FLICKR, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTIONWhen Eileen Pollack, a professor of creative writing at the University of Michigan, graduated from Yale University in 1978, she was one of the first two women to earn a bachelor’s degree in physics. In spite of excelling academically, her professors never encouraged her, and she never believed she was good enough at science to attend grad school in physics or math. In an essay published this week (October 3) by The New York Times magazine, Pollack weaves her personal story together with anecdotes and research about being a woman in science today.
“I wanted to understand why I had walked away from my dream, and why so many other women still walk away from theirs,” Pollack wrote. In interviews with female undergraduate and graduate trainees, Pollack uncovered story after story of roadblocks and scorn that young women who study science still encounter. For instance, one student reported that a physics teacher once told her that she would be graded on a curve specifically for girls, while the boys would have their own, presumably more rigorous, curve. Meg Urry, a Yale professor of physics and astronomy, told Pollack she was “flabbergasted” after hearing these stories from women in her own department.
Pollack’s personal experience and that of many of the women she spoke to focused on physics, where ...
