I’m declaring 2007 the year of women in science. In the wake of Larry Summers’ ass-minded comments at Harvard two years ago, several academic institutions have put the spotlight on women in science and engineering. We’ve started to see the results of that over the past few months. A National Academy of Science study called “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering” came out in September and both Columbia and Harvard have been sponsoring conferences and lectures on women in science.

And as Kristin mentioned in her post, a great article by Cornelia Dean came out today in the New York Times about women in science. Since this article is about to go behind a subscription wall, here are some relevant exerpts from it:

At . . . the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . . . half the undergraduate science majors and more than a third of the engineering students are women. Half of the nation’s medical students are women, and for decades the numbers have been rising similarly in disciplines like biology and mathematics. Yet studies show that women in science still routinely receive less research support than their male colleagues, and they have not reached the top academic ranks in numbers anything like their growing presence would suggest. For example, at top-tier institutions only about 15 percent of full professors in social, behavioral or life sciences are women . . .

As the National Academy of Sciences noted in its report, women who are scientists publish somewhat less over all than their male colleagues — but if surveys control for the amount of support researchers receive, women publish as often as men, the report said . . .

Dr. Joan Steitz cited a study of letters of recommendation written for men and women seeking academic appointments. Though all the applicants were successful, she said, and though the letters were written by men and women, the study found that the applicant’s personal life was mentioned six times more often if the letter was about a woman . . .

She cited “Every Other Thursday: Stories and Strategies from Successful Women Scientists” (Yale University Press, 2006), a book by Ellen Daniell, a former assistant professor of molecular biology at the University of California, Berkeley. In the book Dr. Daniell describes a group of female scientists who have been meeting regularly for more than 20 years to talk about their professional triumphs and travails, turning themselves into mentors and role models for one other.

There’s also a lot of great stuff in the article about how women are evaluated on the way they dress more than men are, and how difficult it is for women to be taken seriously when they are pregnant.

I’ll be reading the NAS study over the next few days, and will post here when I find interesting statistics.

I think that Time magazine got it right when they named you the person of the year for the way that people are bringing all their perspectives online via social networks, blogs, podcasts, and videos. I especially appreciate and applaud the blogs written by a number of anonymous female scientists and engineers who give the dirt about what it’s like to be in their position. (Three examples are FemaleScienceProfessor, ScienceWoman, and the still-new Am I a Woman Scientist?, but each has links to plenty more such blogs kept by women in many different disciplines and at all levels of science from grad student to tenured professor.)

I wrote my essay for She’s Such a Geek because I wanted girls who were considering science as a career to learn from my mistakes. I believe my main mistake was that I didn’t talk to enough people to learn what a physics career really entailed before I committed to that path. Partly it was because I didn’t really give enough thought to issues pertaining to balancing work and personal life as an undergraduate—academic achievement had been priority #1 for me up until then, and I didn’t see anything changing any time soon—and also it was partly because I didn’t feel like there was any faculty member I could have opened up to and ask these things if I’d even known to ask them. Talking to a professor (and they were all male in the engineering and physics departments where I was) felt so intimidating compared to talking to the secretaries and admins there, who despite being warm, fabulous people, couldn’t give me the mentoring that I didn’t know I needed.

So my advice is, find female scientist mentors any way you can—and until you do, read these female scientist blogs. If you’re in a department where there’s only one or two female faculty members, you still can’t expect them to be able to mentor you. Those women have their research to do, just like every male professor in the department, and they probably have to work even harder to make sure that their work is perceived as equally competent to their peers’. Until you find the professor or postdoc or senior graduate students who you feel some chemistry with and who can give you practical, caring advice, you could do a lot worse than read these blogs telling the good, the bad, and the ugly about the lives of female scientists in academia today.

(Also note that this Dec. 19 NY Times article about some of the issues that female scientists are discussing today. It’s definitely progress that people are discussing issues such as unconscious bias, which weren’t even acknowledged when I was an undergrad and graduate student. I’d love to discuss this in a future post, because if I’m honest I internalized some of these biases myself—it would have been hard not to, being raised Catholic.)

I never wanted to be a professor. That’s why I didn’t go to graduate school immediately from undergrad; academia was not calling me. When I did apply, I had a whole metaphysical argument mapped out for why an education in science would perfectly outfit me for a career in humanitarian aid. I firmly believe I will be just as much a scientist no matter where I work or what I do.

But I’m starting to feel personally responsible for fixing the gender gap.

Over 40% of the students and post-docs here are women. The faculty seems to be roughly 12% women. We talk about this discrepancy privately (in equal parts anxiety, anger and resignation). We talk about it publicly (at meetings for the new grad women in science association, at departmental retreats). The questions are always: “How do we change the ratios? How do we ensure more women make it to the top?”

What is the answer if not “By staying in academia yourselves”?

Am I doing a disservice to all girls and women in science if I drop out of academia? Am I merely contributing to the problem? Most of all, after all my ranting and raving about the gender inequities, how can I justify not staying to fix them?

Tonight I’m supposed to meet my two new undergraduate mentees – matched with me by the aforementioned grad women’s group. What do I tell them? “Yes, stay in science! Girls can do it! (But actually, I’m leaving)”? What kind of role model does that make me?

Rather belatedly, I read the Business Week article about Web 2.0 companies that featured Kevin Rose from Digg.com and various other young entrepreneurs. A sidebar in the article was called “Valley Boys,” and featured a bunch of up-and-coming tech companies (including BitTorrent, Facebook, and LiveJournal) run by BOYS. No girls allowed. Who cares if people like Mary Hodder (Dabble) and Di-ann Eisnor (Platial) are raising good chunks of VC and angel money for their cool Web 2.0 companies? They aren’t BOYS. The worst part was that in a couple of the pictures of the “valley boys” they had women’s bodies in the images as eye candy. My favorite (pictured above) is of Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, staring at the rack on a headless chick. WTF?

It’s so frustrating to be reading an article about a tech space that I’m actually interested in, and discover that the people covering the space are so frakkin clueless that they couldn’t even be bothered to take the “no girls allowed” sign off their clubhouse. Wake up, dorks. There are women in the tech industry, including entrepreneurs and VCs, and they are not amused.

Valley Boys [Business Week]

Does sexism in communications and information technology contribute to violence against women? Can women use information technology to help prevent violence? Now’s your chance to share your thoughts on these issues with others. GenderIT.org is organizing “Take Back The Tech,” in which women bloggers and writers take control over IT and communications technology and “consciously use it to disrupt gender relations.” GenderIT is hoping to see a debate about the connection between communications IT and violence against women. You can sign up to take part in a 16-day blogathon:

ka-BLOG! is a 16-day blog fest for the Take Back the Tech Campaign. It is open to anyone and everyone - girls, boys, everyone beyond and more — who wants to share their thoughts, write poetry and prose, post graphics / pictures, rant, rave, heckle, make snide remarks, stick their tongue out at violence against women, and how online communications can exacerbate or help eliminate VAW.

Read more at TakeBackTheTech.Net. Thanks to Beth for the link.

• Madsciencemama highlights a New Yorker excerpt about Virginia Apgar, who became a doctor in 1933 and revolutionized how doctors looked at newborn children.
• You should sign this petition encouraging Congress to end “drive-thru mastectomies.” Notyourwoman has the details.
• The National Center for Women and Information Technology unveils “turnkey” (I hate that word) best practices for companies and institutions to mentor and support women in IT.
• Women inventors registered three patents for military technology, 11 electrical patents and 633 mechanical patents from 1808 to 1895, according to this handy index.

I feel like I’ve probably blogged too much here lately about attempts to explain, or redress, the low proportion of women in the sciences. But here are a couple more links for you anyway. First of all, there’s more reaction to the recent Donna Shalala-led study on barriers to women’s careers in the academic sciences. Boston University’s group Women In Science and Engineering held a symposium to discuss “strategies for change.” From the Daily Free Press:

“Women have the drive and capability to succeed in science and engineering, and the problem is not simply the pipeline [to getting into the field],” Massachusetts Institute of Technology management professor Lotte Bailyn said. “The academic organizational structure and rules contribute significantly to under-representation of women in science and engineering.”

The symposium was part of WISE’s effort “to provide a united voice concerning climate concerns and hiring and retention issues,” according to the WISE website. Founded in 2004, the group aims to provide opportunities for female faculty and graduate students.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the infamous Lawrence Summers speech, “Harvard psychology prof Elizabeth Spelke published a study in which she found there were NO differences between male and female babies, children, and adults in terms of cognitive capabilities and aptitude in mathematical and scientific reasoning,” writes Thinking Girl at [insert witty title]. But linguist Steven Pinker rushed to rebut her findings, and the two held an online debate. “It’s long, but the gist of it is that Pinker takes a ‘nature’ line of argument and Spelke takes a “nurture” line of argument,” says Thinking Girl. She adds:

I’m with Spelke. I don’t think there are significant statistical differences in the cognitive abilities of women and men. I do think there are significant differences in the ways men and women are encouraged and socialized to think. (This is backed up by a study at U of Michigan, which suggests that women tend to choose careers based on their values more than on their skills.) All of Pinker’s points about “biological” differences between men and women have, in my mind (and Spelke’s), a sociological explanation. For example, Pinker says that men have different motivations than do women: men are more motivated by status than by family. My response to that point is that this has nothing to do with biology. Women are taught from childhood to care for other people, and men are taught that they must be providers and achievers. Is this difference in priorities really surprising?

She blames “crappy societal images” for steering women away from techy careers and fields. The whole post is very much worth reading.

This is interesting. Science professor runs the numbers on the female and male science/engineering/math faculty in her department, and finds that most of the women are married, but roughly half of them are married to male professors in the same university. Of those, most are married to a male professor of science/engineering/math. By contrast, most male faculty aren’t married to another professor at all. Her conclusions:

It is a myth that women have to stay single (and childless) to succeed as professors at a research university.

Women professors are commonly married to men who are professors, but the reverse is not nearly as common. This is not news, but I think these data highlight the well known fact that it is important for universities to deal with the infamous 2-Body Problem if they want to hire and retain women faculty. Dealing with the problem requires committing resources and being prepared to create positions within the same department or within different departments. This has to be handled at a high administrative level and not left up to departments.

So we now know that women have fewer job prospects in the academic sciences, thanks to Donna Shalala. But when women do get jobs in science or technology, do they earn as much as men? The answer is no, according to the Harvard Crimson:

Significant salary discrepancies still exist between males and females with equal degrees in the same science and engineering fields, according to a report released by the National Science Foundation (NSF) this week.

The largest discrepancy existed between men and women with master’s degrees in computer and information sciences, where men earned an average of $10,000 more than women.

Overall, men in science fields outearned women by 17 percent, according to the report.

I love the part where they insist that these trends don’t hold true for Harvard women, because they’re just so elite.

From Feministe:

You can check out HBO’s special Hacking Democracy in its entirety on Google Video. (The total run time is about an hour and twenty minutes, just so you know.)

The documentary covers a lot of the known problems with electronic voting and focuses on how much of what’s going on is hidden from public view. You can read HBO’s synopsis here.

Also, check out Salon’s coverage and a good round-up of links from Bruce Schneier.

My own extremely brief two cents: How long do we think Diebold would stay in business if their ATMs had the same kinds of gaping security flaws that their voting machines do?