National Academies of Science Report Recommends Forcing Women Against their Will

A recent report from the National Academies of Sciences (NAS) can find no "good" reason why women are deciding not to go into tenured university positions in upper level science, math, and engineering. The committee of "experts" nevertheless recommends broad, sweeping and massively expensive changes to the way that the US federal government, large foundations, and universities deal with the issue of women in the sciences.

A committee of experts looked at all the possible excuses -- biological differences in ability, hormonal influences, childrearing demands, and even differences in ambition -- and found no good explanation for why women are being "locked out".

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Women have made astounding gains in education in North America, the committee admitted. But since women are not choosing to go into science and math PhD teaching positions in elite universities at the same rates as men, they should be forced to make other choices than they would choose for themselves, the report implies. If women with top level mathematics and scientific skills are making other career and life choices, such as private industry labs, think tanks, or government labs--then society needs to spend massive amounts of money to force them to change their minds.

Forty years ago, women made up only 3 percent of America's scientific and technical workers, but by 2003 they accounted for nearly one-fifth. In addition, women have earned more than half of the bachelor's degrees awarded in science and engineering since 2000. However, their representation on university and college faculties fails to reflect these gains.

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Well, of course, if women have different goals for themselves than the goals that this particular NAS committee has for them, the women should be forced to change--there is no other conclusion to be drawn.

Women make up over 70% of psychologists with graduate degrees. Women are achieving parity (and greater) in most law schools and medical schools. Women make up almost 60% of recipients of bachelors degrees in North America, and since it takes time for the wave of women graduates to roll through higher education and university faculties, one can expect even greater gains in those areas for women. There is nothing that motivated women cannot accomplish in the free atmosphere of North America and Europe.

Yet, for political reasons, a NAS committee has recommended massive overhauls to the operation procedures for government funding, large foundation grants, and university policy, so that women can be favoured in science, math, and engineering--even if women by themselves would make other career and life choices.

There are some women who are clearly as good as the highest level of male scientists and mathematicians, and who should have the opportunity--if they choose--to go to the highest levels of those fields, within universities or any other system that employs scientists and mathematicians. Some of them are choosing to go into other areas of employment than tenured PhD university employment. This seems to distress Donna Shalala and other highly politicised members of the NAS committee.

This topic should enjoy an interesting discussion on the web. I see that Gene Expression blog already has posted on this report. Of course, anyone interested in the underlying science in this issue should read this La Griffe du Lion essay on women in science and this essay on women in mathematics.

This NAS report is an expensive "Ode to Cluelessness." Not so much on the part of the committee members, who clearly know what their own ambitious goals are, as on the part of anyone who takes it seriously.