The Observer, February 29, 2008
Volume XL, Issue 19
Science, engineering need to eliminate bias against women
At the beginning of the semester, the physics lab I work in reached an interesting milestone. Due to new hires and a bit of coincidence, the gender ratio is now evenly split between men and women.
If you are in physics or engineering, you know this is an anomaly. According to the American Institute of Physics, in 2003 only 22 percent of physics bachelor's degrees in the United States were awarded to women, and many of the engineering numbers hover around that number as well. And if, like me, you're one of the few females in one of these testosterone-packed fields of study, you probably don't take note of the disparity very often. It's just a funny kind of normal.
To be honest, I don't devote much thought to the women-or-lack-thereof issue because I am a physicist, not a sociologist, and my field of expertise thus involves explaining forces and particles rather than complex questions of culture. Yet I sometimes catch myself idly wondering why our country is incapable of attracting more women into physics and engineering. We lag terribly behind: countries like Turkey and Ireland, for example, report awarding undergraduate physics degrees to women at rates twice as high as we do, and in Iran approximately 56 percent of degrees are awarded to women. Isn't there something wrong when a nation where girls can be executed for "crimes against chastity" is ahead of the United States on this?
I've had discussions with several people on this issue and I'm surprised at how many conclude that the issue is "innate," which is a fancy way of saying girls aren't as smart as boys. Way back, when the men apparently celebrated the hunt by scratching Maxwell's Equations in the dirt, the women were too busy doing the dishes and never needed to develop such skills. As a result, people speculate that if you look at bell curves for intelligence, women are as smart as men on average, but the standard deviations mean there are more guys who are smarter (and stupider!) toward the edges.
It's a nice hypothesis, but even if you ignore the disparities between countries, there are several studies that indicate this is not what occurs. For example, a 2006 report by the National Academy of Sciences stated that, while there are differences between men and women (no, really), such differences are minute and there are no indications that women are any less intelligent or motivated than men. Rather, the report says, there are often systemic and even unconscious biases in academia that make the playing field uneven.
Full disclosure time: I can't say I've never encountered bias as a female physics major, as there have been too many comments from students and professors alike that made me raise an eyebrow. There was even one particular creep of a professor who once told me he thought differently of me compared to other students and asked me to dinner: a situation so disturbing that it left me upset for weeks afterward. (I came within inches of filing a sexual harassment complaint, but because that's a bit of a hassle I decided on the "avoid like hell" method instead.)
Such a story is on the extreme end of things regarding what most women experience, thank goodness, but the deck is still stacked. There was a famous case a few years ago in which two applications with the same information were submitted with a female and male name, respectively, and the female was rejected more often based on her name alone. And I don't even have the space to delve into how gender stereotypes affect the field, or how it is curiously always someone else who is biased rather than yourself.
As I said before, I'm no sociologist; this is a complicated issue and I don't pretend to know how to solve it. But I am a scientist, and if you look empirically you can see things should be fixed, both above and below the surface, and we need to address them in order to ensure everyone gets a fair shake and our country has the maximum number of people entering the talent pool for science and engineering. Someday I hope saying you work in a physics lab with an even gender split is not anomalous but instead recognized as it should be: normal.
When not doing something else, Yvette Cendes is a fourth-year physics major.
