Forget Affirmative Action. Think National Survival

American women have made remarkable inroads into the community of scientists, particularly over the past decade and a half, but the increase in their participation has stopped well short of equality with men either in numbers or in opportunities. Although the problems women continue to encounter are formidable, the nation’s need for them is growing, and change in their status appears inevitable. With rare exceptions, American women are relative latecomers to science. Their representation among doctorate recipients was higher in the 1920s than it was for the next half-century. In that decade, women earned 16 percent of the doctorates awarded in the life sciences, 8 percent in the physical sciences, 17 percent in the social sciences, and 1 percent in engineering. Educational opportunities for women de- creased in the years following World War II. Higher admission standards for women than for men were established to ensure room for the returning veterans, and most of the best universities had quotas for women that eliminated even many of those who met the higher admissions standards. The proportion of women among new doctoral scientists dropped steadily, reaching a 20th century low in the 1950s, when women earned fewer than 4 percent of the doctorates awarded in the physical sciences, only 9 percent in the life sciences, 11 percent in the social sciences, and less than .5 percent in engineering. From 1960 to 1985 women earned more than 56,000 doctorates in science, and an additional thousand in engineering. They earned about 8 percent of science doctorates in 1960, 17 percent in 1974, and 27 percent in 1985. As in the 1920s, women earned most of their science degrees in the social and life sciences, and fewest in the physical sciences and engineering. Women now earn half of all bachelor’s and master’s degrees awarded in the United States and more than one-third of the doctorates. In science they earn 45 percent of the bachelor’s, 39 percent of the master’s, and 27 percent of the doctoral degrees. In engineering, their share of 1986 bachelor’s degrees is 14 percent, master’s degrees 12 percent, and doctorates 7 percent. But there are also problems, the major one being that the increases have stopped, both numerically and proportionally, well before women have achieved their appropriate share of 50 percent. Part of the reason for their declining interest in science careers may be found in their treatment in the labor force. Despite laws and executive orders requiring non-discrimination, differential treatment of women and men has not disappeared, and equality of opportunity does not yet exist. Some of these problems are economic. Others are societal. All have a negative effect on the achievement of women in science. These problems begin at birth. We label babies in hospital nurseries with appropriately pink or blue blankets and continue to treat them differently throughout their childhood and school years and into the world of work. Girls are told and shown that they are less competent than boys, and have less mathematical ability. Many girls drop out of math as soon as they can, closing their options to a science career as early as the eighth grade. They face other obstacles on the way to a science career. Women graduate students in science are considerably less likely than are men in the same field to have institutional or federal support, and more likely than men to be self-supporting. Women in the physical sciences, mathematics, computer science or engineering are particularly likely to have to work with foreign teaching assistants and faculty, many of them from countries where cultural differences in the view of women and their place in society create serious difficulties for American women. Not that all American men treat women as colleagues— indeed, sexual harassment of women is widely persistent. After completing a doctorate, or in some instances an appropriate lower degree, women find more difficulty in attaining a first position than do the men with whom they graduate. For the past 15 years, biennial surveys of the doctoral population have found that the unemployment rates of women doctoral scientists and engineers are two to five times higher than those of men. In 1985, for example, women were 17 percent of the doctoral labor force in science, but 35 percent of those who were involuntarily unemployed. Fortunately, the unemployment rate for doctoral scientists is low. Women are less likely than comparable men to find full-time work when that is their choice, to find a job in their field, and to find an academic job in a tenure track. This is not a function of their more recent entry into the labor force, since at least twice as high a proportion of women as of men employed in academic institutions are neither tenured nor on a tenure track, and this difference has not changed in the past decade. Women in science are paid less than are comparable men, and the gap in salaries that is present even in the first job widens with age, because women are less likely to be promoted and to move into managerial positions than are their male colleagues. Women earn less than men in every field of science, at every degree level, and at every level of experience. The penalty for being female ranges from a few hundred dollars per year in the first job following a bachelor’s degree to $12,000 or more per year for women scientists and engineers with Ph.D.s after 20-30 years of experience. In 1985, the average salary difference between male and female doctoral scientists and engineers is $10,500 per year—up from $9,100 in 1983 and $8,600 in 1981. It is not really surprising, then, that women do not participate equally with men in science. But this should be a cause of concern for the nation. As we move into the decade of the nineties, the college-age population already has started to decrease and will continue to do so through 1998. The proportion of women within this smaller population who are choosing to major in science is also dropping. If this trend continues, America’s ability to maintain international technological competitiveness over the next two decades will be in jeopardy. Encouraging women and minorities to participate in science and engineering is no longer a matter of affirmative action, carried out as a moral responsibility, but one of national survival. America’s talent pool includes equal numbers of males and females, and comes in all skin colors. White males are a rapidly decreasing proportion of our population who can no longer carry the total burden of responsibility for research, government, and the many other leadership posts that must be filled. Women must be encouraged to work toward attainment of their rightful place, in science as in other fields, as partners with men recognized for their individual talents and contributions without regard to their sex. Shared responsibility for home and family, equal treatment in the workplace, and a change in societal attitudes toward girls and women will be needed to achieve this goal. Vetter is executive director of the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology, 1500 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 831, Washington, DC 20005:

Forget Affirmative Action. Think National Survival

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