Women in Science: Now What?

Today I attended a round table discussion on women in science. It was focused on a particular woman scientist, EveryWoman, who had come to give a special seminar. But the most interesting thing about the discussion was the personal story of EveryWoman. She made choices in her career because of family. The result - she was thrice divorced and on soft money for 16 years.

This soft money tenure came a result of staying in the same place (a consequence of the two-body problem) as she did her PhD. Although she became the second highest grant earner in the department and had as many publications as any PI, she was not a tenured professor at this university. Five department heads (two women) had rejected her application for a tenure-track position, citing one excuse or another. She described the consequences of this 16 years on her self-esteem.

"It was demeaning. They let me come to departmental meetings but I couldn't vote. I was only allowed to have students if they had an academic co-supervisor. Eventually, I became afraid that if I asked for too much, they would say no. So I stopped asking."

One day, the 6th department head was in her lab talking with her and said, "why aren't you a full professor EveryWoman?" It turns out, when the department head wants something, it gets done. In a matter of weeks, she became a tenured professor.

The second interesting thing that came out of this discussion was a website that measures implicit attitudes people hold but are unwilling to report. Harvard psychologists have created The Implicit Association Test that allows you to assess your own prejudices. Take it. I found it quite revealing.

Although I am not opposed to having discussions centred on "what are the issues facing women scientists," I am tired of having the same discussion over and over again.

We all know the issues.

We know that there are biases in the way women are evaluated both in random encounters (see this post by FSP) and systematically within academia (Nepotism and sexism in peer review).

We know that academia doesn't make it easy for women to have a career and children (see the National Academy of Sciences 2007 study on women called Beyond Bias and Barriers).

We know that contributions by women in collaborations are often overlooked (Nobel Snubs).

We know, if a woman gets a job, both men and women will make comments like, "oh did they have had to hire a woman?"

We know that women are paid significantly less than male colleagues. That many women in academia live on soft money.

We know that as academics they tend to get less lab space but are allocated more service work than their male counterparts.

I understand the need to share stories and I do enjoy and get inspiration from them, but I want some constructive solutions. Or at the very least some ways of changing the system. I too need a bitch session every so often, but I think we need to ask the question,

So what can I do about it?