Empowering women (from left): Sheril Kirshenbaum, Joan Steitz, Sara Seager, Shirley Malcom, and Russlynn Ali

Photo: Hector Emanuel

Just a century ago, half the nation’s brainpower was largely excluded from the highest levels of science education. How times change: In 2009 five of the 13 Nobel laureates (including winners in chemistry, medicine, economics, and literature) were women. That same year women earned more than half of all doctoral degrees in the United States for the first time.

Yet some old patterns persist. Women remain substantially underrepresented in many fields, and many encounter discouraging attitudes at every stage from early education to the peak of their careers.

In partnership with L’Oréal USA, and joined by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), DISCOVER convened a panel in Washington, D.C., to explore ways to help the research community—and the nation—make the most of its female intellectual firepower. Participating in the conversation were Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education; Joan Steitz, a molecular biophysicist at Yale University who studies RNA; Shirley Malcom, head of the directorate for education and human resources at AAAS; and Sara Seager, a planetary scientist and physicist at MIT who studies the atmospheres of planets beyond the solar system. U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson provided introductory comments. Sheril Kirshenbaum, who researches public understanding of science at the University of Texas and blogs for DISCOVER at “The Intersection,” moderated.

KIRSHENBAUM  What are the lingering challenges for women in science in 2010?

MALCOM  Gender still matters with regard to success in science. In a survey of AAAS members, an overwhelming number of women said that they knew of people who had left the sciences because they had trouble integrating their life and their science. I would like to probe how government, industry, academic, nonprofit, and other institutions can help us make better use of women’s talent.

ALI  So much progress has been made over the last three decades that folks tend to think we’re done with the work. But we have so far to go. For example, research from Bayer Corporation reveals that 18 percent of female and minority chemists and chemical engineers say professors discouraged them from pursuing a science career. This is about changing belief systems: the way girls feel about themselves and their potential, and the way their educators do as well.

SEAGER  This is the 21st century, this is America, and we still don’t have equality for women. This is not just philosophy; it matters for America’s future. When you want to have an educated voter population, it’s not going to be there. At the graduate level at MIT, a lot of my best students are from India, China, and Europe. We’re teaching them about technology and how to be leaders in industry. Some will stay here, but others will take that training back to their home countries instead of putting it to work here. Meanwhile, we are constantly losing women students in the sciences. I want the women in the audience here to ask yourselves, are there times in your life when insecurity limited you or inhibited you from doing something? This lack of confidence actually gets amplified when there are not enough women around.

STEITZ  I was appointed to the Yale faculty in 1970. There was one other woman in my department at that time. It was very lonely. Research shows that people who are constantly in the minority suffer from something called “identity threat,” which impairs their ability to contribute to the extent that they otherwise would. And I want to underscore that the things that government does can make a big difference. In the early 1970s, U.S. Secretary of Labor George Shultz told universities that if they didn’t at least have plans for increasing the number of women on their faculties, they might lose their federal grants. Nobody lost their grants, but there was a big increase in the number of women as a result.