Let's start with Harvard again. Recently the president of Harvard, Larry Summers, addressed a meeting concerning women in science. He made some provocative statements, some interesting statements, and some incorrect statments. His most controversial thrust was to suggest that disparities in gender representation in science resulted from innate differences. He was roasted in many quarters, and also defended in others. After the release of the actual transcripts of his speech, Slate had a couple of articles on both sides that, between them, appeared to give the whole issue a fair shake. The article defending him is here, and the one critical of him is here.
I don't want to come late to the Summers issue. The Slate writers already did a better job than I could. I want to use it as a launching point to discuss some things I see from the trenches. As an astronomy professor, the issue about women in science (or lack thereof) comes up in my life on a regular basis. I've read a lot of articles about it, looked at the statistics, and grappled with it in many ways. My PhD advisor was female. Many of my collaborators are female. My current graduate student is female. I didn't pick any of them because of their gender, but because of their ability and our mutual interest in a particular science topic. And just last week I spent a couple of hours putting together application packets to nominate a couple of prospective students for Graduate Fellowships for Women which we get to use to aid our recruiting of women.
Astronomy, as a field it seems to me, does a very good job of paying attention to this issue. Every year shows increases in the involvement of women in astronomy (whereas numbers in physics continue to be very low). The last numbers I saw suggest about 40% of astronomy undergrads are women, falling to about 30% at the grad level, and 25% at the faculty level. As long as these numbers continue to grow and approach 50%, we're probably on track. Since women are clearly capable of being very good astronomers, we should probably aim for a 50/50 mix of genders to maximize astronomical output with the best people.
In the U.S., I've seen no blatent institutionalize discrimination against women in astronomy of any kind. If anything, women have discrimination for them, in the form of fellowships, specialty faculty positions, etc., and I have no problem with this until we get to 50/50. [I have heard of problems in some international venues, so I won't say discimination is nonexistent worldwide, but in the US I've seen little.] I've been personally insulted for telling some people these things, which blows me away since I'm just reporting what I see from the trenches. You don't address these issues without gathering facts (so see the AAS webpage on these topics for all in the astronomy field and what statistics exist).
It's more likely, as Summers suggests as part of the problem, that women skip science careers more often than men for cultural reasons, or reasons relating to how tenure is awarded. A woman who waits to have kids until she has tenure is one fighting the biological clock (e.g., late 30s) and having kids pre-tenure can be dangerous. It's also possible women are smarter than men, in some sense, and skip the slow, low-paying science track for better opportunities. Or perhaps the smaller number of role models, historically, hasn't encouraged women to go into science.
And it is important to be mindful of backlashes. For instance, overly encouraging one group to pursue science could result in failures from those within the group not cut out to be scientists. For instance, if we went to great lengths to push all "Steves" to become cosmologists, we'd likely end up with some sub-par cosmologists and some failed cosmologists bitter about science.
This issue also affects science fiction. Cynthia Ward, reviewing on amazon, complains that only a few women are included in a recent hard sf collection. She makes the point that Stan Robinson's story there isn't all that hard or different from some stories by Connie Willis or other women writers. Personally, I thought the Robinson story was the least deserving of the "hard" tag and Cynthia's point only damaged her argument. While some write it well, women DON'T write hard SF in the same numbers as men. That seems to be a fact. That's not because of discrimination from my perspective. Stan Schmidt at Analog is a great guy, who buys great stories rooted in science. He buys stories from women, but publishes fewer by women than men. Why? There was an article in the SFWA bulletin a couple of years ago that indicated that pro editors don't discriminate against women authors at all, but low publication rates from women are the result of editors seeing fewer submissions from women.
Women are fully capable of writing top-notch hard sf. Nancy Kress, Catherine Asaro, etc., are prime examples. But for every Kress or Asaro, I can name a dozen male authors writing good hard sf. I don't think this is good for readers or the field. I'd like to get sf closer to 50/50, since I think that will result in the largest number of the best, most powerful hard sf stories. I'm working on getting funding from the NSF or NASA to develop an annual writer's workshop to promote science in science fiction. I'm budgeting for women/minority fellowships to provide full rides. I'm in the trenches on this, and I just want humans to be doing the best science, and writing the best science fiction (inspiring/educating future generations) that we can.
It's an important issue. If you don't think hard about it, study it, and speculate about it, you're not treating it seriously. White males are not to blame. Stan Schmidt is not to blame. Star Wars is not to blame. Hell, screw what is to blame. What is to be done about it? That's the question.
Let's make the world a smarter, nerdier place, a place that includes space and science, and all the best stuff for all.
Posted by Mike at March 16, 2005 12:54 PM