Women in Academic Science and Engineering

Opening Statement By Chairman Brian Baird

Good afternoon and welcome to this hearing on women in academic science and engineering. I want to thank my dear friend Ms. Johnson for requesting this hearing and for her tireless work over the years to increase diversity in science and engineering. Sadly, Ms. Johnson can not be with us today due to the death of her mother.

Women are receiving PhD’s in steadily increasing numbers. In fact, in some fields, women have achieved parity with men at the graduate level. Unfortunately, however, they still hold only 28 percent of all full-time science and engineering faculty positions, and only 18 percent of full professor positions.

Today, we want to explore what happens to the available pool of women who have stuck it out all the way through a PhD. These accomplished women leave academia in greater numbers than men, and those who do stay in academia continue to be promoted, recognized for academic achievement, and paid at lower rates than their male colleagues.

A National Academies panel recommended that the Department of Justice and other enforcement agencies put more effort into enforcing anti-discrimination laws on university campuses. However, the same panel implied that the most intractable barriers to women in academic science and engineering are intractable precisely because they will not be overcome through even the most rigorous enforcement of the law. They are barriers created not by willful individuals or institutions. Rather, they are barriers created by the collective effect of many small and usually subtle incidents of subconscious bias on the part of well-intentioned individuals and even by some of the seemingly gender-neutral practices in academic science and engineering.

We invited today’s witnesses to help us understand exactly what those barriers are, how we might continue to break them down, and specifically how the federal research agencies can help improve the status of women in academic science and engineering.

We can not afford to continue losing our best and brightest women, or minorities for that matter, from academic science and engineering careers. The seeds of progress in U.S. competitiveness, security and well-being are formed in our colleges and universities’ research laboratories. The interaction and collaboration of diverse individuals with differing perspectives enriches the entire process and stimulates even greater discovery and invention.

I also want to note that this is the first in multiple hearings that we plan to hold to look at the involvement of women in STEM fields. In fact, we will hold a hearing soon on how we might encourage more girls to stick with math and science studies through high school, college and beyond, since attrition occurs at every step along the way.

I thank all of the witnesses for being here today and I look forward to your testimony.

Witnesses

Panel

1 - Dr. Donna E Shalala
President University of Miami University of Miami
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3 - Dr. Freeman A Hrabowski
President University of Maryland, Baltimore County University of Maryland, Baltimore County
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4 - Dr. Myron Campbell
Chair, Department of Physics University of Michigan University of Michigan
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5 - Dr. Gretchen Ritter
Director, Center for Women's and Gender Studies University of Texas University of Texas
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2 - Dr. Kathie L Olsen
Deputy Director National Science Foundation National Science Foundation
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