Breaking the silence on discrimination against women in academic science and engineering

An interesting report out today from the National Academies, and it's a terrific counter to that odious garbage spewed by the former president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers. (Hey, Derek Bok's been doing some cool things since coming in in the interim! I didn't get a chance to post about it, but it is worth watching, his getting rid of Harvard's Early Admissions bias to the hoity toity set)

I'll offer the National Academies Press a kick in the slats for charging $44 to get a copy of the super secret elitist report, however!

Link: Broad National Effort Urgently Needed To Maximize Potential of Women Scientists and Engineers in Academia.

Link: The National Academies | News | Effort Needed to Maximize Potential of Women in Academic S&T.

Such a radical idea, criticizing the "depriving the U.S. of an important source of talent." I went to an engineering school and have taught at what was largely an engineering school, and I know my fellow women colleagues in science and engineering faced a TON of discrimination, and they told me so many horror stories.

At least with my own specialty in technology and interactive media, things are far more open and interdisciplinary than in the more established fields, even if women still are vastly underrepresented. I'm afraid to admit too much of that is self-selection, even with prominent women represented in so many areas of cybercultures, from Mena Trott to Donna Haraway.

But since being outside of that environment, an environment that at least paid lip service to the idea that talent should be rewarded, used as a valuable resource, I've been out in the corporate world, where the Peter Principle is in active force and people who "know too much" are considered trouble-makers who run the risk of commiting the cardinal sin, actually knowing more in their areas of specialty than their bosses do (the horror, the horror!). So interesting it is, to watch a reverse merit system in force, one that seeks out and tries to promote those who strive for greater and greater mediocrity.

Link: Institutions Hinder Female Academics, Panel Says - New York Times.

Institutions Hinder Female Academics, Panel Says

By CORNELIA DEAN

Published: September 18, 2006

Women in science and engineering are hindered not by lack of ability but by bias and “outmoded institutional structures” in academia, an expert panel reported today.      

The panel, convened by the National Academy of Sciences, said that in an era of global competition the nation could not afford “such underuse of precious human capital.” Among other steps, the report recommends that universities alter procedures for hiring and evaluation, change typical timetables for tenure and promotion, and provide more support for working parents.

“Unless a deeper talent pool is tapped, it will be difficult for our country to maintain our competitiveness in science and engineering,” the panel’s chairwoman, Donna E. Shalala, said at a news conference at which the report, “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering,” was made public.

Dr. Shalala, a former secretary of health and human services who is now president of the University of Miami, said part of the problem was insufficient effort on the part of college and university administrators. “Many of us spend more energy enforcing the law on our sports teams than we have in have in our academic halls,” she said.

The panel dismissed the idea, notably advanced last year by Lawrence H. Summers, then the president of Harvard, that the relative dearth of women in the upper ranks of science might be the result of “innate” intellectual deficiencies, particularly in mathematics.

If there are any cognitive differences, the report says, they are small and irrelevant. In any event, the much-studied gender gap in math performance has all but disappeared as more and more girls enroll in demanding classes. Even among very high achievers, the gap is narrowing, the panelists said.

[...]

Nor is the problem a lack of women in the academic pipeline, the report says. Though women leave science and engineering more often than men “at every educational transition” from high school through college professorships, the number of women studying science and engineering has sharply increased at all levels.

For 30 years, the report says, women have earned at least 30 percent of the nation’s doctorates in social and behavioral sciences, and at least 20 percent of the doctorates in life sciences. Yet they appear among full professors in those fields at less than half those levels. Women from minorities are “virtually absent,” it adds.

The report also dismissed other commonly held beliefs — that women are uncompetitive or less productive, that they take too much time off for their families, and so on. Their real problems, it says, are unconscious but pervasive bias, “arbitrary and subjective” evaluation processes, and a work environment in which “anyone lacking the work and family support traditionally provided by a ‘wife’ is at a serious disadvantage.”

Along with Dr. Shalala, the panel included Elizabeth Spelke, a professor of psychology at Harvard who has long challenged the “innate differences” view, and Ruth Simmons, the president of Brown University, who established a widely praised program for aspiring engineers when she was president of the all-female Smith College.

The report was dedicated to another panelist, Denice Denton, an electrical engineer who until her suicide this summer was chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a forceful advocate for women, gays and minority members in science and engineering.

The 18-member panel had only one man: Robert J. Birgeneau, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley. But Dr. Shalala noted that the National Academy of Sciences committee that reviewed the report had 10 men.

[...]