Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering. A Life Sequence Analysis.

A Life Sequence Analysis At the outset we should emphasize that this article is organized in a somewhat atypical fashion; that is, we have merged the existing literature on this topic with our own original results, rather than having composed separate literature review and findings sections. This unusual organization reflects the explicit purposes of our study: (1) to synthesize what others have learned about this important topic and then (2) to test those themes by analyzing two national data sets. Further, we illustrate rather than report all the data that served as the bases of our empiricism, in keeping with the study emphases: We do not want to overstate the importance of our own results, compared to the much more extensive work of others, in reaching our conclusions. In sum, the conclusions that we report represent an integration of the work of previous researchers and of our own original efforts. Background Underutilization of women and minorities in science and engineering is a problem of national priority; social equity and the quality of U.S. labor are involved. Although the numbers for minorities remain discouraging, women have nearly reached or even exceeded parity with men as entrants into numerous scientific fields; nevertheless, their representation in many specialties remains substantially below their distribution in the population (National Research Council, 1991, 1994; Seymour & Hewitt, 1994; Commission on Professionals, 1994). Not only does the lack of parity raise obvious social concerns, the quality of the science and engineering labor force is at issue, for even though the supply of scientists and engineers appears, at least for the present, to be adequate to national needs, larger labor supply pools translate into higher quality scientific workers, thereby increasing marginal labor productivity and, in turn, the productivity of the overall economy. (1) Put another way, all else being equal, we would expect that the more women and minorities enter these fields, which are known to be powerful contributors to national productivity, the larger will be the nation's stock of scientists and engineers, the greater will be the quality of that stock, and the greater will be the productivity of the nations's labor force. Underrepresentation of women and minorities in science and engineering is not a new topic in science policy research. A recent review of the literature identified no less than 120 empirical and theoretical undertakings related directly to the issue (Leslie & Oaxaca, 1997). During 1995 and 1996 alone, many new articles on the subject were published or presented at national conferences (e.g., Barrett, 1996; Ethington, 1995; Paulson, Hagedorn, Petrides, & Wenzel, 1995; Ross, Volkwein, & Vogt, 1995; Sax, 1996; Yaeger, 1995; Zaruba & Dey, 1996). In addition to the ubiquitous commentary-type articles, this substantial literature ranges from studies that consider specific questions by examining small samples in single institutions to major national investigations of virtually all the conceivable, related issues. Although our efforts were targeted on the postsecondary education years, we quickly learned that most postadolescent behaviors in regard to science and engineering can be understood clearly only by reference to earlier life experiences, probably most notably to very early socialization and to behaviors that become manifest in the adolescent years. What emerged from the literature synthesis was a robust early-years-to-employment explanation of why women, and to a lesser extent minorities, are underrepresented in particular areas of science, mathematics, and engineering. This "life-sequence" approach identifies three major concepts that seem to capture most of what distinguishes majority females and minorities from majority males in regard to science and engineering study and employment. After briefly describing our methods, for each of the three concepts we begin our treatment with the early years of life, progress on through the school and college years, and finish long after college matriculation, at a time when some individuals are employed and still others are in graduate school. …