships may not always be bad, a large imbalance in power can result in tension, disconnect, and dissatisfaction. To remedy this issue, it is important to acknowledge power and social distance in relationships as well as implement strategies to empower those that fall on the “lower power” scale (i.e. trainees). Two ways we can begin empowering one another are: one, near peer mentoring to lessen the social distance between mentor and mentee (i.e. grad student/grad student mentoring, postdoc/grad student mentoring, or even undergrad/undergrad mentoring) and, two, acknowledging difficult tasks, as greater social distance can sometimes be accompanied by differences in the wealth of knowledge regarding specific tasks or topics. These small efforts can help empower trainees, leading to a more productive and inclusive research environment.
*defined as a behavior in which an object or person is moved towards, which is in contrast to “avoidant behavior”, wherein there is movement away.
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