Last month’s Natural Selections gave details about the ‘science pipeline’ for women. Much research shows women face discrimination and lack of support all along the science career pipeline: high school, college, graduate school, postdoctoral fellowships, and into their academic careers. This is evidenced by such factors as higher dropout rates in school, fewer grants and fellowships awarded to women, or lower rates of securing tenure track positions for women.

How leaky is Rockefeller’s ‘scientific pipeline’ at the present time? There are currently 201 students enrolled here. According to the university’s Women in Science Initiative, almost half of these students, and nearly 40% of the 355 postdocs, are women. Just under half of the students of the incoming and graduating classes of the last few years have been women. This proportion seems to have remained steady over the last 20 years, even as the total number of students the university accepts has significantly increased over the years. Since 1999, The Rockefeller University has been accredited to award a Master’s degree to those who enter but decide voluntarily not to complete the doctoral program, for example if a student decides on a career change. According to the Dean’s Office, of the 15 students that have left the graduate program with a Master’s degree since 1999, 10 were women. Five of these went on different career paths in science — i.e. teaching, industry, and medicine — or transferred to another Ph.D. program. Since 1991, 12 students have had to leave the graduate program because they were not making sufficient progress at the bench. Of these 12 dropouts, five were women. Four of these went on to other science-related fields.

How do our students fare after graduation according to information from the alumni directory? For those who graduated in the 14- year time period from 1984 to 1999, the greatest number of alumni are now at the Assistant Professor level (Table 1)—around twenty percent of the total number of males (19.5%) and around the same percentage (22.3%) of the total number of females. There are four women, but no men, at Research Assistant or Research Associate Professor levels, which are non-tenure track positions. Just three women, 3% of female alumni, have made it to full professorship; however, 10% of the males have been appointed to this position. Only 2% of the women (in contrast to 8% of the men) have moved to management positions in industry. In other categories, such as industry, financial or other academic research positions, roughly the same proportion of men and women occupy these jobs.

Of the graduates of the last five years, most of the men who submitted their employment information are in postdoctoral positions, 30% of the total males. However, only 20% of females are postdocs, 8% of all these recent alumni. The proportion of female alumni in academic and industry research is roughly half that of men. Only about half of the female alumni from this time frame have reported employment information to the alumni directory. Women make up 40% of alumni from the last five years.

In the first sixty years of RU’s history, it was difficult for women to work on the scientific staff. From 1901 to 1940, there were 52 women scientists here, out of a total personnel of 543. This was a relatively high proportion (almost 10%) of women scientists then, although most of these women were in entry-level positions. At that time women tended to go into certain areas of science, especially bacteriology and biochemistry; these were the main fields of study at RU then, accounting for the relatively high representation. Simon Flexner was the first director of the then Rockefeller Institute. He created many short-term postdoc-type positions intended to help scientists find more permanent jobs at other academic or medical institutions. His practice of hiring women into the scientific staff was very progressive for his time. However, he had a policy of not promoting or hiring women to upper levels. Most women were hired as Fellows or Assistants, which were one-year appointments. Florence Sabin, appointed Member (a permanent position equivalent to today’s Professor title) in 1924, was the only woman at this level before 1958.

Rebecca Lancefield, only the second woman named Full Professor in the first 60 years of the University’s history, has a Professorship named after her. She received her Master’s degree in 1918 and was employed as a technical assistant for Oswald T. Avery and Alphonse R. Dochez at the Rockefeller Institute Hospital. Her work in this lab became the basis of her career in classifying streptococcal bacteria. After teaching in college for a few years, she was re-hired at Rockefeller in the laboratory of Homer Swift. In Swift’s lab she became an acknowledged expert on streptococci. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia in 1925, based on her work at Rockefeller. From 1929 to 1942, she was an Associate, normally a two-year appointment. She was then promoted to Associate Member, a three-year appointment, which was only renewable once. Just before her retirement in 1958 she was named Full Professor (the title had changed from Member). She never headed her own laboratory. Her marriage to the geneticist Donald Lancefield probably gave her social contacts in scientific circles that were helpful to her career.

According to the National Science Foundation, in 1999 females made up only 12.5% of all senior faculty in science and engineering at US universities. Currently, 13% of the Full Professors at The Rockefeller University are women, as can be seen from Chart 1. Women make up about a quarter of all categories of professors here at RU. The greatest number of women senior scientists hold the position of Research Assistant Professor and women make up the majority of Research Associate Professors (both are non-tenure track positions). About 48% of Rockefeller women senior scientists occupy non-tenure track positions, while only 14% of men are in non-tenure track positions. Tenure track positions are offered after the university does a worldwide search. The policy is to offer tenure by review after six years at Assistant Professor and six years at Associate Professor level. There are no women listed in the university’s directory at the Professor Emeritus level, a presumed consequence of the fact that during the first fifty-seven years of the university’s history, only the previously mentioned Florence Sabin (1924) and Rebecca Lancefield (1958) achieved the status of Full Professors at The Rockefeller University.

Table 2 shows that RU Professors are paid higher than their peers and women’s salaries are comparable to men’s. In fact, amongst the ten private universities with the uppermost overall average pay for Full Professor, only at Rockefeller is the average pay for Full Professor slightly more for a woman than for a man, about 3% more for the 2003–2004 academic year. According to the American Association of University Professors, Rockefeller ranks second only to Harvard among private institutions by average Full Professor salary.

Guidestar.org publishes information about non-profit organizations, including their tax returns. These returns list the compensation of the five highest paid employees, other than officers, directors, and trustees. In 2002 and 2003, there were no women among the five highest paid professors at RU. In 2004 there was one woman on the list.

In our last issue, we described Dartmouth’s Women in Science Project. This project provides research opportunities, a peer mentoring program, special events, and a newsletter. The Rockefeller University also has a Women and Science Initiative which was launched in 1998. The program was established to emphasize the vital role of basic and clinical research in tackling the challenges relating to women’s health, showcase the contribution of female scientists, create a program of support for them, and encourage more women to embrace scientific research as a focus of their charitable donations. About seven years ago, the Initiative founded the Partners in Discovery fundraising program. Since then it has granted 56 graduate and postdoctoral fellowships. The university’s Women and Science Initiative has also established the Rebecca C. Lancefield Professorship, currently held by Dr. Elaine Fuchs, with the purpose of recruiting a senior female scientist. Unlike its Dartmouth equivalent, Rockefeller’s Women in Science Initiative does not have a mentoring program for female scientists.

Childcare is also a very important factor that affects the amount of leaks along the scientific pipeline. “The Cradle Will Rock” article in this issue explores this aspect.

While our university does well in several areas of the pipeline, there is room for improvement. The student population is well balanced between men and women, but women seem to have a slightly higher dropout rate from the doctoral program. There is no mentoring program for female students. Although difficult to tell, it seems somewhat fewer female alumni continue in academic research. Typical of older institutions, the long-standing tradition of not allowing women into the upper levels of the scientific staff took a long time to overcome. Even now there are significantly less women in tenure track positions here than men. However, the university does very well in the pay scale for men and women at the same positions, the average salaries being almost exactly equivalent.

References:

1. Creating a Tradition of Biomedical Research, Darwin H. Stapleton, ed. The Rockefeller University Press, 2004.
2. The Rockefeller University Achievements 1901-2001. Betsy Hanson.

Related Articles:

• Political Science
• The Lab Rat Race
• Science Inc.
• “The Leopard” Shakes Italian Research
• Summers’time and the Livin’ Ain’t Easy
• Women and the Science Pipeline
• The Cradle Will Rock