How many women actually go into science?

[Genecks]

I never really see women in science these days. From being at my college for over two years, I've only come across one woman who explicitly stated she was a science major. Now, I don't know about other countries and nations, but I'm still thinking America has that science vs. art gap it did in the past decades.

 

I like to think about the past, in terms of how girls didn't really mess with video games, technology, and more because it was a "guy thing."

 

However, I do see more women messing with technology, science, and more. Yet I don't see many women taking it up as a career. I continue to see women with interests in psychology, business, and nursing. Albeit, nursing requires knowledge of science, it doesn't necessarily make someone a science major.

 

So, does anyone have a rough idea of how many women actually take up science or a field of science as a career/major? Any statistics?

 

I'd hate to be biased, but I'm thinking not a lot of women are into science, perhaps 10% of women.

[ecoli]

My research lab (Microbio & genetics) has the same number of men and women. All my classes are about 50/50 as well.

 

So, I don't know what uni you go to, but it certainly is representative of all of them.

 

It also depends what type of science you're talking about. More women enter biology than physics.

[Pangloss]

Several bills are currently working their way through the US Congress designed to increase funding on academic scholarships aimed at mathematics and science. We have a thread about it over on the Politics board:

http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=26212

 

This article has some statistics from the National Science Foundation on math and science college students:

http://media.www.tuftsdaily.com/media/storage/paper856/news/2007/04/25/Features/By.The.Numbers.Women.In.Science.And.Engineering-2878908.shtml

 

It states that only 26.3% of female college freshmen intended to major in science or engineering in 2004. That compares with 40.8% of male students. The number for women is down from 34% in 1991.

 

Only 0.4% intended to go into computer science. (Compared with 4.1% of men -- both dangerously low numbers!)

 

On a more positive note, amongst 2004 graduates the numbers for men and women were almost even at a quarter-mill each.

 

In answer to your question, according to the article there are about three times as many men as women in science and engineering fields.

[geoguy]

The majority of medical students in many institutions are women and the vast majority of nursing science degrees are women. Women, far from under represnted, are over represented in the medical sciences...the biggest area of science employment.

[insane_alien]

in my chemical engineering course abut 10% of the people are women. about the same number of my lecturers as well.

[Sepiraph]

There were a handful of female students in my physics program, on a per class basis it would be like less than 10%. There were a few girls that took the 4th year General Relativity course which ironically wasn't a requisite in our cirriculum (I didn't even take it myself meaning I never learn GR with my BSc but I know a bit about Quantum Computation). Although I don't recall any girl taking abstract algebra classes like Group Theory or Field Theory. Overall I think about 5-6 graduated in my year.

 

Then again you can have Winnie Cooper in your mathematics program, she even has an Erdos number!

[ajb]

In physics ther are very few women. Im my undergraduate class of about 30 there was 3 or so. In my MSc there was again only a few women.

 

In Mathematics it looks more like 50/50 or so, maybe a little less for PhD. But then very few go to do postdoc or become leturers in either maths or physics.

 

 

How many maths or physics women professors can you name? Pesonally, only a few.

 

In last months "Physics World" (the magazine of the IOP) the question of if we should recruit more women in physics or not was raised.

[Guest Giberelina]

I'm studying Biology and there are more women than men. Maybe this is just because the economic situation here (Argentina) somehow men still feels more pressure to study something profitable, and science isn't exactly profitable in subdeveloped country

Inside biology we have more women dedicating to morphology and ecology. Not me, I study evolution, genetics and microbiology. About that, don't forget Marguilis

[pandphomemades]

I have no stats, but your remark about science versus art caught my eye. I have degrees in both music (undergrad) and microbiology (grad).

 

On the site etsy.com, if you search under handmade for MSOE or Mad Scientists of Etsy, you will find women with wonderful degrees and professions who make beautiful art objects related to science.

 

I embroider microbiology and histology fantasies and crochet models of hyperbolic space. If you'd like something created especially for you, contact me at (link removed by mod)

Edited March 22, 2009 by Phi for All
link removal

[Paralith]

I worked in a biomedical genetics lab at a hospital for a little over a year, and it was 60 - 70% women. My group in particular had one man in it for a short period of time before he got a job elsewhere, and after that we were a seven-woman group until I left. There were a lot of people there from India, China, and Taiwan though. However my Indian colleagues were not at all surprised by the ratio like I was - apparently it's been typical for quite some time for the biomedical colleges there to be majority female. Biology is definitely the field we're taking by storm.

 

I'm currently an an evolutionary anthropology department whose student body is the vast majority women. My entering cohort was 100% women.

[Kaeroll]

My course (undergraduate chemistry) is around 50/50, perhaps slightly more women than men. The academics in the department, conversely, are almost all men - most of the women are either technicians or have only just obtained their doctorate.

 

I know a lass on an electronic engineering course who is one of maybe two, three girls on her course. As others have said, it does seem highly variable.

 

Kaeroll

[chitrangda]

I'm the only female in my astrophysics research lab and just 5 of us in total institution!

[CaptainPanic]

How many women actually go into science?

 

Just to be on the safe side, I'd say: "At least two".

 

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[SH3RL0CK]

Why should women (or men for that matter) go into science, when the big money is in other fields? Society rewards the actors, CEO's, athletes, etc. much more than scientists in terms of pay, respect, working conditions, etc. What scientist ever got a million dollar or more bonus from a company needing hundreds of billions of dollars from the government just to survive?

[chitrangda]

 

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lol..

[Kaeroll]

Why should women (or men for that matter) go into science, when the big money is in other fields? Society rewards the actors, CEO's, athletes, etc. much more than scientists in terms of pay, respect, working conditions, etc. What scientist ever got a million dollar or more bonus from a company needing hundreds of billions of dollars from the government just to survive?

There are motivations other than money, y'know.

[CharonY]

Yes, for instance doing research that interest you. Ow heck, but you can't do that if you don't score one of the few tenured position once you hit the mid-forties. Shoot.

 

But generally it is like already stated. The ratio F/M is highest in biology and drops in chemistry and further in physics (when we talk about the big branches of natural sciences). In each subdiscipline there are also differences, of course. Bioinformatics tended to be male dominated, for instance.

[SH3RL0CK]

There are motivations other than money, y'know.

 

Of course these motivations are why so many people do enter these fields. In fact, I really do enjoy the work I do. And a science career isn't a bad career IMO...but my point is that there is a practical side to be considered as well. Why work so very hard for almost no pay in the hopes that you might land one of the very few decent paying positions?

 

Instead, I suspect some people are chosing to work hard for a degree that will pay well and/or doesn't require as much work. The motivation would be, of course, to do be able to do something you would enjoy such as travel the world (with the extra money) or go fishing (with the extra time).

[sugashana]

Many women go into the sciences. Sadly I'm afraid... They don't really hang out here.

[Paralith]

My mother makes pretty good money doing what she does, but I've grown up knowing how stressed out her job and makes her and how much she generally hates it. That's a large part of the reason why I said to myself one day, "I'm going to be working for the majority of my life. At the very least I want it to be work I can enjoy." And off into the sciences I went!

[sugashana]

I'm in the sciences, but yes... More of the medical field.