Engineering Science - Does Science Promote Women? Comments

Comment on 'Does Science Promote Women?' by Geoff Davis

2006-12-13T22:23:26Z

A very interesting point, Cathy! I seem to remember that somewhere in the Ginther & Kahn paper there is a brief aside to the effect that things might be tougher for women at top-tier institutions, but I'm not sure they looked at the issue in detail. You might ask them (I don't know Ginther, but have met Shulamit Kahn briefly, and she seems like she'd be amenable to such questions). I would speculate that the impact of children would be the greatest at institutions that are the most demanding of people's time and energy. However, family issues don't really provide a very good explanation for your observations about Berkeley and Harvard.

Ginther and Kahn are looking at data across all institutions and disciplines; I could certainly see that there might be some interesting non-uniformity once you get to the level of individual departments. I think that people tend to hire / associate with people similar to themselves, so perhaps all-male or almost-all-male places need a bit of leadership (or a kick in the pants) to get with the program.

If it is in fact the case that there is a bit of an old-boys network still at some places, one upside is that as the ranks of women increase, these problems will presumably decline and the resulting virtuous cycle will further accelerate the pace of hiring of women faculty members.

Comment on 'Does Science Promote Women?' by Cathy Kessel

2006-12-13T21:22:14Z

Ginther and Kuhn Very interesting article by Ginther and Kuhn. However, I wish they had categorized the institutions at which tenure occurred. Not all tenured positions are created equal, at least in my opinion.

In mathematics departments, tenure-eligible college faculty members are 31% female, other full-time faculty members are 47% female, and tenured faculty members are 17% female (Lutzer, Maxwell, & Rodi, 2002). It’s certainly possible that some of the “other full-time faculty members” don’t have PhDs.)

In the “top 10” mathematics departments, there are approximately 300 tenured faculty members; 16 of them are female (Jackson, 2004).

Women do earn PhDs from “top ten” departments though. For example,

"In mathematics, UC hired 5.4% female faculty, the national Ph.D. pool is 22.1%, UC graduates 18.4% female Ph.D.s, our comparable institutions graduate 19.6% women Ph.D.s and even the postdoctoral pool (which in mathematics is highly competitive and is an indication of potential for future funding) has 13.2% females in it." Testimony of University of California Chancellor M. R. C. Greenwood on 1/31/01)

In particular, between 1993 to 2003 the mathematics department at Berkeley hired 28 faculty members. None was female. I haven’t checked recently, but after 2003, a woman got a joint appointment in physics and mathematics.

As of May 2006, there has never been a tenured or tenure-track female mathematician in the Harvard mathematics department (Silverberg, 2006)--and it may still be the case.

However, the situation at elite universities may be quite different in physics. The percentage of women getting PhDs in physics is much lower than in math, for example, 18% of physics PhDs went to women in 2003. (It's been around 30% for mathematics, I'm not sure where Greenwood's statistic came from in the quote above.) The American Institute of Physics survey seems to have gotten results similar to that of Ginther and Kuhn with respect to rate of tenure. The following comes from an (FAQ for this survey)[http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/womenfaq.htm]:

Q: What about women at the top physics departments? Perhaps women can get faculty jobs, but not at the elite departments.

A: Women can, and do, get jobs at elite departments. Among the top 20 departments (using NRC rankings), 6% of the full professors are women, 11% of the associate professors are women, and 12% of the assistant professors are women. These percentages are also consistent with degree production in the past, meaning that women are represented on the top 20 faculties at about the levels we would expect.

References

Jackson, A. (2004). Has the women-in-mathematics problem been solved? Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 51(7), 776–783.

Lutzer, D. J., Maxwell, J. W., & Rodi, S. B. (2002). *Statistical abstract of undergraduate programs in the mathematical sciences in the United States. Fall 2000 CBMS Survey.* Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society.

Silverberg, A. (2006). Women at Harvard. Association for Women in Mathematics Newsletter, 36(3), 17–19.

Comment on 'Does Science Promote Women?' by Geoff Davis

2006-11-29T18:21:10Z

Interesting observations, Cathy.

In my (quick) read of the tables in chapter 5 (e.g. page 105) one other thing stood out: a larger fraction of women than men are in academic positions, at least through 1995. The data aggregate everyone who received a PhD from 1970 or so through 1995, and a lot has changed over that time period (though not necessarily the ratios in question). I'd be interested to see some individual cohort data for more recent graduates.

I tried to find further information on the two summary points you cite from page 221. It looks like the main supporting data for the first point (more women than men being "lost") has to do with the 1970 and 1973 PhD cohorts (e.g. pages 78 and 86). I'd be surprised if the differences were still that big for recent cohorts. Interestingly (at least to me) is that the differences in the percentages out of science are not actually all that big in some fields (e.g. math, life sciences, p. 78). The real story is differences in those working part-time or not at all. Judging from p. 90 and onwards, those differences have mostly to do with young children and cultural expectations for who cares for them.

Looks like I need to dig into this report at some point.

Comment on 'Does Science Promote Women?' by Cathy Kessel

2006-11-29T02:23:59Z

Re Greenspun’s Perspective

I agree that academe is not particularly attractive these days. However, if Greenspun gave any statistics indicating that a higher percentage of women than of men go into industry, I missed them. From Scarcity to Visibility suggests it's not the case (see p. 104), at least up to 1995. It certainly might be that things have changed since.

Several years ago, I looked at From Scarcity to Visibility and picked out pieces of interest to me. For Ph.Ds. surveyed in mathematical sciences, in 1995:

• Approximately the same proportion of men and of women had full time academic jobs (p. 127).

From Scarcity to Visibility concludes (about science in general):

• The transition from the Ph.D. to the full-time labor force is a critical point at which relatively, more women than men are lost (p. 221).

• Throughout the career, proportionally more women than men leave science and engineering entirely (p. 221).

Long, J. Scott. (Ed.). (2001). From Scarcity to Visibility: Gender Differences in the Careers of Doctoral Scientists and Engineers. Can be read on the Web Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Comment on 'Does Science Promote Women?' by Geoff Davis

2006-11-22T17:12:24Z

You make a good point about the discussion of women in science being overly focused on academia. I like Philip Greenspun's perspective: there are fewer women in academic science jobs because they choose to get better jobs elsewhere. The biggest loser in all of this is academia itself.

Comment on 'Does Science Promote Women?' by Peter Fiske

2006-11-21T20:46:50Z

Geoff,

The Wall St Journal had an article in yesterday's paper (In the Lead: Women Tell Women - Life in the Top Jobs is Worth the Effort - by Carol Hymowitz, Nov 20, 2006 p. B1) about a panel discussion with 5 top female CEOs and business leaders. I bring this up because the challenges facing women on the tenure track are probably not too dissimilar to those of women on the executive track. Probably a lot of the same factors (childbearling/rearing, famly support) apply in both worlds.

Several interesting comments came out of the panel discussion. First - these women suggested that the word "balance" should be banned from women's vocabularies. According to the panelists, balance = perfection which nobody can achieve, so rather than live with the stress and guilt, accept that sacrifices will be needed on both sides. The women on the panel expressed the concern that the fears some young women have about having an imbalanced work/life situation may cause them to "waive the white flag" before they've even gotten into the game. One of the panelists commented that people can be lonely, get divorced or have troubled kids without having a great career - "so why torpedo your chances of success before you've even tried?"

The reason I bring this panel discussion up because I think that the entire debate about women in academia tends to be somewhat myopic. Most PhDs (men AND women) don't end up in academia. There are lots of good reasons for this: the job is hard and, despite what most graduate students are brainwashed into believing, is probably genuinely rewarding for only a subset of the folks who enter graduate school. During my grad school experience the most common career concern among my fellow grad students was the fear that they'd have to live a life like their advisors!

Everyone on the panel noted that they were sustained in what they did by passion and love of the industry or the subject that was at the heart of their job. If we explored these deeper "satisfaction" issues while in graduate school, we PhDs would probably feel more satisfied with our careers , no matter what pathway we took.

My $0.02