Ph.D. gender gap in sciences thins
Sacramento Bee 5/13/07
The trend means that hundreds more women such as UC Davis doctoral candidate Suzanne Barber are becoming scientists and professors, paving the way for even more women to follow in their footsteps.
Barber, a fourth-year doctoral student, is one engineer who hopes the phenomenon leads teenage girls to discover the sciences and reject frivolous media portrayals of young women.
"This idea -- be like Paris Hilton or Mandy Moore. I think it's important to show a different side of what a woman can be," said Barber, who is studying materials science engineering.
For its analysis, The Bee looked at computer science, the physical sciences, mathematics and engineering -- the four large disciplines with the biggest gender gap in doctoral students.
In the UC system between 1994 and 1996, 527 women received doctorates in those disciplines, according to the California Postsecondary Education Commission. From 2003 to 2005, the most recent years available, that number rose to 681. That's a roughly 30 percent increase.
A big, obvious gap still exists -- but it's shrinking. Across the UC system, the ratio of men-to-women doctorates in those four disciplines went from 4.8 to 1 a decade ago to 3.5 to 1 in the most recent figures.
The same trends showed up in California's private colleges -- the number of women earning doctorates in those four disciplines jumped about 30 percent between 1993-1995 and 2002-2004, reducing the rate of men-to-women doctorates, state figures show. Private college data for 2005 was unavailable.
Nationally, the number of doctoral degrees in math, computer science, physical science and engineering awarded to women increased almost 20 percent from 1997 to 2004, according to the National Science Foundation.
The increases, experts and students say, are largely the result of a snowball effect. As women scientists and teachers pioneered the way in male-dominated disciplines, they created an academic climate more friendly to other women. And they served as examples for aspiring scientists.
"The more you see positive female role models in our institutions, the more you are going to see yourself ... in those disciplines," said Kirsten Sanford, president of the Sacramento Valley Chapter of the Association for Women in Science and co-host of the radio show "This Week in Science."
Finding women scientists to admire certainly helped Raquel Orozco, a first-year doctoral student at UC Davis in chemical engineering.
Orozco realized she loved science and math while attending high school in Richmond, she said. She did her undergraduate work at UC Berkeley.
Instructors there noticed her talent and got her to take part in a program called UC Leadership Excellence Through Advanced Degrees. Through that program, Orozco said, she got to attend conferences, do research -- just get a good feel for what her future might look like.
She also heard from scientists who told her that it was becoming easier to make it as a woman in engineering.
Her research adviser in the doctoral program is a woman, Tonya Kuhl.
"It's great," Orozco said. "I'm having a good time and learning a lot."
Kuhl herself earned her doctorate about a decade ago, and has seen the atmosphere in her department change.
"Because programs were dominated by men, they were more comfortable for men," Kuhl said.
Now, she said, engineering programs aren't as cutthroat -- there's more collaboration and less internal competition, she said.
Schools such as UC Davis have gone after women and other underrepresented groups heavily during the past decade, using programs like UC LEADS to increase enrollment, said Jeffery Gibeling, dean of graduate studies at UC Davis.
"The bar is always the same," Gibeling said. "It's a matter of promoting ... science and engineering."
Another big difference, Kuhl and others said, is that with more women entering doctoral programs, schools are making an effort to accommodate those who want to take time off to start a family.
"Do I become a scientist or have kids?" asked Carol Tang, a researcher at the California Academy of Sciences. "I don't think it is an either/or."
Also, more women who started in the sciences are following the programs all the way through the doctoral level, instead of sticking with a job right after earning a bachelor's degree.
"The lifestyle choice of being a scientist or academic has really broadened," Tang said. "It's not just staying in the laboratory."
For example, after graduating from the University of Michigan, Barber, the UC Davis materials science doctoral student, worked a private sector job for four years, but decided she needed a bigger challenge.
"I realized I loved research more than anything else," she said.
Despite the increases, there's a lot more progress to be made. At the current pace, it still could be a long time before as many women earn doctorates as men in physical science, engineering, math and computer science.
But there's also a fair amount of agreement about how to continue closing the gap.
The scientific community needs to keep trying to reach young girls and show them that science and engineering are viable career paths.
That's definitely the viewpoint of Ananya Das. A second-year doctoral student in computer science at UC Davis, Das first decided to pursue a career in technology when she took an advanced placement computer class in high school.
Many of the boys in Das' class weren't starting as fresh as she was.
"I think that boys are more into computers when they are young," Das said, noting, for example, the popularity of video games among boys. "A lot of boys will say, 'I like computers.' Whereas what I would say is, 'I like math.' "
Getting young girls into computers earlier, Das said, would instill the same passion in them that boys feel.
Another thing that would help, both Kuhl and Tang said, is getting more positive images about women scientists in the media -- something exciting like CSI investigators instead of the more typical image of scientists in goggles holding beakers.
"A lot of it is cultural," said Tang, referring to young girls choosing less-technical fields. "It's wanting to be cool, pretty, accepted. Scientists don't have that stereotype."
Gibeling, the UC Davis graduate studies dean, is optimistic. He notes that women have achieved parity in fields like medical science, biology and veterinary medicine.
"There are examples of many fields next to these that have achieved an optimal level," Gibeling said.
All of this matters, Kuhl and others said. Science, math and all the benefits they accrue often come down to skepticism and creativity -- challenging notions in fresh ways. And that often requires a wide variety of viewpoints.
"Having people come in with different perspectives," Kuhl said, "can really shake things up."