New PhDs: More Women than Men Overall
Daniel de Vise in the Washington Post covered the newly released report from the Council of Graduate Schools showing that more women than men recieved PhDs last year; read his article here. Undergraduate women have been ahead of men starting back in the 1980's, now holding a 3-to-2 majority at that level. In 2008-9 women in USA recieved 28962 degrees and men 28469. That seems like very good news, and for some STEM fields the details match this rosy overview, but not for all.
de Vise says, "Men retained the lead in doctoral degrees until 2008, largely through their dominance in engineering, mathematics and the physical sciences. They still earn nearly 80 percent of engineering doctorates." So where is the good news for women in science? In health science, where women represent 67% of the doctorates, similar to their achievements in education and in social and behavioral sciences.
The article quotes Liz Nguyen, a 25-year-old doctoral candidate in chemistry at University of Maryland, who says that the older generation of faculty is virutally all men. She notes that the women she has met during her doctoral study are very strong-willed compared to those she knew growing up.
De Vise pointed out that first time enrollment in graduate school grew slightly faster for men than for women in 2009, reversing a long-term trend for men to disappear from graduate education tracks. So we probably will see the ratios stabilizing soon.
How do you feel about this information?
A. We need to do more to open up the STEM fields that are still resistant to women
B. If women are still choosing not to go into the physical sciences, maybe they will never be opened up enough.
C. I think women can do what they want and just find physical sciences and engineering not very interesting subjects, so I don't mind that they don't reach gender parity.
I'm with "A," but I'm not very hopeful. I'd like to see more pro-feminist scientists (women or men) and more pro-social justice scientists (people or color or white). While I think that we can't know what liberatory science would be like until we have a community of scientists with those values, I fear that the process of becoming a scientist is still one that requires apprentice scientists submit to various imperialist/sexist/racist attitudes and assumptions. So I'd like to think that increasing diversity in science will at some point change science, but I'm suspicious that that is not necessarily what has happened when other fields (such as politics) have diversified.
If you consider both sex and ethnicity, we have a long way to go. Let alone the kind of hassles lesbians have to put up with. Don't get me started. Let's don't sit down and declare victory yet!
Hi Physics Needs Help,
I agree physics does, but it seems like the woman you mean is in computer engineering as best I can tell. I will do a feature on her next week.
cheers,
Laura
Hi Laura,
Take a look at the woman in physics who just won the Macarthur genius award at Cornell. I think she's from Brazil. She says there are still very few women trying physics out.
Hi more, more,
I know what you mean. Also, I've been to some meetings and conferences lately on bioinformatics or systems biology in which I thought it was 1968 because I was one of two or three women in the room and there were NO women speakers. Our work is not done, I'm sure of that!
cheers,
Laura
I can't believe we have enough women PhDs in the sciences. No way. Its still hard to find them in our searches, and we have very women-friendly conditions to offer.
Hi Advanced,
I have heard a lot of good things about ADVANCE, and I believe the different programs run national meetings from time to time and have web sites to share their insights into helping women succeed in academia. I know WISELI was started as an ADVANCE grant project (see my earlier postings on this women's group at Wisconsin).
cheers,
Laura
Think about applying to NSF for an ADVANCE grant to sponsor activities to help women at your campus(es). It can really ratchet up mentoring of women by women and help our careers a lot.
If more women than men got PhDs this year but we still lag in physical sciences, maybe that's the way it's just going to be. Too cold, too math-rich and people-poor, too little to entice women unless they just find it fascinating per se. I'm glad the fields are open to those women, but I think C is where I am otherwise.
I just read that locally for me, at Harvey Mudd College, basically an engineering school set in a matrix of cooperative liberal arts colleges (The Claremont Colleges), women outnumber men in the incoming class for the first time ever. I wonder if having a woman president has anything to do with this event? It isn't similar to the national trend, that's for sure.
cheers,
Laura
B. Hate to be a pessimist. Let's take a feminist look at the fields and how they are taught and it may be possible to make them more attractive to women.
A is the right choice, although even if men start up again going to grad school, we should still be able to make progress. I doubt it can be fixed in the next 8 years.
A! A! A! We may only have 8 years to fix this bad ratio in Chem, physics, comp sci, math if the men going to grad school is really taking an upturn.
FBP
