This is a blog post I wanted to write a while ago, after reading a short article in Nature about the subject, but I pretty much forgot about it until today. Since the only thing on TV tonight is the Motor City Bowl (Central Michigan vs. Florida Atlantic, anyone?), now is probably a fine time.
So the question of why there are so few women at the upper echelons of the scientific establishment seems to vex everyone (note: this is different than the issue of why there are fewer women in physics and engineering, which is not something I have an answer for), but to me, the problem and solutions seem pretty obvious. It’s not a matter of innate personality traits or encouragement received as a high school student, or anything like that. It’s the same reason there are so few women at the upper echelons of many competitive fields— women have to have babies, and they have a limited time in which to have those babies. It’s a simple problem to pinpoint, and it can be dealt with in a number of ways; unfortunately, all of them are difficult for either the women or the scientific establishment, which is why I think we continue to discuss it again and again.
At this point, at least in the United States, if there is any kind of misogyny that female students encounter over the course of their education, it’s minimal at best. If anything, science education programs, beginning in middle school and continuing all the way to graduate and medical school, go out of their way to attract women, and it’s worked— the majority of students entering medical school are now women, and about half the individuals entering graduate school for biology are female. It’s not discouragement that happens early in a woman’s career; rather, it’s the social and biological issues that all women, scientists or not, begin to face sometime in their 20’s.
The problem is this: if they’re going to have a family— and statistically, the majority of women are— they need to find a father and have babies in the same window of time in which scientists get paid the least and need to work the hardest (say, late grad student through junior faculty member). There are a few solutions to this problem. First, the age at which people get their first faculty position could be lowered, allowing women to put off starting a family until they know where they are going to be living for the foreseeable future, have a little more money and freedom to determine their hours, etc. Pretty difficult to do. Second, scientists could make more money at a younger age, allowing them to start a family earlier by giving them a way to get decent day care for more hours, etc. Never going to happen. (This, by the way, is likely the reason that you don’t see female doctors leaving medicine after med school— they can afford to pay for decent child care, not to mention the fact that they have much greater freedom in terms of deciding where they’re going to set up shop). Science could somehow make it easier for couples to get faculty positions in the same locations; again, very difficult. Finally, women who want to reach the upper echelons of science can choose not to have a family, and focus instead on their career. Obviously, this is the easiest and most common solution to the problem, but is it an example of the cure being worse than the disease?
Which brings me to my final question: why do we need more women in the upper echelons of science? Does it make a difference in terms of the quality of work produced, if it’s produced by equal numbers of men and women, or all men, or all women? Or is it more an issue of aesthetics, that we don’t want to feel like we’ve excluded anyone unfairly from the field?
The problem is not with ‘the upper echelons’ the problem is simply with having a sensibly paid contract that provides enough safety to have a family. Presently we have a lot of crappy paid short-term jobs, then there is a huge gap in which many people and dominantly women drop out, and then there are the few permanet positions everybody fights for. This is completely nonsensical. What we really need are decent middle-class jobs that one can make some family planning with.
Dara, two quick comments:
Science could somehow make it easier for couples to get faculty positions in the same locations; again, very difficult.
You are assuming that scientists are partnered with other scientists. This is not always the case (in fact, I think the majority of scientists I’ve met and worked with had partners that were not in science.) So the overall effect of that would be minimal.
The other comment… are you serious with your last statement? Or just being provocative?
Re the last comment: please tell me that you are being provocative. There is simply no such thing as ‘fair’ exclusion, which your statement implies.
If there is gender equality in undergrad classes, one would expect equality eventually (taking into account the length of a career, and the time it takes to progress to the higher levels) at the higher levels of science.
Science is an endeavour for all people regardless of ability, gender, race or whatever label we’re using today. To exclude or include any group on the strength of their label is simply absurd.
Tough to qualify for maternity benefits, though, Katherine, when you are on a succession of short-term contracts, compared with jobs in other professions.
In defense of Dara’s last paragraph, which people are pouncing on, I’ve wondered the same thing. For example, a university may have a rule that one of the top three candidates for any tenure track position needs to be a woman, and if there is not a woman there, they need to jump through a series of bureaucratic hoops to explain why there are only men. In this system, if the top three candidates are men and the fourth is a woman, it is much easier and far less hassle to send a polite rejecting letter to male candidate number 3 and bump up the woman to a top three position, giving her a chance at a job that someone else deserved more than she did.
The problem is that there are not many women left in the system at that point, and with tricks like this they are being pushed ahead of more qualified men. At this level, gender should not be a factor anymore, unless there are equal numbers of men and women applying and still more men being hired (but that’s not happening). If there really are twice as many men applying to top positions as women (in other words: one in three candidates is a woman) then on average women would take up one out of every three top spots, but by forcing there to be at least one in every top three, some men are falling through the cracks and that shouldn’t happen.
(The “one of every top three must be female” rule is not fictional, but I can’t find it in print now, and also don’t want to single out a particular institution when this is very likely a common practice.)
Hi Eva,
I totally agree on this problem. I’ve seen the same thing happening not in science but in a political party I used to work for. The result was that less qualified women were chosen over better qualified men. This has a huge backlash in that women then face the prejudice they are only in a position because they happen not to have a Y chromosome. One has to be very careful exactly how one approaches the problem. Best,
B.
Sabine and Eva, I agree with the specific case you describe.
Dara, your statement sounds more general to me, though. You did not say ‘what is the right way to get more women into the upper echelons of science’, you say why do we need more women in the upper echelons of science. Maybe we need a clarification?
@Maxine: I wasn’t trying to comment on the issues of short term contracts in science that hurt things like mat leave and the like. The short term contract issue hurts all scientists – couples who have to do long distance relationships, couples who feel they can’t have kids because one or both don’t have sufficient job security, and females who want to have kids.
It has always struck me as crazy that we invest so much in training our scientists, then leave them at the mercy of short term contracts etc.
Eva/Steffi : I think the last paragraph is badly worded and I’m hoping that Dara may clarify it.
I can kind of see the question though, if you base it on the “men and women are alike and then does it matter if there are men or women in the upper echelons of science”… then it isn’t really a need for women.
Since I don’t nessecary agree with that statement though, I think there is a need for diversity in general and not only in science.
Sabine> I understand what you mean, especially with your examples, but inwards I cringe when the “The result was that less qualified women were chosen over better qualified men.” statement comes up. It is always used against “qoutas” and “trying to make things less homogenic” to explain why noone would want to be judged by those criterias.
One of the key things though, that I have a problem with, is the tossing around of the word ‘qualified’. How do we measure ‘qualified’? Who decide what makes Man A more qualified than Woman A? (using the general argument as you did in the scene of political communities). Usually these are set things that “people already in place use to describe ‘what is needed’”. These qualities are not always an objective thing, rather the opposite. And also, the qualities a person not like all the other people bring in might be exactly what the “place” needs? It is hard to know what you are lacking until you see the result. And a qulified person usually is made up by several different qualities and maybe some of them out weight the others?*
Of course, in science it is all so easy – just look at the publications and then you will know who has the better “qualifications”…right?
Katherine> I have a whole heap of things I agree with you on this maternity/paternity leave thingy and short contracts but I have already commented a long comment. In general I think it is suffice to say, I agree with you, so far at least.
*there are some universities in Sweden that, when hiring assstant professors (a very teching focused position called Lektor in Swedish) look at the candidates and have to weigh their teching abilities and their scientific record. You rank them on both and then you compare the numbers, i.e. you can be number 1 on teaching and 4 on science and vice versa… I agree that the system isn’t perfect but it is another way of looking at it…)