Once again, the only news about the percentage of women faculty members in the top 50 chemistry departments is that there is no news. For the sixth year in a row that C&EN has examined this topic, there has been little growth. Women are still vastly underrepresented among full professors, despite slow and steady progress between the 2000–01 and 2005–06 academic years.
While this is not particularly surprising, I can't help but wish that the number of women chemistry faculty at elite universities was increasing more rapidly. Stanford (my alma mater) hired two women faculty, both of whom are starting this year, increasing the number of women faculty in the department from one to three. A good thing, to be sure, but there simply are not enough role models for women wanting to go into academia.
That said, I can think of several reasons (frequently discussed at WCGL meetings) other than a lack of role models that explain why some women would choose not to be a professor at a Research I school, such as work-life balance. This is unfortunate, because our society is losing a lot of brainpower in academia when women choose to stay in other sectors.
I know why I chose not to follow that particular career path- the tenure clock, the pressure to keep on top of all research being done in my area, and wanting some work-life balance (this does seem to be getting a bit better). I also witnessed/ was part of the wrenching decisions my Ph.D. advisor had to make when her partner did not get a tenure-track position at Stanford (she ended up moving to another university, and seems pretty happy there).
To sum up: the results of the survey are somewhat disheartening, though not surprising. I hope that the chemistry community comes up with more creative ways of recruiting and retaining women to these positions, so that we can continue to push back the frontiers of science.
No comments:
Post a Comment