More Women Scientists or Fewer?

When I studied in the astonomy and physics departments at Berkeley, women were very definitely the minority. In an upper division class of about 20, we would usually have only 2 or 3 women at the most. That's why I was very interested in this Newsweek story about women increasing in numbers in physics at Berkeley. Not just because I loved reading about LeConte Hall and the basement of Birge, and feeling all nostalgic. That nostalgia is about the only reason I can get through the whole movie Junior, and why I liked Hulk better than I should.

But I was interested in that story because yesterday, the National Academies released a shrill report that women in America are losing ground to their male counterparts in the hard sciences. Now, to be fair, the Newsweek story only looks at a few campuses and reports on their programs to support women faculty and grad students. In fact, it looks like Berkeley's tenure programs address exactly the concerns in the National Academies report: "women faculty members are generally paid less and promoted more slowly, receive fewer honors, and hold fewer leadership positions." The report tried to discount any biological differences between men and women in their analytical abilities, and instead pointed toward some vague language of the problems being "rooted in our society's traditions and culture."

Berkeley appears to be taking on some of these issues of tradition and culture head on by bluntly addressing the question of family and pregnancy. Women have often had to discount science as a career because grad and post-grad programs take almost a decade of education and research beyond college, which happen to be the prime child-bearing years for most women. If the steady output of research is not done during this time, tenure-track faculty positions become almost impossible to compete for. Even taking a year away from research to have a baby puts researchers in a hole they cannot climb out of, which is one stark example of the systemic bias against women in the sciences. Berkeley offers a "tenure-clock extension" hiring practice, and other family-friendly options for women with young families.

So, the National Academies report seems dire, but perhaps the leading campuses in the sciences, such as Berkeley and MIT, can also lead the way in acknowledging the objective differences between men and women in our society.