Cuz girlz can't count, dat's why?

Looks like the editor of the respected journal The Scientist is starting to see the light:

It's always a shock to realize that you're in the wrong. As this issue was going to press, I found myself tut-tutting at the data that Phoebe Leboy presents elsewhere in this issue on the number of women scientists in the more senior positions at academic institutions. At the end of 2006, Harvard Medical School had no women among 23 tenure-track faculty in cell biology and biochemistry/ molecular pharmacology. Two have joined since then, but that's still a scandalous figure. The number of female assistant professors at the University of Pennsylvania has dropped from 18 to four in the last eight years? Shocking! Why don't the crusty old beggars that run research play fair?

Then I became uneasy: What is my own record in recognizing senior female researchers? The answer is, very poor. At The Scientist one of the ways of acknowledging leadership in the life sciences is to invite leaders to serve on our Editorial Advisory Board. A quick glance at page 11 will show you that it's an outstanding group of people. But you'll also see that it's light on women members: There are precisely three, out of 22. At 14%, I'm in Harvard Medical School territory. That's hardly the ideal position from which to criticize the NIH (my original intention), which reaches the giddy heights of 20% women among its senior scientists.

Don't give me that women-are-no-good-at-science jive. Women are starting to dominate the med schools and other faculties at universities. If you read leboy's research, you'll see that they try harder than men too. But still, women PhDs. get screwed, especially on payday.

It becomes a vicious circle. Because there are fewer women in these positions, there are more demands on their time to represent the female gender on committees, boards and the like. Women tend to feel obligated to serve -- over serve, in fact -- and get exhausted and bogged down in politics and paperwork. That leaves them less opportunity to do ... science.

Good thing women aren't good at math, eh? Otherwise they'd look at the numbers and start screaming bloody murder.

Comments

[Meredith]

Antonia, I'm loving the new blog. Just one question -- is it Star policy to only show the first couple sentences of the blog post in the RSS feed? It makes reading via the feed EXTREMELY annoying -- almost not worthwhile at all, because I have to click each and every article to read the whole thing.

For instance, for this article, all I see in my feed is:

"Looks like the editor of the respected journal The Scientist is starting to see the light: It's always a shock to realize that you're in the wrong. As this issue was going to press, I found myself tut-tutting at the..."

If by change this ISN'T Star policy and you have control over this, could you look into providing the full article via RSS?

Thanks for considering :)

[Antonia]

I have no control over this. It's the tech guys, or RSS, or something. In fact, the marketing folks and I discussed this briefly the other day. I will pass on your request.

[Meredith]

Thanks, much appreciated! It should simply be a setting within Typekey, but I'm not sure whether it would be a per-blog setting, or something global across all blogs. But heck, it would be great to have across all blogs if The Star is willing to do it. I will cross my fingers.

(By the way, I of course meant "If by chance" up there, sigh...)

Anyway, keep the great commentary coming! It really is worth the extra click :)

[sooey]

Sometimes I think the reason men don't hire women is because they work too hard. And I understand that reasoning. Over-achievers are a pain in the ass.

[Antonia]

Meredith, the Torstar tech gods are working on it! Thanks for the suggestion.

[sooey]

How many of them are women?

[Antonia]

Actually, on Wednesday, I had a meeting with three other people about this blog and they were all women. Plus the boss of all Star blogs is a woman. The publisher of the Star is a woman. And last time I got dressed, I checked. I am a woman.

[johnnykap]

If women over time become dominant in those fields and attain, say, 70% of the jobs, will all of you feminists complain that that's unfair? Somehow I don't think so. This is a merit based society and all of these claims of anti-female prejudice are so out of date.