Stories from the IPCC: An essay on climate science in fourteen questions

Women’s experiences as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) authors, have been explored showing how gender, race, nationality, etc. increase barriers to participate in the production of climate science even for the best scientists. Recently, the IPCC Gender Task Force, conducted another survey exploring barriers to participation in the IPCC that included men as well as women. The Gender Task Force released a report on gendered barriers mostly focusing on quantitative responses. This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the fourteen open-ended questions in the survey. In addition to qualitative analysis, storytelling and the concept of feminist objectivity are useful approaches to convey the complicated web of responses of over 500 scientists about their experiences participating in the IPCC and in climate science more broadly. Gender, race and nationality continue to be barriers. I stress the connection between exclusions of underrepresented scientists in the IPCC with the persistent western belief that science is an objective and impartial practice. The paper brings attention to exclusionary structures that prevent participation in the IPCC and in science more broadly, but also provides stories of how these are resisted. These stories go beyond recognizing people as disadvantaged toward addressing the intersecting structures that exclude people from participating in science. As climate science becomes more diverse, and evidence points toward the benefit of diversity for superior science, understanding barriers and opportunities for scientists participating in multidisciplinary and international reports such as the IPCC becomes increasingly important. The stories provide a theoretical and methodological catalyst for international science institutions who seek to increase the influence and presence of underrepresented groups in science and produce superior science.