Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

3.8.10 | Just in time for International Women’s Day, The International Herald Tribune takes a look at the gains women have made in science in the last century, noting for instance that three women received Nobel prizes in the sciences in 2009, a record year.

On the plus side, writes Katrin Bennhold, “Women now earn 42 percent of the science degrees in the 30 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; in the life sciences, such as biology and medicine, more than 6 out of 10 graduates are women.”

The Obama administration has prioritized promoting STEM careers, and, as we’ve previously written, even Barbie, who once was programmed to say, “Math class is tough,” has been re-imagined as a computer engineer.

But a closer look at the numbers paints a more troubling picture:

In computer science, for example, the percentage of female graduates from American universities peaked in the mid-1980s at more than 40 percent and has since dropped to half that, said Sue Rosser, a scholar who has written extensively on women in science. In electrical and mechanical engineering, enrollment percentages remain in the single digits. The number of women who are full science professors at elite universities in the United States has been stuck at 10 percent for the past half century. Throughout the world, only a handful of women preside over a national science academy. Women have been awarded only 16 of the 540 Nobels in science.

The tug-of-war between encouraging numbers and depressing details is in many ways the story of the advancement of women overall. Women get more degrees and score higher grades than men in industrialized countries. But they are still paid less and are more likely to work part time. Only 18 percent of tenured professors in the 27 countries of the European Union are women.

And the big money in science these days is in computers and engineering — the two fields with the fewest women.

In the 21st century, perhaps more than ever before, there will be a premium on scientific and technological knowledge. Science, in effect, will be the last frontier for the women’s movement. With humanity poised to tackle pressing challenges — from climate change to complex illness to the fallout from the digital revolution — shortages of people with the right skill sets loom in many countries.

Therein lie both opportunity and risk for women: In the years to come, the people who master the sciences will change the world — and most likely command the big paychecks.

The story addresses the obstacles for women, including the difficulty balancing family and career and the subtle (and not so subtle) messages girls receive about natural ability and gender roles: “In India, women scientists have complained that even in science textbooks women are depicted in traditional roles. And in the United States, some psychologists say that the surge in computer games marketed to boys is one explanation for the widening gap in computer sciences since the 1980s.”

The stories are part of a year-long series by The International Herald Tribune (and also appearing in The New York Times) that examines where women stand in the early 21st century.