What is keeping women out of careers in science? Is it lack of aptitude, as the Harvard president has claimed, asks Fionola Meredith
After more than a month of intense criticism, walkouts and rebellion in faculty ranks, the president of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, has escaped a threat to his leadership. A faculty meeting granted him a temporary reprieve, saving him from the embarrassment of a no-confidence vote.
Earlier this year, Summers provoked outrage by arguing that men outperform women in science because of innate biological differences, and that sexism was no longer a major barrier to professional advancement in the sciences. His subsequent attempt to explain his unscripted remarks to a private conference on the position of women and minorities in science and engineering, hosted by the National Bureau of Economic Research, got him into even hotter water. He said that his "best guess" as to why there were so few women in the science and engineering workforce, was "the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity". But, he admitted, "in the special case of science and engineering there are issues of intrinsic aptitude".
Summers based his arguments on behavioural genetics - a school of thought that believes genes determine behaviours and that social relationships have evolved through the genetic transmission of behavioural characteristics. Feminist scientists have described it as "politically, socially and morally dangerous", since it explains and justifies sexual stereotyping and sexual double- standards as natural and inevitable. Donna Haraway, professor of feminist theory and technoscience at the European Graduate School in Switzerland argues that, "the biosocial sciences have not simply been sexist mirrors of our own social world. They have also been tools in the reproduction of that world, both in supplying legitimating ideologies and in enhancing material power."
But the Harvard president can console himself that his belief about innate differences between the sexes has a long, long history in Western scientific thought. Aristotle, who proclaimed woman to be a "misbegotten man", was adamant that woman's inferior brain size meant that "the male of any species will be higher on the scale of being than the female of that species". Gustave le Bon, the 19th- century craniologist and founder of social psychology, was convinced that "the lesser size of the female skull is accompanied by a corresponding intellectual inferiority . . . women represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and are much closer to children and savages than to civilised adult males".
It is generally acknowledged that the barriers against women have always been higher in science. Only in the 1970s did the Harvard physics department hire women as instructors, and it wasn't until 1992 that the first woman professor gained tenure in physics. In 1950s Princeton, not only were women forbidden to teach physics, they weren't even allowed into the building.
Even today, most Western practitioners of science are white males.
So what do contemporary women scientists make of Summers's remarks? Are women really handicapped by a "lesser aptitude" for science? Perhaps unsurprisingly, Prof Emer Colleran, head of the Microbiology Department in NUI, Galway and Director of the Environmental Change Institute (ECI), disagrees strongly. "It's absolute nonsense and simply not reflective of the current situation. Across all scientific disciplines women are scoring as well if not better than men. As to institutionalised discrimination, I've served on dozens of interview boards over the years, and I can tell you if people have the goodies, they'll be appointed, regardless of gender."
Prof Jane Grimson, chairwoman of the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) and vice-provost of Trinity College, has blazed a trail for women scientists in Ireland. In 1970, she became the first female graduate in Engineering from Trinity. And in 1999, Grimson was the first woman to be elected president of the Institute of Engineers in Ireland (IEI) in its 165-year history. Grimson is dryly dismissive of Summers's outspoken comments.
"As a university president, he really should have known better. But I do believe that men and women bring valuable different perspectives. Since engineering is all about solving problems for the benefit of people, a diversity of views means a more creative approach to that."
Women in Technology and Science (Wits), a voluntary organisation that promotes women in science in Ireland, campaigns to redress gender imbalances in Irish research funding. Despite the vast sums being spent on Irish scientific and technical research, male scientists receive over 90 per cent of available funds. Wits is calling for minimum gender targets and new initiatives, including return-to-work fellowships and childcare tax breaks.
While Wits welcomes the new €1 million Women in Science and Engineering scheme to improve the recruitment and retention of women in science, recently announced by Minister for Enterprise Trade and Employment Micheál Martin, it sees the initiative as only the first step towards improving the situation for women scientists.
Dr Ena Prosser, chairwoman of Wits, says, "a key problem is that so many women drop out of scientific research (the so-called leaky pipeline), leaving few women in the senior positions and few women to apply for the major grants. Although girls now account for 60 per cent of all science undergraduates in Irish third-level institutions, there are only a handful of women professors in the science and engineering faculties. The situation is now so bad it's not a leak, but a haemorrhage."
But Dr Prosser doesn't seem to share her colleagues' sense of outrage at Lawrence Summers's comments. "We don't want to be seen as moaners - the 'woe is me', victim school of thought. We're not just a self-promotion exercise. Wits is a very pro-active organisation - we identify problems and do something about them." Why aren't more women taking up job opportunities in science and technology? Dr Clare O'Connor, a biochemist at the Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research in Dublin, says that the low uptake may be due to the way science is presented to the public.
"People see scientists as egg-heads. It's not a very attractive idea, especially to women. A bigger effort is needed to make the discipline more attractive, because there's still this sense of elitism. I think that the 'cream' of the scientific community quite like the idea of being perceived as different; it's as if they don't want the riff-raff in."
Dr Sally Cudmore, general manager of the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC) at University College, Cork, thinks that nowadays there are plenty of opportunities for women in science, but she agrees that the image of "the geeky scientist in a white coat" still prevails in the popular imagination. She believes that education and outreach to young people are vital if these outmoded images are to be challenged. To this end, APC has launched "Microbe Magic" (http://microbemagic.ucc.ie), a schools website where youngsters can find out about health and the body.
Research indicates that preconceptions about science and scientists are formed at an early age. A 2004 Mori poll in the UK showed that while both girls and boys believe science is important, there are marked differences in their interests. Two-thirds of boys were fascinated by the latest technological developments. But only 37 per cent of girls felt the same - and they were much more likely to think animal experiments were always wrong.
Researcher Helen Haste said that girls weren't as turned off by science as was commonly believed but were much more concerned than boys about the ethical issues surrounding the subject. She said one of the most interesting aspectsof her study was that scepticism about the benefits of science was highest among the very girls who were most interested in scientific careers. "If we want to get girls more interested in science and technology, we must move away from purveying the 'space and techie' stereotype that seems to appeal to boys, and bring ethics and the human context into the science curriculum."
It's not a lack of intrinsic scientific aptitude that stalls the careers of many women in science, technology and engineering, but a highly competitive, funding-driven, male-dominated culture that takes little account of the demands of family life. Yet women scientists continue to ask - how can science succeed as a social endeavour if half of humanity is under-represented in its practice?
Messages for modem women
Cybergrrls, net chicks and geek girls are all part of an online community of women who aim to challenge stereotypical ideas about female technophobia and create female-friendly space on the internet.
RosieX, the creator of the Geek Girl site (www.geekgirl.com.au/) - whose slogan is Grrrls Need Modems! - says that "machines are not just our friends but conduits into the world of art, politics, fun, magic and mayhem".
Boasting 10,000-20,000 hits a day, Cybergrrl (www.cybergrrl.com). is the entry point for a variety of discussion forums and chat rooms, and serves as the "mothership" of Webgrrls (www.webgrrls.com), a real-world, face-to-face networking group for women in, and interested in, new media. Chapters are forming in cities around the world to provide fora for women to exchange information, job and business leads, and to learn about new technologies.
