From: stone@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Glenn Stone)
Subject: Re: women in science
Reply-To: stone@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Glenn Stone)
Organization: Columbia University
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 16:35:03 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.213224.5551@speedy.aero.org> nadel@attatash.aero.org (Miriam Nadel) writes:

>
>You might note that these statistics are possibly misleading since they
>refer to employed Ph.D.s and in some of these fields Ph.D.s are relatively
>rare.  You're more likely to need a Ph.D. to do interesting work in biology
>than you are to do interesting work in engineering.  (I have a

That's certainly true for engineering.  For most of the other fields,
I think employed PhD's are a pretty useful proxy.

>I suspect that if you look at undergraduate degrees you see a different
>pattern.  I read recently (but I don't recall where) that about 50% of the
>bachelor's degrees in math are awarded to women, for example.  I certainly
>felt somewhat discouraged as an undergrad in mechanical engineering.  It
>wasn't exactly a joy to deal with remarks like "it's a good thing you're going
>to grad school so you won't be taking a job away from a man."  (I should note

You're quite right that a good next step is to look at sex ratios at
different stages of the career.  I don't have comparative statistics
but I can relate the results of a study (not published yet but
summarized in Science 257:1611) of neuroscience.  There is some
attrition among women before the PhD: 43% of the student members of
the Soc for Neuroscience are women, 36% of neuroiscience PhD's.  No
attrition at the postdoc step; at least at the Nat Inst of
Neurological Diseases and Stroke, women got 38% of the postdoc
fellowships.  The real attrition is at the next step, application to
faculty positions: women accounted for only 18% of the applications.
The author urges "remedial actions" at that step but doesn't even
suggest what these actions should be; he apparently doesn't know what
the problem is.

I'm sure there are various problems but a major one is the conflict
between the tenure clock and the biological clock; I would say a
typical age for someone to have have just completed a postdoc in
neuroscience would be 30, and jumping into a demanding professorship
right then would preclude ever having a family (or make it much more
difficult than it is already).  

I, for one, would like to see universities and other research
institutions develop career tracks that recognize that child-rearing
requires a lot of time for a few years, but that there are a lot of
top-flight scholars out there who will be highly productive before
kids, highly productive after the kids are in grade school, and at
least partly productive in between.

This is exactly what tenure clocks fail to recognize.

This is a larger problem for women than men, but it's a problem for
men too.  Right now my kids are 2 and 5; they're changing every day,
and I'd love to spend more time with them.  But as an untenured
professor, I'm working long days.  My wife has a very well-paid
position as a social scientist and director of a research program, but
she'd trade it in a minute for a half-time position that could turn
into a full-time one again after the kids are older.

Anyway, child-raising isn't the only problem women scientists are
encountering in the career ladder, but it's one very important one.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Glenn Davis Stone                                BITNET: stone@cunixf
  Columbia University            INTERNET: stone@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu
-------------------------------------------------------------------------