Sarah Rothman | Bias doesn't stop female scientists

In January 2005, then-Harvard University President Lawrence Summers gave the speech heard 'round the world. In a talk presented at a conference on diversifying the science and engineering workforce, he hypothesised that differences in innate abilities are responsible for the relative scarcity of women in science.

Naturally, he ignited a firestorm. Summers was acknowledging a true lack of female faculty members in engineering and the sciences, and he was hoping to shed some light on the cause. Many indisputable reports outline this underrepresentation based on the numbers of women obtaining doctorates, tenure track positions and grant funding. For example, although women received 48 percent of all doctoral degrees in 2004, they received only 18 percent of doctorates in engineering.

Although an army of angry scientists and feminists had already laid waste to his hypothesis, a report released last week by the National Academy of Sciences claimed to put the final nail in the coffin. The report determined that "studies of brain structure and function . have not found any significant biological differences between men and women in performing science and mathematics that can account for the lower representation of women in academic faculty."

Vindication for us female engineers?

With four semesters of calculus under my belt, not to mention a summer spent dismantling a car, I cannot help but agree with the academy.

However, the report determined that the real problem is discrimination against women, and it is here that the academy and I part ways. While I have yet to experience the faculty side, I can safely say that other than the occasional ignorant remark, I have not encountered overt sexism in my scientific endeavors.

Yet many people I spoke with agree with the NAS report.

Sita Awasthi studies infectious diseases at the Medical School and serves on the board of the local chapter of the Association for Women in the Sciences. She dismisses the idea that innate differences are to blame for a lack of women in science and engineering.

"Biology can only account for so much of the disadvantage," she said. "If we have interests, we pursue them."

But not everyone believes the report was well founded in completely dismissing biological differences between the sexes.

University of Delaware education professor Linda Gottfredson believes that "the report is ignoring natural differences" and "assuming that [men and women] have the same interests." She believes in gender differences in vocational preferences. "We have to respect that people come into the world with different genetic compasses."

Gottfredson believes that some of the greatest differences between the sexes are "vocational interest and personality" and that "it's a separate question whether those interests are genetic or not." Her hypothesis is that there are clearly biological differences that cause women to gravitate toward "people-related" interests and men toward more "things-related" activities.

For me, there was never any doubt which way my genetic compass was pointing. I was always a scientist, and I feel it is in my genes, and not my upbringing. Although my extended family has an analytical proclivity, my lawyer-father and teacher-mother did not push me in this direction; I found it and chose it myself. Only an "inner compass" can explain why I spent so much time in the basement constructing elaborate paper airplanes and taking notes about rocks in my first ever lab notebook.

And here I am at a crossroads, as I accelerate toward the end of my doctorate. Women drop out of the sciences at every step, from high school to college, from undergraduate to graduate programs, to tenure-track faculty. I'm afraid I'm not going to be much different; I'm going to finish my Ph.D. and become a statistic.

Although I have some time to make a career decisions, I am leaning against a career in academia. Frankly, I'm just not sure that I can balance academia with other goals I have in life: travel, family and writing.

Bias or discrimination have not forced me here. Although I break the mold when it comes to my career interests, perhaps in the end, I too fall at the female end of Gottfredson's "people-things" spectrum.

Apparently, my lack of innate analytic ability hasn't prevented me from making good decisions.

Sarah Rothman is a fifth-year Bioengineering Ph.D. candidate and 2002 Engineering alumna from Fayetteville, N.Y. The Sounds of Science appears on Mondays. Her e-mail address is rothman@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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