Slow, sure strides for women?
Hi friends of women in science,
Back on Oct 22, Martha Irvine wrote for AP, as printed in the San Francisco Chronicle, that women in science are making slow, steady strides towards success. She featured Rebecca Allred who got into science via chemistry lab at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, working with Elizabeth Harbron. On off days the laboratory group played minature golf together. Late nights in lab found them dancing to the score of Mamma Mia.
Allred is now a graduate student in chemistry at Yale University. She recalls the Harbron lab as having been a refuge for her and her friends. Harbron had an all-women laboratory and now she apparently wonders if she's created a mirror image of the old boy network: she has the old girl network in place, even though she never meant to create one. Maybe that's a sign of the times.
Irvine then quotes AAUW on changes in the test score pattern by gender. Math scores on the SAT, as taken by seventh and eighth graders, showed that those achieving over-700-scores 30 years ago had thirteen times as many males as females, but the ratio today has only three times as many males as females. I should note that we hope it may achieve equality some day, but we've often discussed in this forum the negative assumptions about women's math potential by grammar school math teachers and how they affect the performance of girls.
As we've also noted, issues about children can deter women from persisting in science. In Allred's case, she and her husband recently had a daughter, Anna. They chose their graduate school as one that was supportive for graduate students who had children, one of only two on their list of potential graduate schools that seemed that way to them.
What do you think overall about women in science? Do you agree with Tom Pollard of Yale, quoted as saying women need a bit more help and then they will achieve parity? Or are you more skeptical?
cheers,
Laura
Hi Laura,
I agree with Margaret Mead that individuals with determination can make all the difference in progress versus no progress. If that person is in charge, mountains can move. So, it goes ahead when the supportive person is in charge. Once he goes off to be president somewhere else, then stagnation or worse sets in. Not slow and steady.
NL
Hi Djunali,
I know what you mean. My own college has had one amazing woman chemist for many years. They hired another one but she didn't work out and didn't get tenure. Now it looks like they may hire a new one, and I have my fingers crossed that she will survive and thrive. I don't think the one they've had is lonely for other women, but younger women feel that more than ones approximately in my generation.
best,
Laura
I love hearing about a community of women chemists. Life as a woman in chemistry is often pretty lonely, or else I pretend to be one of the guys. I think we need a lot more women to make a real old girls network. Hope these women stay with it!
More like punctuated evolution: we progress a lot when someone in upper administration sees our issues as important. Then he or she leaves and we stagnate. Does that mean what we need is more administrative women of science? Or more men on our side? Maybe both. MK
