Women in the sciences, continued

As a follow-up on yesterday's post about gender bias in the sciences, another Inside Higher Ed artice published today, "Bias or Interest?," discusses preliminary, unpublished results from a study of gender bias in academia

"Unpublished data, however, suggest that most professors don’t agree that discrimination — intentional or otherwise — is the main reason that men hold so many more positions than do women in the sciences. Professors overwhelmingly
think it’s a matter of men and women having different interests.

The data come from a national survey of 1,500 professors at all kinds of institutions in the United States. Two sociologists — Neil Gross of Harvard and Solon Simmons of George Mason University — conducted the survey on a range of social and political issues. While they have not yet finished their analysis, they agreed to release the data on women and science because of the interest generated by the National Academies’ study. "

Women in the sciences

Inside Higher Ed today profiles a recent National Academies of Science report, "Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering." Noting the relatively low proportion of women among science and engineering faculty at research institutions, the report notes,

"The representation of women in leadership positions in our academic institutions, scientific and professional societies, and honorary organizations is low relative to the number of women qualified to hold these positions. It is not lack of talent, but unintentional biases and outmoded institutional structures that are hindering the access and advancement of women. Neither our academic institutions nor our nation can afford such underuse of precious human capital in science and engineering. The time to take action is now."

The authoring committee has put together recommendations for transforming academic insitutions to address this issue, including halting attrition during the academic advancement process, revamping models for institutional support, and reducing other institutional constraint factors. In Chapter 6, the report includes a "scorecard" for institutions to use in assessing progress related to each of the recommendations.

The report is also covered in ScienceNOW Daily News, the New York Times, Nobel Intent, Ontogeny, and other popular media outlets.

The issue certainly is not unique to the US, e.g. see Arunn of Nonoscience's "Unsung Heroines" blog entry today about women scientists in India.