I tend to be suspicious when someone says that a rising tide lifts all boats, but I think in this case that more funding for science means more funding for women scientists.

Unfortunately, right now the problems start back in grade school, with fewer girls ending up in science, technology, and math in college. It's going to take more, I think, than just more research funding - it's also going to take programs that engage young girls earlier.

But just better support for science and a more positive attitude towards the people who work in scientific and technical fields thrills me no end. That alone is a huge step forward.

Heh. As if.

Usually a cynic myself, I'm going to ride the tide of optimism today and say, yes, a female leader in the sciences could be a great boost. However, as I work in youth programming, 4-H specifically, the new SET goals, or Science, Engineering and Technology promise to deliver "1 million new ideas" and "1 million new scientists" over the next (10?) years I think. But there is no gender component...sigh. But, I will say that 4-H and it's close cousin the Boys & Girls Club has been, at least in the past decade, pretty gender balanced in it's numbers so perhaps reaching 14 year old girls with the message now is the way to go, so when they are signing up for college in 4 years (and re-electing Obama!) they are also signing up for science courses.

Wow, that is some happy acid Kool-aid that some people are drinking. I personally would love an increase of women in the sciences (ESPECIALLY the frat boy dominated field of engineering). While these things are important symbolic steps, how is this really going to reach the girls in elementary school? That is where the love for areas of study and recognition of talents begins to form.

I don't know if it's so much going to begin with dramatic Obama quotes and increased funding. Teachers, both male and female, are going to have to take initiatives to increase the interest in the sciences, such as sponsoring their best students and sending them to science camps. I didn't have a gift for the sciences, but I know other girls who did, but the teachers would mainly focus on the smarter boys for all of those accolades and extracurricular activities.

In other words, it's gotta change at the first level. I hope it does, but I think it'll take a lot more than this administration, and a lot more time for us to see the benefits of this.

I sure hope so, since I'm a woman in science.

But my science (anthropology) is actually dominated by women these days, so I'm sure we don't count.

I currently work in an academic medical research lab that subsists largely off of NIH grants and I am very excited. According to my PI a democratic administration always means more funding.

Will it get better for women? I don't know. From where I am it doesn't seem all that bad. But I'm working in academia, industry is a different story. About half the PhDs in my lab are women, and a little better than half of the technicians and research assistants are female. I've also seen this gender balance in my college chem, physics, bio, and math courses.

I believe that the academic gender gap is closing rapidly, but there's lag when it comes to hierarchy. It takes a long time for a researcher to advance in academia. People who have their own labs now often got started 20 or 30 years ago.

Industry moves a lot quicker. I know a couple of women who work in industry, but they're all younger, most still in college. I can't really comment on the institutionalized sexism there.

Hi, this my first comment so I thought it would be polite to say hello. Anyway I was drawn to this post, because of the implication that there is a gender bias in science. Now my undergraduate degree was in physics and I didn't find that to be the case. In the UK at least, they have been bending over backwards to recruit female undergrads. There is extra funding available specifically for women who want to come into these fields. Now it could be down to an impression that there is sexism inside the scientific community, that women will be hampered in their career progression. Now I can only speak from my limited experience of UK academia, in science and engineering. It is certainly something that I've never encountered or ever heard about. If anything the culture tends to be quite laid back. To be honest I'm not sure if really matters, medical courses tend have a majority of female students. The same with many other courses, yet nobody seems too concerned about this. The idea of trying to achieve 50/50 balance in every subject seems to be a rather absurd goal. The job of the science community should be to publicise the opportunities available and then take on anyone with the ability that are interested. This is something that they have been and are continuing to do. The fact that this it isn't working is not something that be held responsible for. They can't force people to persue a career in science.

Heh, no.

I'm excited for Obama for a lot of reasons. But honestly I don't think getting better representation of women in science is something he's gonna give much attention to. Especially considering his, ah, current record on women's representation in other areas. There's a difference between optimism and realism...it's gonna take a huge systematic change to fix the underlying problem of a gender gap in the sciences. And frankly, I don't see that topping his list.

If he gets it done I'll be pleasantly surprised. But the operative word here is "surprised."

Maybe if attitudes and early education start making shifts. Also, old professors phasing out and being replaced by newer, more open minded professors.

One of my [engineering] professors is fond of sectioning off the girls from the class and basically ignoring them for the entire semester. So..yeah... Getting rid of those guys.

Here's hoping. I'm a woman in my final semester as a Mathematics undergrad. While the percentage of women earning the same degree I am is promising, most of these women intend to go into a career in teaching high school level or lower mathematics. While I consider this an honorable career choice, what this translates into is that there are only two female professors in my department: one full professor, one associate. And this is at a large state university.

What does this mean for women like me, who intend to earn a PhD and work as a professor? It means that role models are few and far between. And when the only two female professors in the department are applied mathematicians, it means that someone interested in theoretical mathematics (quite the boy's club) is left without a woman in their field or even anything close to it. While great strides have been made in this area, clearly, there is still a lot more to be done.

The reason science is becoming important is because of the global oil crisis. We past Global Peak Oil Production in late 2002. Since then, no new oil fields have been discovered and the oil has been getting harder and harder to extract.

As we all know, when the oil runs out, so does industrial civilization that supports 6.9 billion people.

"Science" is the new religion and government is hoping that it will come and offer some new technology featuring cheap, clean, renewable energy.

Of course, it's more important as a gender issue.

lolz fun4years.

"It just amazes me, how some people can display their (male/white/class/etc.) privileges so blatantly and yet have little clue as to how they sound to the rest of us who know better."

You know I've heard about this "white privilege" ever since I was in my early teens. So far I haven't seen it. I work for a little over minimum wage at a job where the bourgeoisie, of all colors, look down their noses at me because they assume I must be unintelligent simply because I work in customer service. Our store supervisor is a woman and calls all the shots. The black chick I work with makes more than one of the department managers, who is a male Mexican immigrant. The department head, a white female, makes less than the department manager.

When I walk home at night, I am *frequently* harassed by ("yo cracka!"), panhandled by, and sometimes even followed by, the young black males. They have no need to actually work and support themselves (though in this town there are a plethora of options for them) because the county supports them via food stamps, section 8, cash assistance, etc. Of course, I'm not allowed to *say* anything about the situation, because that would make me a racist and that's a no-no.

As for "white privilege", I more often than not see males of "my own kind" on TV being made fools of, I'm told that I'm the devil and I'm responsible for slavery (even though my family only came to the US in the 1900's) and I "owe" black people and women because of some supposed patriarchy, and it's *my* fault I'm not rich and successful (where-as, a black man is not at fault, it's "because of whitey").

I'm told that I have it so good, I shouldn't complain, I'm white, and privileged, I have it all, etc.

Actually all I've experienced in my life is the sexism towards my maleness and the racism towards my paleness.

So tell me where is my 'white privilege'?

"it's gonna take a huge systematic change to fix the underlying problem of a gender gap in the sciences."

Gender gaps gender gaps... are we talking about equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? Because if it's the latter- who are you to tell a group of people what field they should go into?

I remember an article about gender gaps in certain fields... a certain poster was railing about how there was an "over-representation" of male nurses in the higher paid (and more technical) nurse sub-fields such as anesthetics, and called this discrimination and cited it as a supporting argument for the "gender wage gap".

But haven't we seen time and again that men tend towards the more technical/dangerous (and higher paid) fields and categories and women tend towards the more schedule-flexible, part-time friendly, etc fields? Yes, there have been awareness campaigns- but they've done almost nothing. Pressure to *earn money* is still on men, as it's always been, and the option to go into a field you *enjoy* is open to women.

As a woman in science I'll say that I have a lot of hope that the Obama administration will promote science in general. I think that will also help women in science, especially if he places more women in leadership roles in the scientific community.

I also think, though, that there is only so much he can do about the more deeply rooted systemic problems that keep women out of science careers and academia. Things like subtle discrimination, higher standards for women scientists, and lack of resources, like childcare, for all working women.

In order for women to have all the opportunities of their male counterparts, all of these issues must be addressed. This might be outside the scope of the president's office.

Maybe it's up to those of us in the sciences to fix things from the inside - which is why having women in leadership roles in the scientific community is so important. Obama could help with that.

I'm a biology/chemistry PhD student. At least half (probably more) of my classmates are female. This is apparently getting to be a pretty common situation.

On the other hand, there's a huge imbalance at the faculty of our school. I'm led to believe that this is in large part of the tenure process taking place toward the end of typical reproductive age--and thus that we won't see much change in the number of academic women scientists until something is done about the tenure process.

I think that more funding encourages more people to go into academics, so I suspect this will help women who are interested in academic careers. A lot of discussion is centered on work-life balance and childbearing issues. I won't discuss that here since other people have already discussed it. However, one other major problem is mentoring. Current profs need to make a conscious effort to mentor all their students, not just the ones that they I identify most strongly with. My grad and postdoc advisors are great scientists, and I learned a lot from them, but neither one has a very good track record in terms of numbers of students who go into academia. (On the other hand, they were great at helping students find good jobs in industry) This affected both the men and women, but the women had worse luck at finding academic jobs. Other profs, with similar high caliber research programs, had a much higher percentage of students who went into academics, and some made an extra effort at mentoring their female students. In many cases, those students then became better mentors to their own students. Because of this, there are some subdisiplines of chemistry which have a high number of female profs and some that don't.
I'm a chemistry PhD who was in grad school in the early 90's and looked for faculty jobs in the mid 90's. At the time there was some conscious bias and lots of unconscious bias. I didn't feel like I had encountered any sexism until I started going on interviews, and then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Many of the departments I interviewed at had only one or two female profs. Some had none. In a typical two-day interview I might talk to one other woman, or none. It was a very weird experience. I turned down a job at one school, partially because of the blatantly sexist comments I encountered in my interview.
The American Chemical Society has been tracking the number of female profs for a while. It's creeping up very slowly, even though 30-40% of PhD's have been female for the last 15 years. There are departments whom have hired a lot of women in the last 20 years, and some who still have the same 1 or 2 female profs that they had back in 1990 but either haven't hired any women or maybe just one. (Cornell, Stanford, and Indiana are especially bad in this regard)
Anyway, that's my rant. Hopefully things will improve.

Mendicant is of course correct is extremely bad to anecdote as evidence in science. In my defence this is a topic I'm a bit sensitive about. In college I had a lot of friends who studied arts and humanities subjects, and I was quite shocked by not just there ignorance of the basic of science, but their hostility to science it self. So I tend to see attacks were there are none, for which I must apologise (BTW Nepenthe if you have a link to those peer review articles would actually like to have a look). Still I think we need to separate two different kinds of sexism. The point I was trying to make is I've read a lot about science being a very, for want of a better word, 'male culture'. An environment that is inherently hostile to female students, which doesn't really tally with my own experience. Though I will concede it is something I may have simply not noticed, and if such practice does occur I would like people report and do something about it. The only criticism that I have read of the scientific career path that I do believe leads to a loss of talented female scientists, is at post graduate level. It is a structural problem with how we treat science professionals, at least in the UK (in America it might be different). In this country the standard path is undergraduate, then PHD, and then post doc. The length of time required to complete these various stages leads to people becoming disillusioned. Nobody wants to be approaching their 30's, watching their friends settle down, and still be financially insecure. This is a particular problem for women, because it doesn't provide the flexibility to take time out to start a family, leading to the loss of talented and it has to be said, expensively trained people. Through this is also the reason I decided switched careers and decided to become an engineer. Now the solution is to pay people lower down the career ladder more money, and give them more security. However this is different to saying that there is a conscious policy on behalf of those who run our universities, journals, and funding bodies, to exclude women.
As for white male privilege (from meeneecat) , well your making assumptions now aren't we. I could be an African American female, alight I'm not, I must in right in a frightfully white imperialist manner. You of course do have a point, but there a serious flaw with this line of reasoning, and will try my best to explain what I think that flaw is. Does being white, male, and from a rich developed country put me in a position of privilege. Yes of course, 90% of humanity would love to trade places with me. Yet I suspect meeneecat you are in a similar position, you (and do correct me if I am wrong) are from a wealthy country that had provided you with an education and opportunities unavailable to most of humanity. My point is, it is all a matter of degrees. For instance I went to a state school, most of my fellow students were privately educated; including some of the female students. Does the fact they they are female cancel out the advantage that their superior schooling gave them? Someone once said that identity politics is a dangerous thing, especially for the left, because one of the founding principals of left wing politics is that of solidarity. If you are poor and weak; you can only confront power through being united. The danger of movements that pigeon hole people using their skin colour, religion or gender. Is that it leaves us a position were we are arguing with people we should have a common cause with. So reform science so it is easier for women to stay in the profession, increase the status of scientists, but don't set arbitrary goals, saying what percentage of people from what ever background should make up the ranks of a profession. It should be those with the talent, and the desire to peruse those careers.

Mendicant is of course correct is extremely bad to anecdote as evidence in science. In my defence this is a topic I'm a bit sensitive about. In college I had a lot of friends who studied arts and humanities subjects, and I was quite shocked by not just there ignorance of the basic of science, but their hostility to science it self. So I tend to see attacks were there are none, for which I must apologise (BTW Nepenthe if you have a link to those peer review articles would actually like to have a look). Still I think we need to separate two different kinds of sexism. The point I was trying to make is I've read a lot about science being a very, for want of a better word, 'male culture'. An environment that is inherently hostile to female students, which doesn't really tally with my own experience. Though I will concede it is something I may have simply not noticed, and if such practice does occur I would like people report and do something about it. The only criticism that I have read of the scientific career path that I do believe leads to a loss of talented female scientists, is at post graduate level. It is a structural problem with how we treat science professionals, at least in the UK (in America it might be different). In this country the standard path is undergraduate, then PHD, and then post doc. The length of time required to complete these various stages leads to people becoming disillusioned. Nobody wants to be approaching their 30's, watching their friends settle down, and still be financially insecure. This is a particular problem for women, because it doesn't provide the flexibility to take time out to start a family, leading to the loss of talented and it has to be said, expensively trained people. Through this is also the reason I decided switched careers and decided to become an engineer. Now the solution is to pay people lower down the career ladder more money, and give them more security. However this is different to saying that there is a conscious policy on behalf of those who run our universities, journals, and funding bodies, to exclude women.
As for white male privilege (from meeneecat) , well your making assumptions now aren't we. I could be an African American female, alight I'm not, I must in right in a frightfully white imperialist manner. You of course do have a point, but there a serious flaw with this line of reasoning, and will try my best to explain what I think that flaw is. Does being white, male, and from a rich developed country put me in a position of privilege. Yes of course, 90% of humanity would love to trade places with me. Yet I suspect meeneecat you are in a similar position, you (and do correct me if I am wrong) are from a wealthy country that had provided you with an education and opportunities unavailable to most of humanity. My point is, it is all a matter of degrees. For instance I went to a state school, most of my fellow students were privately educated; including some of the female students. Does the fact they they are female cancel out the advantage that their superior schooling gave them? Someone once said that identity politics is a dangerous thing, especially for the left, because one of the founding principals of left wing politics is that of solidarity. If you are poor and weak; you can only confront power through being united. The danger of movements that pigeon hole people using their skin colour, religion or gender. Is that it leaves us a position were we are arguing with people we should have a common cause with. So reform science so it is easier for women to stay in the profession, increase the status of scientists, but don't set arbitrary goals, saying what percentage of people from what ever background should make up the ranks of a profession. It should be those with the talent, and the desire to peruse those careers.

Sorry for the double post, my connection is running very slowly. If possible could someone delete one of them. Thanks

Or in fact all my posts, the number of mistakes in them is frankly embrassing.

I'm a daily reader but never commented here before, but I feel I have something semi-relevant to say so here goes:

I'm not a woman, and I don't hold a position in science; however, I do feel I have a few observations to offer about my situation working in a US govt. lab. I currently work at a very prominent federal research facility in what most would consider an extremely liberal college town. Unfortunately, among the scientists doing work at our facility, the majority of our lead researchers are men. This is not to say that we have no women scientists in leadership roles. Indeed, one of our most prominent researchers is a woman who is a career researcher/scientist. However, if one were to take a survey of all our current research projects, approximately 75-80% of leadership roles on scientific projects are occupied by men. I believe this disparity is no mere coincidence, nor is it a coincidence that nearly all of these men's assistants/lab techs/subordinates are women.

All of our Administrative/secretarial/clerical staff are female as well, in addition to our librarians and our receptionists. I find this situation odd, as (for example) our accountants' work is no less technical (and infinitely more complex) than the work I do but is undervalued by many of our male scientists. (without whose help of course their projects would not run) These same men treat me in a much more respectful manner than I find fairly embarrassing. I wonder at why we have no men in our administrative department. Yet I suppose these positions fall into our definition of acceptable 'women's work?' The men in the labs and the women in the office?

My occupation is in IT, specifically security and systems analysis/administration. I would be remiss if I did not also point out that my department is entirely staffed by men, aside from our department manager. (Who, I might add, is an amazingly competent woman that I feel has taught me a great deal about good IT managerial skills and practices) I will also note that over the years (at previous jobs) I have witnessed jaw-dropping displays of sexism from my colleagues in IT. I am deeply saddened by my field's overwhelming lack of respect and acceptance of female techies.

Back on topic (I apologize I tend to ramble), at least at our lab I believe we have a long way to go to have equal and equitable opportunities for women in science. It seems that while under this new administration's focus on science there may be an increase in women in science and technology we need to focus on ensuring they have equal opportunities to achieve the kind of leadership roles that their male counterparts do. To borrow from above, not only will this provide role models to younger girls and prospective female students, but I think it can also only help improve the quality (both scientific and social) of our scientific institutions by ending the boys club at the top of the scientific hierarchy.

Also, hooray for taking down the Bush and Cheney portraits at the office!

Whitehouse.gov does make a specific mention of women in science, so I'd say yes, Samhita. What form that'll take isn't clear though.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/women/

@zaph, you've just shown that you do perceive a gender gap in science. I'm also in the UK, and while it's true that undergrad degrees tend to be a reasonably balanced, but as you head up the career ladder, women leave academic science in disproportionate numbers. There are masses of statistics on this, and this website is a good place to start if you're interested in learning more. http://www.ukrc4setwomen.org/html/research-and-statistics/statistics/.