As challenging as the situation is for women in the academic sciences overall, at least there’s progress in most areas. But the situation for minority women in the sciences is “dismal,” according to Brown University professor Anne Fausto-Sterling:
In 2002, there were no African-American, Hispanic, or Native American women in tenured or tenure-track positions in the top 50 computer science departments in the country. …
Although African-American women earn more science and engineering doctorate degrees than African-American men, African-American men hold a greater percentage of faculty positions than women. Overall, the proportion of minority women in tenured science positions is extremely low, and actually fell between 1989 and 1997, Fausto-Sterling said.
“While the overall trend for women is going up, the trend for minority group women is not,” Fausto-Sterling said.
In her talk at Harvard University, Fausto-Sterling pointed to many of the same problems that confront non-minority women. But both women and minorities face discrimination and obstacles:
Firsthand accounts told of economic pressures for those from lower-income backgrounds, the need to care for family members, discrimination from faculty, and the belief of other students – and in a few cases even of themselves – that they don’t belong in the field.
I couldn’t find a copy of Fausto-Sterling’s talk online, so I don’t know what substantive solutions she called for. The article about her talk simply quotes her as saying “leadership is important” at universities. It would be interesting to know if she actually got into any specifics of how to redress the gender and race gaps in science.