National Academies Report on Women in Science

Recently, the National Academies issued a report on women in science, which came to me through a Science Magazine summary. The science summary states "A reasonable goal would be no major disparity between the percentage of Ph.D. degrees awarded to women in a particular field and the percentage elected in that field. Most academies are a far cry from reaching even that level; the 2% figure for NAS women in chemical engineering, for example, pales beside the 14% of U.S. Ph.D.s awarded in the 1980s, much less the 22% awarded in the 1990s." Given that members are elected by exisiting members is there any surprise that this is the case.

To further that my sister, a grad student at MIT, just told me a lovely story about the brain and cog department. She told me that a prominent female faculty member was offered a position at MIT. That after receiving the offer certain senior male faculty members decided that they wouldn't collaborate with her and the resulting faculty pressure forced her to decline the offer. For more discussion go here. [Thanks to Honeybee and Sciencewoman for the links.]

And just the other day someone was asking me what is the bias against women in science...