So maybe I’m not alone after all in thinking there’s a need to encourage more women to enter science and technology careers (The logic: Given the gender imbalances on college campuses, what women major in and pursue as careers now matters to the national economy).

Two developments in this area, thankfully unrelated, have emerged:

– The first is a loopy, Congressionally inspired (after being prodded by feminists’ groups) attempt to apply Title IX to the question of why fewer women than men major in the sciences. The result: an Inspector Clouseau-like effort to root out grumpy, sexist department chairs at the nation’s universities.

This NYTimes piece does a nice job laying it all out in great detail:

So far, these Title IX compliance reviews haven’t had much visible impact on campuses beyond inspiring a few complaints from faculty members. (The journal Science quoted Amber Miller, a physicist at Columbia, as calling her interview “a complete waste of time.”) But some critics fear that the process could lead to a quota system that could seriously hurt scientific research and do more harm than good for women.

The members of Congress and women’s groups who have pushed for science to be “Title Nined” say there is evidence that women face discrimination in certain sciences, but the quality of that evidence is disputed. Critics say there is far better research showing that on average, women’s interest in some fields isn’t the same as men’s.

For perspective, Times writer John Tierney wisely turns to writer Susan Pinker (pictured here), whose recent book, The Sexual Paradox, is a must read for anyone interested in the issue of why women choose certain majors and careers.

Writes Tierney:

  Pinker, a clinical psychologist and columnist for The Globe and Mail in Canada (and sister of Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist), argues that the campaign for gender parity infantilizes women by assuming they don’t know what they want. She interviewed women who abandoned successful careers in science and engineering to work in fields like architecture, law and education - and not because they had faced discrimination in science

 Instead, they complained of being pushed so hard to be scientists and engineers that they ended up in jobs they didn’t enjoy. “The irony was that talent in a male-typical pursuit limited their choices,” Ms. Pinker says. “Once they showed aptitude for math or physical science, there was an assumption that they’d pursue it as a career even if they had other interests or aspirations. And because these women went along with the program and were perceived by parents and teachers as torch bearers, it was so much more difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that the work made them unhappy.”

– The second is a serious contribution to the issue, a new book about what happens to women in academe. As described here in Insidehighered, the issue of why relatively fewer women become academic leaders in their field falls well short of a conspiracy theory:

Writes insidehighered:

A new collection of essays - some with new research findings - explores these contradictions. Unfinished Agendas: New and Continuing Gender Challenges in Higher Education, just published by Johns Hopkins University Press, features many essays that suggest that the barriers to women’s advancement today are less in the form of overt sexism (although that remains) than in assumptions, and larger patterns of the way colleges are organized.

…………

 

One example of that is a chapter in the book, “Shattering Plexiglas,” in which three scholars conducted an in-depth study of what happened to 20 male and 20 female professors in the three years after winning tenure (in a range of disciplines) at major American research universities. They found a series of “pulls” of women away from the scholarly research that first drew them to the academy - and did not find comparable pulls for men. Following tenure, 16 of the women studied and only 5 of the men experienced significant increases in their service obligations at their universities.

The study didn’t suggest that these service duties didn’t represent important work. Many of the assignments were valuable for the professors’ departments or institutions. The newly tenured women - much more so than the men - became academic program coordinators or were appointed to lead institutional committees with real clout. In a number of cases, the assignments also reflected values that were especially important to the women involved, such as playing a role in work to remove gender bias from the institution.

While these assignments may well help these women’s careers over time if they go an administrative route, and while these assignments may accomplish good, they take women more than men away from scholarship. The women reported feeling unprepared for some of their assignments and unsure about how they fit into their careers - but many did not feel they could turn down this role.

 

Tags: women in science

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