Report: Gender, Ethnic Diversity Coming Slowly To Science

The latest analysis of the composition of the United States work force by the Washington, D.C.-based Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology (CPST) shows that the number of women and minorities in science and technology is increasing, albeit slowly. The commission, a nonprofit corporation whose purpose is to collect, analyze, and disseminate reliable information about human resources in the sciences and technology, released its findings in a book titled Professional Women and Minorities: A Total Human Resources Data Compendium, published in January. The statistical compendium shows that a significant number of women are getting higher educational degrees (54 percent of bachelor's and master's degrees in all fields in 1991 were obtained by women), but are still represented relatively poorly in the natural sciences and engineering, compared with their male counterparts, earning between 22 percent and 31 percent of the degrees conferred at the various levels (bachelor's, mas-ter's, and Ph.D.). In the U.S. labor force, too, women's representation among professionals is on the rise, accounting for a very high percentage among psychologists and economists employed, the report found. A majority (87 percent) of the employees in health-related fields, such as nurses, dietitians, and pharmacists, are also women. However, women constitute only about 10 percent of those employed in engineering and the physical sciences professions (see accompanying chart). In academia, women made up about 22 percent of the total science faculty. "More women are getting better prepared [educated]," says Eleanor Babco, associate director of CPST, adding that this is not necessarily reflected immediately in the overall employment picture. "Adding even 10,000 [women] to a base population of 3 million [total employees in the work force] will not change the proportion significantly." "While these tables show the success of attraction strategies," says Catherine Didion, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Association for Women in Science (AWIS), referring to efforts to draw more women toward studying science, "[employers] still need to work on retention strategies." The exit rates, excluding retirement, for women from careers in science and engineering were twice as high as those of men in the seven-year period between 1982 and 1989, according to a 1992 report prepared for the New York City-based Alfred P. Sloan Foundation by Anne E. Preston, a professor of economics at the Harriman School for Management and Policy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. "Keeping the people in; that is the sticky part," says Didion. "This is where the need for systemic changes becomes obvious." A membership survey conducted by AWIS in 1992 (J. Hart, AWIS Magazine, 23:14, January/February 1994) reveals that members' most pressing concerns include inequity in pay and tenure for women vs. men (according to the CPST data compendium, only half of women faculty are tenured, compared with 73 percent of the men), as well as child-care and family-leave issues. "A lot of these issues are marginalized as `women's' issues," says Didion, "but we are kidding ourselves if we think everyone does not have to deal with them. It is in the interest of the employers to address them." The CPST compendium notes that the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the United States is Hispanics, constituting about 9.5 percent of the total population, according to census data. However, statistics for 1991 show that they made up only about 3 percent of total 1991 college graduates, with roughly similar graduation rates in the sciences and engineering. "This is a very low representation," says Orlando Gutierrez, national president of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), a member society of CPST. "On the positive side, though, we have seen an increase from 2.5 percent to 3 percent--that is, a 20 percent increase--in the past five years among engineering graduates." Gutierrez, a retired engineer who worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Washington, D.C., for three decades, says that the key to better representation is to provide better motivation and training from the pre-collegiate level on. "SHPE has several programs in place to prepare students early on by providing them with mentors and role models to prevent early college dropout," he says. "College dropout rates are highest in the freshman and sophomore years. Networking is proving to have good results. Student members of the college chapters of SHPE show a much higher graduation rate--70 percent in the past five years--than [Hispanic] students who are not members." Raul Alvarado, Jr., an aerospace engineer with McDonnell Douglas Aerospace Corp. in Huntington Beach, Calif., and chairman of the Los Angeles-based SHPE Foundation, whose function is to raise funds for supporting student members via scholarships, feels that the 3 percent graduation figure "... may be a little conservative." "Quality is the real key," says Alvarado, stating that the working Hispanic population demonstrates a high level of competence. "Our goal is to motivate more students to get their Ph.D.'s," says Gutierrez, adding that Hispanic representation is particularly low in academia. The compendium shows, however, that more Hispanic Americans are getting doctoral degrees, reaching a total of 755 in 1992; 147 of these were in science subjects and 58 were engineering Ph.D.'s. Statistics also show that increasing numbers of Ph.D.'s in the sciences are awarded to foreign nationals, from 31 percent of the total in 1991 to 39 percent in 1992. These statistics are compiled in more than 300 charts and tables in Professional Women and Minorities. "The big thing is that we have been able to use all the census data from 1990, which gives us a better idea of what the population is looking like," says Babco. For information on how to obtain the compendium, contact CPST, 1500 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Suite 831, Washington D.C. 20005; (202) 223-6995. Fax: (202)-223-6444.

Report: Gender, Ethnic Diversity Coming Slowly To Science

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