International Dialogue Grows Among Women

A six-week "debate" on women in science that began Sept. 9 on the Nature Web site is the latest illustration of how media technology is helping to turn the long struggle for female parity with male colleagues into an internationally shared experience.

Helen C. Davies

"I can't help contrasting this with what has gone before," comments Helen C. Davies, president of the Association for Women in Science and a microbiology professor at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. Recalling efforts to gather national information on women in science over past decades, she observes, "To extend this beyond the [United States] wasn't easy. American women scientists at international congresses would call informal meetings to discuss this matter but [would] discover most of our posters and meeting notices being removed or defaced, except the ones we taped to the mirrors in the ladies' rooms. To have an international dialogue on the...