Women in Science

Although the number of women pursuing science has increased in the last few decades, students and faculty at Harvard say there is still room for greater change.

"Women have been making some progress, but not as much as one would like," says Dr. Carola Eisenberg, a member of the Committee on Women in Science and Engineering of the National Research Council of the Academy of Sciences.

Students say there is a lack of women in certain science classes.

"I went to go shop a chemistry class, and there were maybe a quarter women," Claire C. Tseng '98 says. "It's just one of those things you notice."

The Office of the Registrar reports that males outnumber females in almost every science and math concentration--including applied mathematics, astronomy and astrophysics, biochemical sciences, chemistry, chemistry and physics, computer science, physics and the engineering sciences.

Two concentrations, biology and earth and planetary sciences, have nearly the same number of female and male concentrators.

Only concentrations that combine science with the humanities, such as history and science and environmental science and public policy, boast of more women than men.

The number of women in the sciences decreases even more in graduate school and the work force, says Susan C. Arnott, program coordinator and director of Science Alliance, a first-year orientation program for females interested in science and mathematics.

"If you look at the women in science after undergraduate school, the numbers drop," Arnott says.

For example, the College's biology department has 247 male and 242 female concentrators, according to the Registrar's Office. The ratio of men to women is 50.5 to 49.5 percent, a difference of only I percent between the genders.

However, the gender gap grows bigger in graduate school.

The graduate school program in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology has 36 males and 26 females, a 17 percent difference between the number of male and female students, according to Margaret M. Hamilton, a graduate program coordinator.

But medical schools are closing this gap.

Ten years ago, the class composition of Harvard Medical School was 65.8 percent male and 34.2 percent female. This year's entering class is 54.8 percent male and 45.2 percent female.

Harvard-Radcliffe Opportunities

Harvard and Radcliffe say they are working hard to encourage women in their pursuit of the sciences.

Science Alliance is a freshman orientation program for women that includes four days of panel discussions on concentration and career paths, introductions to faculty and tours of science facilities.

Participants say the program is important because it provides a network to other female students and to the female faculty members.

"Science Alliance is just a way to make a connection," says Elizabeth W. Patton '00, who participated in the program last year.

The highlight of the program this year was a panel discussion that included a forensic scientist, a meteorologist and a patent lawyer, Arnott said.

Arnott says seeing all the paths women can take in the sciences makes the panel useful.

"[The panel served] to broaden students' notions of where they can take science," Arnott says. "Students can see that it is okay to experiment with different career paths in science."

Science Alliance participants find a continuation of their network through the student-run Women in Science at Harvard and Radcliffe (WISHR), to which approximately 600 women belong.

"A lot of the girls who participate in Science Alliance become part of WISHR," Patton says.

In addition to providing a support network and holding panel discussions and faculty dinners, WISHR sponsors a big sister-little sister program for one-on-one advising, says former WISHR co-president Van L. Cheng '98.

Another program offered by the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study--the Radcliffe Research Partnership Program--pays undergraduate women to work closely with female scholars.

Program Coordinator Colleen A. MacDonald calls the research program a "mentoring partnership."

She says, "Students do interesting stuff, not just photocopying."

Such programs are part of a national trend to attract women to the sciences.

According to Eisenberg, programs such as Science Alliance encourage women to pursue science more than they have in the past.

"At the college level, I think they are doing a lot--certainly more than they did when I was a student," she says.

Targeting your Audience

But these programs only target undergraduate students.

Past research has shown that the middle school years are crucial in attracting women into the sciences, and Arnott says that there is a special need for women to enter science beyond college.

"We've recognized that there is a need for more services at later stages," she says. "We're working with WISHR to identify these needs. For example, this year WISHR started a network with graduate students."

The Graduate Student Advisory Network, the most recent addition to WISHR, pairs club members with female graduate students, said WISHR Co-President Caroline L. Kung '00.

Dr. Camara Jones, assistant professor of health and social behavior and epidemiology at the School of Public Health, says such programs are important. However, she says the best encouragement begins at home.

"It begins in the home at all ages," she says. "People should buy their girls the same blocks and legos that they buy their boys."

The Value of Mentorship

Female science students at Harvard say that older mentors are one of their most valuable resources.

"Sometimes [science classes] are kind of intimidating," says WISHR Co-President Patricia S. Cho '99. "What helped me most was knowing [the] upperclass females and graduate students."

Although more mentoring programs are becoming available to women in the sciences, Kung, a psychology concentrator, says that more students must be made aware of them.

"I think many undergraduates would feel more secure and confident about approaching research and [about] exploring careers in psychology if there was more readily-accessible information and support from the psychology faculty, particularly women," Kung says. "I have heard this complaint from many women in science."

A Lack of Women Professors

Another complaint students express is the lack of tenured female science professors.

"The chemistry department has one female professor, and all the rest [are] males," Cho says. "I think it would be very encouraging for women entering college to have more role models."

The chemistry department currently has 16 tenured professors, and only one of them is female, according to Carol C. Gonzaga, a department administrator.

The biology department isn't much different.

According to Jay L. Taft, director of administration for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, the department currently has 19 tenured professors and only two are women.

Working Mothers

The biggest obstacle that women in science face after school is the "juggling act" of balancing a family and a career, Arnott says.

Undergraduates say they are already worried about this upcoming challenge.

"I had been thinking about [being a working mother] all summer," Ariane Park '98 says. "It makes you realize it won't be easy. You can't do both things full time."

Jones, the mother of two young children, says life as a working mother is difficult, but not impossible.

"Right now I feel terribly torn," she says. "I'm not as productive scientifically as someone who is not caring for a family."

Women in academia who choose to take a leave of absence face additional problems, Tseng says.

"If you go into academia from graduate school, you have to do a lot of work before you get to be a professor," she says. "Even though schools say there is no disadvantage to taking time off, we were told that at MIT, no woman who has taken time off has ever been tenured. I think in academia there is definitely a problem."

Robert Birgeneau, dean of science at MIT, says that there is no concrete evidence about the effect of leaves-of-absence upon the careers of female junior faculty.

"We have no meaningful data on whether or not taking a leave-of-absence helps or hurts a junior faculty member's chances for tenure," he says.

However, there is evidence that workplaces are slowly becoming more receptive to the needs of working mothers.

A significant step was taken by the School of Public Health last year when the faculty voted to allow tenure-track professors with significant family-care responsibilities to cut their time commitment by up to 50 percent for up to two years and still remain on the tenure track, Jones says.

"Now with more and more women on faculties, [people] are pushing for institutional change," she says.

Eisenberg said the National Institute of Health (NIH) is spearheading this trend with a new program that reacquaints women with the latest discoveries in their scientific fields after their leaves of absence.

"NIH has a program which they call a re-entry program," she says. "They offer women a one-year fellowship where they learn about the new discoveries in science that have occurred while they were taking a leave-of-absence."

Harvard vs. the Real World

Students have different opinions on whether women are making strides in the sciences.

"I think women have gained a lot of respect in the field of science, and I do not feel that any distinction is made between [the] performances of males and females," Jodie L. Pearl '01 says.

Park agrees, and says that she does not believe women are treated any differently in the sciences.

"I never identified myself as a woman in science," she says. "I don't see myself in a separate category."

But students say this might be due more to Harvard's liberal atmosphere than to any real-world advancements.

Kung says, "College campuses are extremely liberal, especially Harvard. The societal perception that women in science seems bizarre seems much more obscured [here]."

Gender Breakdown by Concentration

There is a disproportionate number of men to women in the math and science concentrations. Concentration  Men  Women Applied Math (168)  86%  14% Astronomy and Astrophysics (16)  94%  6% Biochemical Sciences (384)  62%  38% Biology (489)  51%  49% Chemistry (154)  62%  38% Chemistry and Physics (34)  71%  29% Computer Science (185)  85%  15% Earth and Planetary Sciences (38)  47%  53% Engineering Sciences (78)  82%  18% Environmental Science and Public Policy (144)  43%  57% History and Science (202)  40%  60% Mathematics (126)  80%  20% Physics (122)  78%  22%

Office of the Registrar

Office of the Registrar