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这里是另外一篇
AWM Book Review
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Gerhard Sonnert and Gerald Holton,Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1995. xvi+215. ISBN 0-8135-2220-x (paper). $16.95. |
From: AWM Newsletter, January/February 1997.
Reviewed by:Marge Murray, Book Review Editor, Department of Mathematics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0123; email: murray@calvin.math.vt.edu.
The year 1997 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the passage of Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon, which prohibited gender discrimination in federally-supported institutions of higher education. Title IX was of signal importance in ameliorating the underrepresentation of women in science, engineering, and mathematics. Women's participation in these fields had always been low, but especially in the years following World War II, owing to an unusual confluence of social, political, and economic factors.
Among the initial responses to Title IX was an abrupt effort on the part of colleges and universities in the United States to increase the number of women on their faculties and research staffs, often by promoting women from temporary positions to tenure in a single step. The longer-term responses to Title IX have been concerned mainly with increasing the representation of women in scientific and technical fields by improving the educational environment for women. If more girls and women are encouraged to study mathematics and science at the elementary, secondary, undergraduate, and graduate levels, then more women will acquire the professional credential --- the Ph.D. --- which prepares them for careers in groundbreaking research.
But what happens to these women once they have received the Ph.D.? And, indeed, what happens to the men upon receipt of this coveted degree? What are the differences and the similarities in their experiences? These are the questions which are addressed in Who Succeeds in Science? The Gender Dimension. This book is one of two reports issued by the Project Access study based at Harvard University. Project Access is a detailed qualitative and quantitative study of nearly 700 men and women who not only received Ph.D.s, but who began their careers in prestigious postdocs awarded by the National Science Foundation, the National Research Council, and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College.
By studying the career paths of men and women whose scientific research careers had such auspicious beginnings, Project Access hoped to understand what goes right and what goes wrong for 'the best and the brightest' men and women in American science. The book is addressed primarily to men and women who are themselves embarking upon scientific research careers.
An introductory chapter, 'Science Careers for Women and Men,' offers a concise introduction to gender issues in scientific careers. Proceeding from the premise that "women scientists, as a group, [are] less likely to have successful careers as men scientists," (p.1), two models are offered to explain this gender disparity.
The 'deficit model' explains that women have less successful careers because they are afforded fewer educational and professional opportunities, and because more "structural obstacles --- legal, political, and social" stand in the way of their progress (p.2). The 'difference model' argues that career differences reflect fundamental distinctions betwen men and women which "are either innate or the result of gender-role socialization and concomitant cultural values" (p.3).
The balance of the first chapter is devoted to a detailed discussion of the factors which can cause women to 'drop out' of science at every stage of the 'pipeline', and to a discussion of the quantitative differences in rank and attainment between the men and the women who persist. Along the way, some speculative reasons, based on both the deficit and the difference models, are offered for the gender differences described. The chapter concludes with a concise statement of why, specifically, policymakers ought to be concerned with the problem of increasing the 'career success rate' of women who have already successfully completed a Ph.D. in science:
In the long run it is reasonable and necessary to interest more young girls in science so that we have a more equitable representation of women among future scientists. But we emphasize that the relatively few women who have made it through a leaky pipeline constitute a valuable human resource that is now available to work at its highest potential. Society has already invested heavily in women scientists who have reached the postdoctoral level, and these women themselves have invested an enormous amount of time and energy in science. Obstacles that prevent them from making full use of their skills and talents are particularly wasteful. Moreover, from an equity point of view, these women have the potential to enter leadership positions in science quickly. Thus, as science administrators, policymakers, and role models, they can boost the future representation of women in science. (pp.14-15)
The core of the book, comprising two large chapters, is a collection of twenty career narratives, organized in two groups of ten. The first group consists of narratives from five men and five women who 'succeeded' in pursuing productive research careers in academic science. The narratives in the second group come from five women and five men who 'took a different road' and are no longer pursuing careers in academic research, whether by choice or by circumstances. Each narrative describes the family background, educational experiences, and postdoctoral career paths of an individual, and at the conclusion of each narrative, the authors offer what they believe to be the 'key points' in the story.
The narratives are based on in-depth interviews in which the subjects were asked to tell their scientific life-story, and were then asked several questions. Each interviewee, was asked to comment upon their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as upon their perception of the relationship of gender to the practice of their scientific specialty. Perhaps not surprisingly, in both groups of stories, personal and family considerations seem to have a much more dramatic and practical impact upon the careers of the women than on those of the men.
The later chapters of the book are devoted to an attempt to synthesize the information gained, not only from the specific narratives appearing in the book, but from the study as a whole. It is interesting to note that the overwhelming majority of interviewees, male and female, ascribe much of their success to luck and timing. Men ascribed their success to good luck slightly more often than men in the overall interview sample (89% of the men versus 85% of the women). This runs somewhat counter to the commonly-held notion that men are more likely to ascribe success to talent, while women are more likely to ascribe it to luck. But, interestingly, women were much more likely than men to mention the significance of bad luck in their experiences (49% of the women and 34% of the men).
The authors suggest that, perhaps more important than the experience of good or bad luck is the individual's response to individual events as they occur. They are particularly persuaded by the 'kick-reaction model' of Jonathan Cole and Burton Singer, which they summarize as follows:
According to Cole and Singer, the course of a career in science can be described as a sequence of kicks from the environment and the scientist's reaction to those kicks. A kick is any event in the environment that has a potential effect on the individual's career, be it positive or negative. Likewise, the individual's reaction to a kick can be positive or negative. Over the course of a career, the pattern of kicks and reactions changes. Positive kicks tend to increase the likelihood of further positive kicks in the future; likewise, negative kicks are bound to spawn further negative kicks. There is, in other words, an accumulation of advantages and disadvantages over time. (p. 180)
It is natural to ask, then, whether the pattern of accumulation of advantages and disadvantages is different for women and for men. In reading the narratives of those who ultimately left academic science, this reviewer came away with the impression that the women in the group really did tend to accumulate 'negative kicks'.
But, curiously, I came away with an equally strong impression upon reading some of the narratives of those who were deflected from science, both men and women: that what was lacking, perhaps, was an enthusiastic, authentic emotional commitment to science. For example, Florence decided to pursue science at the graduate level only after having decided against medicine, languages, and law. Gail came to science rather late in her college career and realized that while
she enjoys the scientific way of thinking as a means of explaining the environment around her, [she] has less interest in the more esoteric and speculative facets of science. She also does not like doing the actual experience. Given her attraction to the practical aspects of science and her lack of enthusiasm for the actual scientific work, her switch from research science to the policy area looks like a logical choice. She has since been a successful professional at the intersection of science and politics.... (p. 93)
This sense of ambivalence and uncertainty is found in some of the men who left academic science as well. One issue that does not seem to be adequately addressed by this study is the role that is played by an individual's natural enthusiasm for scientific work. Persistence, unaccompanied by enthusiasm, does not necessarily produce productivity or 'success' by any measure. This is an issue that should be of some concern to those who argue, as does Sheila Tobias, that we can recruit more young people to science by 'stalking the second tier' of talented students whose interests might be more naturally directed elsewhere.
This reservation notwithstanding, however, I would not hesitate to recommend this book to any young person about to embark on graduate training in the sciences, or to any faculty member or administrator who is concerned with the issues of gender and persistence in science. The fourth and fifth chapters offer interesting insights into the factors which contribute to success and the interplay of gender with these factors. The final chapter consists of advice to students, young scientists, and policymakers alike, offering a bigger picture of the puzzle than is normally visible to the occupants of the nooks and crannies of academe.
The most important contribution of this book, however, lies in the simple presentation of the stories of ordinary men and women who have pursued science to the point of the Ph.D. and beyond. The stories themselves illuminate the academic and scientific culture, and each individual reader will come away from them with his or her own questions about how the culture can be changed to the benefit of everyone. | 
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