iSTOCK, PAPPAMAARTAccording to an analysis of recent data, female scientists in academia do not face an inhospitable workplace. Rather, the relatively low numbers of female faculty are simply due to women’s career choices, psychologists Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams of Cornell University and economists Donna Ginther of the University of Kansas and Shulamit Kahn of Boston University argue in Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
“There’s no argument that, until recently, universities deserved their reputations as bastions of male privilege and outright sexism. But times have changed,” Williams and Ceci wrote in The New York Times. “That’s not to say that mistreatment doesn’t still occur,” they continued, “but when it does, it is largely anecdotal, or else overgeneralized from small studies.” Additionally, the authors claim that the lingering perception of a sexist workplace itself is hurting science. “Our country desperately needs more talented people in these fields. . . . But the unwelcoming image of the sexist academy isn’t helping.”
Not surprisingly, many in the scientific community don’t agree with the authors’ conclusions. One criticism, voiced by the University of California, Davis’s Jonathan Eisen on his The Tree of Life ...
