Abstract Among science and engineering, physics is one of the fields where progress is particularly slow when it comes to women’s participation, both in the US and around the world. Women still disproportionately leave physics with each step of career advancement. Why? And how can we change the situation? These questions were the focus of the first International Conference on Women in Physics organized by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) on March 2002. The conference brought together more than 300 physicists from 65 countries for three days of energizing and inspirational presentations, discussions, posters, exchanges, and informal interactions. Among many ideas generated at the conference, we discuss what we learn from the experiences brought in from many nations such as a need for transparent decision making, and family-related issues. The ideas are readily generalized to engineering and other fields where women are scarce.
Index Terms international, women in physics, transparent decision-making, career-family balance
Background
It has been no secret that women are severely under-represented in physics, both in the U.S. and globally. In the US, as the percentage of women Bachelors and PhDs in physics has slowly increased to 20% and 13% respectively (AIP data for 1998), women still disproportionately leave physics at all levels, which has been described as the “leaky pipeline”. On the other hand, there is a real need for change. While many people understand it as an equal opportunity issue-- women do love physics and deserve a fulfilling career in the field, many fewer people realize that the health of the physics field and the greater community demands greater female participation. The best science and engineering requires the best talents from more than just half of humanity; excluding women weakens the science and engineering enterprise. As most other fields, physics can greatly benifit from the diversity of thought and choice of topics that women could bring. In addition, exposing more girls and women to science will result in a more scientifically literate public and will lead to more public support of science. For all these reasons, the low numbers of women in physics is an urgent concern.
The Conference Scene
To understand why, and to develop strategies for increasing women’s participation and impact on the field, the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) established a working group on Women in Physics in 1999 and hosted the first ever International Conference on Women in Physics in the UNESCO headquarter in Paris, France on March 7-9, 2002. The conference was supported by many national and international institutions and organizations and was attended by more than 300 participants from 65 countries and areas. About 15% of the participants were men. (Fig. 1)
Fig. 1. Scenes from the conference.
Participants were welcomed by Philippe Busquin, Commissioner for Research of the European Union; Walter Erdelen, Assistant Director-General for Natural Sciences at UNESCO; and Burton Richter, President of IUPAP. Ten distinguished speakers—at least one from every major geographic region—provided insights into her own experiences and described the situation, barriers, and actions related to women in physics in her country. Teams of physicists from each participating country presented posters on the situation for women in physics in their countries. Attendees and other women physicists were surveyed by American Institute of Physics (AIP) in advance and the results of the survey were presented at the conference.
Discussions focused on issues and strategies related to six important topics for increasing women’s involvement in physics: attracting girls into physics, launching a successful physics career, getting women into physics leadership, improving the institutional climate, learning from regional differences, and balancing family and career.
At its final session, the Conference unanimously adopted eight Resolutions directed at schools, universities, research institutes, industrial laboratories, scientific societies, national governments, granting agencies, and at IUPAP. These resolutions were presented at the 2002 IUPAP General Assembly in Berlin in modified form, and were adopted. In addition, numerous recommendations were compiled that feature specific actions or interventions, many of which have been proven successful in one or more countries. The conference proceedings was published in order to expand the impact of the Conference far beyond the participants. More details about the conference and its resolutions can be found at the web site at http://www.iupap.org, under a link to the “International Conference on Women in Physics,” and in the conference proceedings.[1]
As the editors of the conference proceedings, we had the chance to interact with many of the highly talented women scientists and learned about their experiences and wisdom first-hand. Here we discuss some of the aspects that may be of value to the women in engineering community.
Learning from Regional Differences
The percentage of women varies greatly from country to country (Fig. 2). Since women earn ~50% of the physics bachelors degrees and near 30% of PhDs in some countries, it is clear that there is no intrinsic intellectual barrier to women's participation in physics. In addition, there is little correlation between the women’s participation and the economic status or region of the countries. The countries that have high participation of women physicists are France, Turkey, Portugal, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, and India. The ones with the lowest female participation include Netherlands, Japan, Germany, and United Kingdom. In other words, giving women washing machines and cars is not enough to solve the problem. Yet there is a remarkable consistency in one sobering pattern: the percentage of women decreases markedly with each step up the career ladder. It indicates that women around the world face systematic barriers common in all cultures.
Take France and Germany, for example. Although the two European countries have similar status on economy, science and technology, and political systems, they differ dramatically when it comes to women’s participation in physics. In France, 26% of the assistant professors of physics are women, compared to 3% in Germany. Yet the percentage in full professorships still drops to 9% in France. The positive factors in France include that women are expected to work outside the home; state-supported free daycare/kindergarten; good science education for girls; parental leave; and tax break for childcare. But women still get less chance for promotion and are less represented in the decision-making bodies. Their salaries are also significantly lower than those of their colleagues. In Germany, society’s expectations for women are primarily parental. School children need care beginning in early afternoon. And there is a lack of positions for two-career couples. Similar to France, women are disadvantaged in hiring/promotion regardless whether they have children or not. Yet it is interesting to note that 70% of female physicists do not have children as compared to 49% of men!
Fig. 2. Percentage of women Ph.D.’s in several countries, from the AIP report in [1].
Around the world, it is common that women have to be better to overcome the accumulated disadvantages as the minority in the male-dominated field. A detailed study on publication record in Japan clearly showed that a woman has to be two times more productive to reach the same stature as a man.[1]
A Key Word: Transparency
Outright discrimination, while still existent, especially in some of the developing countries, is becoming a thing of the past. But in a field traditionally dominated by men, people’s natural tendency to seek students and coworkers like themselves greatly slows down the process for change. In addition, women receive less mentoring, have fewer role models, and are more likely to be excluded from the informal networks in the community. For these reasons, many practices that are seemingly unrelated to gender disproportionately damage the woman’s career and create hidden barriers for women. Examples include:
Ambiguity of standards and uneven evaluation;
Secrecy about decision-making and lack of transparency in hiring/promotions;
Narrow view of excellence, which values aggressiveness disproportionately.
These practices make it easier for the “old boys network” to survive and thrive, but in the end they are not fair for any, men and women alike. For career women, these small disadvantages often accumulate to make many women’s career lag behind their full potential, and can sometimes even cause someone’s career to end prematurely.
How do we address these issues? While the idea of “quota” was highly controversial and faced opposition from many attendees, a key word that emerged from the conference was “transparency”.
“Transparency” means having transparent, gender-blind processes for important decision-making such as recruitment, promotion and salary, resource allocation, peer review, conference programs, etc. The decisions should be reported and explained, which requires remarkably strong and confident leadership. It also encourages written rules and policies to achieve fairness and transparency in policies, practices, and decision making. Such gender-blind policies have been credited for the dramatic increase in female musicians in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, after blind audition was implemented. In the meantime, such a gain for women is not at the expense of the competent men or the profession. After all, “excellent men have nothing to fear from transparency of process,” as one of the attendees pointed out.
FAMILY MATTERS
The reports show that having a family is not the dominant factor limiting women’s participation since (1) women without children are not more successful than the women who have children; and (2) countries with strong family-friendly support systems, such as Switzerland and Netherlands, can still have few women in physics. In addition, many more women have entered other demanding fields such as law, medicine, and biology, indicating that it is possible for women to handle a “tough” career. Nevertheless, family issues still negatively affect a woman’s career more than a man’s and have to be addressed. Societal expectations still put the burden of childcare and elder care mainly on women. And the overlap of childbearing years and the years when the career must be established drives many young women out of the field, and makes many others who do stay postpone having babies until way after their peak fertility period. Can having/raising children co-exist with a successful career? Prof. Bando of Japan reported an interesting study on the impact of motherhood. Using number of papers published in a fixed period of time as the measure of productivity, she showed how such productivity varies as a function of age both macroscopically for the average of the men and women in Japanese Physical Society, and microscopically for a eminent woman scientist in the US.[2] With both studies, the bad news is that the child-rearing years indeed coincide with relatively lower productivity. The good news is, however, that women’s productivity takes an unexpected, dramatic upturn after the child-rearing period and greatly surpasses that of men, which Prof. Bando calls the “recovery phase”. While the study is not conclusive since it based on limited data, it did bring up an interesting point: compared to men’s normal linear advancement, women’s career paths can be non-linear. The temporary setbacks, however, do not exclude long-term success. This is particularly informative and encouraging for the young women who are struggling to keep the work-life balance. It would also be important for the employers to re-evaluate their employees when it comes to their long-term value to the companies, institutions, and organizations.
How can the institutions be more family-friendly? The recommendations from the conference include:
Respect and value family obligations;
Allow flexible career paths;
Provide funding sources to help people return after a career pause;
Solve the dual-career couple problem by facilitating geographically co-located job opportunities and creative solutions, such as shared positions.
While it is tough joggling all the responsibilities, many conference attendees showed high spirits when talking about the subject. As Prof. Iya Ipatova of Russia pointed out in her invited talk, “active occupation in science is compatible with normal family life. She, the family woman, has to be perfectly well organized... There are 24 hours in a day - it’s a lot of time.”
Summary
The first IUPAP International Conference of Women in Physics was highly successful. By bringing together physicists from so many different countries and regions, it became clear that the issue of women in physics is very complex and is deeply rooted in culture and society. Yet there are indeed proven approaches that are not only beneficial for improving women’s participation, but also fair for all workers. In this article, positive benefit of a diversity of perspectives, transparency in decision-making and family friendly environment are discussed in more detail. We believe these insights would be of particular value to the engineering community. Other ideas include involving men in the process, advancing women into leadership positions, and helping women to learn “the rules of the game”[3]. Despite all the obstacles, a recurring theme at the conference is the women’s love of physics and the satisfaction their careers have brought to them. Many were greatly encouraged by the simple sight of so many women physicists at one place, and communicated a positive vision of future: together, we shall overcome.
Reference
AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 628, “Women in Physics: The IUPAP International Conference on Women in Physics”, Paris, France, 2002, edited by Beverly K. Hartline and Dongqi Li. (http://proceedings.aip.org/proceedings/confproceed/628.jsp)
J. R. Cole and H. Zuckerman, “Marriage, motherhood and research performance in science”, Scientific American, 17 (4) (1987).
See another article in this Proceedings: Kirsten F. Laurin-Kovit, Dongqi Li, Linda Phaire Washington, Eve Gohoure, Beverly Karplus Hartline and Maryka H. Bhattacharyya, “SURVIVAL SKILLS FOR SUCCESSFUL WOMEN SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS – A SERIES OF CAREER DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS”.