Yale Bulletin and Calendar

March 8, 2002

Volume 30, Number 21

Meg Urry

International meeting will assess
status of women in physics

A Yale professor is heading the U.S. delegation to the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) meeting on Women in Physics taking place March 7-9 in Paris, France.

Meg Urry, professor of physics and director of the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, is the leader of the delegation, which was formed under the auspices of The American Physical Society's Committee on the Status of Women in Physics.

According to Urry, the primary purpose of the conference is to understand the underrepresentation of women in physics worldwide and to develop strategies to increase their participation.

In a presentation at the meeting, Urry and her group note that although women in the United States have made great advancements in expanding their participation in male-dominated professions, the progress has been much more limited in physics than in many other fields.

"The physics community in the U.S. has made slow progress in enrolling and rewarding women in physics compared to other professional communities, due in part to the belief that because science is an 'objective' pursuit, the underrepresentation of women is simply an indication of their lack of interest or ability in the field, rather than an indication of discrimination or exclusion," reads the delegation's prepared statement.

The U.S. delegates note that there have always been exceptional women physicists, but that in the United States they did not thrive at the same rate or to the same extent as men. Many did not marry or have children, and before the 1960s, most remained research associates and -- if they taught at all -- taught at women's colleges, the delegates point out.

The American Institute of Physics reported two years ago that women earn less than 20% of the bachelor's degrees and less than 12% of the Ph.Ds, and that only 20 physics departments graduate five or more women physics majors each year.

"This means that in most universities women students are still an unusual occurrence, reinforcing stereotypical views among senior physicists and the women's peers that women still can't or won't do physics," the delegation members note.

Efforts to correct this problem, the delegates say, have focused on the "culture" of physics -- which, they argue, encourages a hyper-competitive, masculinized and almost "monastic" approach to science. This, in turn, generates work-life conflicts that penalize young people who have working partners and children, and leads to instances where the women physicists are either not taken seriously by professors, employers or colleagues, or are openly discouraged and disliked, they note.

"There is the fairness issue, but along with that there is a pressing need for talent in physics, wherever it may be found," the group members say in their statement. "The socialization of women and their adult roles cause them to bring fresh perspectives to the selection of research problems, to the organizing of research groups, to the teaching of physics, and to the work of physics itself."

Among the discussion topics at the conference are attracting girls into physics; launching a successful physics career; getting women into the physics leadership structure nationally and internationally; improving the institutional climate for women in physics; learning from regional differences; and balancing family and career.

The IUPAP's Working Group on Women in Physics is undertaking an international benchmarking study on issues concerning women in physics. Demographic information on education and career attainment is being collected from countries in all parts of the world and will be analyzed by professional statisticians, discussed at the conference, published and made available freely on the Internet.

-- By Jacqueline Weaver

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