New Women-in-Science Assessment by Helen Shen in Nature
Dear friends of women in science,
My editor, Ilona Miko, alerted me to a new assessment of how women in science stand, written by Helen Shen in Nature March 6, 2013. Lest some of us think our work is done and we can rest on our laurels, I will paste her Figure 1 in here. This figure shows women and men with PhDs employed in STEM fields in academia. Not done. If we plot the same in physical sciences, which is possible by clicking on the figure, we see almost invisible women at the bottom of the graph.
To explain this finding, the first anecdote she provided was about Lynne Kiorpes who wanted to become an engineer at Northeastern in the 1970's. The professor was not in favor of this, and said, ""I see women in the classroom. I don't believe women have any business in engineering, and I'm going to personally see to it that you all fail'." I remember those days well! All but one woman quit engineering, and Kiorpes transferred to psychology herself. But today, as we know, men are rarely if ever so overt in their expression of such opinions.Women are only about 20% of full professors in STEM fields, and only 5% in engineering, today, though. Subtile bias is alive and well.
Shen focused next on lack of role models of successful women in science, pointing directly to a problem with such slow progress in getting women to the top of academia. The issue of children, which we have discussed so often, is also a factor. Shen cites UC Berkeley's study of postdoctoral fellows, in which of those who planned to have children, women were twice as likely to quit science as men. She cites Wendy Williams at Cornell (of Ceci and Williams) that "women who do become faculty members in astronomy, physics and biology tend to have fewer children than their male colleagues - 1.2 versus 1.5, on average - and also have fewer children than they desire."
She also cites Jo Handelsman et al., the paper on evaluation of two candidates with identical CVs that we discussed earlier, where men and women at 127 universities proved biased against the candidate with the female name, although she had the same CV as the male candidate who was evaluated much higher.
One important issue might be representation of women on groups that judge grants proposals, etc. Shen cites data from NIH, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, to the effect that females fare less well on grants and review panels have increased only slowly. These panels averaged 25% women in 2003 and 30% in 2013.
She also reviewed salary discrepancies, which are still found in some places but not all. Shen concluded with a quotation from President Shirley Tilghman from Princeton University, "Absolutely, it needs eternal vigilance," she says. "But we're in a much better place."
Do you feel we will be pushing this rock uphill forever (eternal does imply that!)?
cheers,
Laura
PROFESSORS! Please consider going over the data with your students, as SSW is doing.
EVERYONE! It's clear we need to look at the future here. Some of the problems are old, and some are new. But the old problems manifest differently now, more subtly. This makes them, actually, new. (See Handelsnman study).
Regardless yes, good talking points distilled here by Laura, and good data in the Shen article for backing yourself up next time you are challenged.
Hi Christi,
Or we could all just carry your book around...or both the book and the article!
cheers,
Laura
Great Nature article! Thanks for writing about it, Laura. It's rare to see all that great data in one place and so easy to use.
Christi
I knew it! People keep telling me, this is old stuff, it's not true any more. Yes, it is. A lot of this is government data, pretty reliable! I might carry copies of this article around with me to hand out when needed!
Livi M
Hi Laura,
I like how this article summarizes a lot of what we have discussed recently. I may assign it to my senior seminar this week. Thanks,
SSW
