From: "Dan Gray" <DGRAY@justin-siena.napanet.net>
To: pinhole@exploratorium.edu
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 1997 12:10:20 PST
Subject: Re: discrimination
This raises another serious problem for physical science
teachers: Why are so few young women persuing careers in the
physical sciences and engineering? What can we do as teachers to
address and correct this? What are we doing wrong? What are some of
us doing right?
Dan Gray
dgray@justin-siena.napanet.net
> Interesting. In my department, the opposite has happened: all the
> physics, chemistry and physical science teachers (total of 7) are women,
> and all the biology and physiology teachers (total of 4) are men. I was
> kind of surprised by this when I started teaching there, since this is very
> different from the distribution of men and women in biology, chemistry and
> physics departments at universities. However, someone pointed out to me
> that it may still fit with the problem of limited representation of women
> in the physical sciences: maybe men with physics or chemistry degrees are
> more likely to continue in research rather than become teachers, and women
> with physics or chemistry degrees are more likely to teach. Or maybe this
> is just a random effect at my school.
> Also interesting is that all of the men are white, but the women
> science teachers are relatively diverse [5/7 are women of color]. This
> makes the science department more diverse than the school in general, which
> I think has a pretty large majority of white teachers, which also goes
> opposite the trend in science research that people of color are
> underrepresented.
>
> So? Who knows?
>
> Suzy Loper
>
>
> >Has anyone else out there experienced discrimination in class assignments
> >in science departments? For instance, the men in the department taking
> >all of the physics and chemistry classes, leaving the woman with the
> >physical science classes (even though the woman is more qualified)?
> >
> >If you have any advice, I would appreciate hearing from you. Thanks, gang!!
>
> Suzy Loper
> suzanna@seismo.berkeley.edu
> suzyl@socrates.berkeley.edu (not yet functioning)
>
>
>
>