Talk:Women in science

message: This is the discussion page for Women in science.  If you're new to Wikipedia and want to help with this collaboration, just jump right in.  If you have suggestions, leave a message here.  If you want to change the article, go ahead!  Be bold.  If you add information, include inline citations if you have references handy.  Don't worry about formatting; other editors can clean things up.
This article will probably split of eventually into a separate historical article, but for now, both historical and modern sociological and demographic content is appropriate.--ragesoss 02:24, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Welcome

message: I've added Marie Curie, but I must admit after that I feel a bit stumped, I'm sure there are lots more.
Rosalind Franklin who worked on DNA with Watson and Crick, I'll have to find out her involvement, so I can add her in.
I'm assuming we don't want it to simply be a who's who, but also a discussion about how the involvement of women in science evolved.
Terri G 18:21, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  People to include 

message: What subject areas are we considering 'science'? What about maths? Medicine? Nursing?
I don't know what the policy of Wikipedia on categories based on gender is, but setting up a category for women scientists, divided by nationality/subject, would certainly make finding this information easier. On the other hand, it might perhaps feel insulting to those tagged in this way. Thoughts, anyone? Espresso Addict 10:23, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd be tempted to go easy on those whose major contributions fall after WW2, on grounds of the large numbers, though I agree that underrepresentation in physics is still a fact (at least in the UK). Can anyone source published stats on nos of women per subject at various levels?  Espresso Addict 04:13, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Collaboration of the month

message: Did women outside Europe and the Mediterranean do any science before 1900?--T. Anthony 12:29, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about other places? 

message: I've removed the following text, which is unsourced & PoV, as well as being largely irrelevant to this article, which is about women's contributions in various fields of scientific study, not feminism.
"Advancement of women into scientific fields has been slow. However, it could be argued that this is not necessarily a problem anymore than it is a problem that there are fewer men nurses than women nurses. Due to offshore outsourcing and the increase in skilled visa workers from lower-wage countries, science and technology careers have grown less stable. If the goal is to increase the earning power and career choices for women, then focusing on management and business positions perhaps may be more fruitful."
Espresso Addict 15:02, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *I'd agree with moving most of the present article to History of women in science. Did anyone object to the proposal when it was discussed before? I added some stubby stats sections from UK & US education data (now amalgamated) which might remain under Women in science. Espresso Addict 16:13, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

text: *Do you have an authorative reference or two for the education point? I'm limited in this area by what's freely available online. Espresso Addict 16:42, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism section 

message: I have marked this article as POV, and I would even extend some doubts as to whether it is, at all, dealing with an encyclopedic topic. In particular, I strongly suspect that there is a gender-feministic agenda behind its presence. Notably, GFs tend to ignore the actual number of male and female scientists in the past (as historical facts, irrespective of reasons) and try to paint an inaccurate picture of the proportions and the relative importance of various individuals.
As for POV, consider e.g. formulations like "Women have contributed to science from its earliest days, but as contributors they have generally not been acknowledged. Historians with an interest in gender and science have illuminated the contributions women have made, the barriers they have faced, and the strategies implemented to have their work accepted."
Here a conclusion is foregone in an unscientific and unencyclopedic manner, and disputable statements are made. Notably, e.g., women who have contributed have typically been acknowledged (at least in "western" science).
88.77.179.158 (talk) 01:55, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I have now read all comments here carefully and don't believe this article is as you suggest. I also am interested as a woman and a scientist, why you believe and use the term POV as I just looked up means one's own point of view. When I was reading I noticed a discussion board where editors talk about these POV opinions. I am wondering if you have placed this article on that noticeboard?Docsim (talk) 12:54, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

text: Do you have a specific example from the article that would validate your "gender-feminist agenda" suspicion?  Any particular portions in the article itself where you feel that an inaccurate picture has been painted that can be identified as such without relying on a suspicion? -xcuref1endx (talk) 22:35, 5 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  POV 

message: Every article about women's contribution to the development of civilization could be labelled as "feminist". In fact, Western science has begun to acknowledge historical female scientists only in the 20th century, and notably thanks to such "feminist" writings. This article is completely encyclopaedic, and is disputable only in opinion of people like you who suspect a "feminist plot" everywhere.
Social reasons that caused women's low scientific activity are historical and encyclopaedic facts as well. How could be explained these reasons otherwise? That women have smaller brains? That they are more stupid than men? That women don't like science and prefer homework? A fully objective explication is needed. I'm waiting!
SETI3 (talk) 16:39, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: POV is unfounded

message: You assume that women and men actually have the same abilities in all aspects, in the mean and also share the same standard derivation. How can you back that up? From the data i have seen it seems likely to not be the case. And if you cannot prove that women and men have an equal share of people who are actually able to contribute to sciences (or at least give some tight estimations), how would you want to prove that as contributors they have generally not been acknowledged? 
In my point of view you could only prove that by showing a difference in the ability to publish and the actual number of published work or by actually have reports on the neglect of female scientific work (in the appropriate numbers).
If you actually have a report available that shows that the distribution of talent (for some science) is distributed in the same way among men as it is among women then please let me know. I would honestly be interested. Otherwise you would be the one who has to explain why this is not a POV statement.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.103.123.172 (talk) 14:38, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Why is POV unfounded?

message: I've added a missing reference for Ada Lovelace. The full information is as follows:
On "In Our Time", BBC Radio 4, 6 March 2008, Doron Swade, Visiting Professor in the History of Computing at Portsmouth University, stated: "The point I wanted to pick up on, to be exact about Ada being credited with being the first programmer, she published the first thing we would now recognise as the first programme… because the first series of steps of instructions, we would now call it an algorithm, was published under her name, or at least, under her initials. The thing is that the work was Babbage's… The concept of a programme, what we would now call a programme… is based on Babbage's work before Lovelace had any major involvement in the analytic engines… The actual principle of a programme was Babbage's." 
Esterson (talk) 18:36, 14 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ada Lovelace 

message: An article on BoingBoing today is leading to the expansion of lists of women in science in the World War II to the present section.
I'm not convinced that's a useful thing to do. The section lacks narrative and explanation; providing and expanding a list of scientists does not make good the section's lack, and begs two questions: the criteria for inclusion and, more importantly, "what on earth is the list trying to tell us?". The improvement needed in this article will come from what we can say about women in science in the period, not how many of them we can list.  --Tagishsimon (talk) 19:25, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Per Tagishimon, this article as a few issues. In addition to not being encyclopedic in style, the divisions by time do not make it clear if it means they were born in a certain time, or they made their famous contributions in a certain time. The names could also use some organizing, perhaps by field of expertise. Jokestress (talk) 19:35, 9 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, this article needs more description and narrative in some sections. It is also somewhat confusing and the multiple warnings requiring expansion of the sections don't help in this regard. --Leinad-Z (talk) 14:58, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

text: Another issue would be the subsections that are titled the same.  If a section link is clicked from another article or a redirect, only the same-named section nearest to the TOP of the page will appear.  That will not always be the section that was meant to be linked.  Each section and subsection in an article must have its own, unique title. – Paine Ellsworth ( CLIMAX )  00:44, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Lists considered harmful - BoingBoing

message: The lead has: "Science is generally and historically a male-dominated field, and evidence suggests that this is due to stereotypes (e.g. science as "manly") as well as self-fulfilling prophecies.[1][2]" Footnote [1] says: "Summers, L. H. (2005). Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce. The office of the President. Harvard University." [2]: "Nosek, B.A., et al. (2009). Women always feel the need to try and over hype their contributions to make it seem like they're important when they really aren't. When you hear of science the people that come to mind are all men. Women need their own special science where they don't have to compete with men for the attention. National differences in gender–science stereotypes predict national sex differences in science and math achievement. PNAS, June 30, 2009, 106, 10593–10597." The Lawrence Summers article summarizes Summers' ideas as presented at this conference in much more detail, and shows that the statement in the lead is not at all an accurate characterization of them. Footnote [2] looks like vandalism to me. It gives argumentative, ungrammatical text without saying whether that text is a quote from the source or a summary of it. This doesn't read like the level of writing you'd expect to see in published academic work, and the content is peurile.--207.233.88.24 (talk) 17:27, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: problems with citations in lead, possible vandalism

message: I've been fixing the English in this section, and adding citation/who/contradiction tags. It really needs a complete re-write by someone who knows about this stuff, has access to some of these books and can write a decent Wikipedia article. I've tagged the section with an expert tag.
This paragraph in particular is beyond my ability to salvage:
:Research on women's participation in the "hard" sciences such as physics and computer science speaks of the "leaky pipeline" model, in which the proportion of women "on track" to potentially becoming top scientists fall off at every step of the way, from getting interested in science and maths in elementary school, through doctorate, postdoc, and career steps. Various reasons are proposed for this, and although the existence of this trend in many countries and times suggests that there is a genetic or hormonal causal component, the vast differences in the "leakiness" of this pipe across the same countries and times argues also for a causal component that is cultural. The leaky pipeline is also applicable in other fields. In biology, for instance, women in the United States have been getting Masters degrees in the same numbers as men for two decades, yet fewer women get PhDs; and the numbers of women P.I.s have not risen.Louise Luckenbill-Edds, "The 'Leaky Pipline:' Has It Been Fixed?",The American Society for Cell Biology 2000 WICB / Career Strategy Columns (11/1/2000).
--Carbon Rodney 06:33, 11 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure if it's the case in the U.S. either. I seem to recall reading an article stating that the leaky pipeline model has been discredited. This article is sorely in need of more international perspectives - if you can find some good sources, it would be a great help. RockMagnetist (talk) 15:34, 31 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: i looked into it more deeply and it seems that in the social sciences more females than males are receiving PhDs in the asia pacific.Docsim (talk) 01:41, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statistics about women in science 

message: I'm sorry...why do women get their own page in science? Is there an Africans in Science? Is there a Asians in Science? Seems a bit sexist to me. Of course, I' assuming good faith here. --108.83.115.179 (talk) 08:10, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free to start articles on these subjects. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:51, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Where is Men in Science? 

message: Someone removed the section /* Feminist science */ with the summary 'This has no references and is entirely original research. But more importantly this is just a restatement of the decades old "postmodernist" critique of scientific knowledge as a social construction, there is nothing specifically feminist about it.' I think they're right about the section as it stood. However, there is a truly feminist critique of science. See Criticism_of_science#Feminist_critiques, Talk:Criticism_of_science#feminist_critique, and Talk:Criticism_of_science#feminism_and_science_texts. Much of it is not specifically about the role of women in science, so some thought will be needed about what belongs in this article. RockMagnetist (talk) 19:49, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Feminist critique 

message: Not really true. It is an allegory. Geometry is personified as a woman - like iustitia is personified as a woman. GEEZERnil nisi bene 16:12, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: You're referring to the image, I presume. Click on it and you will get :File:Woman_teaching_geometry.jpg, with a detailed description that agrees with your claim. Do you think the caption needs changing? RockMagnetist (talk) 04:36, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Woman teaching geometry 

message: I'm no expert in History so this is more of a question...
It says "Merit-Ptah (c. 2700 BCE), described in an inscription as "chief physician", is the earliest known female scientist". Won't that (year) actually make her the first (recorded) scientist in general? Bridenh (talk) 19:44, 7 September 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it would – it seems that the first men are considered to be the pre-socratic philosophers, and it's difficult to find accurate dates for them, but few or none of them would date back to the 27th century BCE.  It would be good if a historian could update the Science article for readers so more light could be shed on this. – Paine  16:38, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  First scientist 

message: Hi. Nice article. It's the main article in :Category:Women and science, which is a sub-cat of :Category:Science. Therefore I think the article itself shouldn't be directly under :Category:Science, too. Your thoughts? Thanks. Fgnievinski (talk) 12:35, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: This happens all the time.  Sometimes articles are removed from categories for this very reason, and other times contributors keep the double categorization because it seems natural to keep an article in both categories so it may be more easily found by those readers who look for things in categories.  This article probably falls into the latter sense.  Joys! – Paine  16:45, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categorization 

message: There is presently substandard material in the Recent controversies section.  I've tried to remove it until the editor who presented it can learn to format it correctly, which I tried to help with by placing references on the new editor's talk page.  Another contributor seems to think that some of the substandard material should remain in the article as it is, with no cleanup.  It appears that editor would rather teach new editors how to edit war than how to edit.  I feel I've done all I can, so I'm done with it.  I was going to fix the material, but that other editor will probably edit war with me on that as well.  So long. – Paine  01:57, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: There were two paragraphs. The first one was sourced although its reference citation needed better formatting, which was done. The second paragraph was unsourced, and also its tone was unencyclopedic, so it was discarded. Feel free to clean-up any substandard material left, just don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Fgnievinski (talk) 02:24, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for teaching new editors how we do things here at Wikipedia – first we edit war, then we do the job for them so they don't learn on their own.  Thank you very much and Best of Everything to You and Yours! – Paine  02:55, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Substandard material in article 

message: In this edit,  stated that "This paper doesn't support the statements it's being used for here." But it surely isn't far off - the title of the paper is "National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track". Would it be acceptable if there was an explicit reference to the experiments? RockMagnetist(talk) 15:41, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I was confused when I removed it; I mixed it up with an earlier paper by the same authors.  But either way, I'm dubious about including it because a WP:SPA has been going through adding every paper by those authors to as many articles as possible; we already cover an earlier paper by them with similar results.  And their papers are, as far as I can tell, WP:FRINGE in that they don't agree with the results of any other studies on the subject, so giving so much weight to them (by covering every result they got in detail) is WP:UNDUE.  Eg. you can see some of the criticism of this study here, near the end.  Possibly one sentence summarizing all their results would be fine as long as it noted that their results were controversial and that their methodology has been questioned; but covering every paper they produce individually strikes me as a mistake. --Aquillion (talk) 16:47, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: All good points. Since secondary sources are preferred in Wikipedia, maybe the Post article should be cited instead of the primary research. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:59, 12 September 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Since someone reverted my edit, I'll reiterate what I said above:  There's a danger of placing WP:UNDUE weight on those papers because a WP:SPA has been going around adding every paper by those authors to as many articles as possible.  Beyond that, the paper doesn't quite say what the version they added says it does; the authors conclude that the underrepresentation of women in professional ranks is not solely caused by sexist hiring, promotion, and remuneration.  The version added by the WP:SPA stated that it wasn't a cause at all, which goes beyond what even the paper's authors suggest. --Aquillion (talk) 12:10, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Not using the papers is WP:UNDUE. It doesn't state "at all." Change the end to "mainly" not due to. Problem solved. --Mr. Magoo and McBarker (talk) 15:58, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Not supported? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: We say (though I will remove it shortly)
The source says:
The first would be a very important and interesting fact (if true) while the actual statement in the source is almost a truism.
We really need to be careful to read and understand sources for this article (and ideally look at their sources), and not make egregious mistakes like this.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:02, 14 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Examining and correcting

message: Women have always struggled with having equal rights with everything. One problem they face is equality in science. When it came to winning a Nobel prize men usually won a lot more than women, not saving women never won anything. but a lot of these women contributed with the experiments and had some part in the winning of the Nobel prize, but in the science world men achievements were more focused on then women's. (User: andreabrisby) 8:24 , 27 October 2016 (Andreabrisby (talk) 01:25, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, there is no denying the tremendous impact of women on science and in so many other areas.  For such a long time and with few exceptions, women seemed "happy" to stay in the background to allow men to receive all the honors.  Times they are a changin', slowly but surely, and for the better.  One fly that has always buzzed in my ointment is the fact that the Nobel prize thus far cannot be awarded after a deserving person dies.  That is the only reason, in my opinion, that Henrietta Swan Leavitt, one of astronomy's favorite people in history, did not receive the Nobel for her great discovery of Cepheid variable stars.  She died while the paperwork was still in the works and before she could receive the prize.  Injustice is injustice, and one would think that if the Nobel people cannot come up with a special award that can be given posthumously, then how prestigious can their "it must be given to a living person" award really be?  Paine  u/c 13:50, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Equality with gender in science  

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I'm not quite sure where it would/could fit in, but the experience of Dr. Ben Barres, as explained in the section Ben_Barres#Experience_of_sexism (tl;dr - as a Trans man, after transition he's heard statements like "his work is better than his sister's") seems like it could be relevant somewhere, in documenting the "uphill battle" that many women face in being respected in science.
Similarly, I'm not sure where it would fit in or what the citation would be (beyond his book), but my professor for a Molecular genetics course spent some time during a lecture about Rosalind Franklin's work explaining to us that Watson and Crick's work in "elucidating the structure of DNA" had really all but been solved by Dr. Franklin, but that her work had been stolen and essentially plagiarized by Drs Watson and Crick. Some of this is even touched on in the article The Double Helix#Criticism and the first sentence of James Watson#Controversies, as well as this article and this article touch on this controversy. 
Because of the ways those all relate to how women in science have been systematically overlooked, ignored, criticize, or otherwise had their work taken (without proper credit given), it seems like these might be worthwhile things to work into the article Women in science. Unfortunately I don't have the authoring prowess (nor confidence - see bullet-point #3 here, and see bullet-point #3 in this article from the Gender gap page) to put these things onto the main Article page of "Women in science".
PolymathGirl (talk) 06:40, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been a registered editor for nearly eight years, and I'm not sure I know the best way to include this material, except to say that where it is added, it should be accompanied by appropriate reliable sources.  The only way to learn how to edit this encyclopedia is to go ahead and edit it, PolymathGirl.  Don't be concerned with breaking things or possibly making a bad edit, because other editors will continue to make improvements on your work.  That is the true beauty of Wikipedia!  Make a decision, a choice, and just edit.  Happy New Year!  Paine Ellsworth  u/c 12:47, 1 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Ben Barres]]; and [[Rosalind Franklin]] and [[James Watson]]'s criticism of her 

message: Hi, I have just added new data to the Statistics section. The data come from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, which compiles these data from government surveys of 195 countries every two years. The data have been published in Chapter 3 and the Statistical Annex of the UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030 (published in 2015), which is given as the source. Note that the material from this publication is open access and may be reproduced on Wikipedia's pages, with or without rephrasing, without any copyright infringement. --Susan Schneegans (talk) 09:14, 30 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  New data on women's participation in science and engineering 

message: I was curious on why there was no Women in Physics/Biology pages/why it is forwarded to Women in Science? There is a page for women in  geology, chemistry, and so on. So why is there no page for the women physicists/biologists? Even just a basic list with some information like the other women in ... pages. Especially since the gender gap within this field is so apparent for physics. I think it would be beneficial to have a page that shows a strong representation of the leading women in these fields. I'd be happy to start these pages, just want to make sure this discussion had not already taken place. --Kate Madsekad (talk) 16:38, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Women in Physics/Biology pages

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replies: text: I removed the image from the article. Donna Spencertalk-to-me⛅ 14:59, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: I also appreciated the section that highlights the underrepresentation of LGBTQ+ people in STEM and to that, I think a section should be added about racial/ethnic diversity within STEM particularly focused on outreach and conclusion similar to the LGBTQ+ section. There are so many programs that are geared toward uplifting marginalized ethnic women's voices and I think that would be a good addition. Izzys.young (talk) 19:00, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: It would be helpful if you could list some sources, especially reliable secondary sources (not program websites), that discuss such programs. Perhaps you could also propose the draft of a short new section. NightHeron (talk) 20:25, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Underrepresented Minorites and Outreach Programs