Exploding Myths About Women in Science and Engineering
The storm Harvard President Lawrence Summers stirred up in January with a speech suggesting that women may have a
genetic propensity to lag behind men in science or are otherwise ill-equipped for science jobs is still driving action.
Much of the impact has been positive: Summers has admitted his errors, and in mid-May announced that Harvard will
spend $50 million to recruit and retain women and underrepresented minorities on its faculty. Other institutions
are also examining their programs and policies.
On the downside, Summers' original comments promoted persistent misconceptions about the underrepresentation of
women in science and engineering, as well as what it takes to be a scientist. Puncturing these myths is critical
if institutions and society are to remedy gender inequity in engineering, math, and science, says sociologist Kimberlee
Shauman, author of Women in Science: Career Processes and Outcomes and associate professor at the University of
California, Davis. The book, which she co-authored with University of Michigan sociologist Yu Xie, is due out in
paperback in the fall.
Myth #1: Math = Science
The first misconception is "the idea that if you can do math, you can do science," says Shauman. "But we know it
takes a lot more. It takes good communication skills, the ability to work in groups, to think in interdisciplinary
ways, and more."
Myth #2: Women don't participate because they can't achieve
Shauman's research tracking students from seventh grade through high school shows that the achievement gap between
boys and girls is narrowing—strong evidence of social influences on test scores. And it's happening far too quickly
to be caused by biological differences. Moreover, the difference in mean test scores is too small to account for
the gender gap in science and engineering achievement.
Summers, says Shauman, made the faulty assumption that successful scientists come from the high end of test takers.
It's true that boys are more concentrated at the high and low ends of the curve, while girls cluster toward the
middle, but Shauman and Xie found that high math achievement in high school is not a good indicator of who pursues
a college science major.
"We see girls who are high-achieving going on and boys who are low-achieving going on—and vice versa," Shauman
says. "Having an interest in science and engineering depends on many things."
Myth #3: Girls don't have the right background
"That's just not true," Shauman says. "There's not a gap in high school, except in physics classes, and girls' grades
are significantly better than boys'. All the objective evidence says [girls and young women] can do the work."
Yet Shauman found that girls are less likely to say they like math and science, whereas boys are more apt to have
positive attitudes. In both cases, those attitudes aren't strongly correlated to achievement.
Potential Sources of the Gender Gap
Shauman points to a raft of research indicating potential factors in women's underrepresentation in science and
engineering: kids hold the stereotype of a scientist as a man in a lab coat, for instance, and girls and young
women do better and are more confident in single-sex educational settings. Other research shows that hands-on,
practical approaches to teaching science (as opposed to abstract "science for science's sake") benefit girls.
In looking at labor force participation, Shauman and Xie found that the time it takes to get a Ph.D. and the
desire to have a family are major reasons women are less likely to make the transition from undergraduate to
graduate school. Women with a science or engineering degree are less likely than men to be in the labor force,
and those who are working are less likely to be in science and engineering.
"We, as a society, are wasting a huge amount of potential because of the way the science career is structured,"
says Shauman. "Short-term slowdowns [such as maternal leave] can have a very significant negative effect on a
career overall."
The response shouldn't be taken to say that women shouldn't have kids, or that it's their choice and there's
nothing we can do about it, she says. "There needs to be an institutional recognition that having kids is normal
and it should be supported—or we're going to lose this human capital."
Helping Women Persist in Science
Family-friendly policies are one way to help women pursue science careers, but Shauman says it will take more than
that to encourage women to pursue livelihoods in STEM fields.
"In college, the persistence rates are just as good between young men and women—in fact, once in the programs,
women are slightly more likely to complete science degrees," she says. "But the problem is that girls are less
likely to declare a science major [even though they] have done the work and have what it takes to move into these
majors."
Mentoring programs are part of the solution, Shauman believes, along with giving girls and young women the chance
to meet women scientists and a showing them that science's stereotype as geeky and hard is unfounded.
"It's a complex challenge," she says. "We can't expect simple answers, and we need to be realistic about the fact
that it's going to take a lot to address all the small things that affect gender inequities in the sciences."
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