Committee on Science and Technology
US House of Representatives
May 8, 2008
(Washington, DC) –Today, the House Science and Technology’s Subcommittee on Research and Science Education held a hearing to discuss ways to remove barriers for women in academic science and engineering fields. The Subcommittee held a hearing to receive comments on draft legislation that incorporates recommendations from the National Academies panel that were presented at a hearing in October of 2007.
“The United States cannot afford to continue losing our best and brightest women from academic science and engineering careers,” said Subcommittee Chairman Brian Baird (D-WA). “The programs in this bill are just a small part of what is needed to tackle the barriers to women in science and engineering. In fact, there is only so much Congress can do to compel what is ultimately a change to an academic culture with a long and proud history. I want to thank Congresswoman Johnson for bringing this important legislative proposal before the subcommittee.”
The legislation, titled Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Act of 2008 and sponsored by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), includes workshops to increase awareness of implicit gender bias in grant review, hiring, tenure, promotion, and selection for other honors based on merit; extended grant support for caregivers; and improved demographic data collection on federal grant-making.
“While I do not intend to be heavy-handed toward our universities, I do feel that not nearly enough is being done to educate persons of influence on the subtle gender bias that exists and is holding women back from achieving at the same level as men,” said Johnson.
Women are consistently underrepresented in tenured faculty positions as research universities, despite earning more than half of all science and engineering bachelor’s degrees in 2005. According to data compiled by NSF, in 2006, women held 30 percent of all full-time science and engineering faculty positions at U.S. colleges and universities. Specifically, they constituted 19 percent of full professors, 34 percent of associate professors and 42 percent of junior professors, a category that includes both instructors at 2-year colleges and assistant professors at 4-year institutions.
The 2007 panel found that most of the barriers to women in academia are not created with intent. Even policies that seem gender-neutral in theory might not be so in practice. The panel recommended that Federal science agencies sponsor workshops on gender bias in order to raise awareness of and provide strategies to overcome the collective effect of many small and subtle incidents of subconscious bias and barriers that are often built into academic culture. The draft bill under consideration creates a program of such workshops, and the Subcommittee solicited input on the details of that program and on metrics for evaluation.
The National Academies panel also highlighted the need for better data collection, to understand the extent of gender inequity and to have a basis for evaluating policies to address the gap. The draft bill therefore requires Federal science agencies to collect demographic data on the grant making process, and encourages universities to collect better data for the purposes of evaluating the gender bias workshops.
The following witnesses testified today before the Subcommittee:
Dr. Lynda T. Carlson, Director of the Division of Science Resource Statistics, Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, National Science Foundation.
Dr. Linda G. Blevins, Senior Technical Advisor in the Office of the Deputy Director for Science Programs, Office of Science, Department of Energy.
Dr. Donna K. Ginther, Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Economic and Business Analysis, Institute for Policy Research, University of Kansas.
For more information on this hearing or to access witness testimony, visit the Committee’s website. http://science.house.gov/press/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=2186
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Friday, May 9, 2008
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Female Faculty and the Sciences
Inside Higher Ed
insidehighered.com NEWS
October 18, 2007
During a Congressional hearing focused on the recruitment and retention of female faculty members in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields Wednesday, witnesses discussed how the federal government can combat the underrepresentation of women through targeted grants and incentives — and even the creation of a new quasi-governmental agency that would expand the enforcement of Title IX, the landmark 1972 gender equity law, to better encompass academic practices.
“The original intent of Title IX was to ensure equal educational opportunity for both sexes. Yet, relatively little has been done outside of the arena of athletics to make that mandate meaningful,” said Gretchen Ritter, director of the Center for Women and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She pointed out in her written testimony that while the Government Accountability Office did ask granting agencies to ensure that grant recipients comply with Title IX in 2004, “what this might mean in practice and whether such compliance reviews are being conducted is not entirely clear.”
“I know a lot about Title IX but more because of sports programs than educational programs and that’s something that Congress can easily fix,” said Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami and chair of the National Academies committee that wrote the recent report, “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering.”
“We need an organization like the [National Collegiate Athletic Association] that holds us accountable,” Shalala added — an entity situated somewhere between government and higher education.
Wednesday’s hearing of the House of Representatives Science Subcommittee on Research and Science Education focused on the end of the pipeline, so to speak — the representation of women within the faculty ranks. According to 2003 National Science Foundation data, women hold about 28 percent of all full-time science and engineering faculty positions — representing 18 percent of full professors, 31 percent of associate professors and 40 percent of assistant professors. Despite growth in the Ph.D. pool, faculty appointments, particularly at the senior levels, are still lagging: While women now constitute more than 50 percent of Ph.D. students in the life sciences, for instance, and, in 2003, made up 42 percent of the entire pool of life science Ph.D. recipients within the six preceding years, they represented just 34 percent of assistant professor appointments.
“What we learned [in researching the “Beyond Bias” report] was the pools are there for the first time,” Shalala said. “It’s not the pool issue anymore. It’s our behavior.”
“Entire campuses have been dozing on this issue,” Kathie L. Olsen, deputy director of the NSF, said in prefacing her remarks about the foundation’s ADVANCE Institutional Transformation awards. “Targeting funding for individuals simply did not go far enough. What we needed was a full, institution-wide shakeup to bring about results.” [To read the entire story, go to:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/18/womensci ]
insidehighered.com NEWS
October 18, 2007
During a Congressional hearing focused on the recruitment and retention of female faculty members in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields Wednesday, witnesses discussed how the federal government can combat the underrepresentation of women through targeted grants and incentives — and even the creation of a new quasi-governmental agency that would expand the enforcement of Title IX, the landmark 1972 gender equity law, to better encompass academic practices.
“The original intent of Title IX was to ensure equal educational opportunity for both sexes. Yet, relatively little has been done outside of the arena of athletics to make that mandate meaningful,” said Gretchen Ritter, director of the Center for Women and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She pointed out in her written testimony that while the Government Accountability Office did ask granting agencies to ensure that grant recipients comply with Title IX in 2004, “what this might mean in practice and whether such compliance reviews are being conducted is not entirely clear.”
“I know a lot about Title IX but more because of sports programs than educational programs and that’s something that Congress can easily fix,” said Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami and chair of the National Academies committee that wrote the recent report, “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering.”
“We need an organization like the [National Collegiate Athletic Association] that holds us accountable,” Shalala added — an entity situated somewhere between government and higher education.
Wednesday’s hearing of the House of Representatives Science Subcommittee on Research and Science Education focused on the end of the pipeline, so to speak — the representation of women within the faculty ranks. According to 2003 National Science Foundation data, women hold about 28 percent of all full-time science and engineering faculty positions — representing 18 percent of full professors, 31 percent of associate professors and 40 percent of assistant professors. Despite growth in the Ph.D. pool, faculty appointments, particularly at the senior levels, are still lagging: While women now constitute more than 50 percent of Ph.D. students in the life sciences, for instance, and, in 2003, made up 42 percent of the entire pool of life science Ph.D. recipients within the six preceding years, they represented just 34 percent of assistant professor appointments.
“What we learned [in researching the “Beyond Bias” report] was the pools are there for the first time,” Shalala said. “It’s not the pool issue anymore. It’s our behavior.”
“Entire campuses have been dozing on this issue,” Kathie L. Olsen, deputy director of the NSF, said in prefacing her remarks about the foundation’s ADVANCE Institutional Transformation awards. “Targeting funding for individuals simply did not go far enough. What we needed was a full, institution-wide shakeup to bring about results.” [To read the entire story, go to:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/18/womensci ]
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