You can go to our
Newslette
rs.
Or search for a word here:
Publications of Interest
On Campus with Women is a quarterly journal published
by the
Association of American Colleges and Universities
(www.aacu-edu.org). In
addition to articles, it includes short book reviews,
conference
announcements, and Web sites related to women´ s
studies.
A report from the European Commission on Women and Science
(ETAN),
Science Policies in the European Union: Promoting
Excellence Through
Mainstreaming Gender Equality is available at
http://www.cordis.lu/improving/src/women_documents.htm .
(The ETAN Web site also has links to European women and
science
networks, information about funding such networks, and a
declaration
adopted by representatives of the networks.)
The 170-page report contains much information on the
situation of
European women in science, statistics on students and
faculty, summaries of
previous reports, and listing of studies on, for example,
peer review as well
as strategies that have been used for increasing equity or
raising awareness
of inequity. For example, "It is important to put the
data in the public
domain but in an accessible form....´ Gender-fact
cards,´
which can be used to distribute to schools and journalists
to raise awareness
about patterns of gender segregation more generally, are a
useful
device" (p. 78). U.S. readers may have mixed emotions
about com-
ments such as: "One reason the American economy is so
prosperous
compared with other industrialized nations is that they
don´ t utilize
their female capital like we do" (p. 94). Perhaps we
don´ t but
wouldn´ t U.S. prosperity increase even more if women
could go
about their academic business with fewer impediments?
The Spring/Summer 2000 issue of Women´ s Studies
Quarterly
concerns "Building Inclusive Science." Articles
include Sylvia
Bencket and Else-Marie Staberg´ s study of women
scientists in
Sweden. In 1995, Carl Tham, the Swedish minister of
education, responded
to the finding that 93% of the professors in Sweden were men
by creating
30 new professorships for women. In 1997, a study was
published in
Nature showing that women needed to be considerably
more
competent than men to receive a post-doctoral fellowship
from the Swedish
Medical Research Council. It is against this backdrop that
Bencket and
Staberg´ s study
took place. Although, they perceived that men in science had
advantages
that women did not have, the scientists had mixed reactions
to Tham´
s action. Bencket and Staberg note, "If women argue
that they are the
same as men with the same conditions and should not have any
special
treatment, nothing in the hierarchy will change, or it will
change slowly as it
always has. If, on the other hand, women bring out the
differences,
concerning family obligations or attitudes toward the male
culture, the male
norm will still not disappear and the women will risk being
devalued and for
this reason kept out of power."
Mary Franke Fox´ s article in the same issue of
Women´ s
Studies Quarterly concerns a study of science and
engineering
departments that were successful or unsuccessful in
graduating high
percentages of women Ph.D.s. Departments that were
successful also had
strong leadership on issues that concerned women, had
considered what
constitutes a good environment for graduate education, and
were more
likely to have written guidelines for graduate study. (This
last point is similar
to one of the recommendations in Good Practice in Tenure
Evaluation.)
For example, the chair of an unsuccessful department said in
discussing
sexist behavior, "People tend to focus upon a few
anecdotal incidents,
and blow them up. That does a lot of damage." In
contrast, the
graduate director of a successful department said,
"There was a
comment made during a qualifying exam "let´s see
if a
woman can do anything good here." There have also been
comments
made in the classroom. The problems were directed to the
chair. The chair
had direct discussion with the faculty. Apologies were made,
a memo was
circulated." (An editorial comment: Imagine how
different the situation
of
Inbal
Hayut would have been in the latter department.)
-wage@wage.org-