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What accountsfor therelatively lownumbers ofwomen insome fields of science andengineering? Join thediscussion at TierneyLab.

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Further Reading"U.S. Agencies Quiz Universities."Y. Bhattacharjee. Science, 2007.

"Why Can't A Woman Be MoreLike A Man?" C. Hoff Sommers.The American, 2008.

"Women in Physics andAstronomy, 2005. R. Ivie and K.Nies Ray. American Institute ofPhysics Report, 2005.

"Study of MathematicallyPrecocious Youth After 35 Years."D. Lubinski and C.PerssonBenbow. Perspectives onPsychological Science, 2006.

FINDINGS

A New Frontier for Title IX: Science

Victor Koen

By JOHN TIERNEYPublished: July 15, 2008

Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexualdiscrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. Butnow, under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies havequietly picked a new target: science.

The National Science Foundation,NASA and the Department of Energyhave set up programs to look forsexual discrimination at universities receiving federalgrants. Investigators have been taking inventories of labspace and interviewing faculty members and students inphysics and engineering departments at schools likeColumbia, the University of Wisconsin, M.I.T. and theUniversity of Maryland.

So far, these Title IX compliance reviews haven’t hadmuch visible impact on campuses beyond inspiring a fewcomplaints from faculty members. (The journal Sciencequoted Amber Miller, a physicist at Columbia, as callingher interview “a complete waste of time.”) But some criticsfear that the process could lead to a quota system thatcould seriously hurt scientific research and do more harmthan good for women.

The members of Congress and women’s groups who havepushed for science to be “Title Nined” say there is evidencethat women face discrimination in certain sciences, but thequality of that evidence is disputed. Critics say there is farbetter research showing that on average, women’s interest

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"Why are there so few women ininformation technology?" J.L.Rosenbloom, R.A. Ash, B. Dupont,L. Coder. Journal of EconomicPsychology, 2007.

"The Sexual Paradox: Men,Women, and the Real GenderGap." S. Pinker. Scribner, 2008.

"Title IX as a change strategy forwomen in science andengineering." D.R. Rolison.Women, Work & the AcademyConference, 2004.

"The freedom to say 'no.'" E.McArdle. Boston Globe, 2008.

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in some fields isn’t the same as men’s.

In this debate, neither side doubts that women can excel inall fields of science. In fact, their growing presence informer male bastions of science is a chief argumentagainst the need for federal intervention.

Despite supposed obstacles like “unconscious bias” and ashortage of role models and mentors, women nowconstitute about half of medical students, 60 percent ofbiology majors and 70 percent of psychology Ph.D.’s. Theyearn the majority of doctorates in both the life sciencesand the social sciences. They remain a minority in thephysical sciences and engineering. Even though theirannual share of doctorates in physics has tripled in recentdecades, it’s less than 20 percent. Only 10 percent ofphysics faculty members are women, a ratio that helpedprompt an investigation in 2005 by the American Instituteof Physics into the possibility of bias.

But the institute found that women with physics degrees go on to doctorates, teachingjobs and tenure at the same rate that men do. The gender gap is a result of earlierdecisions. While girls make up nearly half of high school physics students, they’re lesslikely than boys to take Advanced Placement courses or go on to a college degree inphysics.

These numbers don’t surprise two psychologists at Vanderbilt University, David Lubinskiand Camilla Persson Benbow, who have been tracking more than 5,000 mathematicallygifted students for 35 years.

They found that starting at age 12, the girls tended to be better rounded than the boys:they had relatively strong verbal skills in addition to math, and they showed moreinterest in “organic” subjects involving people and other living things. Despite theirmathematical prowess, they were less likely than boys to go into physics or engineering.

But whether they grew up to be biologists or sociologists or lawyers, when they weresurveyed in their 30s, these women were as content with their careers as their malecounterparts. They also made as much money per hour of work. Dr. Lubinski and Dr.Benbow concluded that adolescents’ interests and balance of abilities — not their sex —were the best predictors of whether they would choose an “inorganic” career like physics.

A similar conclusion comes from a new study of the large gender gap in the computerindustry by Joshua Rosenbloom and Ronald Ash of the University of Kansas. Byadministering vocational psychological tests, the researchers found that informationtechnology workers especially enjoyed manipulating objects and machines, whereasworkers in other occupations preferred dealing with people.

Once the researchers controlled for that personality variable, the gender gap shrank tostatistical insignificance: women who preferred tinkering with inanimate objects wereabout as likely to go into computer careers as were men with similar personalities. Therejust happened to be fewer women than men with those preferences.

Now, you might think those preferences would be different if society didn’t discouragegirls and women from pursuits like computer science and physics. But if you read “TheSexual Paradox,” Susan Pinker’s book about gender differences, you’ll find just theopposite problem.

Ms. Pinker, a clinical psychologist and columnist for The Globe and Mail in Canada (andsister of Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist), argues that the campaign for genderparity infantilizes women by assuming they don’t know what they want. She interviewedwomen who abandoned successful careers in science and engineering to work in fieldslike architecture, law and education — and not because they had faced discrimination inscience.

Instead, they complained of being pushed so hard to be scientists and engineers that theyended up in jobs they didn’t enjoy. “The irony was that talent in a male-typical pursuit

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limited their choices,” Ms. Pinker says. “Once they showed aptitude for math or physicalscience, there was an assumption that they’d pursue it as a career even if they had otherinterests or aspirations. And because these women went along with the program andwere perceived by parents and teachers as torch bearers, it was so much more difficult forthem to come to terms with the fact that the work made them unhappy.”

Ms. Pinker says that universities and employers should do a better job helping womencombine family responsibilities with careers in fields like physics. But she also points outthat female physicists are a distinct minority even in Western European countries thatoffer day care and generous benefits to women.

“Creating equal opportunities for women does not mean that they’ll choose what menchoose in equal numbers,” Ms. Pinker says. “The freedom to act on one’s preferences cancreate a more exaggerated gender split in some fields.”

Applying Title IX to science was proposed eight years ago by Debra Rolison, a chemist atthe Naval Research Laboratory. She argued that withholding federal money from “poorlydiversified departments” was essential to “transform the academic culture.” The proposalwas initially greeted, in her words, with “near-universal horror.”

Some female scientists protested that they themselves would be marginalized if a quotasystem revived the old stereotype that women couldn’t compete on even terms in science.But the idea had strong advocates, too, and Congress quietly ordered agencies to beginthe Title IX compliance reviews in 2006.

The reviews so far haven’t led to any requirements for gender balance in sciencedepartments. But Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American EnterpriseInstitute who has written extensively about gender wars in academia, predicts thatlawyers will work gradually, as they did in sports, to require numerical parity.

“Colleges already practice affirmative action for women in science, but now they’ll be sointimidated by the Title IX legal hammer that they may institute quota systems,” Dr.Sommers said. “In sports, they had to eliminate a lot of male teams to achieve Title IXparity. It’ll be devastating to American science if every male-dominated field has to becalibrated to women’s level of interest.”

Whether or not quotas are ever imposed, some of the most productive science andengineering departments in America are busy filling out new federal paperwork. Theagencies that have been cutting financing for Fermilab and the Spirit rover on Mars arepaying for investigations of a problem that may not even exist. How is this good forscientists of either sex?

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