From: nadel@attatash.aero.org (Miriam Nadel)
Subject: Re: women in science
Organization: /usr/lib/news/organization
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 21:32:24 GMT

In article <1992Sep30.025437.24415@news.columbia.edu> stone@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Glenn Stone) writes:
>I do have some numbers, from the May 1991 Science.  Data are from an
>NSF survey of employed PhD's.
>
>
>                % white    % female
>
>psychology         95.4        36.0
>medical            88.9        29.1
>biology            89.8        23.4
>social science     90.7        21.2
>computer sci       86.0        11.6
>chemistry          86.6        10.7
>math               88.7         8.7
>environment        91.8         8.4
>agriculture        92.8         7.7
>physics/astr       89.8         4.7
>engineering        79.1         3.1
>
>It doesn't look to me like the orthodox view, as expressed by the
>usually heterodox Ken Mitchell, that girls get their interest in
>science drummed out of them, holds up very well.  Why would we drum
>out interest in physics and astronomy, but not interest in medicine
>and biology?

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
Ph.D. in engineering and say that it probably isn't worth it for anyone
who isn't interested in staying in academia.)

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
that the nay-sayers were a minority and that I was actively encouraged by
other professors.  But if I weren't the sort of person whose natural reaction
to being told I ought not do something were to say "Damn it, I'll show them"
I probably wouldn't have made it.)

I do know that women drop out of grad school at a much higher rate than men.
One factor is financial support.  I don't know current figures but I do 
recall an NSF study a decade ago that indicated that women were more likely
to be offered teaching assistantships while men were offered research
assistantships.  An R.A. is directly related to your degree and gives you
the opportunity to show off a lot more and to become the favored student
of your advisor.  One result was that women in academia tended to be more
likely to end up at non-research oriented universities since their perceived
experience was as teachers.

In engineering, another issue is that grad school is unattractive to
Americans in general.  (At least when the job market is good.  Hard to say
what the story is now.)  More than 50% of the engineering Ph.D.s go to
foreign students.  Women are even more underrepresented in engineering in
other countries (and particularly those countries from which most of the
grad students come) so this is a factor.  

As for biological vs. physical science, I think another thing that makes
a difference has to do with visibility.  If girls show any interest in
science, they often have to find out for themselves what to do with it, and
are more likely to end up in the more visible areas.  Most people know what
doctors do.  Almost nobody knows what engineers or physicists do.  I was
definitely pushed towards medicine by my parents and by teachers who saw I
liked and was interested in science.  When I started college, I was sure I
was going to major in chemistry and maybe be pre-med, but I stumbled on
interesting stuff going on in ME.  (Being at MIT helped!)  

I'm a little surprised the astronomy number is so low because I seem to know
of a lot of female astronomers

Miriam Nadel