I heard some good news the other day. The Royal Astronomical Society published a study in the October Astronomy & Geophysics showing that astronomy and solid-Earth geophysics have a better representation of women than other disciplines of physics. Yay! It’s nice to see “my” branch of science come out ahead.
Where would girls ever get the message that academic success isn’t feminine in our society? // Photo courtesy shine.yahoo.com
Of course, the accomplishment is sort of like being the smartest cow: It’s not saying all that much. A
study in the October issue of Gender & Society says that most universities have failed to add more female undergraduates to their science and engineering programs. Worse, schools are apparently compounding the problem, and their attempts to improve the numbers focus less on systemic issues within the programs and more on the individual students.
Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (often collectively referred to as STEM) fields have never been anywhere close to a majority, and have only recently begun approaching parity with men. That’s too bad because I hope we can all agree that women are just as capable as men. So when fewer women go into STEM, we all lose out on their abilities. Who knows what brilliant technologies we’d have now if we’d been able to tap everyone’s potential, and not just the XY half?
We like to think that most of that kind of thinking is behind us now, deep in the past. Women can actually matriculate at Harvard, after all, and are often encouraged to do and be whatever they want. Still, the expectation that STEM is “men’s stuff” creeps in. Take, for instance, the hubbub a few weeks back when JCPenney started selling a girls’ T-shirt with the phrase, “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.” Sure, the store stopped selling it after the outcry got too big, but they really thought it was an OK message in the first place? Didn’t they expect some kind of outrage?
And it isn’t rare. Female scientists have been putting up with this kind of thing one way or another for almost all their professional lives. It’s something a lot of men, especially outside the sciences, have no idea about and often become defensive over — as if “sexism is bad” were some kind of controversial stance.
So it’s good news that astronomy (and geophysics) is outpacing other branches of physics when it comes to recruiting and keeping women. But we’ve still got a long way to go. (And don’t even get me started on racial minorities in STEM!)
Have you encountered anything similar, or think we’re making progress on this issue? Let me know in the comments section below!