In January, Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, made some provocative statements about women’s lack of ability to succeed in science (see Natural Selections Issue 13). While Summers was widely criticized for his remarks, they did bring up the debate on the reasons why there are fewer women in the upper echelons of science. It seems that there is still much gender discrimination, but it has become subtler over the years. Scientific research on the problem pinpoints areas where discrimination can occur; unfortunately few researchers have come up with solutions.

Summers spoke about the role of “intrinsic aptitude” in under-representation of female scientists. In a bell curve of male vs. female IQ scores, the medians are very close, with males slightly skewed to the higher scores. As this bell curve has been redrawn over the years, with the most recent data, the gap between the male and female scores at the high end has decreased. Also, this gap varies from country to country. The factors date and location indicate that the gap between male and female high IQ is due to societal reasons¹.

Female scientists have always faced discrimination during their careers. Until as recently as the 1970s this discrimination was very blatant. In 1977, a female researcher in psychology was asked by a famous faculty member during a job interview, “Who did your research for you?” She wrote an essay on her experiences in which she noted that at that time it was very common at professional meetings to see a joke slide of a semi-dressed woman². While such insensitive behavior would draw much negative feedback today, more subtle discrimination still exists in society and in science. The advent of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (prohibition against discrimination on the basis of sex from any educational program or activity) led to a significant increase in the number of females entering the field of science and occupying entry-level positions in the 1970s. It was a widely held belief that once these women were promoted, the proportion of women in the upper ranks of academic research would increase. This has not happened. In 1996, women made up 51% of the population and 46% of the labor force, but only 22% of the science and engineering work force³. Although there have been other legislative efforts to boost women’s involvement in science, such as The 1980 Science and Technologies Opportunities Act⁴, women are still statistically less likely to have a successful career.

One explanation for the low percentage of female scientists is a high rate of loss of women during the stages of career progression, known as the “science pipeline.” Many girls drop out, but hardly any drop back in, especially after high school. Efforts to fix this attrition consist of three different strategies: increase intake, prevent leakage, and make it easier to drop back in.

There is a range of factors at each stage of the “science pipeline” that contribute to leaks. From the outset, family and parental support forecast girls’ perseverance in science. Secondly, in elementary and high school, it has been recognized that teenage girls drop behind in science and math⁵. Studies have shown that the mere presence of boys in the room can lower girls’ math scores¹. The third stage of female departure is at college. The freshman year is the most critical; it is when women disproportionately drop out of science. Women tend to receive less faculty support, which has been shown to be a very important factor in the science pipeline. In addition, it has been acknowledged that male peers can make science classes inhospitable for female students. However, it is controversial as to whether female colleges are effective in nurturing women’s ambitions in science. In 1993, Wellesley’s Pathways Report discovered a 36% attrition rate from science by Wellesley’s alumnae. The fourth step is graduate school where women have been reported to have lower self-confidence than their male peers. Finally, during later stages of their career, a higher proportion of female than male scientists are married to other scientists and face the problem of finding two jobs in the same area. Women report family obligations as the main reason for leaving science⁵.
A major study in 1997—the Dartmouth Women in Science Alumnae Survey—sought to determine the career paths and the important factors determining these paths for science, math, and engineering alumnae. Responses to three questions were provided by a total of 724 alumnae (from the classes 1973 through 1996). The first question was: Did you continue in science after leaving Dartmouth? 72% of the respondents had continued on to post-graduate degrees: 33% for Masters and 39% for a Ph.D. Of the 81% of the respondents who were employed, a heartening 80% were currently or recently employed in science. Moreover, 45% said that their current or most recent job related to their undergraduate major.

In response to the second question of what factors during college encouraged or discouraged them in their careers and in the decision to get an advanced degree in science, the reasons given from those who had left or were considering leaving science were: a) advantages of non-science careers and concerns about a science career, b) feelings of inadequacy or disinterest, and c) influential incidents in college, graduate school, or the workplace. Negative gender-related issues were cited by 63% of respondents, including the small number of female students in science classes and the small number of female science faculty. Formal advising was also considered a negative influence. Influential encouraging factors were: course work (cited by 59%), informal advising (67%), institutional structure (63%), and positive out-of-classroom learning experiences (85%).

To the third question, what recommendations do alumnae have to prepare women for science, the answers were mostly concerned with women’s issues and perspectives. Formal advising was the category most cited as in need of improvement and respondents emphasized the importance of faculty support and mentoring for a career in science. Dartmouth’s Women in Science project, which provides research opportunities, information, and support, was rated as making a positive contribution by 83% of the respondents. This program provides research internships, a peer mentoring program, an industrial mentoring program, special events, and a newsletter⁶.

At the next step in the pipeline, the career track, studies show that women face discrimination. A 1997 study analyzed the awarding of postdoctoral fellowships at the Swedish Medical Research Council. The Swedish Freedom of the Press Act enabled researchers unprecedented access to peer reviewer evaluation sheets, and the paperwork from the 1995 round of postdoctoral applications was analyzed. In that year, 114 applications were submitted from 62 men and 52 women, and awards were made to 16 men and 4 women. In this postdoctoral fellowship evaluation system each applicant is given a score that is a multiple of scientific competence (typically number and quality of scientific publications) and assessment of their research proposal. Female applicants received lower average scores than men, with the largest difference occurring in the score for scientific competence. However, when the researchers did their own analysis of the applicants’ publication records (using a range of criteria including total number of publications, first author publications, impact factors of journals published in, and total citations), they found that women with comparable publications to men received significantly lower scientific competence scores from reviewers. The authors calculated that a female publication record had to be 2.5 times more scientifically productive than a male’s application to achieve the same competency score—on average, this represented about three extra papers in Nature or Science. In the 1995 data set, only the females with the best publication records received competence scores equivalent to men. However, these women’s scores were equivalent to the least productive male applicants⁷.

One quarter of the applicants to the European Young Investigator awards this year were female. The first round of selection reduced the proportion to 20%. While 10% of the men applying made the shortlist, only 4.7% of women did. The random chance probability of the female proportion being cut to half of men is only 0.05%⁸.

In a study on curricula vitae (CV), researchers sent out two identical CVs to 238 academic scientists, one with a female name, and the other with a male name. Employers were more likely to recommend hiring the male candidate than the female candidate, regardless of whether the viewer was male or female⁹.

At late career stages, studies have found that qualified women tend to back away from research universities because of the impediments they see in balancing high-powered professional jobs and family, and because of discrimination issues. At MIT, university discrimination came under the spotlight in the 1990s due to Nancy Hopkins’ famous study of the status of female faculty there. Her study determined that from the 1970s through the mid-1990s the proportions of female faculty at MIT remained at around 7%, despite the fact that the national number of female science PhDs had been growing steadily. In 1995, women made up only 6.2% of senior faculty at MIT. It was also discovered that while male senior faculty had significantly more lab space than male junior faculty at MIT, female senior faculty had no more lab space than any junior faculty. In 1999, MIT president Charles Vest confessed openly that the university was guilty of gender bias. After the Hopkins study, the proportion of female faculty at MIT grew by 50%¹⁰.

To widely survey the issue of university hiring of women, in 2005 The Graduate Employees and Students Organization at Yale, along with graduate students from Columbia and University of Pennsylvania compiled a report, “The (Un)Changing Face of the Ivy League,” using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System at the US Department of Education. The report found that in 1993 14% of all tenured faculty were women, but by 2003 that percentage had increased to 20%. In 2003 Ivy League campuses recruited 443 new professors into tenure-track jobs, with 150 (34%) of these new hires being women. However, the report showed that there is a higher percentage of women in non-tenure track positions. In recent years Ivy League schools have increased their teaching staff by hiring more graduate students and adjunct professors, which are non-tenure track positions. These jobs tend to pay less, have fewer or no benefits, and are less secure than tenure track positions. The Ivy League has created a two-tier system: Women populate the lower tier with no hope of tenure, but men are the majority in the higher status upper tier. It seems that it’s not enough to create an administrative position to correct the gender disparity; the report recommends school-wide efforts. Labor unions seem to have made significant strides towards equity at universities, lobbying, for example, for the release of data on gender among the student body and faculty. Such transparency helps to make progress towards gender equality. Unions also push for higher wages and better benefits, which tend to help lower tier employees. In addition, better job security helps improve the academic freedom of the lower tier. The New York University graduate employee contract increased earnings in general by about 40%, which had the most impact on the lower wage earners. The report states that improvements in parental leave, tenure timelines, flexible hours, and childcare options will level the playing field for women in academia¹¹.

Recently, Dr. Christine Nusslein-Volhard, director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, has come up with her own solution to help women in science. Her plan is based on the fact that in the early stages of a science career, a woman doesn’t have the money to hire domestic help that would allow her to reach a certain level of professional achievement. She wants to keep distinctively capable women in science that would otherwise wind up “working” for their husbands. Her foundation will award its first of five grants this summer for the equivalent of $500 a month for a period of one to three years¹².

Considering the issue closer to home, how are women scientists treated at The Rockefeller University? This will be explored in depth in the next issue of Natural Selections.

References:

¹ Women in Science: Are They Being Held Back? The New York Academy of Sciences’ Women Investigators Network. April 14, 2005.

² www.cwluherstory.com/CWLUMemoir/naomiscientist.html.

³ Hall, A., Leutwyler, K., “Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?” Scientific American, April 27, 1998.

⁴ Sonnert, G., “Advocating Women”, Scientific American, April 27, 1998.

⁵ Sonnert, G. “Dropping Out”, Scientific American, April 27, 1998.

⁶ “Looking Back: A Retrospective Study of Dartmouth Science Alumnae 1973 to 1999”. Dartmouth Women in Science Project.

⁷ Wenneras, C., Wold, A. Nature vol 387, p.341-343 (1997).

⁸ Watson, D., Anderson, A., Hjorth, J., Nature, Vol 436, July 2005, p.174.

⁹ Steinpres, R.E., Anders, K.A., Ritxke, D. The impact of gender on the review of curricula vitae on job applicants and tenure candidates: A National Emperical Study. Sex Roles: A Journal of Research vol. 41, nos 7/8, 1999, pp509-528.

¹⁰ Lawler, A. Science, Nov. 12, 1999.

¹¹ The (Un)Changing Face of the Ivy League, The Graduate Employees and Students Organization at Yale, February 2005.

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