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Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?

education are well documented. But what could still be keeping women out of the STEM fields (STEM being the current shorthand for science, technology, engineering and mathematics), which offer so much in the way of job prospects, prestige, intellectual stimulation and income? As one of the first two women to earn a bachelor of science degree in physics from Yale I graduated in 1978 this question concerns me deeply. I attended a rural public school whose few accelerated courses in physics and calculus I wasnt allowed to take because, as my principal put it, girls never go on in science and math. Angry and bored, I began reading about space and time and teaching myself calculus from a book. When I arrived at Yale, I was woefully unprepared. The boys in my introductory physics class, who had taken far more rigorous math and science classes in high school, yawned as our professor sped through the material, while I grew panicked at how little I understood. The only woman in the room, I debated whether to raise my hand and expose myself to ridicule, thereby losing track of the lecture and falling further behind. In the end, I graduated summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with honors in the major, having excelled in the departments three-term sequence in quantum mechanics and a graduate course in gravitational physics, all while teaching myself to program Yales mainframe computer. But I didnt go into physics as a career. At the end of four years, I was exhausted by all the lonely hours I spent catching up to my classmates, hiding my insecurities, struggling to do my problem sets while the boys worked in teams to finish theirs. I was tired of dressing one way to be taken seriously as a scientist while dressing another to feel feminine. And while some of the men I wanted to date werent put off by my major, many of them were. Mostly, though, I didnt go on in physics because not a single professor not even the adviser who supervised my senior thesis encouraged me to go to graduate school. Certain this meant I wasnt talented enough to succeed in physics, I left the rough draft of my senior thesis outside my advisers door and slunk away in shame. Pained by the dream I had failed to achieve, I locked my textbooks, lab reports and problem sets in my fathers army footlocker and turned my back on physics and math forever.

Mondadori Portfolio, via Getty Images

At the Solvay Conference on Physics in 1927, the only woman in attendance was Marie Curie (bottom row, third from left).
By EILEEN POLLACK Published: October 3, 2013 322 Comments

Last summer, researchers at Yale published a study proving that physicists, chemists and biologists are likely to view a young male scientist more favorably than a woman with the same qualifications. Presented with identical summaries of the accomplishments of two imaginary applicants, professors at six major research institutions were significantly more willing to offer the man a job. If they did hire the woman, they set her salary, on average, nearly $4,000 lower than the mans. Surprisingly, female scientists were as biased as their male counterparts. The new study goes a long way toward providing hard evidence of a continuing bias against women in the sciences. Only one-fifth of physics Ph.D.s in this country are awarded to women, and only about half of those women are American; of all the physics professors in the United States, only 14 percent are women. The numbers of black and Hispanic scientists are even lower; in a typical year, 13 African-Americans and 20 Latinos of either sex receive Ph.D.s in physics. The reasons for those shortages are hardly mysterious many minority students attend secondary schools that leave them too far behind to catch up in science, and the effects of prejudice at every stage of their

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Not until 2005, when Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, wondered aloud at a lunchtime talk why more women dont end up holding tenured positions in the hard sciences, did I feel compelled to reopen that footlocker. I have known Summers since my teens, when he judged my high-school debate team, and he has always struck me as an admirer of smart women. When he suggested among several other pertinent reasons that innate disparities in scientific and mathematical aptitude at the very highest end of the spectrum might account for the paucity of tenured female faculty, I got the sense that he had asked the question because he genuinely cared about the answer. I was taken aback by his suggestion that the problem might have something to do with biological inequalities between the sexes, but as I read the heated responses to his comments, I realized that even I wasnt sure why so many women were still giving up on physics and math before completing advanced degrees. I decided to look up my former classmates and professors, review the research on womens performance in STEM fields and return to Yale to see what, if anything, had changed since I studied there. I wanted to understand why I had walked away from my dream, and why so many other women still walk away from theirs.

Post describing her gradual realization that women were leaving the profession not because they werent gifted but because of the slow drumbeat of being underappreciated, feeling uncomfortable and encountering roadblocks along the path to success. Although Urry confessed in her op-ed column that as a young scientist she interpreted her repeated failures to be hired or promoted as proof that she wasnt good enough, anyone who meets her now would have a hard time seeing her as lacking in confidence. She has a quizzical smile and radiant eyes and an irreverent sense of humor; not one but five people described her to me as the busiest woman on campus.

Before we met, Urry predicted that the female students in her department would recognize the struggles she and I had faced but that their support system protected them from the same kind of self-doubt. For instance, under the direction of Bonnie Fleming, the second woman to gain tenure in the physics department at Yale, the students sponsor a semiregular Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics at Yale. Beyond that, Urry suggested that with so many women studying physics at Yale, and so many of them at the top of their class, the faculty couldnt help recognizing that their abilities didnt differ from the mens. When I In many ways, of course, the climate has become mentioned that a tea was being held that afternoon so I more welcoming to young women who want to study could interview female students interested in science science and math. Female students at the high school I and gender, Urry said she would try to attend. attended in upstate New York no longer need to teach Judith Krauss, the professor who was hosting the tea themselves calculus from a book, and the physics (she is the former dean of nursing and now master of classes are taught by a charismatic young woman. Silliman College, where I lived as an undergraduate), When I first returned to Yale in the fall of 2010, warned me that very few students would be interested everyone kept boasting that 30 to 40 percent of the enough to show up. When 80 young women (and three undergraduates majoring in physics and physicscurious men) crowded into the room, Krauss and I related fields were women. More remarkable, those were stunned. By the time Urry hurried in, she was young women studied in a department whose lucky to find a seat. chairwoman was the formidable astrophysicist Meg Urry, who earned her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins, The students clamored to share their stories. One completed a postdoctorate at M.I.T.s center for space young woman had been disconcerted to find herself research and served on the faculty of the Hubble space one of only three girls in her AP physics course in high telescope before Yale hired her as a full professor in school, and even more so when the other two dropped 2001. (At the time, there wasnt a single other female out. Another student was the only girl in her AP faculty member in the department.) physics class from the start. Her classmates teased her In recent years, Urry has become devoted to using hard data and anecdotes from her own experience to alter her colleagues perceptions as to why there are so few women in the sciences. In response to the Summers controversy, she published an essay in The Washington mercilessly: Youre a girl. Girls cant do physics. She expected the teacher to put an end to the teasing, but he didnt. Other women chimed in to say that their teachers were the ones who teased them the most. In one physics

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class, the teacher announced that the boys would be graded on the boy curve, while the one girl would be graded on the girl curve; when asked why, the teacher explained that he couldnt reasonably expect a girl to compete in physics on equal terms with boys.

conventionally feminine seem even more intense now than when I was young.

For proof of the stereotypes that continue to shape American attitudes about science, and about women in science in particular, you need only watch an episode The only members of the audience who didnt know of the popular television show The Big Bang Theory, what the rest were talking about were the women who about a group of awkward but endearing male Caltech had attended all-girls secondary schools or had grown physicists and their neighbor, Penny, an attractive up in foreign countries. (The lesbian scientists with blonde who has moved to L.A. to make it as an actress. whom I spoke, at the tea and elsewhere, reported Although two of the scientists on the show are women, differing reactions to the gender dynamic of the one, Bernadette, speaks in a voice so shrill it could classroom and the lab, but voiced many of the same shatter a test tube. When she was working her way concerns as the straight women.) One student I took toward a Ph.D. in microbiology, rather than working in her to be Indian or Pakistani said she arrived on a lab, as any real doctoral student would do, she campus having taken lots of advanced classes and waitressed with Penny. Mayim Bialik, the actress who didnt hesitate to sign up for the most rigorous math plays Amy, a neurobiologist who becomes course. Shaken to find herself the only girl in the class, semiromantically involved with the childlike but unable to follow the first lecture, she asked the brilliant physicist Sheldon, really does have a Ph.D. in professor: Should I be here? If youre not confident neuroscience and is in no way the hideously dumpy that you should be here she imitated his scorn woman she is presented as on the show. The Big Bang you shouldnt take the class. Theory is a sitcom, of course, and therefore every character is a caricature, but what remotely normal After the tea, a dozen girls stayed to talk. The boys in young person would want to enter a field populated by my group dont take anything I say seriously, one misfits like Sheldon, Howard and Raj? And what astrophysics major complained. I hate to be remotely normal young woman would want to imagine aggressive. Is that what it takes? I wasnt brought up herself as dowdy, socially clueless Amy rather than as that way. Will I have to be this aggressive in graduate stylish, bouncy, math-and-science-illiterate Penny? school? For the rest of my life? Another said she disliked when she and her sister went out to a club and Although Americans take for granted that scientists are her sister introduced her as an astrophysics major. I geeks, in other cultures a gift for math is often seen as kick her under the table. I hate when people in a bar or demonstrating that a person is intuitive and creative. at a party find out Im majoring in physics. The minute In 2008, theAmerican Mathematical Society published they find out, I can see the guys turn away. Yet data from a number of prestigious international another went on about how even at Yale the men didnt competitions in an effort to track standout performers. want to date a physics major, and how she was worried The American competitors were almost always the shed go through four years there without a date. children of immigrants, and very rarely female. For example, between 1959 and 2008, Bulgaria sent 21 After the students left, I asked Urry if she was as girls to the International Mathematical Olympiad, flabbergasted as I was. More, she said after all, she while the U.S., from 1974, when it first entered the was the chairwoman of the department in which most competition, to 2008, sent only 3; no woman even of these girls were studying. made the American team until 1998. According to the In the two years that followed, I heard similar studys authors, native-born American students of both accounts echoed among young women in Michigan, sexes steer clear of math clubs and competitions upstate New York and Connecticut. I was dismayed to because only Asians and nerds would voluntarily do find that the cultural and psychological factors that I math. In other words, it is deemed uncool within the experienced in the 70s not only persist but also seem social context of U.S.A. middle and high schools to do all the more pernicious in a society in which women mathematics for fun; doing so can lead to social are told that nothing is preventing them from ostracism. Consequently, gifted girls, even more so succeeding in any field. If anything, the pressures to be

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than boys, usually camouflage their mathematical talent to fit in well with their peers.

are far worse in computer science. Maybe boys care more about physics and computer science than girls do. But an equally plausible explanation is that boys The studys findings apply equally in science. Urry told are encouraged to tough out difficult courses in me that at the space telescope institute where she used unpopular subjects, while girls, no matter how smart, to work, the women from Italy and France dress very receive fewer arguments from their parents, teachers well, what Americans would call revealing. Youll see a or guidance counselors if they drop a physics class or Frenchwoman in a short skirt and fishnets; thats shrug off an AP exam. normal for them. The men in those countries seem able to keep someones sexual identity separate from her That cultural signals can affect a students ability to scientific identity. American men cant seem to perform on an exam has long been known. In a appreciate a woman as a woman and as a scientist; its frequently cited 1999 study, a sample of University of one or the other. Michigan students with similarly strong backgrounds and abilities in math were divided into two groups. In That the disparity between men and womens the first, the students were told that men perform representation in science and math arises from culture better on math tests than women; in the second, the rather than genetics seems beyond dispute. In the early students were assured that despite what they might 1980s, a large group of American middle-schoolers have heard, there was no difference between male and were given the SAT exam in math; among those who female performance. Both groups were given a math scored higher than 700, boys outperformed girls by 13 test. In the first, the men outscored the women by 20 to 1. But scoring 700 or higher on the SATs, even in points; in the second, the men scored only 2 points middle school, doesnt necessarily reveal true higher. mathematical creativity or facility with higher-level concepts. And these were all American students. The Its even possible that gifts in science and math arent mathematical societys study of the top achievers in identifiable by scores on tests. Less than one-third of international competitions went much further in the white American males who populate the ranks of examining genius by analyzing the performance of engineering, computer science, math and the physical young women in other cultures. The studys sciences scored higher than 650 on their math SATs, conclusion? The scarcity of women at the very highest and more than one-third scored below 550. In the echelons is due, in significant part, to changeable middle ranks, hard work, determination and factors that vary with time, country and ethnic group. encouragement seem to be as important as raw talent. First and foremost, some countries identify and Even at the very highest levels, test scores might be nurture females with very high ability in mathematics irrelevant; apparently, Richard Feynmans I.Q. was a at a much higher frequency than do others. Besides, less-than-remarkable 125. the ratio of boys to girls scoring 700 or higher on the The most powerful determinant of whether a math SAT in middle school is now only three to one. If woman goes on in science might be whether anyone girls were so constrained by their biology, how could encourages her to go on. My freshman year at Yale, I their scores have risen so steadily in such a short time? earned a 32 on my first physics midterm. My parents In elementary school, girls and boys perform equally urged me to switch majors. All they wanted was that I well in math and science. But by the time they reach be able to earn a living until I married a man who high school, when those subjects begin to seem more could support me, and physics seemed unlikely to difficult to students of both sexes, the numbers accomplish either goal. diverge. Although the percentage of girls taking highI trudged up Science Hill to ask my professor, Michael school physics rose to 47 percent in 1997 from 39 Zeller, to sign my withdrawal slip. I took the elevator to percent in 1987, that figure has remained constant into Professor Zellers floor, then navigated corridors lined the new millennium. And the numbers become more with photos of the all-male faculty and notices for alarming when you look at AP classes rather than lectures whose titles struck me as incomprehensible. I general physics, and at the scores on AP exams rather knocked at my professors door and managed to than mere attendance in AP classes. The statistics tend stammer that I had gotten a 32 on the midterm and to be a bit more encouraging in AP calculus, but they needed him to sign my drop slip.

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Why? he asked. He received Ds in two of his physics courses. Not on the midterms in the courses. The story sounded like something a nice professor would invent to make his least talented student feel less dumb. In his case, the Ds clearly were aberrations. In my case, the 32 signified that I wasnt any good at physics. Just swim in your own lane, he said. Seeing my confusion, he told me that he had been on the swimming team at Stanford. His stroke was as good as anyones. But he kept coming in second. Zeller, the coach said, your problem is you keep looking around to see how the other guys are doing. Keep your eyes on your own lane, swim your fastest and youll win.

months missing parties, skipping dinners and losing sleep, trying to figure out why waves of sound, of light, of anything travel in a spherical shell, like the skin of a balloon, in any odd-dimensional space, but like a solid bowling ball in any space of even dimension. When at last I found the answer, I knocked triumphantly at my advisers door. Yet I dont remember him praising me in any way. I was dying to ask if my ability to solve the problem meant that I was good enough to make it as a theoretical physicist. But I knew that if I needed to ask, I wasnt.

Years later, when I contacted that same professor, the mathematician Roger Howe, he responded enthusiastically to my request that we get together to discuss women in science and math. We met at his I gathered this meant he wouldnt be signing my drop office, in a building that still has a large poster of slip. famous mathematicians (all male) in the lobby, You can do it, he said. Stick it out. although someone has tacked a smaller poster of I stayed in the course. Week after week, I struggled to famous women in math on the top floor beside the womens bathroom. Howe appeared remarkably do my problem sets, until they no longer seemed youthful, even when you consider that when I studied impenetrable. The deeper I now tunnel into my fourwith him, he was the youngest full professor at Yale. inch-thick freshman physics textbook, the more equations I find festooned with comet-like exclamation He suggested we grab a sandwich, and as we sat waiting for our panini, I told him that one reason I points and theorems whose beauty I noted with exploding novas of hot-pink asterisks. The markings in didnt go to graduate school was that I compared myself with him and judged my talents wanting. After the book return me to a time when, sitting in my all, Id had such a difficult time solving the problem he cramped dorm room, I suddenly grasped some had challenged me to solve. principle that governs the way objects interact, whether here on earth or light years distant, and I He looked puzzled. But you solved it. marveled that such vastness and complexity could be Yeah, I said. At the end I really understood what I reducible to the equation I had highlighted in my book. was doing. But it took me such a long time. Could anything have been more thrilling than comprehending an entirely new way of seeing, a reality But thats just how it is, he said. You dont see it more real than the real itself? until you do, and then you wonder why you didnt see it all along. I earned a B in the course; the next semester I got an A. By the start of my senior year, I was at the top of my But I had needed to drop my class in real analysis. class, with the most experience conducting research. Howe shrugged. There are a lot of different math But not a single professor asked me if I was going on to personalities. Different mathematicians are good at graduate school. When I mentioned shyly to Professor different fields. Zeller that my dream was to apply to Princeton and become a theoretician, he shook his head and said that I asked if he had noticed any differences between the if you went to Princeton, you had better put your ego in ways male and female students approach math your back pocket, because those guys were so brilliant problems, whether they have different math personalities. No, he said. Then again, he couldnt get and competitive that you would get that ego crushed, inside his students heads. He did have two female which made me feel as if I werent brilliant or students go on in math, and both had done fairly well. competitive enough to apply. Not even the math professor who supervised my senior I asked why even now there were no female professors on Yales math faculty. Notenured women, Howe thesis urged me to go on for a Ph.D. I had spent nine

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corrected me. Just recently, the department had voted to hire a woman for a tenure-track job. (That woman did not receive tenure, but this year the faculty did hire a senior female professor.) Well, I said, thats still not very many. He stared into the distance. I guess I just havent seen that many women whose work Im excited about. I watched him mull over his answer, the way I used to watch him visualize n-dimensional toruses cradled in his hands. Maybe women are victims of misperception, he said finally. Not long ago, one of his colleagues at another school admitted to him that back when all of them were starting out, there were two people in his field, a woman and a man, and this colleague assumed the man must be the better mathematician, but the woman has gone on to do better work. I finally came straight out and asked what he thought of my project. How did it compare with all the other undergraduate research projects he must have supervised? His eyebrows lifted, as if to express the mathematical symbol for puzzlement. Actually, he hadnt supervised more than two or three undergraduates in his entire career. Its very unusual for any undergraduate to do an independent project in mathematics, he said. By that measure, I would have to say that what you did was exceptional. Exceptional? I echoed. Then why had he never told me? The question took him aback. I asked if he ever specifically encouraged any undergraduates to go on for Ph.D.s; after all, he was now the director of undergraduate studies. But he said he never encouraged anyone to go on in math. Its a very hard life, he told me. You need to enjoy it. Theres a lot of pressure being a mathematician. The life, the culture, its very hard. When I told Meg Urry that Howe and several other of my professors said they dont encourage anyone to go on in physics or math because its such a hard life, she blew raspberries. Oh, come on, she said. Theyre their own bosses. Theyre well paid. They love what they do. Why not encourage other people to go on in what you love? She gives many alumni talks, and theres always a woman who comes up to me and says the same thing you said, I wanted to become a physicist, but no one encouraged me. If even one

person had said, You can do this. She laughed. Women need more positive reinforcement, and men need more negative reinforcement. Men wildly overestimate their learning abilities, their earning abilities. Women say, Oh, Im not good, I wont earn much, whatever you want to give me is O.K. One student told Urry she doubted that she was good enough for grad school, and Urry asked why the student had earned nearly all As at Yale, which has one of the most rigorous physics programs in the country. A woman like that didnt think she was qualified, whereas Ive written lots of letters for men with B averages. She wont say that getting a Ph.D. is easy. It is a grind. When a young woman says, How is this going to be for me? I have to say that yes, there are easier things to do. But that doesnt mean I need to discourage her from trying. You dont need to be a genius to do what I do. When I told my adviser what I wanted to do, he said, Oh, Meg, you have to be a genius to be an astrophysicist. I was the best physics major they had. What he was really saying was that I wasnt a genius, wasnt good enough. What, all those theoreticians out there are all Feynman or Einstein? I dont think so. Not long ago, I met five young Yale alumna at a Vietnamese restaurant in Cambridge. Three of the women were attending graduate school at Harvard two in physics and one in astronomy and two were studying oceanography at M.I.T. None expressed anxiety about surviving graduate school, but all five said they frequently worried about how they would teach and conduct research once they had children. Thats where you lose all the female physicists, one woman said. Yeah, its even hard to get your kid into child care at M.I.T., said another. Women are just as willing as men to sacrifice other things for work, said a third. But were not willing to do even more work than the men work in the lab and teach, plus do all the child care and housework. What most young women dont realize, Urry said, is that being an academic provides a female scientist with more flexibility than most other professions. She met her husband on her first day at the Goddard Space Flight Center. And we have a completely equal relationship, she told me. When he looks after the kids, he doesnt say hes helping me. No one is

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claiming that juggling a career in physics while raising children is easy. But having a family while establishing a career as a doctor or a lawyer isnt exactly easy either, and that doesnt prevent women from pursuing those callings. Urry suspects that raising a family is often the excuse women use when they leave science, when in fact they have been discouraged to the point of giving up.

that smart. This is what discrimination looks like in 2011.

Not everyone agrees that what was uncovered at M.I.T. actually qualifies as discrimination. Judith Kleinfeld, a professor emeritus in the psychology department at the University of Alaska, argues that the M.I.T. study isnt persuasive because the number of faculty members involved is too small and university officials refuse to All Ph.D.s face the long slog of competing for a junior release the data. Even if female professors have been position, writing grants and conducting enough shortchanged or shunted aside, their marginalization research to earn tenure. Yet women running the tenure might be a result of the same sorts of departmental race must leap hurdles that are higher than those infighting, personality conflicts and mistaken facing their male competitors, often without realizing impressions that cause male faculty members to feel any such disparity exists. slighted as well. Perceptions of discrimination are evidence of nothing but subjective feelings, Kleinfeld In the mid-1990s, three senior female professors at scoffs. M.I.T. came to suspect that their careers had been hampered by similar patterns of marginalization. They But broader studies show that the perception of took the matter to the dean, who appointed a discrimination is often accompanied by a very real committee of six senior women and three senior men difference in the allotment of resources. In February to investigate their concerns. After performing the 2012, the American Institute of Physics published a investigation and studying the data, the committee survey of 15,000 male and female physicists across 130 concluded that the marginalization experienced by countries. In almost all cultures, the female scientists female scientists at M.I.T. was often accompanied by received less financing, lab space, office support and differences in salary, space, awards, resources and grants for equipment and travel, even after the response to outside offers between men and women researchers controlled for differences other than sex. faculty, with women receiving less despite professional In fact, the researchers concluded, women physicists accomplishments equal to those of their colleagues. could be the majority in some hypothetical future yet The dean concurred with the committees findings. still find their careers experience problems that stem And yet, as was noted in the committees report, his from often unconscious bias. fellow administrators resisted the notion that there Jo Handelsman spends much of her time studying was any problem that arose from gender bias in the micro-organisms in the soil and the guts of insects, but treatment of the women faculty. Some argued that it since the early 1990s, she also has devoted herself to was the masculine culture of M.I.T. that was to blame, increasing the participation of women and minorities and little could be done to change that. In other in science. Although she long suspected that the same words, women didnt become scientists because subtle biases documented in the general population science and scientists were male. were at work among scientists, she had no data to The committees most resonant finding was that the support such assertions. People said, Oh, that might discrimination facing female scientists in the final happen in the Midwest or in the South, but not in New quarter of the 20th century was qualitatively different England, or not in my department we just graduated from the more obvious forms of sexism addressed by a woman. They would say, That only happens in civil rights laws and affirmative action, but no less real. economics. Male scientists told Handelsman: I have As Nancy Hopkins, one of the professors who initiated women in my lab! My female students are smarter than the study, put it in an online forum: I have found that the men! They go to their experience, she said, with even when women win the Nobel Prize, someone is a sample size of one. She laughed. Scientists can be bound to tell me they did not deserve it, or the so unscientific. discovery was really made by a man, or the important In 2010, Handelsman teamed up with Corinne Mossresult was made by a man, or the woman really isnt Racusin, then a postdoctoral associate at Yale, to begin work on the study that was published last year, which

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directly documented gender bias in American faculty can watch the tension in the room drop. I can say: We members in three scientific fields physics, chemistry all do this. Its not only you. Its not just the bad boys and biology at six major research institutions who do this. scattered across the country. I asked Handelsman about the objection I commonly Moss-Racusin, along with collaborators in the heard that John is a stronger name than Jennifer. She departments of psychology, psychiatry and the School shook her head. Its not just a question of syllables, of Management, designed a study that involved believe me, she said. There have been studies of sending out identical rsums to professors of both which names convey the same qualities to respondents sexes, with a cover page stating that the young in surveys, and John and Jennifer are widely seen as applicant had recently obtained a bachelors degree conveying the same level of respectability and and was now seeking a position as a lab manager. Half competence. That faculty members reported liking of the 127 participants received a rsum for a student Jennifer more than John makes the covert bias all the named John; the other half received the identical more insidious. As the authors make clear, their results rsum for Jennifer. In both cases, the applicants mesh with the findings of similar studies indicating qualifications were sufficient for the job (with that peoples biases stem from repeated exposure to supportive letters of recommendation and the pervasive cultural stereotypes that portray women as coauthorship of a journal article) but not less competent by simultaneously emphasizing their overwhelmingly persuasive the applicants G.P.A. warmth and likability compared to men. was only 3.2, and he or she had withdrawn from one And when you combine that subconscious institutional science class. Each faculty member was asked to rate bias with the internal bias against their own abilities John or Jennifer on a scale of one to seven in terms of that many young female scientists report experiencing, competence, hireability, likability and the extent to the results are particularly troubling. Of all the data her which the professor might be willing to mentor the study uncovered, Handelsman finds the mentoring student. The professors were then asked to choose a results to be the most devastating. If you add up all salary range they would be willing to pay the candidate. the little interactions a student goes through with a The results were startling. No matter the respondents professor asking questions after class, an adviser age, sex, area of specialization or level of seniority, recommending which courses to take or suggesting John was rated an average of half a point higher than what a student might do for the coming summer, Jennifer in all areas except likability, where Jennifer whether he or she should apply for a research program, scored nearly half a point higher. Moreover, John was whether to go on to graduate school, all those minioffered an average starting salary of $30,238, versus interactions that students use to gauge what we think $26,508 for Jennifer. Handelsman told me that of them so theyll know whether to go on or not. . . . whenever she and Moss-Racusin show the graph to an You might think they would know for themselves, but audience of psychologists, we hear a collective gasp, they dont. Handelsman shook her head. Mentoring, the significance is really so big. advising, discussing all the little kicks that women get, as opposed to all the responses that men get that I asked Handelsman if she was surprised that senior make them feel more a part of the party. female faculty members demonstrated as much bias as male professors, regardless of age, and she said no; she Some critics argue that no real harm is done if had seen too many similar results in other studies. Nor women choose not to go into science. David Lubinski was she surprised that the bias against women was as and Camilla Persson Benbow, psychologists strong in biology as in physics or chemistry, despite the at Vanderbilt University, spent decades studying presence of more female biologists in most thousands of mathematically precocious 12-year-olds. departments. Biologists may see women in their labs, Their conclusion? The girls tended from the start to be she says, but their biases have been formed by images better rounded and more eager to work with people, and attitudes they have been absorbing since birth. In plants and animals than with things. Although more of a way, Handelsman is grateful that the women she the boys went on to enter careers in math or science, studied turned out to be as biased as the men. When the women secured similar proportions of advanced she gives a talk and reveals the results, she said, you degrees and high-level careers in fields like law,

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medicine and the social sciences. By their mid-30s, the men and women appeared to be equally happy with their life choices and viewed themselves as equally successful. And yet the argument that women are underrepresented in the sciences because they know they will be happier in people fields strikes me as misdirected. The problem is that most girls and boys decide they dont like math and science before those subjects reveal their true beauty, a condition worsened by the unimaginative ways in which science and math are taught. Last year, the Presidents Council of Advisers on Science and Technology issued an urgent plea for substantial reform if we are to meet the demand for one million more STEM professionals than the United States is currently on track to produce in the next decade.

population, you are going to have to go much farther toward the bottom of the barrel than if you also can search among the females in the population, especially the females who are at the top of their barrel. In addition, she said, her colleagues need to recognize the potential of women who discover a passion for science relatively late. Studies show that an early interest in science doesnt correlate with ability. You can be a science nut from infancy and not grow up to be good at research, Urry said, or you can come to science very late and turn out to be a whiz.

With a little practice and confidence, girls can even make up for an initial disadvantage working with machines, tools and electronic equipment. While boys consistently outperform girls in tests that measure the spatial skills essential for lab work and engineering, studies also show that spatial aptitude is a function of experience. At Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts, the administration is dedicated to But beyond strengthening our curriculum, we need to making sure that half the students in each entering make sure that we stop losing girls at every step as they class are women. All of Olins incoming students are fall victim to their lack of self-esteem, their required to take a machining course the first semester. misperceptions as to who does or doesnt go on in According to Yevgeniya Zastavker, a faculty member science and their inaccurate assessments of their who conducts research in biophysics and studies the talents. role of gender in science: Everyone is faced straight on As daunting as such reform might be, it is far from with gender differences in the lab. We set them up in impossible. A book called Math Doesnt Suck, by the coed teams and ask them to design a tool or a product. actress Danica McKellar (who starred as Winnie If the gender dynamics get weird, we intervene, and Cooper on The Wonder Years before earning her that one intervention early on has a ginormous effect. bachelors degree in math at U.C.L.A.), along with her Back at Yale, Urry laughed at my own stories of how follow-up books, Kiss My Math, Hot X: Algebra inept I had been in lab drizzling acid on my Exposed and Girls Get Curves: Geometry Takes stockings, which dissolved and went up in smoke, Shape, may well have done more to encourage girls to getting hurled across the room by a shock from an stick with math than any government task force. ungrounded oscilloscope, not being able to replicate McKellars math books might go a little far in the Millikan oil-drop experiment. Even she had been a pandering to adolescent girls stereotypical obsessions disaster in lab in college. Only when she took a more (the problems involve best friends, beads and Barbies advanced lab and spent hours poring over a circuit rather than baseballs and speeding cars), but the wildly diagram, figuring out that her fellow students had set enthusiastic response they have received speaks to the up an experiment wrong, did she realize she knew as effect that can be achieved by reworking the contents much as they did. of standard math and science problems and countering the perception that boys wont like girls who are smart. Im soldering things, and Im thinking, Hey, Im really good at this. I know the principles. Its like an art. It The key to reform is persuading educators, researchers took me years to realize Im actually good with my and administrators that broadening the pool of female hands. I have all these small-motor skills from all the scientists and making the culture more livable for them years I spent sewing, knitting and designing things. We doesnt lower standards. If society needs a certain should tell young women, That stuff actually prepares number of scientists, Urry said, and you can look for you for working in a lab. those scientists only among the males of the

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As the Yale study laid bare scientists of both sexes also need to realize that they cant always see the way their bias affects their day-to-day lives. Abigail Stewart, director of the University of Michigans Advance program, which seeks to improve the lives of female and minority faculty members, told me in an e-mail that Handelsmans study shakes the passionately held belief of most scientists that they are devoted to accurately identifying and nurturing merit in their students. Evidence that we are not as likely to recognize and encourage talent (even modest talent, as in this study) shakes our confidence and (I hope) will make us more attentive to our limitations in recognizing talent where we dont expect to find it.

Roger Howe wrote me to say that hed had a gifted female student, would I get in touch with her to offer some advice and support? At M.I.T., 19 years after those three senior women began comparing their experiences and demanding changes, the university now has a significant number of female administrators. Day care is more readily available. Faculty members find it more acceptable to have children before they achieve tenure. And deans and department chairs seem committed to increasing the number of female professors.

Urry, who stepped down as chairwoman of Yales physics department this summer but will soon be president of the American Astronomical Society, Like Stewart, Urry thinks Handelsmans study might wonders if her departments commitment to gender catalyze the changes she has been agitating to achieve equality will continue or stall. One fall Friday, she for years. Ive thought for a long time that invited me to attend a picnic the physics and understanding this implicit bias exists is critical. If you astronomy departments were throwing to welcome believe the playing field is equal, then any action you back its graduate students and faculty. The professors take is privileging women. But if you know that women were sipping wine from plastic cups and chatting with are being undervalued, then you must do something, colleagues they hadnt seen all summer. Hungry because otherwise you will be losing people who are graduate students surveyed tables crowded with bowls qualified. of salad, barbecue fixings, pies, cakes and a plate of brownies that Urrys husband baked that morning Most of all, we need to make sure that women and when he realized she had overslept. Four young women men dont grow up in a society in which they absorb one black, two white, one Asian by way images of scientists as geeky male misfits. According to of Australia explained to me how they had made it so Catherine Riegle-Crumb, an associate professor at far when so many other women had given up. the University of Texas at Austin, gender differences in enrollment rates in high-school physics tend to be Oh, thats easy, one of them said. Were the women correlated with the number of women in the larger who dont give a crap. community who do or do not work in STEM fields. Dont give a crap about ? Handelsman, who is awaiting Senate confirmation as associate director of science in the White House Office What people expect us to do. for Science and Technology Policy, told me that she Or not do. would love to see murals of women scientists painted Or about men not taking you seriously because you on the walls of Yales classrooms, say, a big mural dress like a girl. I figure if youre not going to take my with Rosalind Franklin in the front and Watson and science seriously because of how I look, thats your Crick in tiny proportion in the back. problem. The good news is that, slowly and steadily, as more Face it, one of the women said, grad school is a institutions acknowledge the bias against women and hazing for anyone, male or female. But if there are initiate programs to remedy it, real change is taking place. Peter Parker, who was director of undergraduate enough women in your class, you can help each other get through. studies in physics when I was at Yale and for many years thereafter, told Urry that he wasnt surprised that The young black woman told me she did her all the students and professors in the department were undergraduate work at a historically black college, then male. In his later years, Urry said, he would exclaim entered a masters program designed to help minority with glee that, say, 21 out of 49 of the physics majors in students develop the research skills and one-on-one the junior class that year were women. Not long ago, mentoring relationships that would help them make

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the transition to a Ph.D. program. Her first year at Yale And by the way, my sister graduated with a degree in was rough, but her mentors helped her through. As biochemistry in the late '60s and was very much my mother always taught me, she said, success is the encourage by her professors to enter graduate school. best revenge. 3. As a career option, the number of academic As so many studies have demonstrated, success in openings in science is generally less than the respective math and the hard sciences, far from being a matter of number of PhDs granted per year by, say, the Univ of gender, is almost entirely dependent on culture a California at Berkeley. Most of the college science culture that teaches girls math isnt cool and no one faculty nation-wide come from about 7 PhD-granting will date them if they excel in physics; a culture in institutions. Non-pedigree PhDs spend long years as which professors rarely encourage their female post-docs and technicians, and may if they are lucky students to continue on for advanced degrees; a culture wind up at small four year colleges. (Rare is the in which success in graduate school is a matter of breakthrough to the major research institution.) The isolation, competition and ridiculously long hours in market cannot assimilate all the PhD graduates (and so the lab; a culture in which female scientists are hired why some pundits advocate importing more is beyond less frequently than men, earn less money and are my ken). allotted fewer resources. Many science majors go to medical school rather than And yet, as I listened to these four young women laugh pursue a PhD - many of these are now women. (See at the stereotypes and fears that had discouraged so above for reason.) Others go into law and use their many others, I was heartened that even these few had specialized knowledge to advantage in this field. made it this far, that theirs will be the faces the next 4. A turkish friend of mine told me that women generation grows up imagining when they think of a outnumber men in hard sciences, particularly in female scientist. chemistry and biology in turkey. I did not believe that Eileen Pollack is a professor of creative writing at the so easily since eventually turkey is a kinda mildly University of Michigan and author of Breaking and muslim community. I checked the chem and phys Entering and In the Mouth. She is at work on a departments of some major uni's and she was right. In book about women in the sciences. Editor: Joel Lovell chemistry, men are simply minority while in math and phys the numbers are around 0-40. Later she told me 322 Comments that academia is the best job for women due to its 1. When humans lived in caves, the physically biggest flexible working hours so long as you don't care about individual,always a man, enjoyed the largest piece of money. yes magic word. money.... meat and the closest place next to the fire. As cultures Besides, if there are less women than men in the advanced, status symbols changed but the male science business in the US, well I think this simply continued to retain superiority. So it is today, salary shows that women are smarter than men. I know many and title have replaced meat and access to the fire and men lost their hairs and struggled with financial if women wish to obtain equal status they must problems during their phds. Only, a tiny fraction of compete with the same competitive, scholarly them made it to a full-time permanent faculty job. Is agressiveness as the male. Ninety percent of the battle this really smart? is beliving you can. 5. Women Realize Science Is A Lousy Career Choice 2. I'm confused by something. Ms. Pollack says that her high school took a very dismissive view of women in There are more men in science because women make the sciences and apparently did not encourage her in better career choices. I graduated in physics and any way. Yet she was in one of the early coed classes at worked in physics. I'm a guy. In physics I worked in Yale, one of the top educational institutions in the labs that were hazardous. Some of the substances I country. worked with, if they were mis-handled, could be lethal. Either her high school had nothing to do with her entering Yale or someone at it must have provided her some encouragement. Compensation is lousy. Despite what you read there is a significant over-supply of virtually every scientific discipline (except computer science). Job security is

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non-existant. Intelligent, very capable people can spend years as post-doctoral fellows.

8. There has been a long standing idea that women just get married and pregnant and waste their degrees. When I went to Penn State in the 1960s, there was a Directly or indirectly most scientists are employed by higher GPA requirement for woman than men the government. Government cutbacks have had a resulting in an undergraduate gender ratio of 1 female devastating impact on even world renown science labs. for every 3 males. Graduate schools tended to be 6. I graduated with an BA in science in 1965. There suspicious of females that were married or seemed were few women science majors at the time. There was inclined to it. only two in the dept I was in. In chemistry lab, most of However, some things have changed. Many medical the women there were majoring in a nursing program schools now have more females than males in their not chemistry per se. Science careers depend greatly on classes and women seem well represented in the biogood math skills which is not an appealing subject medical sciences. matter especially in the K-12 public school system. It is at these early ages that kids are either attracted to 9. Its goo to clarify the difference between pure hard science or not. When I was in grad school we had a sciences and the rest of applied sciences which are married couple both in the same major and both much more collaborative with other areas of study. For worked on complimentary science projects. instance a biostatistician or a social scientist might also use same skills that can be applied to pure sciences. My sister never liked math or science so she ultimately Similarly neurosciences, cognitive sciences, psychology became a lawyer!! - there are plenty of women in these areas, where there 7. I find this article fascinating and pretty much true. I is so much study of human physiology and anatomy as work in an engineering firm that is 90% plus male. My well. guess would be that this a pretty daunting prospect for 10. Because we live in a very sexist society that expects any female looming in. women to behave and be very certain ways and take on Let's take this one step further. Most scientists are not very specific roles. Look at Germany, the height of the most socially gifted people in the world. It is 'Western Civilization" , where negative influence is possible that inadvertently these dominantly male built into the language, i.e. environments are not as accepting to female 'RavenMother". viewpoints as they should be. If American and European women have yet to take Heres the odd thing. I manage a boatload of women control of the own bodies and minds as completely self and yet I am challenged to promote them because they actualized individuals. How can we expect a world are headstrong and don't always listen to their shackled with religious and political dogma to take colleagues. The very skills that may have made them a such control? Simone De Beauvoir wrote extensively success in a STEM field are now holding them back. on these issues. The truth is that we are progressing. In 1950, my mother wanted to become a doctor and her father (a doctor) would not permit it. My daughter, in high school, is receiving tremendous encouragement to puruse a STEM field. As to those comments on genetic ability, those are the most ridiculous things I have ever heard. Perhaps women are not as spatially gifted as men, but perhaps we have not yet identified those spatial areas in which women are more gifted than men. Looking forward to what we are lacking is more important than looking back at what we have. In these very tricky and difficult economic times I believe Millennials to be the most conformist generation we've had since the early fifties. They most certainly are visually. Which will make things even tougher in these regards moving forward. 11. This article resonated deeply with many of my life experiences. I am a woman with a Phd in physics; I was the only woman to graduate in three successive years from my highly regarded college. I now have a tenured academic position and I find that the feelings of anxiety never completely abate. I also have a young daughter who is extremely quick in math and science. I am hoping for a different experience for her, although

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honestly I don't see it shaping up in her schooling so far. Many young women entering science are certainly offput by what appear to be the impossible compromises concerning family life. Because of that, I collected some stories from my female colleagues who are handling life in academic science with children:

if not white, of some Asian ethnicity) who doesn't know how to dress himself, work on a car, or throw a spiral. As you note, those of us who don't fit those stereotypes are even more poorly represented in the hard sciences than women are as a group. My experience is that none of the stereotypes are true.

14. I agree with the author-women need more encouragement. Our science education was develop for http://fairhalllab.com/careers/how-does-she-do-it/ boys flooded with testosterone. The difference between 12. At least a portion of it is branding. My Computer the athletic field and the science classroom: we Engineering undergraduate year had about 40 segregate athletics. Nerds compete as hard as jocks and students. Only six were female. The Computer Science the teaching methods are very similar: trap them into a year had about 35 students, of whom almost half were mistake, humiliate them in front of their peers and female. There was about 80% overlap in the class dare them to do better next time. The logic is that boys material and the 20% differed in ways that are unlikely have to be shown they are not infallible or their bridges to have any relationship to gender (i.e. Unix operating will collapse, their airplanes will crash and their system architecture vs. compiler design). The nuclear reactors will meltdown. Girls don't excel in this admissions grades were slightly higher for Computer teaching model. Science, but only marginally, so the raw intellectual At 16 I was an assistant in an eng. dept. In HS I was range required was about the same. My suspicion was sent to 3M for days with scientists. At college I majored that if you didn't change the degree syllabus but simply in physics and dormed with scholarship kids, many 14changed its name from Computer Engineering to 16 years old. Social awkwardness haunted that dorm. Computer Arts, the course would have become Today, geeks enjoy a coolness nerds never enjoyed. The relatively more attractive to women candidates and writers have gone easy on The Big Bang Theory guys. less attractive to the men. Dr. Cooper would have trended normal in my dorm, at 13. As you note, the stereotypes about science and least among those who could have gone on to CalTech. scientists are still quite pervasive in society at large and That awkwardness, the inability to socialize with nonwithin science itself. My first reaction when I saw the geeks much less women, contributed to a certain strain three female scientists at Yale whose pictures illustrate of misogyny. While changing the educational culture this article was to note that they're all white and blond, for girls is important, you many want to consider social not that they're women. And, as you point out, there is engagement classes for gifted boys. To be blunt, teach still this image of the scientist as socially inept, them how to interact with people, how to not physically meek, and athletically incompetent, i.e., condescend so much, to be tolerant of the not as gifted, nerds and geeks. And yet most of my colleagues, from to be less naturally offensive in manner and personal graduate school at one of the top 3 STEM schools in grooming; teach them how to get laid. the nation were heavily involved in sports, had active 15. Too much space is devoted to the repetitious social lives, and came from diverse backgrounds that discussion of obvious: women face seemingly ininclude the military (my advisor was a Force Recon surmountable odds in the pursuit of science education Marine in Vietnam and I was in an elite Army unit; my for a bunch of important and lamentable, inexcusable roommate had been a helicopter pilot, etc.), law reasons. Pollack continues, without a doubt in a highly enforcement, firefighting (another classmate was a articulate way, more of the same. smokejumper - parachuting into remote wilderness areas to fight wildfires), etc. We were all scuba divers, I have three girls and a boy ready to go to college in a surfers, rock climbers, etc. A very few of us (myself few years. Hence, I curiously await some insights into included) were members of underrepresented the following: minorities. a. Given how strongly the culture discourages smart And yet there is still this completely false idea that to women in general, and their pursuit of science be a good scientist one must be a pasty white male (or education in particular, why are there are not many

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more women entrepreneurs (who say, "the heck with especially important, they would have substantially the dominant culture in which I am not accepted, and I greater control of their lives. can produce something of value on my own.") A career in science involves huge personal tradeoffs. b. I get that all countries have similar problems. Is the There's the competition for limited research positions, outcome different in countries that have taken steps constant battle for grants and funding, endless beyond neanderthal-worthy thinking about gender? laborious tasks and deep subject immersion often to Are there more women scientists in some places the exclusion of a meaningful relationship. Not always, because of cultural differences? Where do we stand? of course, but there are as many negatives as positives to a science career. It's very difficult and basically, c. Of course men and women are equally smart. Why doesn't nearly pay a really smart person as well as they do the female students I have in my classes not like my could earn in any number of other professions. feedback at all, but the males either take it in their stride, try to prove me wrong, or laugh it off. What Smart women have the opportunities, science or not, brought this about? Not buying the story that causes and they have made their choice. are genetic differences (I teach applied statistics). 18. Does gender bias exist? Of course. However, it is Kalidan disappointing to see in an article on women in science significant unscientific elements. Correlation is not 16. There is a powerful hormonal factor that influences equal to causation. Anecdote proves nothing. how males and females behave and treat each other in society: The influence, even bodily aroma, of estrogen Bias itself is a very complex issue. It is difficult (though in women calls forth unconscious expectations of necessary) to tease out whether one's view comes from sociability, weakness and nurturing while the abstract prejudice or is the result of one's own direct influence, and bodily aroma, of testosterone in men experience, empirical data. The difference is relevant calls forth unconscious expectations of domination, both in making ethical judgments and in remedying power and control. The differing shapes of bodies and problems. genitalia visually reinforce these stereotypes and social Then there are the hidden complexities. One of the conditioning does the rest. problems with education in our country is gender bias. Our egocentric desires for career success must contend However, that bias is multi-dimensional. A generation with the necessity of rearing and raising the next ago the best and brightest women largely went into generation of humans, which is Mother Nature's great teaching and nursing, because those were the only priority. We may rail against the personal injustice of fields where they could earn a fairly good income, our own life and these days may even win a battle in obtain job security, and have some prestige. With the that arena now and then, but we must also hope (while opening up of the job market, women now have many ruing the fact) that human beings will never win the more opportunities and, thus, those going into war against their own intrinsic sexual natures because teaching revert to the mean. In and of itself this would at that point the biological human race would go tend to lower the quality of teachers. Unfortunately, extinct. this is exacerbated because men rarely go into primary school teaching. Why? Largely this stems from another 17. "But what could still be keeping women out of the form of bias. Women (for the most part) do not grow STEM fields which offer so much in the way of job up having fantasies of marrying guys who are prospects, prestige, intellectual stimulation and kindergarten teachers. They support men in teaching income?" as a principle (much as men support women in physics I think that's an exaggerated observation. How about in principle), but when push comes to shove, he isn't money? Consider that the student population at most going to be in my bed anymore than she is going to be medical schools is half female. Since these women in my lab. students are smart, and many smart enough to have 19. The gender bias certainly exists in employment, pursued a science career, they likely concluded that as promotions etc. being a male dominated society. It a doctor they would earn far more practicing medicine simply doesn't matter in which century we live and in than wearing out their senses in a research lab. And, what part of the world we live. Strangely the gender

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bias seems to exist in America even for taking subjects of their choice in education. Anatomy of a person has nothing to do with the subjects of Maths, Science, Technology or Engineering. Male or female can take up the courses of their choice and succeed in these fields provided one is interested and willing to work very hard.

think we will have to prepare her for the negative attitudes of her peers. "A mind is a terrible thing to waste!"

21. Considered a social science, women in economics face similar issues. I entered my Ph.D program with a specific research interest, an interest that I expressed in my application and later as a student. The graduate There is no scientific proof that states that women can't officer (who was my instructor for the first Micro study Maths, Science etc. course) ignored this and suggested that I should talked with faculty interested in fertility and wage (gender) Certain jobs in Engineering demand working late gap issues. I eventually went to work with a faculty hours, round the clock shifts in factories etc, which member who worked in my area of interest. He was women find it too tough to handle,where men are never told that I wanted to do research in his research generally employed. area. It appears Maths and Science are not properly taught I would visit the grad officer for the course's office in America with emphasis on basics and not merely on hours and my questions were answered with flippant '' Answer''. There should be a drastic change right from responses. Other women in the class had similar the school level. Otherwise it would be extremely experiences. At one point, I waited outside his office difficult for Americans to compete with the rest of the with a male classmate. Given that we had similar world especially Chinese and Indians in these fields. questions, we went in together. I asked the question 20. I agree with Eileen Pollack that there are cultural and the faculty member turned to my classmate, said, and upbringing causes limiting the number of women "That is an interesting question." and explained the in science. I think that my upbringing provided me answer to him in detail. One lesson learned from his with a different attitude than most of my peers. class (and one that I applied in other situtations), in some situations, bring a man in the room with you if My mother graduated college in 1926 and she wanted to be "the next Madame Curie". It was "normal" for me you want your concerns to be treated with respect. Pretty sad, don't you think? to have her help me with my high school Chemistry and Latin homework. When I went off to college as an engineering major, I was attracted to the few female students who were engineering, science or math majors. My "normal" upbringing led to an unquestioning acceptance of the women in my science and math courses, many of whom were brighter than I was. My wife has a Masters degree in Mathematics. My brother is an electronic engineer and was the product development manager at an electronics company. He reviewed the personnel folders for his employees and discovered that a woman, a lab technician, had a Ph.D. He asked her why she took that job and was told, "It was the only offer I received after graduating". My brother promoted her immediately and assigned her to projects that matched her expertise. If we had a different upbringing, he probably wouldn't have bothered. My granddaughter is in grade school and enjoys math and science. She is already thinking about a career in biology. Her parents and I are encouraging her and I I am curious if Dr. Pollack's research found that women are steered into less productive research topics. I experienced steering but ignored it because I saw it for what it was. 22. On average, maybe boys do score better on the SAT or spatial reasoning. But being a scientist isn't about averages. The average man may be stronger than the average woman, but there are plenty of women who are stronger than a good number of men. The biologist Ruth Hubbard once put it this way: there are enough qualified men and women to do any job in our society, except for sperm donor and surrogate mother. 23. "Mostly, though, I didn't go on in physics because not a single professor - not even the adviser who supervised my senior thesis - encouraged me to go to graduate school." I'm male and went on to get a PHD ... and not a single professor encouraged me to go to graduate school.

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No doubt there is discrimination, and the article gives many examples. But that does not prove the claim, "That the disparity between men and women's representation in science and math arises from culture rather than genetics seems beyond dispute." 24. As a counter-argument against blaming culture for holding women back in STEM, please review this study: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/16/us/study-findsearly-signs-of-creativi... This study found spatial skills correlate with higher creativity and technical ability. "The new research is significant ... showing that 'high levels of performance in STEM fields' - science, technology, engineering and math -- are not simply related to math abilities." "[Spatial aptitude] is a competence more associated with men than women. In the current study, boys greatly outnumbered girls, 393 to 170." Do not ignore our biology. Gender is more than a social construct. 5. When I was applying for a job out of college I was required to take a full-length IQ test, which changed my life. During the exam, the phycologist said in surprise that in her 27 years of administering this test (at an ivy league school) she had never seen anyone answer all off the spatial ability questions correctly she even asked me to explain some of them to her. Did I major in the STEM subjects? No, I majored in the arts, was extremely active in my sorority, was popular, and had a cute boyfriend. For some reason, despite clues early on I had some talent in math and science, I really didn't believe that I was smart enough. That test really changed my self-perception. I ended up taking graduate level physics courses (where I had the highest exam scores in the class but only got a B in the class until I challenged my grade and got an A, but that's another sexist story), and I ended up applying to medical school. I am very feminine but math and analytics seem very obvious to me. However, I simply assumed I was worse than the guys until I happened to take a standardized test that proved otherwise. Had I not applied for that job, I would have never taken an IQ test, and I

probably would have continued on my path to an MRS instead of switching tracts and getting my MD. How many talented women out there just proceeded on, were never recognized for mathematical talent and just never developed those math skills?