Statistics overlooked in critique of gender equity study

CATHY YOUNG'S Oct. 2 op-ed ``Women, science, and the gender gap" failed to highlight key findings in the report from the National Academies, ``Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering."

Inequities between male and female scientists are greatest at the top of the career ladder. Young overlooked alarming statistics that show women are grossly underrepresented in senior faculty positions and top leadership roles. A recent study by the Association of American Medical Colleges found that women account for only 18 percent of section chiefs, 11 percent of department chairs, and 10 percent of deans. The report also shed light on gender inequities that extend beyond the university gates and into publishing, where few women hold the chief-editor position of high-impact science journals.

After having recently attended a meeting of the President's Council on Bioethics in Washington, I would like to point out that of the 18 members sitting on the council only three are women.

Young's position that the National Academies report ``upholds an orthodoxy of female victimization" undermines the challenges that women in science confront every day.

LINDSAY CHURA
Adelaide, Australia

The writer is a Fulbright fellow at the Research Center for Reproductive Health at the University of Adelaide.

CATHY YOUNG'S critique of the National Academies' report on women in the sciences makes assumptions about what it means to be a scientist: total brilliance and total devotion to work. Somehow she assumes that men come by this naturally while an occasional woman or two might make it if they try really hard, especially, she seems to think, if they are Asian-American. What's more, she claims that the leading academic scholars, administrators, and scientists who wrote the report somehow comprise her imagined version of old-fashioned feminists who slant their evidence.

Maybe it would help if Young thought about what it would take to allow anyone, male or female, to have total devotion to work. Maybe she might consider that women who score brilliantly on SAT exams get thwarted in their scientific careers, as the report documents. Maybe she ought to consider that naming the structural barriers to women's scientific achievement isn't crying victim, but is brilliantly and devotedly telling the truth.

SUSAN M. REVERBY
Cambridge

The writer is a professor of women's studies at Wellesley College.