Perhaps, it all starts in middle school math:
% of females taking Calc BC in 2005 = 40%
% of females taking Calc BC in 2013 = 41%.
We had a lengthy thread on this after that Cal prof was fired last year.
@intparent thank you for the link.
Wow @palm715 I hadn’t realized the number of females in engineering has stayed that stable over time. Thanks for posting those stats. I am pleased to have such a open communicative daughter, it will be interesting to discuss these issues with her over time, if necessary.
It goes back further than that. I would guess 20% back as far as early 80’s. We had an incoming freshman class that was 50% female - I believe it was in 1983. The following year the Sophomore class was once again in the 20-25% range. All that extra advertising just resulted in a lower than normal return rate. I’m tired of reading about how to increase the number of women in STEM. They have been playing that tune as long as I can remember.
I’ve never been harassed, but I have to admit that I have never been offered drugs either. My theory is that I give off an “I will turn you in” vibe causing people to not mess with me.
I think one additional factor in STEM is the grant money the stars bring in. If a professor of French or art history harasses his female students and they report it, it is easier to fire him because (a) there are many other French PhDs who would love to have a job and (b) it’s unlikely to cause the university a big financial loss.
It’s harder to find a replacement for a star chemistry or physics professor. More importantly, if he brings in a lot of $, firing him means losing that $. In some cases, firing a prof would mean the loss of millions of dollars. Plus, his graduate students would be really hurt by his departure.
I don’t think the disparity is limited to STEM employers or universities. Go to any bank, law firm or business and the majority of the top execs and partners are male. White males. Law schools have been graduating classes with 50%male/50%female for decades and there hasn’t been much movement at the top.
Our daughters have to do what we did - fight for our positions, salaries, projects, awards. Try to keep everything public such as meeting, business travel (there are books about safe business travel for women), cc’ing superiors on memos to get credit for work. Hopefully, as we’ve raised our daughters aware of these issues, we’ve raised our sons to be more aware too.
I am a scientist, and in college, I experienced a small amount of harassment. There was a math instructor who I graded for who invited me out to a bar. I brought my boyfriend. That was pretty easy to deal with. Much worse, though, was a history professor I was somehow referred to for advice on writing a scholarship essay. He was not one of my teachers, but he very uncomfortably invaded my personal life, and started getting very interested in me, my thoughts and feelings from a psychological perspective. It was harder to extricate myself from this guy, but one day it hit me how unprofessional he was being so I cut off all communication.
I guess the moral of my story is that it is not unique to science! Why couldn’t it happen in any academic field?
I wonder if I can find data here … searching …
American Association of University Professors
http://www.aaup.org/issues/women-academic-profession
I had forgotten, but I was harassed when I was an assistant professor 25 years ago. It was even more public and bizarre than the case in the article that started this. The associate dean (social scientist) told me at a reception, in front of two other assistant profs, that he had a fantasy of a lamp shaped like a woman with lightbulb breasts. I told him to stay a way from me. He wrote a letter of apology, saying “I was only joking” (can’t take a joke, witch). I went to HR and proceedings. Everyone was supportive of me, but all he got was a letter in his file.
The following year I moved to another university, not quite as highly ranked, but with regular raises, better retirement, strong graduate program, and better location. I didn’t feel as if my job was threatened, but I can imagine circumstances where someone might.
Women’s progress has been stuck for the last 15 years: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/03/the-costs-of-inequality-for-women-progress-until-they-get-near-power/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=03.08x.2016%20%282%29%20B
It does happen everywhere, in every field. And there are perceived stars in every field. STEM probably generates more of them, because people can actually attract money there, but the notion that fame and prestige bring license is pretty common across the board.
It’s not fair at all, but I don’t think it’s responsible for driving women out of STEM fields. Unless they find a field where men are basically absent, there’s nowhere to hide. Men do this to other men, too. I’m not aware of women doing it to men or to other women, at least not in the same way.
(I once counseled an undergraduate who was having an affair with a female faculty member, but she didn’t feel that she had been coerced into it, she felt she had initiated it. The issues came up when she had to deal with how driven, dark and depressed the woman she idolized really was. It was less a sexual harassment situation than a 19-year-old crashing into thirtysomething adulthood, and losing some illusions in the process.)
Meanwhile, those engineering numbers are interesting. There seems to have been little or no progress in getting more women into the field over the past decade and a half, but the suggestion in the NYT piece that women winnow themselves out on a relative basis is not borne out by the engineering data. Women got about 19% of engineering bachelor’s degrees. 22% of master’s degrees, and 24% of PhDs. The PhD numbers actually showed some meaningful progress, from about 17% in 2000 to 24% in 2009.
I’ve never been harassed. Maybe because my dad was head of my engineering department, then I met my future husband in grad school!
When I go to engineering association meetings, there are at the most 3 of us women among 25 to 30 men. Now I’m one of the older engineers!
I married young (although had children late) so was spared from unwanted advances.
I imagine if I had been single my experiences could have been very different based on what I witnessed or heard.
Couple of female friends who finished PhDs as single swore that they would never send their daughters to graduate school unmarried.
I highly recommend marrying young :))
Ha ha @payn4ward, I married young too, but it didn’t stop a married supervisor from trying things.
@NorthernMom61 You must have been devastatingly attractive :)) It also helped that DH looks hot tempered and was into martial arts and body building in youth.
@payn4ward I wish I had that as an excuse!
The issue of women in the sciences is receiving a lot of attention lately. Here is a fairly comprehensive article.