Education is no longer sex-segregated with schools teaching wood shop to boys and home economics to girls, but annual surveys of college degree-earners by the National Science Foundation report that scientists are still more likely to be men.
According to the Association for Women in Science, women are not only among the minority of science degree-earners in nearly every discipline, but they also secure fewer faculty positions, earn lower wages and leave the sciences at a higher rate than their male peers.
Although numbers of women in the University faculty are not far from the national averages in most areas, with high female representation in biological sciences and lower representation in the physical sciences, the University struggles especially to recruit women in the fields of physics and math.
The NSF data show that during the past 40 years, increasing numbers of women earned bachelor’s degrees in psychology and biology, some years representing more than half of degree-earners.
In 2006 for instance, women received 77 percent of bachelor’s degrees in psychology and 60 percent of bachelor’s degrees in the biological and agricultural sciences. However, the number of female degree-earners decreases with each post-bachelor’s degree, leaving women out-numbered in faculties and research labs nationwide.
Fewer women pursue undergraduate studies in the physical sciences, math and computer sciences and engineering, according to the NSF data, and those who do are less likely to obtain master’s and doctorate degrees.
So, in a society where little girls grow up in large part hearing they can be or do whatever they want, how do female scientists explain the lack of greater female representation in science?
“There definitely are forces at play, very unconscious forms of bias at play,” said Karen Guillemin, associate professor of biology at the University. “People used to think it was just a matter of time before it would even out, but it’s not evening out.”

Women are interested in science, Guillemin said, as evidenced by the large numbers of women in undergraduate biology and chemistry courses. But explaining why more women don’t become scientists and why they mostly steer clear of physics, math and engineering is complicated.
The Oregon State University physics faculty includes four women, and the University of Oregon physics faculty has just one – these low numbers that reflect the low numbers of women who study physics. Last spring the University of Oregon awarded one out of nine doctorate degrees, one out of seven master’s degrees and three out of 28 bachelor’s degrees to women in physics.
Women scientists nationwide attest that historical notions of women as less intelligent, less capable, and more suited for home and family than labor and academia sometimes still pervade modern culture, which might explain why the representation of women in the sciences is still lacking.
“There are a lot of environmental and social reasons, but also the level of expectations for boys and girls are different and stereotypes set in early, sometimes too early,” said Miriam Deutsch, associate professor of physics at the University. “We have evolved from a male-dominated society where men called the shots for centuries, but it becomes a culture.”
Women’s physical ability to bear children, they said, has also historically bound them to the role of primary caregiver, often placing the responsibility of finding day care, staying home with sick children and watching children after day care hours squarely on mothers’ shoulders.
Guillemin, a mother of two young children, said the demands of motherhood present a threat to keeping women in the sciences and allowing them to become leaders.
A university’s child care options for faculty’s children are pivotal to drawing women and building diverse faculty, Guillemin said.
“This is a huge issue for recruitment and retention,” she said. “If I were recruited to another research institution, day care is the number one thing I would look at.”
Although the University offers day care for faculty’s children, Guillemin said the space available is not enough.
Chemistry instructor Deborah Exton said that in addition to a great need for child care, the rigors of running a research lab are often not compatible with family life.
Although men often don’t make career decisions based on the time demands they face as fathers, Exton said, women are often expected to sacrifice career for family.
Exton also suggested that women might consider having children a greater priority than pursuing taxing careers in the sciences.
“Anecdotally, I know that that’s not how women want to live their lives, putting in 60, 70, 80 hours a week as they approach tenure,” she said.
Deutsch, also a mother, disagrees.
“It’s not that women can’t work long hours or are afraid to. There’s talk of child care being an issue, but I’m not really buying that,” she said. “Women know how to take care of child care issues.”
As the lone female physics professor at the University, Deutsch said the expectation of young girls to not like science or not perform strongly in math is the beginning of the gender bias that drives them away from the sciences.
Geraldine Richmond, chemistry professor and head of the University’s Women in Technology and Science program, agreed and said female scientists and teachers are essential to drawing more girls to the sciences.
“Studies show you are influenced to go into a career because someone looks like you and acts like you,” she said. “Teachers can influence that, so it’s important that professors mirror the students that we teach.”
Deutsch, who is from Israel and completed all of her studies there, said the representation of women in physics was “miserable” when she was a student. With no female mentors to turn to, she said it was simply her strong interest in physics that motivated her.
Though she works in the field that her passion propelled her to pursue, she said women in the workplace would be a significant and welcome addition.
“It’s not normal for there to be such a split in gender in the workplace,” Deutsch said. “It’s about a dialogue. When I go to conferences and talk to female physicists, it’s a different culture. For everyone’s functional health, the place would benefit from having representation that is compatible with the interests that you see in society.”
Deutsch said her teaching experience has been different and exciting in the few classes she’s had with an unusually high number of women. “There’s a friendly atmosphere in class,” she said. “When there’s a well-balanced mix, it functions differently. It has a completely different pulse, it just feels normal.” However, most of her science classes have been about an average of 15 percent female.
The bias women will face in the sciences is almost guaranteed, the women faculty said, but the best weapon of all might be to stick with it.
In the face of physics’ overwhelming gender homogeny, Deutsch followed her interest, not her female peers.
“Maybe I am missing a more interactive culture, a work culture that would be more lively with more representation,” she said. “(But) maybe I just didn’t find it such a terrible lack.”
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