From yesterday's New York Times.
Regards,
Bernardo
The New York Times
September 18, 2006
Institutions Hinder Female Academics, Panel Says
By CORNELIA DEAN
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.
A spokesman for Mr. Summers said he was out of the country and could not be
reached for comment.
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.
"Nothing was a foregone conclusion," she said, adding that the committee was
surprised at the strength of evidence supporting the report's conclusions.
In an interview, Dr. Simmons of Brown said: "The data don't lie. There are
lots of arguments one could have mounted 30 years ago, but 30 years later we
have incontrovertible data that women do have the ability to do science and
engineering at a very high level."
She said the more relevant question is, "Why aren't they electing these
fields when the national need and the opportunities in the fields are so
great?"
Leveling the playing field does not mean giving women an unfair advantage,
another panelist, Maria Zuber said. Dr. Zuber, a geophysicist at M.I.T.,
said for example that scholarly journals might eliminate the identify of
authors when they send manuscripts out for pre-publication review. That way,
she said, work would be judged on its merits, rather than by the prominence
of its authors.
Ana Maria Cauce, a psychologist at the University of Washington and another
panelist, said at the news conference, "This is about more excellence, this
is not about changing the bar or lowering the bar.".
Ben A. Barres, a neuroscientist at Stanford who was not connected to the
effort, but who published a commentary on women in science last summer in
the journal Nature, said echoed the report's assertion that small
administrative changes could produce big differences for women in science.
He pointed to the Pioneer award program for young researchers run by the
National Institutes of Health. Dr. Barres, who has been a judge for the
awards, said even making it known that scientists could nominate themselves
helped make the pool of winners more diverse.
Dr. Shalala began the report's preface by recalling that when she was in
graduate school in political science the 1960's and as a young professor she
was told that fellowships or tenure would never be hers because she was a
woman.
Overt discrimination like that is now rare, she wrote, but progress has been
too slow. "We need overarching reform now," she said.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company