Situation Report

ANY woman who opts for a scientific career will quickly find that the statistics are stacked against her. Although women now make up nearly 40% of the U.S. labor force, they account for only 10% of the nation's more than 350,000 scientists. Furthermore, women in the sciences earn fewer doctorates than men, have more trouble winning tenured posts in universities, are paid less than males in the same field--the so-called "skirt differential"--and all too often find it almost impossible to reach the top rungs of their profession. The National Academy of Sciences, for instance, currently has only nine women among its more than 800 elected members. Of 278 Nobel Prizes in science, only six have been awarded to women (two to Marie Curie and one to her daughter Irene).

In recent years, there have been some hints of change in attitudes toward women in science. For example, Government agencies like the Department of Transportation are now making an effort to recruit women for research posts. So, too, are colleges and universities, industrial firms and even such traditional male strongholds as engineering societies. On another level, the number of graduate scholarships awarded by the National Science Foundation to women has been steadily rising; for 1970-71 they accounted for nearly 20% of the total, up almost 4% from the previous year. Beyond this, women continue to be employed in substantial numbers--though often in lower-ranking jobs than men--in such fields as chemistry, where they account for about 27% of all scientists, the biological sciences (21%), psychology (19%) and mathematics (10%).

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