TOPIC 3
GETTING
WOMEN INTO THE PHYSICS POWER STRUCTURE NATIONALLY AND
INTERNATIONALLY
Topic Organizing Committee:
K. Gebbie (USA, Chair), H. Fukuyama (Japan), Y. Gamal (Egypt), B.
Hartline (USA)
The Issue: The percentage of women
in physics in all countries decreases markedly with each step up the
academic ladder and with each level of promotion in industrial and
national laboratories. The result is a dearth of women among
physicists in leadership positions in these sectors worldwide.
Nor are women well represented among physicists in top research
institutes, funding agencies, professional societies and government.
Yet there is much evidence that the women who do reach these top
positions command as much or more respect as their men peers.
If the profession of physics is to attract the talent pool
needed by industry, government and academia, women must see
themselves as full participants in the scientific endeavoras
executives, directors, managers, leaders and policy makers as well as
researcher scientists in the laboratory. And if the profession
is to maintain its authority, it must draw for its leadership on the
best and the brightest of its practitioners from all segments of
society.
Questions:
Definitions:
How do we identify positions of power? How do leadership positions
differ in different countries? For example, a full
professorship in Europe is much more prestigious than in the United
States.
Databases: How can we best develop and maintain
databases of percentages of women in high level positions in physics
throughout the world? Are these percentages changing? Can
we use these data to increase awareness of the problem?
Causes:
Why the paucity of women physicists in leadership positions? Is
it a phase lag that does not yet reflect the (slowly) increasing
percentage of PhDs in physics awarded to women? Does it reflect
what Virginia Valian1 calls the =93accumulation of
disadvantage,=94 small differences in treatment that add up to large
disparities over time? Is it schema of sex differences and the
relative roles of men and women?
Skills and Style:
What skills are generally associated with good leadership?
Are these different for men and for women? Is it more difficult for
women than for men to assert leadership without aggravating
people?
Leadership Activities: What kinds of
activities tend to build leadership and the image of power e.g.,
assuming additional responsibility, chairing committees, setting
policy, solving problems, bringing in funding, making money? In
academia? In Industry? In government?
Training:
When is leadership training useful for women physicists? What
kinds of training might be useful? For example:
=B7 The
California Institute of Technology gives short courses on LEADERSHIP
& MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT, =20
=B7 Harvard, MIT and
Tufts have similar courses.
=B7 There
is also a variety of other institutes (for which I will try to= find
good ones with websites) that give short courses in sensitivity to,=
and awareness of, other cultures, races and genders.
Solutions:
How do we approach the complex process of changing= behavior in those
men and women who genuinely want to change and in those= who see no
advantage in doing so? How do we get men in= positions of
power engaged in solving the problem?
Bibliography:
Women
in Physics, 2000. AIP Publication Number R-430, Rachel Ivie=
and Katie Stowe
Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women,
Virginia Valian 1998. = Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT Press.
1998
Differential Access to Opportunity and Power, R. M.
Kanter 1979. In= Discrimination in Organizations, R. Alvarez
and K. G. Lutterman, eds., pp= 52-68. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
EU report 1999
Resolutions:
What
resolutions could we pass that would help individual men and women=
as well as academic, industrial and governmental institutions deal
with= this issue?