Subcommittee Reviews Legislation to Remove Barriers for Women in Academic Science and Engineering Fields

(Washington, DC) –Today, the House Science and Technology’s Subcommittee on Research and Science Education held a hearing to discuss ways to remove barriers for women in academic science and engineering fields.  The Subcommittee held a hearing to receive comments on draft legislation that incorporates recommendations from the National Academies panel that were presented at a hearing in October of 2007. 

“The United States cannot afford to continue losing our best and brightest women from academic science and engineering careers,” said Subcommittee Chairman Brian Baird (D-WA).  “The programs in this bill are just a small part of what is needed to tackle the barriers to women in science and engineering.  In fact, there is only so much Congress can do to compel what is ultimately a change to an academic culture with a long and proud history. I want to thank Congresswoman Johnson for bringing this important legislative proposal before the subcommittee.” 

The legislation, titled Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Act of 2008 and sponsored by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), includes workshops to increase awareness of implicit gender bias in grant review, hiring, tenure, promotion, and selection for other honors based on merit; extended grant support for caregivers; and improved demographic data collection on federal grant-making.  

“While I do not intend to be heavy-handed toward our universities, I do feel that not nearly enough is being done to educate persons of influence on the subtle gender bias that exists and is holding women back from achieving at the same level as men,” said Johnson.

Women are consistently underrepresented in tenured faculty positions as research universities, despite earning more than half of all science and engineering bachelor’s degrees in 2005.  According to data compiled by NSF, in 2006, women held 30 percent of all full-time science and engineering faculty positions at U.S. colleges and universities.  Specifically, they constituted 19 percent of full professors, 34 percent of associate professors and 42 percent of junior professors, a category that includes both instructors at 2-year colleges and assistant professors at 4-year institutions.

The 2007 panel found that most of the barriers to women in academia are not created with intent.  Even policies that seem gender-neutral in theory might not be so in practice.  The panel recommended that Federal science agencies sponsor workshops on gender bias in order to raise awareness of and provide strategies to overcome the collective effect of many small and subtle incidents of subconscious bias and barriers that are often built into academic culture.  The draft bill under consideration creates a program of such workshops, and the Subcommittee solicited input on the details of that program and on metrics for evaluation.

The National Academies panel also highlighted the need for better data collection, to understand the extent of gender inequity and to have a basis for evaluating policies to address the gap.  The draft bill therefore requires Federal science agencies to collect demographic data on the grant making process, and encourages universities to collect better data for the purposes of evaluating the gender bias workshops.

The following witnesses testified today before the Subcommittee:

• Dr. Lynda T. Carlson, Director of the Division of Science Resource Statistics, Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, National Science Foundation.
• Dr. Linda G. Blevins, Senior Technical Advisor in the Office of the Deputy Director for Science Programs, Office of Science, Department of Energy.
• Dr. Donna K. Ginther, Associate Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Economic and Business Analysis, Institute for Policy Research, University of Kansas.

For more information on this hearing or to access witness testimony, visit the Committee’s website. 

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