Who Counts as a Woman in Science?
Hi Friends of Women in Science,
"I think it's important to call out that sometimes those numbers are not really failures, but successes in another area. The woman giving the keynote at that AWIS meeting was Dr. Kerri Ann Jones, Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. Definitely not a "failed woman in science". It is just strange because we always talk about work-life balance, and tenure, and gender bias as reasons women aren't staying in academia. Maybe it's because they are just finding other things they think are interesting and fulfilling... Not better than academics, just different. We need those role models held up too. These are successful women doing important things with their PhDs.
"I think the only important distinction to make is that we are not talking about the old "academia vs. other" where we feel like we disappointed someone because we didn't stay in academics. This is a conversation specifically about women in science and how we are counted. I call that out because many women at the meeting tried to start the conversation, and people kept thinking they were talking about "leaving the ivory tower syndrome". They weren't. They were trying to ask "Are we still considered women in science? Do you consider us when you quote statistics?"
What do you think?
A Only bench scientists should count
B I'd count bench scientists and administrators for research, not science policy workers or biographers
C I think if you are doing anything to do with science, you should be counted, so policy, yes, biographies of scientists, yes, science writing, yes, administration of research, yes. You're lost to the field if you write murder mysteries or teach in a non-science discipline.
D I don't know what to think about this issue. I'm confused.
I'm a C person, myself.
Within the university, though, generally only placements in academic careers "count". That's because the rating metrics (e.g., NRC graduate rankings) only care about academic placements. So when we place graduates into industrial careers, for example (which we do a lot), the university often does not see that as a success, because the NRC doesn't count them, even though we explain that increasingly there are types of science you can only DO in industry. Ditto for other professions.
I think Phoebe has a great point about how we as a culture define status and success. Those definitions change very slowly.
In the settings where I've seen CS up close, what counts is status jobs (professor, supervisor). Not the grunts who write code, not those who teach students (no one perceives them as seed corn). I've never run into someone in science policy so I don't know about how they'd be counted.
It does go to show that there may be disagreement about who is being counted, and we may be splitting apart people who should be counted together, right? This is not the first time I've heard that you can get anything back by designing the questionnaire carefully to point people in some direction of interest.
What interesting responses to this question! AWIS is leading the field here, but we also need to know what the governmental entities count. I've sent in data to some of them, data that were obtained fairly informally by surveying faculty members about what they knew about former students now graduated and out in the world. I don't recall getting specific directions on where to draw this line we're discussing.
cheers,
Laura
AWIS embraces all who have made a career in science and science-related professions - including science writers, scientist teachers and science policy fellows. [By the way -we also embrace mathematicians, social scientists and engineers as part of our membership.]
Why then do so many AWIS speakers focus on the disappearance of women from academic science? The issue is not WHO is a scientist but WHAT is perceived as success in science. For better or worse, in our current culture the highest prestige goes with a tenured professorship at a research-oriented academic institution. If women are to be seen as having made it in science, they must have an appropriate proportion of full professorships. It is about perception, role models and being admitted into what has been a closed fraternity, not about what any individual wants to do.
I will definitely say C. I am in academia as an instructor of upper level science courses, a good number of years for high end laboratory courses, and more recently involved in creating online courses for future science teachers.
Sometimes it seems that only researchers of some sort are considered real scientists, but I think anyone who understands the scientific method and how science is or has been practiced can be considered a scientist (an expert in some field of science).
For instance, I was a part of a burgeoning bioengineering department and was called on continually to explain mammalian cell biology and the process of cell culture to help engineers use biology to solve important problems. I am valuable as a scientist to them because I understand science and can give insight to constructing their biological experiments even though I chose not to run a research laboratory. Isn't that what science writers and educators do?
If you think scientifically and can influence those who do not do so, then you are a scientist.
Argh, I'm a spoil sport again. I have to say A. It's because that's what the programs TRY to produce. It's nice that some people use their science to benefit others. I am not saying it's not valuable. I'm just saying, it's not what we were trying to produce, and we judge ourselves on that.
C definitely. When we count up our graduates to decide if they are 'in science', we count as in C. I think liberal arts colleges are likely to make students consider such creative extensions of the PhD in science, and it would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we only counted up the academics and people doing research in industry.
C because I'm considering it more. My knee jerk reaction would have been A, and now I think that would be wrong. We should count people who are using their science for the good of humanity, for the good of other scientists, for the good of the country. It doesn't make sense to exclude such people when we could up the "loss" of women from the pipeline.
