You can go to our
Newsletters.
Or search for a word here:
Diversity in Science Departments
by Cathy Kessel
Donna Nelson, a chemist at the University of Oklahoma,
has written several articles about diversity in chemistry
and chemical engineering departments for the
Association for Women in Science Magazine.
These include statistics on percentages of black, white, Asian,
Hispanic, and Native American female and male chemistry professors.
Now she´s done the same for physics. Her article in the Winter
2002 issue of the AWIS Magazine (not yet on the Web) has statistics
for professors of various ranks at physics departments ranked by the
National Science Foundation as the "top 50" in the United
States (these include six UC departments).
As in the
audit of UC,
Nelson compares percentages of faculty with percentages of Ph.D.s,
but with a difference‹for each ethnicity, she looks at all faculty
ranks in individual departments and compares those numbers with Ph.D.s
earned between 1983 and 1999. Her statistics show that the percentages
of female faculty members of the "top 50" chemistry, chemical
engineering, and physics departments in the United States are smaller than
the percentages of women who received Ph.D.s between 1983 and 1999 in those
fields. Moreover, these ratios (percentage on faculty vs. percentage of Ph.D.s)
were smaller for women than for men, for each ethnicity and for all three
disciplines, except for Native Americans in chemistry and Hispanics in physics.
(One should not infer a trend from these last‹the numbers are not large enough.
There are three Native Americans in the "top 50"
chemistry departments and 37 Hispanics in the "top 50" physics
departments.)
Reasons why those who are not white males are not hired or do not stay in
academic departments will be familiar to WAGE members from their own experiences,
and from sources such as the MIT reports or Virginia Valian´s book Why So
Slow?
Reasons why two women left Nelson´s department are described in
http://news.mywebpal.com/partners/858/public/news283239.html.
Both have left academe: one now works in a laboratory on an air force base
and the other has started her own company.
If women receiving Ph.D.s in science are not employed at the "top 50"
departments, then where are they? Some answers are in Anne MacLachlan´s
article "
Careers of Minority Women Scientists from the University of
California, Berkeley" (in AAAS´s Making Strides, July 1, 2001).
MacLachlan located many of the men and women of color who earned Ph.D.s in
science and engineering from UCB between 1980 and 1990.
About 57% of the men have academic jobs and 38% are ladder faculty.
In contrast, 32% of the women have academic jobs and only about 11% are
in ladder positions. Interviews with some of the women revealed a variety of
reasons for their choice of positions‹among them, a desire to work at
institutions that would enable them to serve their communities, a desire to
stay in the Bay Area, need to accommodate a spouse. Like the two women who
left Nelson´s department, some of their job changes were preceded by
unpleasant treatment or experiences. Most report now being very satisfied with
their work.
It seems more than just unfortunate that a larger percentage of these women
could not serve their communities at a "top 50" department. As the
2002 MIT Report asks, "Do we need to change the rules of the game?"
-wage@wage.org-