The past decade for women scientists — win, lose or draw?

Abstract

Recently, a colleague sent me an article about the current status of women in science which quoted a paper I had written some time ago. Although published in 1971, the observations and data were based on research carried out between 1960 and 1966, a period when I was conducting a study of career decisions among undergraduates. What led some science students to persist in their plans to become scientists while others shifted into nonscientific tields? The shifting-out phenomenon was strikingly more frequent among women than men students. Some of their reasons were summarized as follows: The pressures on a woman science student are particularly intense in a coeducational university, a fact that no-one hides from her for a moment from her freshman advisor who insists that mathematics will be too difficult or her classmates who assure her that she will give up science as most girls do, or her professors who, for the most part, do not take her quite as seriously as her male counterparts. Were there a journal of retractions, would this discouraging message be accorded high priority for publication? Have conditions for aspiring young women scientists changed sufficiently to judge the above as anachronistic nonsense? Have the apparent gains of the intervening years been real or illusory? By what criteria could they be assessed? The time seems ripe for an overview of the decade 19661976 when so much appears to have happened so quickly. The problems of assessment are compounded by the available data which, because they are derived from disparate sources, present formidable obstacles in normalization. Where one study of the percentage of women in science combines the natural sciences with engineering (in which there are relatively few women) thereby drastically lowering the apparent proportion of women, another will include the social sciences and the percentage takes an upward leap. In other studies the subfields are not identified so that the data cannot be used in comparative studies. And then, of course, there is the problem of a qualitative analysis of change. If more women are going into science, how is it possible to evaluate the trend in terms of whether the choice has provided them with the educational experience they sought and later, the professional rewards and lifestyle to which they aspired? If the numbers have increased (as subsequent figures will indicate), what percentage of the potential pool of women scientists does the increase represent? Are these women free from the sex-based discrimination of the past? Do they have equal opportunities with men for job access, promotion and salary? If so, are they producing on a par with their male peers? Some of these questions, particularly the qualitative ones, cannot be answered on more than an anecdotal basis while others, more quantitative, provide some measure of the trends. But they are, at least, a beginning. Most of this article will be based on American studies [l] and, consequently, can only be suggestive, of trends in other industrialized countries. However, the differences between women’s success in science careers in Great Britain and the U.S.A. do not appear to be striking. As one English woman scientist said, ‘It’s not being a top scientist that is a problem for women. It’s getting to be one’ [2]. A sentiment not unknown in the former colony. Between 1966 and 1974, the overall percentage of women attending four-year colleges and universities increased from 38.2”/ to 44.2”~~ x 0 o. As Table I indicates, the increase in the percentage of women students across science specialties (12”,,) was greater than the increase in overall enrollment (4’:“). All fields show an increase in participation by women whereas comparable figures for men show a decrease in the physical sciences and engineering. Between 1965 and 1974 the figures for women receiving doctoral degrees in science and engineering were even more impressive from 744 to 2590 almost a 25OY/, increase. ‘This absolute growth also represents an increase in the share of science and engineering doctorates earned by women, the proportion growing from 7”,, in 1965 to 147: in 1974’ [3]. If there is any accuracy in the old adage, ‘In numbers there is strength’, then numerically the past decade has been a good one. Begun with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and strengthened by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, AfIirmative Action is probably not a positive indication of change, because the numerical N 123