"From Glass Ceiling to Crystal Ball: A Vision of Women
in Science"
Dr. Rita R. Colwell
Director
National Science Foundation
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study
Cambridge, Massachusetts
April 9, 2001
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[title slide]
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Thank you, Paula, for your introduction. I would also
like to thank Laura Roskos and Phyllis Strimling for
inviting me to join you at Radcliffe this evening.
It is a pleasure to be part of your lecture series,
and I am especially grateful to everyone for graciously
accommodating the changes in my schedule.
My talk tonight is called "From Glass Ceiling to Crystal
Ball: A Vision of Women in Science."
However, before launching into my main theme today,
I would like to tell you just a little bit about what
happened earlier today at the National Science Foundation.
We presented the NSF budget proposal for the coming
year.
As you know, agencies across the government are facing
constraints this year, but I will not spend time on
the details here, except to say that NSF has been
chosen to take the lead in math and science education.
A centerpiece of the FY2002 budget request is an initial
$200 million of $1 billion over five years for a new
Math and Science Partnerships Initiative, part of
President Bush's education plan.
The initiative is focused on links between higher education
and K-12 education. This is an area that needs a great
deal of effort--the integration of research and education.
The new partnerships will bring us closer to that
goal.
It's a pleasure to be here tonight, on what
is also familiar turf. For me, Cambridge is
pretty close to home. I grew up in Massachusetts,
in Beverly, a stone's throw from the ocean.
My mother still lives in the family home just a block
down the road from this lighthouse in Beverly Cove.
I have very fond memories of sailing in regattas in
Marblehead, and my husband and I have raced in the
Nationals for our two-man dinghy class in Marblehead
several times.
Not all memories of the past are as warm, yet some
of them do bear upon our topic tonight, which is my
reflections on women in science and engineering.
For example, when I went to high school, girls simply
were not allowed to take physics. More to the point,
my high school chemistry teacher told me I would never
make it in chemistry--because women could not.
That angered me, but also galvanized me. I had begun
to see science as a way to understand the world and
as a way to make my way in the world.
At Purdue University, many of my counterparts were
majoring in home economics, learning how to make souffles
while I was learning how to balance equations.
In my senior year at Purdue, I found the encouragement
of a good mentor--Professor Dorothy Powelson. It was
rare in those days, back in the fifties, to have a
woman professor.
She opened the door, and I became entranced by the
microscopic world. That enthusiasm was an asset when
encountering various roadblocks along the way.
For my masters degree, for example, I counted 186,000
fruitflies, studying crossing-over in the linkage
map of Drosophila, the fruitfly. Now we have the entire
genome of Drosophila sequenced!
Today, no one would ever say outright that they would
not "waste" a fellowship on a woman--like I was told
in the 1950s. Yet girls and women still have a long
way to go to achieve equity in all phases of scientific
and engineering education and careers.
The problems are highly complex and not all solutions
are clear. That is why I prefer to discard the metaphor
of the "glass ceiling" as too fragile to bear the
weight of what we need to learn and change.
Instead I will offer the crystal ball as a symbol of
being able to see our way through and beyond established
strictures that keep girls even today from taking
flight though the discovery of science and engineering.
This new metaphor presents us with clearer vision and
a multitude of futures.
[bullet slide]
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Knowing the past often helps when we want to change
our future. Women have a long and distinguished history
in science although we still do not learn much about
past pioneers.
It is eye-opening to bring to light even a few of these
poorly known stories. Some of these women's lives
actually border on the tragic. Then we'll look at
where women stand today in mathematics, science and
engineering, from elementary school up through the
labor force.
Mathematics as a gateway to science and engineering
deserves special mention. Then I'll cite a few examples
of programs by the National Science Foundation to
attract girls and women into these fields.
Finally, I will explore some trends that are transforming
science and engineering, and suggest how women may
be shaping some of these changes.
Some of you have probably read or heard of the scientific
bestseller, Galileo's Daughter, by Dava Sobel.
NSF's National Science Board has given its public
service award to Sobel this year for her book.
As we read Maria Celeste's letters to her father, the
eminent Galileo, the dynamic personality of his daughter
is revealed. She copies his manuscripts for him and
takes avid interest in his scientific inquiries.
We can speculate how Maria Celeste--with all her intelligence,
energy, and perseverance--might have succeeded in
science herself in a later era that would not have
consigned her to the life of a cloistered nun.
[Alice Evans in
her lab]
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Jumping several centuries to our own, we find women
who accomplished much in science, but whose stories
are seldom told.
One is Alice Catherine Evans, who studied the bacterial
contamination of milk, and identified the organism
that causes undulant fever in humans.
At a time when bacteriology was in its infancy, she
challenged the wisdom of her scientific peers, triggering
enormous controversy in the medical and dairy communities.
Unfortunately, Evans' work extracted a heavy personal
toll. She contracted undulant fever while doing her
research and suffered its effects for two decades.
Her pioneering work led to the near-elimination of
undulant fever through the mandatory pasteurization
of milk in this country, starting in the 1930s.
Another example is Rosalind Franklin. History now inextricably
links the names Watson and Crick with the revelation
of the structure of DNA. How few have heard of Rosalind
Franklin.
Her x-ray studies revealed critical evidence of DNA's
helical structure, but she never received the full
credit she deserved. Her early death prevented her
work from ever being considered by the Nobel committee.
That work, which was "purloined" by Jim Watson--to
use his own words--helped him to win his Nobel Prize.
Another woman who did receive the Nobel Prize--Barbara
McClintock--nonetheless suffered from scientific isolation
during her career. McClintock won the Nobel for her
discovery of "mobile genetic elements."
Through her studies of corn, beginning in the late
1940s, she proposed the existence of transposons--genes
that can change position, carrying other genetic material
along. McClintock's discoveries had huge significance
for biology and medicine.
On a personal note, I can recall a college professor
of mine muttering that he was forced to teach us McClintock's
findings on "jumping genes," but that he did not believe
the theories of this "crazy woman."
Other forgotten females in science and engineering
were the six women chosen to program the ENIAC--the
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer--during
World War II. ENIAC was the first large electronic
computer.
The job title of the women was actually "computer."
(The old usage of the term "computer" referred to
the people--usually women--who did mathematical calculations.)
However, they were considered sub-professionals because
of their gender.
One of the women, Jean Bartik, worked on the ENIAC
at the age of twenty. Looking back, she recalls,
"We lived and breathed computers. I thought I had
died and gone to heaven. I had never been around
so many brilliant people in my life...We had no
manuals for ENIAC. We learned how to program by
studying the logical block diagrams. What a blessing.
From the beginning I knew how computers worked."
[science proficiency
of boys and girls]
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It helps to learn about those few who preceded us.
Others with stories worth remembering include astronomers
Jocelyn Bell and Henrietta Leavitt, and physicist
Lise Meitner.
Even today, however, far too many girls and women fail
to even cross the threshold into science and engineering.
We know that obstacles and stereotyped cultural conditioning
begin to appear very early in life.
In a study of young children reported in the recent
book Athena Unbound, a four-year-old boy told
researchers that "...only boys should make science."
Part of the problem today lies in what I call the "valley
of death" in education: grades 4 through 8, when girls
are discouraged--in subtle and not so subtle ways--from
pursuing science and engineering.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows
a gender gap in science proficiency as early as age
9. We can trace this through ages 13 and to age 17,
when the gap has widened further.
There has been little change in this trend over two
decades. In a moment I'll describe a few of NSF's
gender equity programs for those ages.
No doubt many of you have heard the term "leaky pipeline."
It's an apt phrase for the loss of women in science
and engineering throughout higher education, and continuing
in academia, through the route to full professor.
[percent of bachelor's
degrees earned by women, 1975-97]
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It is interesting that between ages 25 and 34, the
typical American female is more educated than her
male counterpart. Women now earn more than half of
all college degrees, and over half of those in the
life sciences. Well over 40% of math and chemistry
bachelor's degrees also go to females.
But some developments are deeply disturbing. For example,
the percentage of women receiving bachelor's degrees
in computer science has been dropping since the mid-1980s.
We see a downward trend for both men and women--but
it's been more precipitous for women.
[U.S. doctorates:
women]
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If we take a closer look at doctorates earned in the
United States by women, we see a divergence among
the disciplines. Women now earn around 40% of all
doctorates. However, this differs greatly by field.
In the life sciences, women earn over 40% of doctorates.
But in the physical sciences and mathematics, women
earn fewer than 20%. In engineering, they receive
a little over 10% of PhDs.
[MIT graph and
quote]
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A couple of years ago, the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology took a close and courageous look at
women on its science faculty, releasing its study
in 1999.
Introducing the report, MIT president Charles M. Vest
wrote, "I have always believed that contemporary gender
discrimination within universities is part reality
and part perception. True, but I now understand that
reality is by far the greater part of the balance."
As the study began in 1994, the MIT School of Science
had only 15 tenured women, versus 194 men.
The subsequent study, which took much determination
and effort, found that women science faculty had been
"marginalized" throughout their careers, facing discrimination
in salary, awards, space, and other parameters.
We look forward to following MIT's response to the
report as it evolves. All of us can benefit from the
lessons emerging at MIT.
[U.S. workforce,
1997]
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Our problem is larger than the institutions of higher
learning. In more than 400 job categories in our economy,
women are found mainly in only 20 categories.
Women comprise less than a quarter of the total science
and engineering labor force. The S&E; workforce looks
very exclusive. This is dangerous for the nation.
We need the talent of every worker in order to compete
and prosper.
[Land of Plenty]
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Some of you may be familiar with the report called
Land of Plenty, issued last year by the Congressional
Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities
in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development.
The commission calls diversity our country's competitive
edge. The commission states this: if women, minorities,
and the disabled--two-thirds of U.S. workers--joined
the science and engineering workforce in proportion
to their numbers, the shortage in skilled S&T; workers
would "largely be eliminated."
However, if our country continues to exclude so many
citizens from the new economy, the report warns that
"our nation will risk losing its economic and intellectual
preeminence."
[Mathematical knot
with quote about importance of math]
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At this point I want to highlight the key role of mathematics.
Mathematics is the single most important factor leading
to a career in science and engineering.
The American Association of University Women has recommended
that states should make algebra and geometry mandatory
for all students. These are the "gatekeeper" classes
for college admission and later study in math, science
and engineering.
[Poster: woman
and line, I am a mathematician]
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We know that we have been able to narrow the gender
gap in mathematical performance for young women, which
is a hopeful sign for the future and also evidence
that the gender gap in performance is not a genetic
gap.
The National Science Foundation supports a number of
programs to improve girls' math participation and
performance.
For example, we have partially sponsored a series of
striking science posters by artist Pamela Davis Kivelson,
including some that use creative, visual means to
promote the power of mathematics to young people.
One shows a young woman with the legend, "I am a mathematician."
Another idea to consider, perhaps--suggested by one
of our program officers--is a campaign called "Math
for Moms."
Biologist E.O. Wilson writes that "...mathematics seems
to point arrow-like toward the ultimate goal of objective
truth." Given the accelerating cross-pollination of
mathematics and science, it's not a mere coincidence
that Wilson is a biologist.
Indeed, mathematics is the ultimate cross-cutting discipline,
the springboard for advances across the board. Mathematics
is both a powerful tool of insight and a common language
for science.
As a biologist I find the burgeoning two-way traffic
between biology and mathematics especially exciting.
Not only is mathematics revolutionizing biology, but
biology begins to foster new paradigms in mathematics.
The information science of life edges ever closer to
electronic information science. Advances in understanding
life may lead to new algorithms and new modes of computing,
notably biological computing.
However, our country's world leadership of mathematics
is fragile. We have been relying on overseas talent
and have not been attracting enough U.S. students.
In the meantime, NSF's role in support of mathematics
has become ever more important.
We provide about two-thirds of federal academic research
support, and our share is growing. In fact, a key
feature of our budget investment this year is $20
million for interdisciplinary mathematics.
It will expand our support for fundamental research
in mathematics to the entire spectrum of science and
engineering in our portfolio.
[San Diego Girl
Scouts: collage]
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NSF has a number of other programs that target girls
and women in math, science and engineering at all
ages.
An excellent program in San Diego intervenes early,
focusing on teaching about computing and science to
minority girls in grades four-through-eight. The program
is led by the San Diego Girl Scouts and the San Diego
Supercomputer Center.
Girl Scout adult teachers have now trained about 5000
girls on computers. The program is being expanded
to Houston. The girls' entire families get into the
act on Family Nights for hands-on computer learning.
Parents and siblings learn from the girls.
[Carson City gender
equity]
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NSF funds gender equity research across the country,
planting seeds in the form of pilot programs. One
example, in Carson City School district in Nevada,
focused on 10 Hispanic girls who barely knew English.
Within a year, they had learned English using a computerized
tutor; learned to use computers; could make presentations
about a Geographic Information System; and were being
sought out by employers. Nevada's Department of Education
has picked up the funding of the program.
[Josietrue.com
website]
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Computer games--often the first exposure kids have
to computers--are one factor that can turn off girls.
They dislike the violent, repetitive and sexist elements
of the games that are widely available.
They ask for identity games in which they could create
a character or build a world, with chances to communicate
and collaborate. NSF has funded a game called "Josie
True," an Internet adventure in which a girl travels
back in time to rescue her inventor-turned-teacher
named Ms. Trombone.
The journey includes science, math and technology games.
[ADVANCE: bullets]
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On the other end of the NSF spectrum is our newest
flagship program to address the low numbers of women
in science and engineering: ADVANCE.
The program intends to spark system-wide changes that
will foster a more positive climate for women to pursue
academic careers.
ADVANCE seeks to bring more women into science and
engineering, but is not limited to women. Clearly,
men need to participate in these changes, and they
are eligible for all three types of awards.
- Fellows awards give those who had limits
to their career advancement--perhaps because of
raising children, other family needs, or related
factors--a chance to jumpstart the continuation
of careers.
- The second type of award, for institutional
transformation, supports institutions that define
effective approaches to drawing women faculty
into the upper ranks.
- Leadership awards, the third type, recognize
contributions toward increasing the participation
of women in academic science and engineering careers.
The NSF program manager for ADVANCE, Alice Hogan, emphasizes
that the program sends the message that NSF values
and rewards the hard work needed to change the conditions
for women in science and engineering--and gives participants
an opportunity to make a real difference over the
long-term.
[total NSF support
for women researchers]
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I should also underscore that NSF's largest
investment in women scientists and engineers is through
all our other research and education efforts.
NSF support for women researchers has tripled over
the past decade to approach 500 million dollars.
[sunspot shot]
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Let me broaden our perspective now, looking back into
that crystal ball as a wider lens to scan the entire
spectrum of discovery in science and engineering,
which we want to open to the participation of all.
We have entered the Age of Knowledge and we need to
transform our educational system into one of lifelong
learning so that everyone benefits.
New tools are broadening our vision in every discipline.
In just one very current example, we are able to look
at our sun, and we are seeing the largest group of
sunspots in a decade.
The sun has an 11-year cycle; right now it is in the
phase of high activity called solar maximum. The sun's
activity fosters geomagnetic disruption, and we have
reached the point of being able to predict these effects,
now called space weather.
The sunspot areas have been erupting in just the past
couple of weeks, disrupting radio communications and
low-frequency navigation signals on Earth.
We are graced to be alive at a time when science and
engineering are extending our vision to the farthest
reaches of the cosmos, back to the time of the Big
Bang.
At the same time we can peer down into the most minute
scales of life, decoding the blueprint of life for
our species, the human genome, and learning the secrets
of life for all our fellow travelers.
The scientific tool most familiar to me as a microbiologist
is, of course, the microscope. It is the tool that
represents an approach that much of modern science
has followed up to now: to seek understanding by taking
things apart into their components.
To be sure, this strategy has given us the lion's share
of scientific knowledge to date, but it has been a
reductionist approach.
As science and engineering grow ever more interwoven,
we fashion new, more integrative tools. We watch our
fields intersect increasingly with one other to forge
new frontiers at every scale, from quarks to stars.
Only through mapping and nourishing these linkages
can we truly reflect and probe the wholeness of the
world that we study. The days are gone when a discipline
could go it alone. Now, the entire enterprise must
progress as a whole.
[LIGO]
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On another frontier, the border between astronomy and
physics, researchers are listening for gravitational
waves. The LIGO Project, short for Laser Interferometry
Gravitational Wave Observatory, is the largest project
NSF has ever supported.
LIGO is searching for the waves produced by colliding
black holes or collapsing supernovae. If these ripples
in the fabric of space-time are recorded, they will
open up a new window on the universe.
[GriPhyN]
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These explorations are not taking place in isolation.
LIGO, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and CERN, the European
accelerator laboratory, will ultimately be linked
together in the Grid Physics Network (GriPhyN).
This computational grid will tie together resources
from the United States and Europe. Many disciplines
share a similar need for widely dispersed users to
access and use a massive data set.
These include projects on the human brain and genome,
to those who study astronomy, geophysics, crystallography,
and satellite weather, to consumer spending and banking
records. These latter uses require advances that preserve
consumer privacy as well.
[adaptive optics:
Neptune]
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Another example of blending boundaries is the refinement
and application of a technique called adaptive optics.
Large ground-based telescopes, it turns out, have
their views into space blurred by the earth's shimmering
atmosphere.
Some are being fitted with adaptive optics to correct
for the distortion.
[AO: blurry "E"s
]
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We're now applying adaptive optics to human vision.
So far tests have shown that adaptive optics doubles
the sensitivity of the eye in low light.
[Oldest microorganism]
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Our new vistas also extend our concept of life. Even
in the most extreme environments on our planet, in
ocean vents, within the deepest mines, and in the
seeming wastes of Antarctica, we are finding life,
thriving and abundant.
The oldest living organism found so far, a 250 million-year-old
bacterium, was described last fall.
It was found entombed in salt crystals 850 feet down
in the Permian Salado Formation in New Mexico, by
Russ Vreeland, a former student, and his colleagues.
Needless to say, we never imagined life to survive
in pure salt.
[bees and nanosensors]
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Our tools give us insight on the smallest of scales.
Foremost among them are nano-science and technology,
whose applications are only limited by our imaginations.
At the Lilliputian level of the nanoscale, we see how
nanotechnology is being used to understand the Earth's
biodiversity.
Researchers have developed microscopic nanosensors
that are carried like ordinary pollen on the body
of a bee. A bee collects the sensor, called smart
dust, and carries it throughout its normal daily activities.
When it returns to the hive, a sensor plate downloads
the data collected by the sensor. The result is a
map of the bee's itinerary: where it traveled and
which flowers it visited.
[Women at water
source]
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Only integrating information from many scales will
lead us to deeper discoveries. In my own research,
I have spent more than 30 years studying cholera,
a terrible water-borne scourge that still causes thousands
to die every year in developing countries.
My work on the environmental factors associated with
cholera epidemics would be impossible without the
power of computing.
At the same time, our research continues at the scale
of the village, where women in Bangladesh are testing
a simple filtering system for their drinking water.
They are using sari cloth to remove plankton and particulate
matter to which the cholera bacteria are attached.
[cholera, SST]
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Remote sensing and computing have helped us to delineate
the patterns in the incidence of cholera. Its
occurrence is related to environmental factors, whether
in the Bay of Bengal or off the coast of South America.
Sea surface temperatures, chlorophyll concentrations,
and sea surface height are all elevated when cholera
appears. It is our ability to integrate insights from
many levels that leads us to the threshold of predicting
cholera epidemics.
[biocomplexity]
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There are many such examples. To unravel the complexity
of life on our planet, we must chart the ribbons of
interconnections between cells, organisms and ecosystems,
past and present.
A new term for what we study is biocomplexity. We are
at the brink of being able to observe complexity at
multiple scales across the hierarchy of life. To understand
the interlocking systems of our planet is our only
hope to sustain them.
A celebrated astronomer and a member of our National
Science Board, Vera Rubin, speaks about the evolution
of galaxies--a term we might associate more with the
study of life.
She returns often to her theme of connections. In an
interesting cross-fertilization of vocabulary, she
speaks of a galaxy as an ecosystem.
In her view, we should be looking for life on other
planets by looking for planets that have a hot molten
core. The core generates the Earth's magnetic field,
which ultimately gives us the ionosphere that enables
and protects life.
[galaxy picture]
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The frontiers of science and engineering today seem
endless, yet we need the participation and perspectives
of all to probe as far as we might in every direction.
When we consider how to attract women and minorities
to science and technology, we begin to reexamine our
assumptions about education across the board, from
kindergarten to lifelong learning.
The process to achieving a doctorate today can take
twice as long as it did when I worked on my PhD--and
the degree-holder now emerges even more specialized
than in the past.
We need to change our thinking about how we educate
those who will carry out the research of the future,
in a world of science and engineering that is moving
toward international networking, collaboration with
multiple disciplines, study of complexity, and integration
of perspectives.
I suspect this is a world that could welcome the perspectives
of women more warmly than have the cultures of science
and engineering of the past, and be the better for
it. Thank you.
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