AAS Committee on the Status of Women Issue of July 18, 2008 eds. Joan
Schmelz, Hannah Jang-Condell & Caroline Simpson
This week's issues:
1. A New Frontier for Title IX: Science
*** FOLLOWING POSITIONS WERE TAKEN FROM WIPHYS ***
2. Faculty Research Fellowship Program, Michelle R. Clayman Institute
for Gender Research, Stanford University.
3. How to Submit, Subscribe, or Unsubscribe to AASWOMEN
4. Access to Past Issues of AASWOMEN
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. A New Frontier for Title IX: Science From: Geoff Clayton
[gclayton
fenway.phys.lsu.edu]
The New York Times
July 15, 2008 Findings A New Frontier for Title IX: Science By JOHN
TIERNEY
Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual
discrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. But now,
under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies have quietly picked
a new target: science.
The National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Energy have
set up programs to look for sexual discrimination at universities
receiving federal grants. Investigators have been taking inventories of
lab space and interviewing faculty members and students in physics and
engineering departments at schools like Columbia, the University of
Wisconsin, M.I.T. and the University of Maryland.
So far, these Title IX compliance reviews havent 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 womens 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, womens
interest in some fields isnt the same as mens.
In this debate, neither side doubts that women can excel in all fields
of science. In fact, their growing presence in former male bastions of
science is a chief argument against the need for federal intervention.
Despite supposed obstacles like unconscious bias and a shortage of role
models and mentors, women now constitute about half of medical students,
60 percent of biology majors and 70 percent of psychology Ph.D.s. They
earn the majority of doctorates in both the life sciences and the social
sciences. They remain a minority in the physical sciences and
engineering. Even though their annual share of doctorates in physics has
tripled in recent decades, its less than 20 percent. Only 10 percent of
physics faculty members are women, a ratio that helped prompt an
investigation in 2005 by the American Institute of Physics into the
possibility of bias.
But the institute found that women with physics degrees go on to
doctorates, teaching jobs and tenure at the same rate that men do. The
gender gap is a result of earlier decisions. While girls make up nearly
half of high school physics students, theyre less likely than boys to
take Advanced Placement courses or go on to a college degree in physics.
These numbers dont surprise two psychologists at Vanderbilt University,
David Lubinski and Camilla Persson Benbow, who have been tracking more
than 5,000 mathematically gifted students for 35 years.
They found that starting at age 12, the girls tended to be better
rounded than the boys: they had relatively strong verbal skills in
addition to math, and they showed more interest in organic subjects
involving people and other living things. Despite of their mathematical
prowess, they were less likely than boys to go into physics or
engineering.
But whether they grew up to be biologists or sociologists or lawyers,
when they were surveyed in their 30s, these women were as content with
their careers as their male counterparts. They also made as much money
per hour of work. Dr. Lubinski and Dr. Benbow concluded that adolescents
interests and balance of abilities not their sex were the best
predictors of whether they would choose an inorganic career like
physics.
A similar conclusion comes from a new study of the large gender gap in
the computer industry by Joshua Rosenbloom and Ronald Ash of the
University of Kansas. By administering vocational psychological tests,
the researchers found that information technology workers especially
enjoyed manipulating objects and machines, whereas workers in other
occupations preferred dealing with people.
Once the researchers controlled for that personality variable, the
gender gap shrank to statistical insignificance: women who preferred
tinkering with inanimate objects were about as likely to go into
computer careers as were men with similar personalities. There just
happened to be fewer women than men with those preferences.
Now, you might think those preferences would be different if society
didnt discourage girls and women from pursuits like computer science and
physics. But if you read The Sexual Paradox, Susan Pinkers book about
gender differences, youll find just the opposite problem.
Ms. 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 dont 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 didnt 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 theyd 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.
Ms. Pinker says that universities and employers should do a better job
helping women combine family responsibilities with careers in fields
like physics. But she also points out that female physicists are a
distinct minority even in Western European countries that offer day care
and generous benefits to women.
Creating equal opportunities for women does not mean that theyll choose
what men choose in equal numbers, Ms. Pinker says. The freedom to act on
ones preferences can create a more exaggerated gender split in some
fields.
Applying Title IX to science was proposed eight years ago by Debra
Rolison, a chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory. She argued that
withholding federal money from poorly diversified departments was
essential to transform the academic culture. The proposal was initially
greeted, in her words, with near-universal horror.
Some female scientists protested that they themselves would be
marginalized if a quota system revived the old stereotype that women
couldnt compete on even terms in science. But the idea had strong
advocates, too, and Congress quietly ordered agencies to begin the Title
IX compliance reviews in 2006.
The reviews so far havent led to any requirements for gender balance in
science departments. But Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at
the American Enterprise Institute who has written extensively about
gender wars in academia, predicts that lawyers will work gradually, as
they did in sports, to require numerical parity.
Colleges already practice affirmative action for women in science, but
now theyll be so intimidated by the Title IX legal hammer that they may
institute quota systems, Dr. Sommers said. In sports, they had to
eliminate a lot of male teams to achieve Title IX parity. Itll be
devastating to American science if every male-dominated field has to be
calibrated to womens level of interest.
Whether or not quotas are ever imposed, some of the most productive
science and engineering departments in America are busy filling out new
federal paperwork. The agencies that have been cutting financing for
Fermilab and the Spirit rover on Mars are paying for investigations of a
problem that may not even exist. How is this good for scientists of
either sex?
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Faculty Research Fellowship Program, Michelle R. Clayman Institute
for Gender Research, Stanford University From: WIPHYS, July 11, 2008
Call for Applications: 2009-2010 Deadline: October 15, 2008 The Clayman
Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University invites
applications for residential fellowships for the academic year
2009-2010. Applications will be considered from tenured and
tenure-track faculty, and postdoctoral scholars from the U.S. and
foreign universities. Candidates may apply as individuals or as small
groups.
Fellowships are offered in a number of interdisciplinary areas,
including: -Gendered Innovations in Knowledge. While much has been
written on women in science and engineering, especially the difficulty
of recruiting and retaining women in these areas, the challenge now is
to integrate the insights of gender studies into scientific theory and
practice. We welcome research proposals that address how gender
analysis, when turned to science and engineering, can profoundly enhance
human knowledge. The key questions are: How has gender analysis sparked
creativity by opening new questions for future research? How can
employing gender as a tool of analysis lead to new knowledge? To better
understand what we are looking for, see Londa Schiebinger, Gendered
Innovations in Science and Engineering (Stanford University Press, 2008)
and Has Feminism Changed Science? (Harvard University Press, 1999), part
III, or Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28
(2003):859-922 on "Feminism Inside the Sciences." -Gender in the
Physical Sciences, and Math. -Gender in Engineering and Computer
Science. -Gender in Environmental Sciences. -Gender in the Life
Sciences and Bio-technology. -Gender-specific Medical Research and
Women's Health. -Clustering in Scientific Subfields. Women tend to
cluster in particular sciences, such as the life sciences, and in
particular subfields of science or engineering (for example, there are
many more women in civil than in electrical engineering). We welcome
applications that investigate what it is about particular fields that
attract or repel women. -Title IX in Science and Engineering. Title IX
applies to all areas of federally-funded education, including science
and engineering. Researchers working on the use of Title IX, in
particular identifying criteria for assessing institutional compliance
with Title IX, in the sciences are invited to apply. -Women in "Big
Science". -Work culture and work-life balance in professional life,
especially in the sciences. -Division of Household Labor. It is well
known that women tend to undertake more household labor than men in
heterosexual relationships, even when they work in full-time paid
employment. We are interested in new approaches to these issues, rather
than a restatement of existing conclusions.
Fellows must be in residence at the Clayman Institute for the duration
of their fellowship. Fellowship stipends range from $36,000 for
postdoctoral scholars to $60,000 for senior faculty. Applications for
one, two or three quarters will be considered.
Complete applications are to be received in our office by 4:00pm (PST)
on Wednesday, October 15, 2008. To apply and for further information,
please visit the Clayman Institute website at http://gender.stanford.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. How to Submit, Subscribe, or Unsubscribe to AASWOMEN
[Please remember to replace "" in the below e-mail addresses.]
To submit to AASWOMEN: send email to aaswomenaas.org All material
sent to that address will be posted unless you tell us otherwise
(including your email address).
To subscribe or unsubscribe to AASWOMEN go to
http://lists.aas.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aaswomen and fill out the
form.
If you experience any problems, please email itdeptaas.org
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Access to Past Issues of AASWOMEN
Past issues of AASWOMEN are available at
http://www.aas.org/cswa/AASWOMEN.html
Each annual summary includes an index of topics covered.
AASWList mailing list AASWListaas.org
AASWList mailing list
AASWListaas.org