The WiSE Women of Science
neuroscience and senior associate dean for research at USC Viterbi. “At USC,” she adds, “the most influential advocates for women have been men – former provost Lloyd Armstrong, university president Steven Sample, Max Nikias and Viterbi School dean Yannis Yortsos – scientists all.” This championing of women in science by male mentors is a recurring theme. Intentional sexism isn’t really the problem, though everyone has her favorite anecdote. But the occasional ogre notwithstanding, women scientists invariably describe a plethora of Prince Charmings. Morrison, who received her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, has nothing but praise for her male mentors: “I had wonderful professors, all of whom were men, all of whom I’ve kept in close touch with.” She doesn’t remember ever being told by a man that she couldn’t be a scientist. “And I was naïve enough and oblivious enough not to recognize that there were likely to be real problems ahead,” she adds with a knowing grin. Parker also speaks glowingly of male mentors from high school on up. It was a male physics teacher who recommended her for the engineering scholarship that got her a free ride at North Carolina State, and she reveres the man who supported her every step of the way at USC, George Bekey, professor emeritus of computer science, electrical engineering and biomedical engineering. “Words can’t describe what he did for all the women whose careers he touched,” she says. IN MANY WAYS, Jean Morrison embodies the
challenges women face in academic science. A metamorphic petrologist whose research has focused on stable isotopes and the role fluids play in fault systems, she has spent her whole career at USC, hired right out of graduate school in 1988 as an assistant professor. Morrison, who is married to earth scientist J. Lawford Anderson, also a USC professor, waited until she was 37 to have her first child. By postponing motherhood, she dodged the biggest bullet that kills women scientists’ careers: the collision course between tenure and the biological clock. Having soldiered through graduate school and postdoctoral fellowships and landed a
plum job at a research university, the average woman scientist will spend the next seven years in a Darwinian publish-or-perish struggle. On the march to tenure, she will devote every waking hour to grant-writing, lab-building, data-crunching, symposium-presenting and, of course, teaching and mentoring bright young minds. Throw a screaming baby into the mix and the challenges are amplified. Women graduate students look around at
percent of degrees in engineering went to women. Yet somehow, by the time they should be going on the academic job market, this group of female candidates mysteriously evaporates from the pipeline. Chemist Hanna Reisler laments that of the many doctoral students she has advised over the course of a long career at USC, “I do not have a single woman who had followed in my footsteps. They
Urbashi Mitra, a professor of electrical engineering and WiSE leader, posts clippings about notable women and men in science on her office door.
the small number of faculty women who are successfully performing this perilous balancing act and draw their own conclusions. Most opt out of academe without even dipping a toe in the water. Many others trickle off in the early stages of their careers, casualties of what is called the “leaky pipeline.” Even disenchanted tenured women scientists occasionally jump ship. Taken collectively, about half of all undergraduate degree recipients in science and engineering are women. And according to the latest NSF data (from 2006), women earn 35 percent of all science and engineering Ph.D.s – up from 8 percent in 1966 – although the figures vary widely by field. Life sciences, including health sciences and agriculture, awarded the highest percentage of Ph.D.s to women (51 percent); but only 28 percent of degrees in physical sciences and 20
either went to industry or teaching, but not one went on to a research university.” Those who do make it through the leaky pipeline face the decision of when to start a family. Many opt to wait. “I had my daughter right as I got tenure,” says Morrison, whose children are now 14 and 11. Even with that job security, she found managing two young children along with the demands of her career without guidance from anyone with experience to be hard. “I was rather overwhelmed,” she says. Alice Parker took a similar path. She was 39 and tenured when her son was born. But tenure didn’t solve all her problems. Realizing she couldn’t do everything her male colleagues were doing, Parker attempted what few scientists have ever successfully accomplished: She took a hiatus from research. Putting on hold her work in applied software
U S C T R O J A N FA M I LY M A G A Z I N E autumn 2009
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