Lack of Women in the Hard Sciences

If one were to ask generally well-educated people, individuals with an educated layperson's knowledge of the history of science but no particular background in the history of women in science, to name some Important Women Scientists, the chances are quite great that the great majority of them would come up with precisely one name: that of Marie Curie. This small thought experiment demonstrates only one instance of a broader phenomenon, namely that at least in the popular cultural perception, the natural sciences have been an overwhelmingly male domain.

Why should this be the case? On one level, of course, the disparity between men and women in science is not surprising at all; it is simply one instance of a disparity that runs across the whole spectrum of public and professional life. If women scientists have been the exception, so have been women philosophers, women composers, women railroad executives, and women bank robbers. Until quite recently women were, if not legally excluded, at least heavily pressured against entry into all but a handful of organized professions, and the sciences were no exception.

But there is evidence that the barriers, direct or indirect, that barred women from the sciences are falling significantly more gradually than in other traditionally male areas of endeavor. In particular, as we shall see below, women seem to be finding it easier to move into the domain of law and politics--the very heart of the societal power structure--than i

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r society. The stereotypical image of the science student is the nerd, wearing a plastic pocket protector in his shirt, filled with pens and a calculator. This is not an image that commands great popular respect, but the "nerdette" is even more cruelly stereotyped (Brush, 1991, p. 406). She has abandoned her feminity, in the eyes of popular culture, far more than has the briefcase-wielding female law student--and without in the process acquiring the latter's power-status. The second explanation agrees with the first in pointing to institutional pressures against women, but identifies these pressures as lying far deeper in the structure of the culture of science. In this view, the surface social pressure against women entering the sciences is not alone sufficient to explain their absence. Male science students, after all, are subjected to the stereotyping outlined above, yet they resist it and go into the sciences anyway--because they find the sciences interesting and fulfilling. If fewer women find enough interest in science to resist the social stereotype, according to this theory, it is because the culture of the sciences has long been structured around a primarily male way of looking at the world, a mode of thought that

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