The lack of women in science: An unrealized reality

The second lecture of the biology 4243G lecture series held at the University of Western Ontario was led by associate professor Dr. Amanda J. Moehring. The scheme of the lecture was a summary of statistics and facts of women in science and then a question period with four women panelists: two associate professors, one postdoctoral fellow and a PhD student. Dr. Moehring began by showing us pictures of 16 women scientist that have made important contributions to science and encourage us to visit a website about them. She emphasized that women in science are not as recognized as men scientist; therefore it would be hard for us to identify them. Moehring showed us a bar graph that supported the fact that the number of women working at the UWO biology and chemistry faculties is substantially lower than the number of female undergraduate science students.
Then some linear graphs were comparing the years 1999 and 2007, showing the career path of a professor from undergraduate to full professor as the independent variable and the number of women that have masters, PhDs, etc. as the dependent variable. The results from the graphs showed one full professor in 1999 and 6 in 2007. Moehring said that there is a significant increase over the years but it’s still a very low number. The conclusion of these line graphs was that many women in science for some reason don’t make it all the way to be full professors not only at UWO, but also around the world.
Moehring gave us some examples of how women in science were not given the same opportunities as men for example in the European Union, women are less likely to get fellowships, and had 50% less chance of success than men. Another example was at MIT, a university in the US, which is predominantly male. A study showed that women in science at MIT were paid less, had smaller lab spaces and less grants. The difference was so significant that MIT had to make 95% changes. The issue here is: why are not women perusing higher education, making us wonder, if this trend is a matter of discrimination, aptitude, ability, society expectations or culture.
I was very surprise to learn that there is a lack of women in science, in the 21st century, where supposedly we have surpassed inequalities between women and men. I think that women are not pursuing higher education because of standardized testing and lack of opportunities to those that don’t pass these tests. Not everyone learns the same way and undergraduate degrees are mostly based on these standardized testing such as multiple choice, which don’t show our hard work. In contrast, graduate degrees are more hands on learning such as experiments, posters and publications, which are hard work but with good results. I notice that none of the panelists experienced discrimination from men, but they did have difficulty when they were pregnant because the ten year system to be a full professor looks down on people that take time off. The panelist and I agreed that now days, it’s a matter of choice and believing that you are good enough. This leads me to conclude, that we are not realizing that issues from the past are still true today, because we have kept old systems instead of adapting them to our changing world. Incentives and opportunities to women students and reforms in the 10 year system have to be made in order to accommodate women’s needs. Furthermore, it is essential to constantly review the issue so things like in MIT don’t happen again.