A sexy calendar of women engineering students from University of Illinois sparked some controversy, according to the IEEE Spectrum. After a dozen female engineering students posed in varying states of undress, the story got picked up in newspapers. And then Playboy weighed in, saying the engineers weren’t “knockouts,” but were “the total package,” smart as well as cute. Whatevs. It sounds as though the calendar didn’t do that well, and one woman who posed for it says she’s disappointed that it didn’t reflect more of her geeky skillz as well as her sexiness.

The article concludes with a fascinating interview with Karen Hopkin, who created the calendar “Studmuffins of Science,” featuring male science PhDs in saucy poses. The 1990s calendar series did so well, she considered expanding it to include women, only to hit a snag:

“Whereas hundreds of guys had sent in pictures, I got maybe four women,” says Hopkin, herself a Ph.D., in biochemistry, and a science writer for the National Institutes of Health. “And they all accompanied their photos with several-page letters saying that they liked my idea but needed to know what I was doing. It had to be tasteful; they didn’t want to jeopardize their careers.”

The men hadn’t minded at all. One did tell her that he’d been a bit worried to see his calendar photo mixed in among his journal articles during his final interview for academic tenure, but then the department head slapped him on the back and told him it was okay. Another, a cover model, credited the calendar with introducing him to his future girlfriend. Hopkin concluded that men have less to fear from exposing themselves, both literally and figuratively.

She says she supports the Illinois calendar project completely, that it’s great to let people know that engineering and science “can be done by women, and by good-looking, sexy women.” The problem, though, is that just about any woman with a Ph.D., well along in her career, will shy away from what to an undergrad might seem merely a lark.

I don’t know why she needed PhDs instead of students, but this sort of reminds me of the comment thread on my post the other day. It’s hard enough for a woman with a PhD in the sciences to be taken seriously and get a secure job track. I’m sure very very few female science PhDs feel secure enough to portray themselves as sex objects on top of that. So don’t blame the sexual double-standard in this case — it’s much more to do with the leaky pipeline in general.

The gender gap among science PhDs in California has narrowed a fair bit, according to a new analysis by the Sacramento Bee:

In the UC system between 1994 and 1996, 527 women received doctorates in those disciplines, according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission. From 2003 to 2005, the most recent years available, that number rose to 681. That’s a roughly 30 percent increase.

A big, obvious gap still exists — but it’s shrinking. Across the UC system, the ratio of men-to-women doctorates in those four disciplines went from 4.8 to 1 a decade ago to 3.5 to 1 in the most recent figures.

The Bee found similar numbers for private colleges, and said the number of women getting PhDs in the sciences nationally went up about 20 percent in the past decade. The reason? A “snowball” effect: the more women role models you have in the sciences, the more women get into the sciences, and so on. Offhand, these statistics sound like a good start, but obviously a 1:1 ratio would be better. And the next hurdle for these women, once they have their PhDs, is getting a tenure-track job.