We Can Do It

 

In 1980, Jacqueline E. Dixon went to sea on a U.S. Geological Survey ship. The six-month voyage would be the Stanford undergraduate student’s first experience with oceanographic field research, as well as an opportunity to see the world, and she was thrilled by the prospects. But Dixon’s excitement soon fizzled when she learned that the ship’s crew was less than pleased about her presence. “They thought it was bad luck to have a woman on-board,” she said.

By the time the cruise was over – with no ill having befallen the ship – Dixon had shown she was a worthy shipmate and a capable researcher. Yet the sexist comments were not over. When she approached a senior oceanographer at the university to tell him about the trip, he asked if she had worked as the ship’s cook.

“I was furious,” said Dixon. “But I decided that I could either take these small instances and be discouraged or be angered and channel that anger into succeeding and proving them wrong.”

Now a professor of marine geology and geophysics at the University of Miami, the director of its Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy, and a senior associate dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, Dixon says that things have changed for women scientists. In 1980, only about 12 percent of doctoral degrees in the physical sciences (including chemistry, physics, and geology) were awarded to women. By 2004, this number had increased to 27 percent. An even greater improvement occurred in the life sciences, with the percentage of PhDs awarded to women going from 25 percent in 1980 to nearly 50 percent in 2004.

But while many more women are now earning PhDs in the sciences, the rise is not reflected in the number holding tenured faculty positions. In 2003, among full professors at research universities only 19 percent in the life sciences and 10 percent in the physical sciences were women.

At the University of Miami, women currently hold just 15 percent of the full professorships in the life sciences and a mere 5 percent in the physical sciences.

According to University of Miami President Donna E. Shalala, many major research universities just aren’t interviewing or hiring women. “They’re still using the old boy network to identify candidates for jobs, and we’re no exception,” she said. “We’ve got to do better.”

Mother, Scientist, or Both?

As chair of the National Academies-supported Committee on Maximizing the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering, Shalala has spent considerable time studying this issue. In October 2007 she testified before Congress, calling for the elimination of gender biases within academic institutions. She cited findings from the committee’s recent report showing that the problem is not the pipeline. In other words, plenty of women are earning PhDs in the sciences, yet only a fraction of them enter academic professions. It is not clear whether they are simply choosing to forego academic careers, of their own volition, or are being discouraged for some other reason, perhaps by colleagues and administrators who are unfriendly toward women.

Dixon thinks it’s probably some of both. For one thing, she said, the prime childbearing years coincide with the intense career-building period of graduate school, the postdoctoral fellowship, and the professoriate’s pre-tenure timeframe. She suggests that this is enough to make many women decide to stay home with their families. “Most women carry the bigger burden of household chores and child-rearing, so they are forced to make choices that men don’t have to make,” she said.

Dixon herself is a working mom. Her son was born while she was in graduate school and she has two stepsons who were already teenagers when she married her husband. But despite the difficulty of pursuing a demanding career while simultaneously raising children, Dixon has achieved academic success.

And she is not an exception. Data show that women with children are no less likely than men to succeed in science. Marriage, children, and elder-care responsibilities, according to Shalala’s report, only minimally affect women’s publication productivity. And while women do, on average, take more time off during their early careers to care for children, they are less likely than men to take sick leave later in life.

Barbara A. Whitlock, an assistant professor in the Department of Biology and mother of two, agrees that balancing work and home life is actually not so difficult. “The problem,” she said, “is the perception that it can’t be done.”

Dealing with Discriminatation

Discrimination against women remains another significant barrier. But at the University of Miami, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Michael R. Halleran says he has made fighting it a priority. “Besides being just plain wrong,” he said, “discrimination cuts out a part of universities’ intellectual capital.” Halleran also notes that women faculty members are important role models and mentors for female and male students alike.

Assistant professor of biology Alexandra C.C. Wilson agrees that women scientists are important role models for students. “Students have told me that I was the first female science professor they’d had at UM,” Wilson said, “and one student mentioned that she felt more comfortable talking to me because I’m a woman.” Whitlock too has found that her female students look to her as a role model, and both biologists say that they themselves have benefited from having female mentors, including their own department chair at the
University of Miami, Kathryn Tosney. “Having women in leadership positions makes a big difference,” said Whitlock.

Yet even with women in positions of power, discrimination persists, and at every step along the path to becoming a full professor – beginning with the hiring process. According to Halleran, the fairness with which women are treated during recruitment depends on who is on the search committee, how the job advertisement is framed, and how broadly the search is defined. In an attempt to level the playing field, the Dean’s Office conducts a preliminary review of the top candidates as well as the top female and minority candidates, if they are not already represented in the group.

“I can’t force a department to hire a particular person and I wouldn’t want to,” said Halleran. “But there are things we can do to increase the diversity of the pool. For example, under our usual protocol, when a departmental position opens, we bring to campus the top three candidates for interviews. But if I discover that we will have a more diverse pool by bringing the top four candidates, then the college provides additional funding to bring all four candidates for an on-campus interview. Hiring is an extremely important commitment, after all, that can potentially affect the university for some 40 years.”

Wilson has noticed a difference between the University of Miami and other institutions where she has worked. “Here,” she said, “the candidate pool has been much more even.” But the biology department is an exception. Chemistry, physics, and computer science have had a difficult time recruiting women. According to Hüseyin Koçak, Chair of the Department of Computer Science, it’s not that he doesn’t want to hire a woman – he continually tries to do so – it’s that there are too few available in the recruitment pool.

In addition to facing discrimination at the start of their careers, many women – including some at the University of Miami – have observed that they were given lower salaries or unfairly treated during the tenure process. But while it is difficult to tell whether a department has based such decisions solely on gender in the past, it is clear that administrators now take the issue seriously and are implementing new measures to protect women. For example, faculty members with a new baby are given the opportunity to temporarily stop the tenure clock, which gives them a greater degree of flexibility and a higher likelihood of succeeding.

A Cultural Problem?

There is even greater hope in the fact that not all countries suffer from a shortage of female scientists. Recently hired University of Miami physicist Olga Korotkova said the situation is completely different in Russia, her home country. “In Soviet times, women were encouraged to pursue scientific careers,” she said. “I was taught that women can succeed in all possible areas.”

The United States clearly has a lot to do before matching the Russian record, but Nita A. Lewis, an associate professor of chemistry at the University, thinks the problem in this country generally, and at the University of Miami in particular, is more than just a gender issue. “It’s not purely a female problem, but rather an American problem,” she said. “Americans aren’t going into chemistry and physics because there is no money in those fields.” And they are falling off the science bandwagon in many other scientific fields as well. A 2004 report from the National Science Board stated that the United States had dropped from third place to seventeenth place globally in the number of 18- to 24-year-olds who receive science degrees. Shalala agrees that the problem is indeed broad and cultural. “If the United States wants to maintain its lead in the global scientific and engineering marketplace,” she wrote in her testimony to Congress, “policies must be geared to attracting and retaining the best and brightest – regardless of gender.”