The representation of women in physics can be viewed as either a 'glass half-full' or 'glass half-empty' situation. The optimist would point out that the number of women faculty in physics has doubled in the past 20 years or so. The pessimist would note that, even so, women still hold less than 10% of physics faculty positions worldwide and their numbers in administration are even more minuscule.

If representation is poor on the university level, it is abysmal at the leadership levels of international physics societies, Judy Franz, executive officer of the American Physical Society (APS), said last month at the APS Washington meeting. For example, Franz notes that, until fairly recently, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) was dominated by men. Perhaps an unintended result of this make-up has been a failure to invite women speakers to international physics conferences. Without such role models, young women physicists attending conferences receive the subtle signal that there is little or no room for them at the end of the pipeline.

The other signals that cause women to leave the physics pipeline at a disproportionately higher rate than those following paths towards faculty positions in other disciplines, such as biology or social sciences, are poorly understood. But Franz doubts that it is because women are smarter than their male colleagues at realizing that more lucrative positions await them in sectors outside academia, or that women don't need physics PhDs to land them. “That doesn't ring true to me,” Franz said.

The IUPAP has started a working group on women in physics to gather more data about conditions and trends in different countries. The group will discuss its findings at its first international meeting next March in Paris. Women, most assuredly, will be invited.