Subject: Re: [Peninsula_Interweave] Dr. Barres' view validated by National Academy of Sciences panel

From: Brian Singer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 10:15:29 -0700 (PDT)

Ok.  This is good, but there's no way I can have the time to read it in its current form.  Do you have a better/printer friendly copy?  Does anyone have the original article of the Barres guy with his picture?
   
  Thanks,
   
  Brian

David Harris <[email-masked]> wrote:
  
------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 19, 2006

Bias Is Hurting Women in Science, Panel Reports

By CORNELIA DEAN 

Women in science and engineering are hindered not by lack of ability but 
by bias and “outmoded institutional structures” in academia, an expert 
panel reported yesterday. The panel, convened by the National Academy of 
Sciences 
, 
said that in an era of global competition the nation could not afford 
“such underuse of precious human capital.” Among other steps, the report 
recommends altering procedures for hiring and evaluation, changing 
typical timetables for tenure and promotion, and providing more support 
for working parents.

“Unless a deeper talent pool is tapped, it will be difficult for our 
country to maintain our competitiveness in science and engineering,” the 
panel’s chairwoman, Donna E. Shalala 
, 
said at a news conference at which the report was made public. The 
report, “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in 
Academic Science and Engineering,” is online at 
www.nationalacademies.org .

Dr. Shalala, a former secretary of health and human services who is now 
president of the University of Miami 
, 
said part of the problem was insufficient effort on the part of college 
and university administrators. “Many of us spend more energy enforcing 
the law on our sports teams than we have in our academic halls,” she said.

The panel dismissed the idea, notably advanced last year by Lawrence H. 
Summers 
, 
then the president of Harvard 
, 
that the relative dearth of women in the upper ranks of science might be 
the result of “innate” intellectual deficiencies, particularly in 
mathematics.

If there are cognitive differences, the report says, they are small and 
irrelevant. In any event, the much-studied gender gap in math 
performance has all but disappeared as more girls enroll in demanding 
classes. Even among very high achievers, the gap is narrowing, the 
panelists said.

A spokesman for Mr. Summers said he was out of the country and could not 
be reached for comment.

Nor is the problem a lack of women in the academic pipeline, the report 
says. Though women leave science and engineering more often than men “at 
every educational transition” from high school through college 
professorships, the number of women studying science and engineering has 
sharply increased at all levels.

For 30 years, the report says, women have earned at least 30 percent of 
the nation’s doctorates in social and behavioral sciences, and at least 
20 percent of the doctorates in life sciences. Yet they appear among 
full professors in those fields at less than half those levels. Women 
from minority groups are “virtually absent,” it adds.

The report also dismisses other commonly held beliefs — that women are 
uncompetitive or less productive, that they take too much time off for 
their families. Instead, it says, extensive previous research showed a 
pattern of unconscious but pervasive bias, “arbitrary and subjective” 
evaluation processes and a work environment in which “anyone lacking the 
work and family support traditionally provided by a ‘wife’ is at a 
serious disadvantage.”

Along with Dr. Shalala, the panel included Elizabeth Spelke, a professor 
of psychology at Harvard who has long challenged the “innate 
differences” view, and Ruth J. Simmons, the president of Brown 
University 
, 
who established a widely praised program for aspiring engineers when she 
was president of the all-female Smith College.

The report was dedicated to another panelist, Denice Denton, an 
electrical engineer who until her suicide this summer was chancellor of 
the University of California 
, 
Santa Cruz, and a forceful advocate for women, gay men and lesbians, and 
minority members in science and engineering.

The 18-member panel had one man: Robert J. Birgeneau, chancellor of the 
University of California, Berkeley. But Dr. Shalala noted that the 
National Academy of Sciences committee that reviewed the report had 10 men.

“Nothing was a foregone conclusion,” she said, adding that the committee 
was surprised at the strength of evidence supporting the report’s 
conclusions. In an interview, Dr. Simmons of Brown said: “The data don’t 
lie. There are lots of arguments one could have mounted 30 years ago, 
but 30 years later we have incontrovertible data that women do have the 
ability to do science and engineering at a very high level.”

She said the more relevant question was, “Why aren’t they electing these 
fields when the national need and the opportunities in the fields are so 
great?”

Leveling the playing field does not mean giving women an unfair 
advantage, another panelist, Maria Zuber said yesterday. Dr. Zuber, a 
geophysicist at M.I.T. 
, 
said for example that scholarly journals might eliminate the identity of 
authors when they sent out manuscripts for pre-publication review. That 
way, she said, work would be judged on its merits, rather than by the 
prominence of its authors.

Ana Mari Cauce, a psychologist at the University of Washington 

and another panelist, said at the news conference, “This is about more 
excellence; this is not about changing the bar or lowering the bar.”

Ben A. Barres, a neuroscientist at Stanford who was not connected to the 
effort but who published a commentary on women in science last summer in 
the journal Nature, echoed the report’s assertion that small 
administrative changes could produce big differences for women in science.

He pointed to the Pioneer award program for young researchers run by the 
National Institutes of Health 
. 
Dr. Barres, who has been a judge for the awards, said that even making 
it known that scientists could nominate themselves helped make the pool 
of winners more diverse.

Dr. Shalala began the report’s preface by recalling that when she was in 
graduate school in political science in the 1960’s and as a young 
professor, she was told that fellowships or tenure would never be hers 
because she was a woman.

Overt discrimination like that is now rare, she wrote, but progress has 
been too slow. “We need overarching reform now,” she said yesterday.

-- 
David Harris, Palo Alto, California.
GPS location: 37.41988, -122.13388 (1984 WGS system).
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---

From: Brian Singer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 10:15:29 -0700 (PDT)

Thanks,
   
  Brian

By CORNELIA DEAN 

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