Title IX & why women prefer non-science careers
Heather Buschman
Tuesday, 22 July 2008 03:05 UTC
An interesting article titled A New Frontier for Title IX: Science caught my eye in the New York Times last week. It describes an initiative by the U.S.’s National Science Foundation, Dept. of Energy, and NASA to conduct reviews of lab space and research funding going to men vs. women at several top institutions, including Columbia University and M.I.T.
Title IX is better known in the U.S for preventing discrimination in education, particularly when it comes to mandating equal funding for men’s and women’s school sports teams. If federal funding for research depended on a similar assessment, wouldn’t it do more harm than good to punish departments or universities if they don’t recruit enough women to science?
The NYT article also delves into some interesting studies of why women tend to prefer non-science careers in the first place. Many things have been written about the need for more childcare support or the need to encourage more young girls to pursue scientific careers. Yet as this article points out, there are still significantly fewer women in science in parts of Europe where healthcare, daycare, and maternity leave for women are quite generous (certainly far better than in the U.S.). The article also brings up the point that, rather than being discouraged from pursuing science careers, many successful female scientists have switched careers partway up the ladder after realizing that they were pushed into science without actually enjoying it. Perhaps, like sports, there are simply fewer women interested in science.
I was left pondering a couple of questions that I’d like to put out there…
1) Is the tendency for women to prefer people-oriented careers over science inherent or shaped by society? (Of course most things are a bit of both, but it’s my opinion that there must be a good deal of biology making social work or teaching more attractive to women. After all, isn’t it generally accepted that we are naturally better communicators and nurturers? Why wouldn’t women be more interested in careers that celebrate their innate abilities?)
2) Does anyone think “Title Nining” science is a good idea? Is it fair to punish research institutions if women just aren’t as interested in science as men are? Are there better ways of discouraging sexual discrimination, without discriminating against other successful scientists, both male and female?
Updated 22 July 2008 03:13 UTC
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Wow! Thanks for bringing all that to our attention, Hilary. I think as graduate students we just get a “feeling” that it’s tough to stick it out and push for that coveted tenure-track position, but I never gave much thought to the specifics of why, like reward systems. I know work/home balance plays a huge part in the career choices women make, but I think it’s really interesting to hear about the other factors.
I was really surprised by one of the accounts in the last article you mention, in which a woman used a gender-neutral alias at work. It turns out that she received a completely different type of email response as “Finn” than she did as Josephine. I never felt like I was treated differently at my mostly-male undergraduate school, in graduate school, or in my current job, but that really makes me wonder how often we are perceived and treated differently without ever realizing it…
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Really interesting to read all this – I am fairly new at UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology, but lots of the comments here are in line with issues we work on.
I heard Lynda Gratton of the London Business School speak recently: she said that failure to stay in a job and rise is not to do with being female, its to do with being in a minority. Everything you do and say becomes visible when you are the only one. She also said that women Chief Execs tend to appoint more women, to more senior positions.
On another note, we have just started a blog for visiting women scientists/engineers/technicians etc, and our first blogger, Jenny, is an aeronautical engineer who has moved into wind turbines. She writes “I think in general women engineers are more attracted to environmental and health related companies, as many women enter engineering to make the world a better place to live.” I wondered if you agree… Perhaps engineering needs to be marketed in a completely different way…
Best wishes, Ruth
PS Great podcast, Andrew. -
In my 10 years or so of covering science policy and science career issues, I’ve encountered a bifurcated response from women scientists themselves. Some successful women say they want to succeed without any formal policy assistance—even if it means they need to work longer and harder. The subtext is, if they receive any kind of non-merit-based leg up, they will be considered less worthy than their male colleagues—even if they’ve bagged the same number of papers, citations, grant dollars, etc.
Others say that there’s strong evidence that women are discriminated against—whether it’s institutional, personal (closeted misogynist department chairs?) or functional (the need to take time out to start/raise families). As a result, some sort of policy approach is justified.
The argument either way closely resembles the one for affirmative action for minorities in the US—a hot-button politica issue, if there ever was one. I suspect stalwart successful women scientists don’t want their hard-earned success to be tarnished with what they see as the stigma of affirmative action. Meanwhile, the other group, based on history and a plethora of past studies (perhaps making the latest NIH gender issues call for grant applications just a wee bit behind the curve) recognizes that something needs to be done. The question, as always, is what. I will scour the Naturejobs archives for relevant stuff about this issue, and perhaps invite some experts to jump into this fray. Stay tuned!
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Problems & Solutions
I like to couch most issues I write about—whether science, policy or creative—in terms of problems and solutions. Naturejobs has documented lots of both in terms of women in science. However, the problems seem legion in terms of discipline, sector, function and geography. Most of the solutions appear to be small projects or limited initiatives.
Here’s a break-down, from the Naturejobs archive:Problems
You know the situation is serious when satirical newspaper The Onion jokes about “National Organization for Women turns 39 again”. The uncomfortable humor here is even more double-edged when taking into account the NIH’s research proposal to examine what problems women scientists face. The NIH’s call for proposals seems noble, but perhaps someewhat redundant, as there’s plenty of data out there—like this piece about the dearth of women physicists and this even more depressing study documenting instances of blatant sexism during lab visits in UK physics departments. Of course, these situations aren’t limited to physicists, or the UK. Global stats aren’t exactly encouraging. And imbalance may be even worse in the prvate sector—especially in biotech management. I could go on and on and refer you to multiple NSF and NAS studies, but you’ve probably already read them, and you get the picture…Solutions
Mentoring schemes for and by women make a lot of sense as do programs that address maternity issues and child care.Those sorts of programs—when available—directly help women scientists. But many argue that institutional change is also needed. The EU has stepped into the fray with one equality idea. A program that aims to reduce gender bias in peer review makes a lot of sense to me, as does training programs to help women deal with institutional and personal bias. And proactive recruiting programs for women should also help—but of course, risk being lablled as affirmative action. But if all the other programs don’t become more widespread and the scope and scale of the problems continue, perhaps there’s little other choice?
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A few comments for Maxine, Anna, and Paul:
Paul—the sort of humor to which you refer in the Onion is perhaps one of the most hurtful things because a). if you don’t laugh at it, you’re considered humorless (‘come on, it was just a joke’ kind of stuff) and b). it is so repetitive. Those kind of jokes are thrown around causally so frequently that I think it would take an incredibly strong woman not to be affected at some level. There’s a great article about it called Diminished by Discrimination We Scarcely See, by a Yale Physicist, Meg Urry, who used to work for NASA.
Anna—in response to your comment that some people (probably mostly men) think that the quality of science would be threatened if there were more women in science, Professor Urry refers to a really good statement from one of her colleagues in a paper she wrote on this subject in her paper, Physics: For Women, the last frontier.
He says “Excellent men have nothing to fear from transparency.”
Maxine—A few comments. Do you think that women are the ones who “fade out?” The reason I ask is because Professor Urry says the exact opposite in an interview discussing gender inequality in science. She says that for men, getting tenure may be the big “touchdown,” and once they get tenure they fade, whereas women are constant and consistent.
I highly recommend listening to the entire audio of this interview (I’m not saying that because I was the one conducting the interview, but because I think she makes some amazing points especially towards the end when she talks about having a family, a husband, and a career.
As far as solutions go for this problem, I thought Paul’s links were very appropriate, because I think this is a subject that could easily be discussed and argued in circles, without anyone doing anything to actually help the problem. I would love some more ideas like that. What I’m trying to do right now is to interview as many women scientists as possible and put their opinions and stories out there, but I’m sure there’s more that I could do.
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@Matt: thank you for that fascinating interview, which I wouldn’t have found without your link. I absolutely agree with Dr. Urry’s observation that like mentors like, most easily and naturally. We all need support. And validation.
@Paul: you wrote, “stalwart successful women scientists don’t want their hard-earned success to be tarnished with what they see as the stigma of affirmative action.” There is a corollary, which is related to the question of self-worth: if there was any perceived “help” or “advantage”, a recipient of some such policy may well feel that she did not deserve the professional success which she eventually attained, since she had a leg up relative to before that policy.
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I meant “fading out” in the sense that there are fewer senior women in most scientific fields in proportion to the number entering them. I did not mean “fading out” in the sense of producing poorer quality work.
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I just wrote
there are fewer senior women in most scientific fields in proportion to the number entering themI should have added “compared with men”. My point is that there are more male senior scientists than there are women in most fields, whereas at the more junior levels, the numbers are more even (if I have interpreted/remembered the figures correctly).
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Most professional scientific societies have some activities to promote women in science—or at least highlight the disproportionate representation. American Women in Science
responded to the “New York Times piece”: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15tier.html?_r=1&oref=sloginpiece: on Title IX and women scientists and has a plethora of other information and support for women scientists.The American Chemical Society has its own series of reports, including one about even more disproportionate representation among older scientists and another about how to patch this leaky pipeline
The American Association for the Advancement of Science has also been active in this area, including one report about international opportunities for women scientists.A piece on the Royal Society website shows that this is not a new argument; one famed woman scientist over 100 years ago echoed what I see is an attitude held by some successful women scientists today—that there are only good and bad scientists.
The Royal Society offers a number of networking events for women scientists.
The European Molecular Biology Organization has a list of gender equity programs.
The International Union of Pure and Applied Physicists has been following this issue for years, with an active working group and a plethora of reports. IUPAP physics working group been active in presenting reports and programs
Finally, the European Union has its own reports, statistics and policy initiatives
The question I have is, with all this acknowledgment of the issue and activity from so many societies and organizations, why hasn’t there been more positive change? Please let me know what you think, and also share any other useful reports, organizations, initiatives etc. on this forum.
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@Ruth – thanks for the note on the podcast. It’s always good for us to get feedback on what topics people want us to cover, it helped that Jan Bogg is really passionate about the subject.
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