Scientific achievements of women undervalued

Many of us are familiar with stories of Nobel Prize-snubbing, such as in the cases of Chien-Shiung Wu and Rosalind Franklin.  Both women were extraordinary scientists who made important contributions to Nobel Prize winning work, but were left out while the Nobel Prize was received by male colleagues.  While we hope that this sort of devaluation of the work done by women scientists is in the past, a very disconcerting study from Social Studies of Sciences recently revealed that “when men chair committees that select scientific awards recipients, males win the awards more than 95% of the time”, even while women make up over 20% of the nomination pool.  And while women are winning more awards than in the past, they are more likely to win awards for their service or teaching than for their scholarly achievements.  Between 2001 and 2010, for the societies examined in the study, women won 10% of science awards, ~32% of service awards, and ~37% of teaching awards.

The authors suggest that the fact that women win more service and teaching awards than science awards is reflective of “the tacit assumption that scientists and rigorous scholars are men, and that women are incongruent with the scientist role.”

Increasing the number of women on the awards committee helps to even the score, and authors suggest solutions such as: ensuring women are represented well in prize committees, reviewing award criteria for bias, and having oversight committees.

 

Jack Welch to women: Over deliver to achieve equality in workplace

At a Women in the Economy conference held this week, Jack Welch, former General Electric chairman and CEO, suggested that the key to women’s advancement in the workplace was working harder.  Welch told a group of women that they should “over deliver”, and that results were the only thing that would help them advance in the workplace.  Ugh. To me, this suggests one of two, equally insulting viewpoints:

1) Welch realizes that women need to work harder than men to achieve the same level of success, but doesn’t care.

or!

2)  Welch thinks that women aren’t working as hard as men, and this is why they haven’t achieved workplace equality.

Either way, this is seriously insulting to women, and this sort of attitude effects the advancement of women in all fields.  Not surprisingly, the female audience members did not take kindly to his suggestion.  An article from Forbes does a good job at illustrating the fact that women are working just as hard, if not harder, than men to achieve success, citing studies that show women outperforming men in “12 out of 16 competencies that comprise outstanding leadership.”   So clearly, Jack Welch is totally out of touch with his suggestion that women just need to work a little harder if they want to get ahead.  It’s apparent that women are already working hard and are more than capable of being in leadership roles, and that other factors are at play that are affecting the advancement of women in male-dominated fields.  I thought this was pretty established, but apparently not…

White House Report on Women and Economy

The White House recently released a report on women entitled “Keeping America’s Women Moving Forward: The Key to an Economy Built To Last.”  The report includes a section on women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields.  STEM-related employment is expected to increase by 16.5% by 2020.  For this reason, it is so important to make sure women are equally represented in STEM. Women make up 25% of the STEM workforce, and therefore are missing out on valuable employment opportunities.  In addition, STEM employers are missing out on valuable employees!

Another reason why it’s so important to encourage women to pursue STEM jobs is because women in STEM fields earn more.  On average, women holding STEM jobs earn 33% more than women holding non-STEM jobs.  There is also better pay equity in STEM fields – while women in non-STEM fields earn 21% less than their male coworkers, women in STEM-fields earn 14% less than their male coworkers.  Granted, both of those pay inequity numbers are terrible.  The pay inequity is just a little less terrible in STEM fields.

The report goes on to detail things the government is currently doing to increase the representation of women in STEM.  The entire report is very long, and contains a variety of topics related to the status of women in the U.S.  It’s worth picking out a few sections you’re particularly interested in to read

Study: Women physicists have less access to resources

In “Women in physics: A tale of limits”, an article recently published in Physics Today, Rachel Ivie and Casey Langer Tesfaye stress looking beyond the underrepresentation of women in physics to determine whether women in physics have equal access to resources.  Although women in physics are still underrepresented (they make up 17% of physics PhDs), concentrating on that can take focus off the day-to-day issues women physicists face.

In all, the authors had survey data from 15000 physicists from 130 different countries.  While the article can be read in it’s entirety here, I’d like to highlight some main points.

1) The majority of housework is more likely to be done by women than men.  The female physicists are also more likely to be married to someone with a high level of education. The authors write, “Taken together, the survey results indicate that if family responsibilities do affect physicists’ careers, they are more likely to affect women than men.”

2) Having children slows the career progress of female physicists, but not the career progress of male physicists.  In fact, according to a different survey, male faculty members with children are the most likely group to achieve tenure.

3) In both less developed countries and highly developed countries, women have less access than men to key resources such as funding, office space, lab space, and equipment (among other things).

4) In both less developed countries and highly developed countries, women have less career advancing experiences, such as being invited to give talks at conferences, and serving on committees for grant agencies.

I highly recommend taking a look at the tables and figures in the article, as they reveal distressing facts about the status of women in physics worldwide.  Not only are women physicists underrepresented, but they have less access than men to important resources and career advancing experiences.  The careers of female physicists are also affected negatively by family responsibilities while the careers of male physicists are not.

Study suggests link between lack of female empowerment and existence of gender gap

Recently, a study examined spatial reasoning skills in two tribes in Northeast India.  The tribes have similar lifestyles and diets, live nearby, and are closely related according to DNA test.  The major difference between the tribes is that one is patrilineal and one is matrilineal.  In a matrilineal society, things like surnames, property, etc. would be passed down through females.  In contrast, a patrilineal society would pass them down through males.  In the patrilineal tribe, men outperformed women, taking 35% less time to complete the spatial reasoning task.  In the matrilineal tribe, there was no significant difference between the two sexes on the spatial reasoning task.

The authors of the study then examined various factors that could possibly have resulted in this discrepancy.  Males were more likely to be educated in the patrilineal society, and it was found that education accounted for 1/3 of the discrepancy.  It was also found that male ownership of homes had a large effect – the gender gap was significantly less in homes that were not owned solely by men.  However, who would inherit the home had no effect – siblings of the sex that was to inherit the home didn’t outperform their non-inheriting siblings.

The authors were clear that the research should be taken with a grain of salt, because the cause of the gap could not be definitively pinned down.  In addition, it isn’t possible to know whether these results hold for the entire population.  However, the study does indicate that certain spatial skills appear to be influenced by cultural factors, specifically those that empower/oppress women.  I think it’s extremely likely that gender gaps previously attributed to by innate differences between the sexes are largely due to cultural factors.

To read more, check out this article: Gender Gap Vanishes in Female-Empowered Cultures

Happy (belated) Women’s Equality Day!

Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of Women’s Equality Day.  Women’s Equality Day began in 1971, and August 26th was chosen as the day to commemorate the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.  Women have come a long way since 1920 (when the 19th Amendment was passed), but there is still work to be done!  For example, women still only make 79 cents for every dollar men make, and only 12 Fortune 500 companies are run by women.  There is also a significant gender gap that still exists in the sciences – women make up just 24% of employees in all STEM jobs.  I experience this gender gap in my physics classes – in high school, I was one of two girls in my AP Physics class of ~25 students, and in my college classes, there are typically only two girls in physics classes with 15 students.  This is not acceptable, and it’s something that needs to be addressed and remedied.  It’s important to stay informed about things that hinder women’s advancement in the sciences – such as unconscious bias, and lack of role models or mentors – so that we can work to ensure women achieve equality in the sciences.

U.S. Dept of Commerce: Women underrepresented in STEM, have been for last decade

The U.S. Department of Commerce recently released a report about the status of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) entitled “Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation”.  I read through the executive summary of the report, available for download here.  Here are some of their findings:

• Women comprise 48% of the U.S. workforce, but just 25% of STEM jobs.  This has been consistent throughout the last decade, even as more college-educated women have entered the workforce.
• From 2000 to 2009, the percentage of women in all STEM  jobs has not changed from 24%.  This can be broken down by field.  The percentage of women in computer science and math jobs has decreased from 30% to 27%, the percentage of women in engineering has increased from 13% to 14%, the percentage of women in physical/life science related jobs has increased from 36% to 40%, and the percentage of women STEM managers has increased from 23% to 25%.
• The gender wage gap for STEM jobs is 14%.  This means that women in STEM jobs earn 86 cents for every dollar a man in a STEM job makes.  This is less than the non-STEM job wage gap of 21%.
• Women in STEM fields earn 33% more on average than their female counterparts in non-STEM jobs.  For men, the difference is 25%.
• The gender wage gap for college-educated STEM workers is 12%.  Broken down by STEM field, the highest gender wage gap exists in computer science and math.  The lowest gender wage gap is for engineering jobs, at 7%.
• In 2009, there were 2.5 million college-educated working women with STEM degrees, compared to 6.7 million men.
• 57% of college-educated working women with a STEM degree have their bachelors degree in a physical/life science.  In comparison, 31% of college-educated working men with a STEM degree have their bachelors degree in a physical/life science.  The bulk of men with STEM majors choose engineering degrees.
• 40% of men with STEM degrees work in STEM jobs. 26% of women with STEM degrees work in STEM jobs.

To conclude, the report finds that women are “underrepresented both in STEM jobs and STEM undergraduate degrees, and have been consistently over the last decade.“  Women who receive STEM degrees are actually less likely to work in STEM than men who receive STEM degrees.  While the gender wage gap is smaller in STEM fields than for other fields, it is still a significant gap.  The report doesn’t attempt to explain why gender differences in STEM exist.

Too pretty to do math?

This magnet was sold on forever21.com.

Recently, a magnet became available on forever21.com with the statement ‘I’m too pretty to do math’.  After the company received complaints, they removed the magnet from their website.

It’s pretty disgraceful that Forever 21 would sell a magnet that perpetuates such a ridiculous stereotype.  Forever 21 is a stylish clothing outfitter who sells mainly to teenage girls and young women.  A magnet like this would be certain to reach a wide audience of girls.  This quote is tying one’s looks to one’s intelligence – saying that subjects like math (and by extension, science) are only for girls who aren’t “pretty”.  This is bad for several reasons.  For one, it discourages girls from pursuing math-oriented careers for fear of being seen as “uncool”.  It sends the message that girls who want to be pretty and feminine shouldn’t pursue math, which gets the reputation of being difficult and boring.  It also relies on the stereotype that women aren’t as good at math as men.  One article mentions that there would never be a magnet stating “I’m too handsome to do math.”

You would think that as increasing numbers of women pursue careers in science, the stereotype about women being bad at math would die down.  But apparently not!  While it’s good that the magnet has been taken off the website, it’s pretty terrible that it was ever available in the first place.  Because math is cool! And because whether a person is good or bad at math has nothing to do with their gender.

Discussing under-representation of women in physics leads to stronger “physics identity” for girls

This article from Scientific American examines the factors that cause students to choose physics, and relates it to the under-representation of women in science.

First, the author discusses what influences a student’s decision to pursue physics?  One factor is an early interest in science.  More so than mathematics achievement, this is a good predictor of whether a student will major in science as an undergraduate.  Also extremely important is a student’s confidence in his or her abilities.  Both male and female students who are more confident in their ability to succeed or complete a task are more likely to get good grades in physics.  Parents, teachers, and fellow students also have the ability to influence a student’s decision.  In one study, it was found that the “more mothers believed in their children’s science and math abilities in grade 7, the more likely those students were to pursue careers in science at age 24.”  The fact that outsiders can have such a strong influence on the careers that students choose to pursue can be problematic when girls encounter people who think that math/science are for boys.

Researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics surveyed “3,800 American undergraduate students about their physics interests, confidence and career plans, along with their experiences in high school physics classes.”  The researchers then measured each student’s “physics identity”, which reflects how much they see themselves as the right type of person for physics.  A person with a strong physics identity would have confidence in their ability to complete physics problems, an interest in physics, would participate in physics-related activities, and have other people recognize them as the right type of person for physics. The researchers asked students questions about their high school physics experience; how they were taught, the types of resources they had, etc.  They also asked students if teachers addressed subjects outside of the typical physics curriculum, such as ethical issues, benefits of a career in science, and the under-representation of women.

They found several factors that were related to a strong physics identity.  For men and women, discussing cutting-edge physics, “frequent labs addressing students’ beliefs about the world, opportunities for peer teaching, and encouraging student questions” all led to stronger physics identities.  They found that one classroom experience led to a stronger physics identity for women only – the discussion of the under-representation of women in physics.  Women who were in classes where they discussed the fact that there were fewer women in physics had significantly stronger physics identities.  The discussions had no impact on men.

Acknowledging the under-representation of women in physics to high school students can perhaps help to decrease the gender gap.  Social factors still appear to play a large role in whether students decide to pursue science or not, and having a good teacher is extremely important in encouraging students to go into the sciences.

Female undergrads more likely to answer questions in math class when professor is female

Researchers from the University of Amherst recently studied the performance of undergraduate students with male and female math professors.  The differences that appear in the performance of female students is particularly fascinating.  The data breaks down like this:

1) Percentages of female students attempting to answer questions posed to the class (beginning of the semester)

• With male professor: 11%
• With female professor: 7%

2) Percentages of female students attempting to answer questions posed to the class (end of the semester)

• With male professor: 7%
• With female professor: 46%

3) Percentage of female students approaching professor for help after class (beginning of the semester)

• With male professor: 12%
• With female professor: 12%

4) Percentage of female students approaching professor for help after class (end of the semester)

• With male professor: 0%
• With female professor: 14%

Finally, the researchers evaluated how much women “identified” with mathematics and found that women were less confident in their mathematical abilities when their teachers were men (even when the women were scoring higher than men on tests).

So what does this tell us?  First of all, we need to make women scientists and mathematicians more visible!  Having female role models is  a significant way of boosting women’s confidence and participation in mathematics, so we need to show students that there are many successful female scientists and mathematicians.  Second, there are subtle factors that may alter a woman’s decision to pursue science or math.  While overt discrimination still exists, it is important to be aware of these subtleties, because they play a role in the under-representation of women in STEM fields as well.

Reference: Psych-Out Sexism by Shankar Vedantam