Women in Science |
Carnegie Institution of Washington
President Director, Department of Plant Biology Director, Department of Terrestrial Magnetism Director, Department of Embryology Director, The Observatories, Crawford H. Greenewalt Chair Director, The Geophysical Laboratory Director, Administration and Finance Director, External Affairs Editor |
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Ninety-eight years ago—16 years before women won the right to vote—the fledgling Carnegie Institution awarded its first grant to a woman scientist. Her name was Nettie Stevens. Interestingly, Stevens, a biologist, studied gender differences. Her work revolutionized our notion of what determines sex by showing that the X and Y chromosomes are involved, changing conventional thinking that environment was the cause. Since that time, Carnegie has fostered the genius of a succession of extraordinary women—geneticists Barbara McClintock and Nina Fedoroff, embryologist Elizabeth Ramsey, archaeologist Anna Shepard, and astronomer Vera Rubin, to name a few. In 2001, the National Research Council issued a report about women scientists and engineers in the workforce. It caught my eye, and I wondered how Carnegie compared with the national figures. In 1995—the last year covered by the report—women Ph.D.s made up 21% of the science and engineering workforce. In the life sciences, 26% were women. I am pleased that the departments of both Plant Biology and Embryology are well ahead of this norm: 44% of the current Staff Members, Staff Associates, and adjunct staff at Plant Biology are women, while at Embryology, 33% of the Staff Members and Associates, and 55% of the fellows and postdoctoral associates are female. Excellent numbers. Nationwide, there are proportionately fewer women in the physical sciences. They represented just 10.5% of the total in 1995. With the advent of the newest Staff Members at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM), women now make up 14% of the senior staff there, but only about 7% at the Geophysical Laboratory (GL). Despite the latter figure, the future at GL is very promising—18% of our Carnegie fellows and postdocs there are female. It is the postdocs and fellows at the Observatories who also tell the tale of what the future holds in astronomy. Nationally, only 7.3% of working astronomers were women in 1995—a figure on a par with the senior Observatories staff. Today in Pasadena, however, 33% of the postdocs and fellows are female. The gender balance in science is improving across the country, and especially at Carnegie. The encouraging trends we see at the institution are a tribute to the work of Maxine Singer and each of the department directors. But we shouldn’t be too surprised with our standing. Since the beginning, we have supported extraordinary individuals, no matter who they are. We have frequently gone against convention to pursue this central mission; it is the foundation of all we do.
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—Tom Urban Chairman