Twenty years after the surge of modern feminism brought a growing number of women into the influential and high-status professions generally, women remain severely underrepresented in the sciences. In physics, for example, the numerical imbalance appears as early as high school, where only half as many girls as boys take physics. Only fourteen percent of bachelor's degrees in physics are now going to women, and women are still only about seven percent of working physicists and astronomers (Brush, 1991, p. 404).
Reinforcing and perpetuating this imbalance is a persisting social perception that science, if not specifically masculine, is still somehow essentially nonfeminine. Brush (1991, p. 406) cites Newsweek's expression putting the popular attitude in vivid form: "Real men don't do science, real women don't even think about it." Science is not perceived as particularly virile, but even the common image of the nerd is still specifically male.
Now, it is certainly true that women are underrepresented in nearly all the high-power, high-status professions, and in positions of influence generally. We should not expect this to be less so in the sciences than in other fields. Yet the exclusion of women seems to be stronger in the sciences than in other fields, and more persisting.
Consider, for example, a profession far removed from academia, the law. Women were long barred from most practice of law. Moreover, lawyers have a combative, tough image, surely as far removed from conventional ideals of feminity as is the image of scientists. Yet women have moved into the law in considerable numbers, and with considerable success. Vivid evidence of this has been given by the recent practice of televising trials. Women attorneys are so usual that their mere presence is scarcely noticed any more. Indeed, successful women lawyers in high-profile cases have become media stars, as their male counterparts long have done.
Few ...