Happy International Women’s Day!

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Today is the 100th annual International Women’s Day.  Women have come a long way in the sciences since 1911.  When Marie Curie won her second Nobel Prize in 1911, it was extremely unusual for a woman to be involved in science.  While women are still underrepresented in STEM fields, we have come a long way since then.  I thought today I’d share some statistics to show the progress we have made in science over the last 50 years or so.

In 1958, women were awarded 7.9% of doctorates in all science, engineering, and health fields.  In 2006, that number was 40.2%.

Percentages of women earning doctorates in specific fields: (statistics from NSF)

  • Physical sciences – 1958: 3.5%, 2006: 29.0%
  • Mathematics – 1958: 5.9%, 2006: 29.6%
  • Life Sciences – 1958: 10%, 2006: 51.8%
  • Engineering – 1958: 0.5%, 2006: 20.2%
  • Computer Sciences: 1978: 9.1%, 2006: 21.3%

Percentages of tenured or tenure-track female faculty:

  • Physical sciences – 1979: 3.8%, 2006: 17.0%
  • Mathematics – 1979: 6.2%, 2006: 17.4%
  • Life Sciences – 1979: 10.2%, 2006: 32.3%
  • Engineering – 1979: 0.7%, 2006: 10.8%
  • Computer Sciences: 1985: 12.6%, 2006: 21.2%

We have made so much progress, but there is still significant work to be done!  That is why it’s so important to give women the encouragement they need to pursue science and to demonstrate to younger women that there are many great female scientists and that pursuing science is a career option for women too.

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92 thoughts on “Happy International Women’s Day!”

  2. Hi there – I’m guessing these are American stats? Is that right. I would love to know the worldwide figures women’s achievement in sciences Any idea how to find out? Congratulations on being Freshly Pressed :D

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  3. I find this article very biased. You are only measuring the progress by the increase in doctorate degrees in a select number of fields.

    Progress for women, and what International Women Day stands for, encompasses way more than that.

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    • I understand that progress for women encompasses much more than progress for women in science, but I chose to report on the statistics in science fields since this is a blog primarily about women in science.

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      • I think showing the increase of women in the fields of science and engineering is a great way to show how much progress has been made.

        Of course the day stands for more than that, but detailing the achievements made by women in science is a microcosm of a bigger picture.

        Great post!

  13. Pingback: Happy International Women’s Day! « Coreys Views

  14. It worries me that both my children, male and female, who are maths majors, don’t see this as a continuing problem. Both are actively mentored by a female tenure track prof. They are actually annoyed at being told they must be aware of, and continue to work for equality. Their department is gender balanced; they seem to assume all are. Yes, they will learn, but from their feedback about conferences, especially the AWM in Nebraska this winter, many of the younger generation were perplexed at talks on how to deal with sexual bias. It’s great they see no problems, but it’s tragic as well. There’s too much pressure in politics and certain religious groups to squash even the few gains we’ve made.

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    • I couldn’t agree more that it is too easy to perpetuate the myth that the struggle is over. It’s hard to galvanize around a problem you don’t see or experience. Though I think it’s fantastic that mhilm’s own kids’ experience reflects a more egalitarian environment.

      I also think it’s interesting that Engineering continues to have the lowest percentage (and quite a low one at that) of women.

      Happy IWD!

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    • mhilm – I understand your frustration, but I might venture an explanation for the viewpoint that your children (and many others) seem to have.

      While I am happy to acknowledge the statistics, I stop short of dwelling on them. I find (in myself and many of my female engineering peers) such a focus on being downtrodden often leads to a feeling of paralysis rather than motivation. One of the major contributors to success (especially in the industry my peers and I are in) is confidence, and constantly discussing unfavourable numbers can surreptitiously undermine the ability to remain confident.

      I’m not saying this viewpoint is correct, but for many younger professional women there seems to be an impression that the most successful method is simply to get on with changing the statistics instead of expending energy worrying about them. Put an accountable program in place to manage a given problem and move on. I just hope that these same people can keep their ambition and drive in place long enough to have an impact on the numbers, as this viewpoint seems to change through experience.

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  17. It’s glad to know that, while things are obviously not equal, we are making progress in some fields. Happy International Women’s Day from the Japan- and gender studies departments!

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  20. I just heard of this “day” as I’ve gotten to know my g/f who is from Ukraine, where she says this is a celebration bigger than the US’ Valentines Day. A little historical research tells me that is a more relevant “holiday” as well. Kudos on getting your business suit freshly pressed!

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  21. A lot of progress has been made over the past 100 years for women in science related fields since the inception of this day..and yes, there’s still a lot of progress to be made. I just went into NSF website, and the stats there show – as a percentage of doctorates awarded to women in engineering has increased dramatically to almost 20% in 2006 compared to 0.5% in 1958. I think this indeed quite a progress. Also, I am a female engineer and went to grad school for my Masters and within my engineering dept there were more females doing PhD than men!

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  22. I love that you’ve chosen to focus on the positive, Vivienne. Although concentrating on the negative facts is often a good motivator for some (e.g. http://bit.ly/erkMPR), it doesn’t necessarily work for all women.

    I for one am proud of the successes we’ve made – particularly in the STEM fields (although I agree that we need more female engineers!). Now if only we could implement some useful ways to enable women to remain around/engaged/earning after those kidlets (which is when all the overall gender stats really begin to diverge).

    Happy IWD, and congrats on being Freshly Pressed!

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  23. These stats are encouraging, and there’s much to celebrate. But, as you point out in your post, there’s always (more) work to be done. Look at the discrepancies between the number of women earning doctorates in those fields vs. the number of women holding tenure track positions in those fields. Now, being in a humanities PhD program myself, I understand that there are several factors that explain why there’s such a large variation between the numbers: some people may not complete the program, may not search for academic jobs after completing the program, or may not get a tenure-track academic job (but get an academic position, nonetheless). I would venture to guess, though, that there are other, significant structural issues at work which make it difficult for women to get tenure track jobs in the first place.

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    • I noticed the same things, but what was really remarkable is that the difference between the percentage of women earning PhDs and the percentage of women occupying tenure track positions is almost nil for computer science. What makes that field so different from the others?

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  30. Pingback: Happy International Women’s Day! | Mircea Ciucă – photographer

  33. is a great post , i fell luck to stumble the article , rather infomative. and of great importance to woman. but i think the day should be canceled so that the world realizes a real equal between the two genders.

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  36. Pingback: Linkspam: International (Geek) Women’s Day | Geek Feminism Blog

  37. Happy International Women’s Day! We celebrated it at work & the company posted a similar article with stats on the number of women in high level and managerial positions. Love the shot of Orion in your header. Had to locate the full size version and download it for my desktop!

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  38. Thanks for the stats! I’ll enjoy reading your posts in the future – and congrats on being freshly pressed! I enjoy Dr. Brian Cox’s documentaries on BBC – he’s a laid back physicist in the UK – fun to watch. Best wishes on your future blogging!

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  41. I am so excited to see your blog. My daughter is very interested in everything science. Currently, her fave topic is space. I enrolled her in a Saturday Scholars program offered through our school district to encourage greater exploration of this field.

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  47. Thankyou for posting this! It’s great to see IWD so big this year and it’s fabulous to know that we’re making progress towards equality – particularly in academia. Woman in faculty aren’t just about the appearance of equality – they are proof it can exist. I’m so happy to have female Profs at my uni – it shows what we can do!
    xx

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  48. Enjoyed your post and the comments. In my dental class, we had one female, one Afro-American, two Hispantics and one Korean out of one hundred . You can probably guess close to the time. The female was the only one not accepted by the male faculty nor most of the male class. At the end of the second year, she transferred to the dental hygiene program, I didn’t blame her. If I had received her treatment, I would have left before the first year was up. I spoke with her many times and she was tough. Many of you women understand this and understand what she had to endure. I didn’t because coming from small towns, I had never seen anyone put down that way. My mother was able to have one semester of college in 1919 and she loved it. Through her 86 years she often mused what she might have accompished if she had been allowed to finish college. But, unfortunately, she had to give up college to return home and help with the family. She was the only woman in our town with a husband who worked and she eventually became an entrepreneur. But to give my view to mhilm, our children have not seen what we saw or experienced. Therefore, their world isn’t that way. I’m glad it isn’t that way any more and hopefully it will continue to improve so all people in the USA and hopefully the world will be able to experience freedom. Sorry, I think I wrote too much but I feel strongly about this too. I’m proud to say my youngest daughter’s (I have three.) best friend is Afro-American. That’s a long way from my time.

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  49. I love this post! As a female in the life sciences, animal science specifically, I love encouraging young girls to follow their dreams! It’s also really important for women to be recognized for all they give back to their communities. We’re givers, it’s what we do! Check out my blog http://thanks-4-giving.com/ to see which women I’m thankful for!

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  50. Has it occurred to anyone that the difference between the percentages of women who complete doctoral degrees and those who are tenured or tenure-track faculty in all those scientific fields mentioned (except computer science) may be partly due to their leaving academia for positions in the private sector, where they can actually DO something with what they have been studying for 8 years? Why they don’t go out into the professional world with PhDs in computer science is perhaps another gender bias problem?

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    • First, I just want to say that you can do a lot of things with your PhD in academia. If some sort of gender bias was not occurring, you would expect men and women to leave academia for the private sector in equal numbers. But there are many issues effecting the number of women who go on to become tenure-track science professors. One such issue is that being a research scientist in academia requires long hours, and women (who are often expected to take on primary childcare roles) sometimes have to leave academia for jobs elsewhere because there is not enough of a support system in place for women who want to have children and be tenure-track science professors.

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  51. Pingback: Women in business; top French SME’s with women in control « Americanexpatinfrance's Blog

  54. It seems silly to only celebrate women one day out of the year. I’m grateful for the women in my life everyday. ;-)

    Getting that out of the way here’s the meat of my comment.

    My wife has a bachelors degree but she stays home to raise our children. Could she have gone on to get a masters or PHD? Sure but at what cost to the family? As it was she had two semesters while we juggled small children.

    I didn’t mean to come here and rain on anyone’s parade but rather get people to think. Do we need more women with degrees? Is there something wrong with full time mothers? Is my wife any less of a woman for taking care of our kids rather than working in an office?

    On another note are that many women interested in going into engineering? Just a couple of years ago the ratio of men to women in my advanced IT classes was about 20:1. This wasn’t about opportunity, my lower division IT classes were about split evenly between the genders. When the professors would ask what majors people were taking the vast majority of the women were not IT or engineering majors.

    Anyway, have a happy international women’s day. Anyone else looking forward to talk like a pirate day?

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    • There is a lot in your comment I want to address, so I will do it in list form.

      1) “Do we need more women with degrees?”
      ABSOLUTELY. Women make invaluable contributions to science (and all fields for that matter)! Why shut out half of our society from making contributions simply because of their sex?

      2) “Is there something wrong with full time mothers? Is my wife any less of a woman for taking care of our kids rather than working in an office?”
      No, and I’m really not sure why you asked this. I never said anything to imply that a full time mother is “less of a woman”. My mom stayed home to raise me and my sister, and she is the greatest woman I know. But every mother should have a choice. If she wants to continue to work, our society should have the support structure in place so that she can be a mother and pursue a career. I also want to point out that you imply that the burden of raising children should fall on the mother primarily. It takes two to make a baby, and men should contribute equally to child raising. It is not fair to ask women to give up their careers to raise children when it is not asked of men.

      3) “On another note are that many women interested in going into engineering? ”
      Yes! If women were not interested in engineering, why do you think more and more women are pursuing it? Women in the past didn’t have the opportunity to pursue careers in science, and now that women have the opportunity, the numbers are increasing greatly. There is nothing inherent about women that makes them less interested in science/engineering than men.

      4) You say that your IT classes have a lot more men than women. I’d like to offer you a (well supported) reason for this. There are deep-rooted stereotypes in our society. One such stereotype is that men are much better at science/math than women. If a girl thinks that the boys in her class are better at science/math simply because they are boys, she will be less likely to pursue careers in those fields and will explore other options. These stereotypes can become apparent at early ages. Yes, women have the opportunity to pursue science/math. But these stereotypes can discourage women from pursuing careers in these fields. That being said, we are making headway on disproving these stereotypes, which I think inspires more women to go into science/math.

      As a closing comment, I’d like to say that women are not born with the sole purpose of growing up to have babies and staying home to take care of them. We are intelligent, we have aspirations, and we make incredible contributions. It is unfair to put women in a position where they are unable to pursue their aspirations because of stereotypical gender roles.

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      • Thanks for the well thought out reply. I appreciate it. I almost didn’t leave a comment because I expected to be flamed.

        I didn’t mean to come off sounding like I don’t think there should be women in science and engineering. In a prior job of mine one of the sharpest IT workers we had was a woman who has forgot more about computers than I’ll know.

        That said I can’t stand it when some women look down their noses at my wife and the millions like her that choose to stay home.

        Hey megancase, I don’t live under a bridge. ;-)

    • Thanks for your concern, troll. You say your comment was intended to “get people to think”, as if there was something novel in what you have to say, rather than it being the same tired crap we hear every single day of our lives. One could say we’ve already thought about it, a lot.

      Equality is not about whether we “need” more women or men in any profession, it´s about individuals being able to choose to do what they want to do with their lives without society’s gender roles dictating it for them. Boys should grow up knowing it’s a great choice to be a stay-at-home parent if that’s what they want to do, and girls need to grow up hearing fewer comments like yours so that they won’t be discouraged from studying the sciences.

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  55. Nice post. It isn’t often that we see women openly discussing feminism in a non-social science field. So thanks.
    I recently saw a news show about the gender gap and the sad thing was that for my native Canada – the gap is spreading. A lot. Women are losing ground and I wonder if part of the problem is that things are OK. Perhaps if things were worse we’d fight harder – the frog in the pot of water and all.
    As a scientist turned mommy, I know that things are only just OK for those who choose to stay home any more than the government-funded time frame.

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  56. This is a great post, and many interesting responses. Like my compatriot, YouGetWellSoon, I know that, while the advances for women in formerly male-dominated fields such as medicine, law and engineering are improving in Canada, in the area I work (finance and investing) there has been almost no progress for women in the last decade. Women still make up only about 17% of the investment advisors, portfolio managers, traders, investment bankers, etc. There is a sense that, as was mentioned in another response, historically girls were not encouraged to pursue maths and sciences in school, and many assumed that careers such as engineering and economics require too much math, and we just don’t get it. I, myself, have an English degree, and took a curcuitous route to becoming an investment advisor. But now I’m a strong advocate for women becoming aware of the great careers that can be theirs in both retail and institutional capital markets arenas. There is also a tremendous need for women to become more financially literate (the last two years of terrible markets have brought that home to many). This also speaks to the historical bias that money was something that men handled.

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  58. It’s amazing to read your article. Hope it’s not too late to say “happy international women’s day” to you. According to your statistics, I really feel that how great women is. I am so proud to be a woman and I will improve myself anywhere and anytime.

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  61. Gender Bind / Unfair Share

    In Times of India [ March 08,2011 ], Ms. Rema Nagarajan provides following insights :

     Women own 1 per cent of the world’s wealth, have a 10 per cent share in global income

     Women comprise half the world’s population but occupy just 14 per cent of leadership positions in the private and public sector

     Of the 1.4 billion people living on less than $ 1 a day, 70 per cent are women and girls

     Women do two-thirds of the world’s work, but earn only 10 percent of the income

     Women produce half of the world’s food, but own just 1 per cent of its land

     Of the almost 900 million adults worldwide who can’t read or write, two-thirds are women

    Will mankind [ on “ Women’s Day “ 2011, should I say, womankind ? ] manage to bridge this gender gap by end of 21st Century ?

    With regards

    hemen parekh

    http://www.CustomizeResume.com

    Jobs for All = Peace on Earth

    Reply ↓

  63. Happy International women ‘s day is great. It’s a day for women to feel great about themselves and to prove were not stupid. I think we deserve a day like this for all those hard smart working women out there. Stay strong and keep your head up.

    I’m in love with this post great job…

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  67. Love your blog. My dad was a physicist too, and my mom a pharmacist. They both instilled an appreciation for learning about the sciences, but I am still missing their dedication to hard work! I support a local foundation that encourages education in the sciences and because of your site, I will see if have any initiatives to inspire female students. Thanks for the great blog.

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  68. Pingback: Happy International Women’s Day! (via Physicist/Feminist) | 41cmc's Blog

  76. I really like your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you create this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you? Plz answer back as I’m looking to create my own blog and would like to know where u got this from. kudosBirmingham Roofing Contractors, 3506 Inverness Landing, Birmingham, AL 35242 – (205) 301-2113

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