Nice spiel. But prepare for invectives from our Harvard friend.

Sorry for being off the topic, but I’m curious: what do you think about Barack Obama’s recent religious talk? Topic for a post maybe?

Great talk, Sean!

Thanks (from a woman scientist)

If there’s a bullet wound and a smoking gun, you don’t have to insist that if we look hard enough, we’re sure to find stab wounds on the body.

Except that there might well be bullet holes and stab wounds.

Annie

I felt the same when I was younger. Trust me, the latter is true.

As they say down South, bless your heart, Sean, for caring about women in science.

Cough.

Philip Greenspun has argued that women are just smart enough to realise that careers in science are a bad choice for nearly everyone, while men’s status anxiety blinds them to reality. If this is even partly true, encouraging girls to go into science is going to improve things only very slowly, and what we need to be doing is making science competitive with other career options.

Belizean,

Let me see if I am interpreting your comment#14 correctly…

It seems that you are implying that a woman – with her inferior innate mechanical skills – would probably not be able to repair her broken air-conditioner. However, a woman – with her superior innate people skills – would probably be able to manipulate a man into repairing her air-conditioner.

Feel free to correct my interpretation of your comment… In the meantime, I will simply declare that your comment is riddled with flaws.

That these differences are innate is obvious to anyone who’s experienced chronic exposure to a sample of young children of both sexes. It’s so obvious that the burden of proof lies with those asserting the contrary — that these differences are not innate.

That’s not good science. If you want to prove that differences between the genders are innate, then you must perform experiment. Without experiment, it is the null hypothosis that should be accepted, namely that there are no differences.

Remember in all this, that gender is only one of the more obvious dichotomies that can be made in a human population. There are many others which might often result in more striking contrasts in the data. Take for example the differences that might be observed between introverts and extroverts. Or between left and right handed people. Or between persons with different blood groups. Or indeed, persons from different socio-economic groups.

Most of these studies draw their conclusions from the mean of the data. This is often not a very useful quantity. For example, on average, anywhere on earth, the sun shines for 12 hours in a day. But this only occurs one day in every year. In paticular applications, the general mean may not be helpful.

The rising trend of women obtaining higher level qualifications in the sciences, and in academia in general, brings into question “obvious” conclusions drawn from anecdotal exposure to young children. It is clear that it is these established views that are need of experiment to test their veracity.

Belizean: the fact that girls get dolls to play with and boys get fire engines (from an extremely early age, I might add) does not have any influence? Come off it! If you treat children according to the expected role model, they will conform.

The only hope for you to prove your position is to find the implicating genes. In the meantime, we can’t really know whether these interests are innate or not.

Regarding your spiel, Sean, see the NY Times’ July 4 interview with biologist Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard (Nobel 1995):

Now 63, she directs the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany. In her off-hours, she works to improve the status of women in science.

With her own money and a $100,000 award from Unesco-L’Oréal’s Women in Science Program, she has organized the Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Foundation, which offers grants to young female scientists for baby sitters and household help.

“If I could propose one thing, it would be to do everything in our power to encourage young girls to get excited about science, math, and technology.”

This strikes me as a little odd. Of the multitude of heinous problems facing human civilization, why does this one come to the top of your list?

To me at least, it is not obvious that the gender imballance in science is really causing that much suffering. In theory it would be nice to have more equal representation, but my impression is that most women don’t go into science simply because they find it less interesting (—for whatever reason). It is not because they were thwarted by an inpenatrable wall of prejudice and discrimination at the college level and beyond.

Of couse, it is possible, even likely, that women are less interested because of systematic prejuduces—i.e. societal expectaions—which influence the child’s personality and interests from a very young age. In some sense this is sad, but I don’t think most women regret that “if only dad gave me a truck instead of a barbie doll when I was 3, I would have been a completely different person than who I am today, and there is a slight chance that that person would be a better, happier person than who I turned out to be.”

Supernova, thanks for answering Justin’s question. As to your own about switching into physics later, I wish I had a reference but I don’t. The statistic was mentioned by Tim McKay during the course of a talk about the results from studies done by the University of Michigan ADVANCE initiative, but I don’t know if it’s been published. I thought it was an important finding, as it suggests a concrete proposal that would help encourage women in science: universities can structure curricula such that students can complete a physics degree in three years rather than four (which is a good idea anyway).

I have to admit to playing a little devil’s advocate too. My problem is that I tend to think of things in terms of individuals rather than statistics… if every person is living a happy, fulfilled life, why should it matter what the current numerical gender ratios are in typical physics departments?

Of course, not everyone lives a “happy life,” and sexism is still a major problem in scientific academia, even if it seems (to me) that most women scientists remain unphased. I just wonder whether “proportional representation” (as such) is really the right goal to pursue.

There’s always a bigger problem.

If you use the argument that there are more important problems in the world, then pretty much none of us can justify thinking about anything other than (a) potential devstation of civlization due to coming climate change, and (b) the genocide-du-jour, currently in (at least) Darfour.

However, just because there are other bigger problems doesn’t mean that a given problem isn’t real! Sean is a physicist. The problem of gender discrimination in physics is a problem *in his own house*. It’s eminently rational for him to consider that one of the biggest problems worth spending his time and energy on, if he considers it a problem at all.

-Rob

Justin — two points:

if every person is living a happy, fulfilled life

They’re not. There are even people who have been extremely succsful in science who are unhappy about the conditions; there are more who have left science, not because they weren’t interested in the science or didn’t have the aptitude, but because they didn’t want to put up with the general misogynistic bullshit.

Here’s an editorial from a pundit of astronomy on the issue:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A360-2005Feb5.html

it seems (to me) that most women scientists remain unphased.

You don’t talk much in depth about these issues with many women, then.

Most women I know in science seem unphased to me, only because I haven’t talked to them much about it. However, of the handful of women I have talked to in some depth about it, every single one has stories to tell that are between shockingly irritating and utterly hair-raising.

Again, my evidence is anecdotal– but I would suggest that your anecdotal lack of evidence is merely evidence that you haven’t really tried to see if there is evidence.

-Rob

-Rob

I hate to break it to you all but things aren’t really any different in the business world or in the home. It’s a lovely idea to be able to spend your time pursuing only your most prized interests, but in reality most people have to work to make a living and not just for self-fulfillment. Anyone who is blessed enough to be able to truly engage in their intellectual pursuits with minimal interruption, interference, etc. from ‘lesser’ concerns AND to be paid for it should never complain about how ‘hard’ it is. Just the perscective from ‘below.’ How many women in prominent positions in any field have children? For instance, does Lisa Randall have children?

Anyone who is blessed enough to be able to truly engage in their intellectual pursuits with minimal interruption, interference, etc. from ‘lesser’ concerns AND to be paid for it should never complain about how ‘hard’ it is.
The point here is that women in science are suffering from more disruptive influences than men doing the same work. Also, I don’t know what point you are trying to make wrt children. Lisa Randell doesn’t have children – how is this supposed to demonstrate that things aren’t any better in the business world?

To Anonymous PhD: Amen! to your whole comment. I am only about to start my PhD (though I have been in grad school for a couple of years already – don’t ask!) but I doubt that I am going to continue in academia beyond that. I don’t think I want to spend my 30′s without any clear idea where I am going in life. I love to move around, but equally, I want some sort of stability, at least in the form of confidence that I will have a job in two years’ time. I just spent a weekend with a friend who is working in the City. I’m not sure I’d want his job, but his life – yes. He admits work isn’t exactly exciting, but he’s on the way to a life he wants.

To Annie: 1st grad school I tried, the issue wasn’t so much discrimination as creepiness. Like more than one guy turning up uninvited at my house in the evening, or trying to push the boundaries of “friendship” way too far. And the guy with porno in his cubicle, which the school did nothing about though I complained. In addition to this, I have experienced also the being ignored by faculty thing. I say something, they just glance at me and don’t respond; a guy says the same and gets a full answer.

To be fair, I have also been in a class in which the (young) professor said “great question!” whenever a girl asked, but dismissed the same or similar comments from guys. But those situations are definitely in the minority. IT’s great you haven’t noticed it yet, but eventually I suspect you will. Good luck in the meantime…

Let me see if I am interpreting your comment#14 correctly…
It seems that you are implying that a woman – with her inferior innate mechanical skills – would probably not be able to repair her broken air-conditioner. However, a woman – with her superior innate people skills – would probably be able to manipulate a man into repairing her air-conditioner.
Feel free to correct my interpretation of your comment… In the meantime, I will simply declare that your comment is riddled with flaws.

Geez. It’s like I’ve gone back in time to 1972.

Cynthia, you must have missed the memo stating that it’s now okay to admit that men and women are innately different and remain a feminist.
If you want to believe that males and females have innately identical interests, you go right ahead. If you want spread the gospel that socialism raises the median standard of living more than capitalism does, knock yourself out. If you think astrology predicts the future, well, hey, it’s a free country. But you really can’t expect someone living in the 21st century to patiently refute for you these tired positions of another era. I wish I was up for that, but, frankly, I’m not. Maybe another time.

And the fact that some people are unfazed by it doesn’t make the bullshit any more acceptable.

a random sample of a classified ad list from one of the hungriest technical markets, the S.F. Bay area in California, the sci/biotech, medical/health, software, technical support, internet engineers job arenas are far from experiencing a ‘surplus of technical labor’.

Amara,

Most of those jobs are offering a mere $60,000 per year or so to perform extremely demanding work, for which one must have mastered many technologies that did not even exist a decade ago, while living in the most expensive part of the country. The evidence of a surplus is the low salary offered for such a demanding job.

You could just as well argue that there is a shortage of physicians in the bay area, because few are willing to work there for $60K.

Er, that’s garbled.

$60k is entirely adequate compensation for work which requires a bachelor’s degree and less than 5 years of experience. Competence, not mastery, is expected.

The notion of innate interests better explains the phenomenon of young girls and boys adhering to stereotypical behavior patterns despite explicit attempts to change them.

Interesting, therefore, that the percentage of women pursuing careers in physics and other technical and scientific fields has been increasing in response to explicit efforts to encourage such “non-stereotypical” behavior…

I have boy/girl twins, and it was not because of prompting one way or another that the girl had girly interests and is much more oriented towards what other people think (about her!), while the boy isn’t. This isn’t statistical of course, but the difference MAY be indded valid at a population level. But so what. That has stuff all to do with an interest in physics and stuff all to do with whether or not more women should be encouraged to pursue curiosity about the natural world and translate that into a profession.

Sean and Supernove,

The reference you are looking for is the study/book by Xie and Shauman.

It’s amazing and depressing how this conversation never progresses. It would help if people would read the literature and stop with the anecdotal stories (all of which have a counterexample).

macho, yes, the lack of progress is depressing, which is why it’s worth repeating the obvious over and over again.

The Xie and Shauman book is Women in Science : Career Processes and Outcomes.

Anyone who doesn’t think that some women actually are pushed out of the field by discrimination needs to enlarge their tiny universe of anecdotal evidence.

On the flip side, more happily, encouragement works as well! It’s surprising what impact being told “You can do it” or even “Give it a try, see if you like it” can have.

why are we talking about girls and dolls when French women are twice as likely to get a PhD in physics than American women? Like Sean implied above, let’s explain THAT little phenomenon before we start even talking about all this stupidity about inherent differences.

Comparisons with France might not be particularly helpful. A higher fraction of female Ph.D.s might, for example, simply be a consequence of France being a more credential-driven society than ours. Credentialism tends to flourish in inverse proportion to the strength of local capitalism. French capitalism can’t be particularly robust given that we just witnessed weeks of rioting when the French government considered passing a law that gave businesses the right to fire worker under the age of 26.

In other words, Belizean, the fraction of women physicists in France is heavily influenced by contingent social factors, while here in the U.S. (at precisely this moment) it is simply a natural reflection of intrinsic predispositions?

Nature features “Cosmic Variance” as one of top 5 science blogs (and the only physics-related):

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7098/full/442009a.html

You’d think you see a blog entry on Cosmic Variance about it, or something…

The phenomenon that you adduce — women becoming physics majors later in their college careers than men — seems to support my view. Women aren’t as naturally attracted to the subject and need to be coaxed into it by welcoming physics professors.

Sorry to give up on attempts at constructive engagement, but … that’s just one of the funniest things I’ve ever read.

Yes, now that you mention it, I see that that phrase does conjure up an amusingly creepy picture.

bittergradstudent,

I talked two women that I know — a physics post doc and a physics grad student — about this very subject. Neither noticed any discrimination. [Although, one of them complained that she's constantly being hit on by guys she considers unattractive. And it's challenging to rebuff their advances without straining her professional relationship with them.]

They could be flukes. But, by contrast, I can’t think of a single person in my extended family who is older than 60 and didn’t experience anti-black racial discrimination first hand.

The phenomenon that you adduce — women becoming physics majors later in their college careers than men — seems to support my view. Women aren’t as naturally attracted to the subject and need to be coaxed into it by welcoming physics professors.

What about the phenomenon of attrition? Proportionately more women than men change college majors from physics to other fields, proportionately fewer women than men go on to grad school in physics, and proportionately more women than men leave grad school before getting a Ph.D. I suppose the women who leave have been mercifully awakened to the fact that they weren’t innately interested in the subject after all? (It’s interesting to note that the female undergrads who leave physics have higher grades in their physics courses than do their male counterparts who leave.)

Kea has a very good point about the anecdotal evidence. It is very difficult for women to talk to men about these problems, for fear they will be seen as complainers who are advocating for “special treatment” or who can’t hack it in physics and are looking for a scapegoat. This is especially true if the man asking the question is competitive with or senior to the woman. Belizean, you aren’t by chance these women’s adviser, are you?

Belizean: “Comparisons with France might not be particularly helpful. A higher fraction of female Ph.D.s might, for example, simply be a consequence of France being a more credential-driven society than ours.”

Then you would need to explain Italy, where the population-at-large thinks the degree is mostly a useless degree (Comment #16), while the number of men and women PhD earners are about half and half. Italy is still a large ‘exporter’ of PhDs (i.e. Brain Drain) because of the large societal and economic factors against science in general. To have access into the literature comparing different countries such as France and Italy, Google on “Eurodoc”. Here: Comparison of Higher Education Studies in Different Countries. In this document, you’ll find numbers of men versus women PhDs for many fields, but unfortunately not specifically for physics; the tables usually list subjects: Engineering or Natural Sciences. Regarding Italy, for those who stay in the country for their degree, please notice the number of research doctorates awarded to men and women, which are roughly equal (see tables 6 and 8, page 67 and 68).

The number of women with full academic positions (versus positions at CNR / INFN / INAF / ENEA etc. — research institutes) is very low however; women are penalized every step along the way in top-level academia. You can read about that in this paper: Academic Scientific Careers in Italy.

Belizean says:

In the absence of an experiment one assumes the least controversial hypothesis.

But are you adopting the least controversial hypothesis? Not according to this blog. Perhaps it is where you come from, but why does that carry more weight than the discussion here?

The Cream Rises to the Top

The case of Lounette Dyer/PhD Caltech is an interesting story

Lounette Dyer
Cofounder and chief technology officer, Cogit Corp.

The daughter of a barber and a factory worker in the blue-collar town of
Muskegon, Mich., Dyer was the first member of her family to attend
college. An accomplished percussionist, at age 14 she played marimba and
timpani professionally. She was also a brilliant math student, but so
backward was her small public high school that her tenth-grade typing
teacher chided her for dropping his class to take a college-level calculus
course at a nearby community college. “When you graduate from high school,”
he scolded, “you’ll be able to make good money typing.”

She ignored his advice. After earning a B.S. in computer science and
mathematics (with a minor in music) from Western Michigan University, Dyer
got a Ph.D. in computer science from the California Institute of
Technology. “Once I eliminated academia as a career choice, there was no
question that I would start my own firm,” says Dyer, who lives in a San
Francisco loft. But first she needed some work experience.

She wrote software at Xerox spinoff ParcPlace Systems, Greenwich Capital and
Teradata before cofounding HyperParallel Inc. in 1994. The young software
firm was soon paralyzed by an unwieldy equity structure. In June 1996 Dyer
quit to cofound her second company, this time with Robert Flynn, whom she’d
met at Teradata.

Their San Francisco-based Cogit Corp. writes so-called data mining software,
which uses complex algorithms to uncover patterns in massive corporate
databases. Potential customers include: Bank of America and BellSouth.

Though Dyer is only 35, her reputation in Silicon Valley is
established. “When she called, it took me about a nanosecond to decide to
back her,” says Ruthann Quindlen of Institutional Venture Partners, whose
firm gave Dyer $1 million for a stake in Cogit. A second venture capital
firm, New Enterprise Associates, has chipped in another $1 million.

She’s on the Caltech Board of Trustees, I assume partially because of her gender (it looks as if she’s totally qualified). Interesting thing, she eliminated Academia as an option & pursued entrepeneurialship. Of all things, she received negative influence by a male teacher in HS (“all girls should take typing, because secretarial work is all they’re good for”). This contrasts with Danica McKellar (who was failing math in HS, but got support from a female HS math teacher), who went on to take math courses @UCLA (late, on a whim..kinda like Joanne): graduated w/honors & co-published a significant paper.

Update: she’s started a new company.

French capitalism can’t be particularly robust given that we just witnessed weeks of rioting when the French government considered passing a law that gave businesses the right to fire worker under the age of 26.

It can’t help the rest of your argument to misrepresent something tangential to it, can it? Correction: the right to fire anyone under 26 in their first two years of employment, without having to give a reason. One can argue that this would help or hinder a capitalist society, but I don’t think it is implicitly necessary for it.

Without experiment, it is the null hypothosis that should be accepted, namely that there are no differences.

No. In the absence of an experiment one assumes the least controversial hypothesis. Otherwise, we’d have to be neutral about whether civilized beings are living in the middle of the sun…

How is the null hypothesis regarding life in the middle of the sun that these beings may exist and could be civilised?

Of course, there have been experiments. A meta-study last year found that although studies finding differences between men and women got a lot more press, most studies found no difference. A friend of mine wrote about this in a post entitled Men Are From Earth, Women Are From Earth and I bask in the vicarious eloquence of his title.

But, I forgot, we are here talking about the supposed innate interests of the sexes. Surely a person’s interests are even more likely to have been affected by the way that they have been treated? Their equal aptitude has apparently been accepted by all. You contend that the differences in interests between the sexes should be considered to be natural until someone here presents evidence that they are caused by social pressures. When they do present evidence, you dismiss all tendency towards physics as social pressure and laud all tendency away from it as ‘innate interests’. I’m sorry, but this really seems like someone bending the facts to their worldview to me.

a few more random points:

I have a bit of a moral dilemma about encouraging anyone to go through grad school. On one hand, science is exciting and all that… but practically – job security sucks, pay is low, hours are long and there’s over-supply of PhDs. Most young people are a bit naive about these issues at the time they enter grad school, and only become aware of it at the end of postdoc.

So why should we encourage women (or anyone?) to choose physics as their career?

Second – what about social interactions factor? Scientists are introverted people, and there’s a lot of weirdos that I have met through grad school. If I was a woman, this would probably qualify as “creepy” rather than “funny” experiences.

Third – some departments solve the problem of improving equality status quo by simply hiring female grad students from overseas – russia, china. At least it was the case in my school. Does this count as a positive change, or is it simply a ploy?

Fourth – since we are talking about foreign students – I can assure you that nationality-based bias is as big of an issue as gender-bias. But for some reason I don’t hear people talk about it. For example, asians are not considered “strong leaders” and despite a large representation in sciences, they hold very few leadership positions – likely more disproportionately than women or minorities.

Fifth – as long as we are talking about foreign students. If the goal is to have equal representation of the two genders (something I tend to agree with), then what about other criteria? I am playing devil advocate here, but what about equal representation of students from middle east, africa or south america? Does it mean we need to reduce the number of students from soviet block, china, korea and india?

Sixth – I disagree with a lot of points Belizian makes, but it makes me wonder if we are trying to desperately encourage women to do something that they may have very little interest in doing. We are clearly not there yet, but what if he is correct, and there’s a difference in some sort of innate interest, that would limit female:male ratio at, say, 1:2. It’s the same question as with affirmative action – how do we know that the problem is solved? And how much can departments do to ensure equality? What if even with all the encouragement from professors and high school teachers, physics is still more interesting to males than females?

Seventh – how much of what we say and the way we act represent our true feelings on the subject, and how much of it PC?

Ok, enough of “devil advocate” points here. While I can easily come up with counter-arguments, it’s not enough to paint a self-consistent picture.

No. In the absence of an experiment one assumes the least controversial hypothesis.

This is not correct. Occam’s razor is the guiding tool in the absence of experimental data.

The least controvertial hypothesis initially was that all celestial bodies revolved around the earth., and behaved differently to each other. However, after enough experimental data was gathered, this view had to be modified, via epicycles, and eventually had to be changed. The simpler assumption that all mass obeyed the same gravitational laws lead to the correct agreement with the data.

Again remember that the dichotomy between men and women is only one of many which can be made. It falls to those proposing it why this dichotomy should be held above all the other in this context. The assumption being made is that there are innate differences, yet few experiments attempt to separate the innate from the instructed. If the difference are innate, we should expect to be able to deduce a relationship between the differences, based on say, hormone levels etc.

In my exprience there’s more women who are chemists than physicists, but I don’t have numbers to back that up.

I would find this unsurprising, given the vast arrays of advanced unguents and potions adorning the shelves of many impressionable young girls across the world.

Amara,
I think you are talking about industrial physics, where things are a lot better. But a lot of physicists may not have that option (astrophyics, high energy, atomic, nuclear, all of theory), at least they are not as useful to employers as someone who worked on laser systems, UHV chambers, semiconductors or biophysics.

For these people the market sucks because if you can’t land a faculty job after numerous postdocs, the options are pretty slim. Basically you can keep doing soft-money postdoc-like position with very low pay, or you can re-train yourself in finances, software, consulting or some other field unrelated to your primary field of expertise. This is rather unfortunate and depressing – I see it as a waste of resources, time and effort, especially as many PhD’s spend 6, 7 or 8 years doing research, followed by a couple of 2-3 year postdocs, which quickly become the norm. In a global market this situation would eventually correct itself, except there’s very little feedback from people forced to quit physics in search of a job that can pay the bill, to the naive graduate students who think their future is so bright.

I wish there was a crystal ball that someone could look into at age 21 or whatever, and it said something like: “With

I do understand. I didn’t want a PhD for many years for many of the reasons that you listed. Heartbreaking for me to see the trials of the graduate students and postdocs, and I didn’t want that life for myself. I changed my mind (Comment #68) though, with the help of a serious work injury, at which point I needed to evaluate my life and follow my heart (got my PhD at age 40). Moving to Europe shifted my perspective, as well (more time for myself, hobbies, etc.). One thing we might emphasize to Physics PhDs, is that your training might not land you in the long-term job of that particular field. Instead it prepares you for a way of thinking that is useful for many technical fields, if you can accept being flexible.

Amara,

We are trying to understand the cause of the relative dearth of female physicists in the U.S. The conjectured primary causes are

1) discrimination or discouragement directed disproportionately toward females
2) an innately lower interest among females in the subject

Neither of these conjectures precludes the possibility of a country in which, for example, 90% of physicists are female. That’s because both of theses depressive effects can be compensated for by social inducements. People, for example, seem to have an innate revulsion for death, but we can always increase the number of morticians by making this occupation more glamorous, lucrative, prestigious, secure, or otherwise more attractive. If 90% of the physicists in Slabovia are female, we cannot in the absence of fairly intimate knowledge of Slabovian society understand why. The profession of physician became overwhelmingly dominated by women in the old Soviet Union. That fact alone tells us nothing about whether there is a sexual difference in intrinsic predispositions to practice medicine.

In order to know which of the above conjectures matters most within a given society, we’d need some way of quantifying them. Short of that, we’re stuck with our qualitative judgment of the relative strengths of these within the societies in which we live.

In my case, I see hundreds of billions of dollars invested in the assumption that women and men have different interests (chick flicks vs. action flicks, romance novels vs. techno thrillers, Lifetime Network vs. Spike TV, fashion industry vs. pro sports, etc.) and repeated experiential evidence that this dichotomy (people/social vs. objects/mechanical) of interest patterns exists from birth. Even cognitive scientists and developmental psychologists have dropped the zero-difference dogmas of the 50′s & 60′s. Stacked against that there are the subtle discouraging signals that girls allegedly receive in the educational system. Even if such signals exist, it seems unreasonable to suppose that they are primary explanation for female under-representation in physics as opposed to a higher order correction.

“The point here is that women in science are suffering from more disruptive influences than men doing the same work. Also, I don’t know what point you are trying to make wrt children. Lisa Randell doesn’t have children – how is this supposed to demonstrate that things aren’t any better in the business world?”

If you’d get your head out of your academic ass you’d be able to see that the problems (“suffering from more disruptive influences than men doing the same work”) of women in academia are no different from the problems of women anywhere- in business, at home, where-ever. The point about children is that when a woman is a mother that job does (and should) become her primary concern over any other. To continue with the Lisa Randall example, if she had children she would probably not have had the time and energy to do as much as she has in physics. Look at the business world and you’ll see countless examples of women who had to choose family or career. It’s a matter of biology more than anything else, whether we like it or not. But I don’t think that brain function/intrinsic aptitude is necessarily the very relevant factor that all these elevated minds want to say it is.

Yes, there is a whole world of assumption implied in that little parenthetical (and should).

Here’s some recent data from the aip from a survey of women physicists:
http://aip.org/statistics/trends/reports/iupap05.pdf
One of the highlights of the survey:

“Although a majority of the responding women physicists said they would choose physics again, a majority also reported being discouraged about physics. Many spoke about negative interaction with colleagues, including many stories about discriminatory attitudes (Table 17). Eighty percent said that attitudes about women in science need improvement (Table 18).”

Discussions such as the one on this blog would benefit from using data instead of vague impressions and anecdotal stories. It is a serious issue and when a majority of women in the field still this way, it’s time to listen to them.

You’re right — perhaps my mind has been clouded by the fine Colorado Whiskey (George Stranahan’s special brew) that has been flowing freely out here in Aspen. A little physics, a little hiking, a little whiskey — who needs data?

The data are based on survey responses of over 1350 women physicists, only 30% of whom are currently full-time students. So it is not graduate students who feel discriminated against, but women at every level, including those who are tenured faculty at major institutions.
I posted a detailed list of references several months ago on this blog (don’t know how to go back and find it, but you probably can).

(second sending, don’t know where the first went to). What is the context of the second question? It seems to have come out of the blue. Anyway, I have a hobby-ist interest in the 2000 year historical trail of the alchemists, and have a good reference book at home: Promethean Ambitions by William Newman.

Witchcraft and alchemy. It’s not a true link in the sense that the Canon Episcopi was written about three centries before the transmission of alchemy from the Islamic world to Europe. The Canon text gives no indication to the aurific art (witchcraft). It was only much later that some sources connected the two.

The Canon episcopi written about the 10th century, addresses two claims of the time. The first is that certain heretical women worship the pagan goddess Diana in large groups to which they have been trasported over great distances in a single night on the backs of beasts, and the second is that the same women or others can be transformed into animals. The Canon rejects the idea that anyone can really change his shape or species as heretical and forbids the belief in the shape changing power of women. So this document is a reference to witches.

About the mid to late thirteenth century, Dominican monk Martinus Polonus wrote in his Margarita decreti encyclopedia an entry for alchemy which begins with the phrase “alchemy seems to be a false art, because he who believes one species to be able to be transferred into another, except by the Creator Himself, is an infidel and worse than a pagan”. These words were echoed by subsequent writers and so alchemy and the Canon episcopi was then linked.

To clarify definitions: Historically, alchemy is primarily an art of transmutation: one metal is turned into another, one living creature erupts out of the substance of another. Art was defined following Aristotle, which is: to 1) perfect natural processes and to bring them to a state of completion not found in nature itself (i.e. improve), and to 2) only imitate nature without fundamentally altering it, i.e.,. to imitate various aspects of the natural world.

So shapeshifting and alchemy was linked by Polonus, but it was not tied to the Devil until the middle 1400s, when a Franciscan monk named Alfonso de Spina analyzed the question of the Canon whether witches can undergo spatial transport at tremendous speed and whether they can change their shape, and he says that only the Devil can do this. He links alchemy and shapeshifting and then with this line:

“The cause is that he (the Devil) knows how to apply actives to passives, as appears in those things that the magicians of Pharaoh did. But that the Devil may cause one man to be converted to a serpent, bird, or plant – this is impossible for him. Therefore, many perverse Christian alchemists are decived having pacts with demons, and believing that they transmute iron into gold through their art.”

De Spina and other monks rejected the idea the nature could be improved upon by ‘art’, and a large text named Malleus was subsequently written. The text denied the power of witches and gave a denunciation of alchemy. This book went through at least 26 printings between 1487 and 1669 and became the witchhunter’s guide. The Devil and demons were endlessly discussed and debated alongside the alchemical art-nature debate.

Albertus Manus straddled both sides of the alchemy (pro/against) debate, but it was his student, Thomas Acquinas, who continued strongly Manus’ anti-alchemy position. Acquinas’ position was that demons were between humans and God, and more powerful than humans. At that time, many of the Medieval arguments against alchemy stemmed from giving demons too much power. Since alchemy represented a high point of the arts in its relationship to nature, it was a useful yardstick to assess the things that demons could or could not do. But the ‘transmutation’ of the alchemical art-nature debate into one involving demons, then unfortunately led to the Great Witch Hunt.

Richard,

Your post #98 pertains to an issue that always seems to pop up when gender imbalance topic is addressed. Why use population averages as a crutch to make decisions that pertain to individuals? Just because proportionately more boys/ are represented in the Physical sciences, that’s not a reason to discourage girls/ en masse. Let those who show interest and aptitude be encouraged, irrespective of how well or otherwise persons of the same demographic group are represented in the field.

Re #95,

Thanks, Macho. But the problem starts early. The low number of female tenured physics professor is largely due to the low number of female physics undergraduates.

The question is, “Why the low number of female physics undergrads?” Nature (inherent disinterest) or Nurture (subtle discrimination)? Unfortunately, more data on female perceptions of discrimination at the higher ranks of the profession won’t help answer this.

If the problem is nurture, then data will be shown on a percentage that does not show an absolute…60/40…70/30..even 80/20…or 90/10 all show nurture as the cause.

Nature displays itself like this: What percentage of humans can fly using their bodies only? Zero. They have no inherent capabilities. What percentage of snakes have hands, feet and wings? Zero again.

What percentage of parrots can speak a language? According to linguists the answer is zero again. The parrot can mimic sounds but will not fly off into the forest, teach its fellow birds to speak nor will its language learned go through any history of weakening of consonants, shifting of vowels, dropping prefixes and suffixes and then building up new prefixes and suffixes with the following generations. Humans do it involuntarily.

Supernova,

Belezean has stated in #101 ” The question is, ‘Why the low number of female physics undergrads?’ Nature(inherent disinterest) or Nurture (subtle discrimination)?”

If women are inherently disinterested in physics, then none of them are interested.

Furthermore, what percentage of men show an interest in physics enough to take it up in school? Is it 100%?

I think I am making a strong pitch on behalf on nurture and you might not agree?

No, Bob, I’m with you in the nurture camp on this one, but I gotta agree with Belizean that you’re far oversimplifying the claim that anyone is “inherently” anything. I don’t think anyone on the nature side is trying to deny that female physicists exist, or argue that they exist in spite of a complete lack of interest in the subject. It doesn’t do us any good to traffic in absolutes.

Further:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/15023082.htm

Here’s a link to Barres’ opinion piece in Nature (subscription may be required):

Does Gender Matter?