The Softer Science??
Dear friends of women in science,
Christopher Drew recently published an article in the New York Times identifying biology as "where the women are" in STEM fields. He noted that 58% of PhDs in the life sciences are being awarded to women today, while women earn only 18% of the degrees in Computer Science and in Engineering, and only 40% in the physical sciences.
He quotes Paula E. Stephan, Georgia Tech economist, that "Women historically have been interested in subjects that were less math intensive and that had goals of helping people, and biology and the medical sciences have both of those." Her new book, How Economics Shapes Sciences, is forthcoming from Harvard University Press.
But the biology PhDs get less pay than they would in computer science and engineering, about forty to fifty thousand a year if they begin as professors, instead of the fifteen thousand a year more for professors in Computer Science or engineering. The problem of finding a job is also acute for younger biologists because academia has hiring freezes in place across the country, leaving new PhDs stuck in the postdoc pipeline earning less than forty thousand dollars a year. Some new PhDs compete with those with less training and experience for teaching positions in community colleges or high schools.
It used to be possible for new graduates to go to work for federal research enterprises, like NIH and the national laboratories, but government cutbacks have made such positions rarer. And biotech companies have laid off workers recently, and might well want to rehire their trained employees rather than seeking new PhDs to employ. However, Stephan (and Drew) point to the fact that biotech is still growing as an industry, so they predict the biotech industry is the best hope of new PhDs for jobs today.
My problem with this article is that it implies that biology is easier than the physical sciences. It may be true that some parts of biology used to be less mathematics-dependent, but statistics and modeling are important in every aspect of biology today, especially in the "omics" approaches, which generate a huge amount of data that must be correctly interpreted and correlated with other kinds of data.
Following up on Stephan's quote above, I wonder how much of the "softness" is actually just being open to how the knowledge can be used to help others? That works to get more women into physics, so why not biology?
What do you think sends more women into life sciences?
cheers,
Laura
Hi Marian,
Yes, biology does have that aspect, but you're right, premed cutthroat behavior turns off good women from the field. And yes, bio pays less BUT academia currently has hiring bonuses at a lot of places for Bioinformatics, just as much as for Finance in Economics! So the high math end of bio can pay very well and be prestigious. I haven't seen many women there, but there are certainly some. The cynic would argue the pay would go down as women take it up. I hope not.
cheers,
Laura
Laura,
I think that part of the reason that biology attracts women is that women seek relevance in their work, and it is easier to see the relevance of biology to the world around them. Also, in Bio women can see, in a practical way, that they make a difference.
Now, as women stay in the field of biology, they move on to need and use mathematics, but I doubt most women (or anyone) go into biology because they like, or are good at, math!
I am now an applied mathematician, but when I was a freshman in college I wanted to be a biologist. Why didn't I stay on that path? Because 60% + of the freshman class was premed, and bio and chem were cutthroat classes! I went with math, not because I loved it, but because I was very good at it. I liked math when I was younger because I liked puzzles. I learned to love math as I learned to apply it to real-world problems. I pursued engineering mathematics because of the relevance of the problems I solve.
Marian
Also, I agree with Tracy Z regarding pay and prestige. If it is a women's field, it is paid less and has less prestige. We need to change that, but how?
Hi femprof PhD,
I think first you are right. Whatever area women go into and succeed, that area gets less pay and prestige. Until....Until we're on top of the hierarchy! But the only way I can see that happening, is to keep on trying and doing everything we do well until someday, we look around and WE are in charge. We can pay fairly then. Maybe not so long now.
TRZ
I have a relatively paranoid theory (having read Laura's book). I think that no matter how far women get, there will always be fields that are dominated by men, and those will be the ones that will be the ones that earn more money, that are more prestigious and so on.
At this point my field, math, is moving with an unmistakeable momentum, toward equality. And already I see physicists & computer scientists, talking about how math is easy and that is why women are able to do it, but CS or physics, now _those_ are hard!
Read what Laura went through in her book. Biology was too hard for women then. What has changed? Women somehow have managed to break the barriers. So now it is of course too easy, too soft...
Think about teaching. When it was all men doing it, it was a respectable enough job. Now that almost all elementary school teachers are women, it is a trivial job, underpaid and disrespected.
And I have to say, my paranoid projections see academia as a whole becoming less and less desirable and respected, as women make progress all across the spectrum (how many university presidents and provosts are women now? I bet it is a lot more than it was 20 years ago. And I also bet it will be growing. Simultaneously the academia will lose respect and status...
Come on, find me a reason to be optimistic...
Hi Laura,
We do have a few in conservation bio who avoid math but pretty much the same as Zarha said, most take lots, way beyond just advanced calculus. Two of mine got automatic math minors last year, just from the classes they thought they needed to understand their bio classes!
CPB
Hi Laura,
I don't think a bio student today can succeed without strong math skills, and here almost all of ours finish calc and take more advanced math courses, plus one or more stats courses. The NAS recommended this a few years ago and it's certainly coming true. Ecology has some of the most sophisticated modeling of any bio.
ZQ
