Berkeley tops in US for female PhDs in science

(Correction: Because of an editing error, a headline on a story about the University of California at Berkeley in Monday's Nation pages incorrectly stated that Berkeley was ''tops in US for female PhDs in science." A study reported that of women who earned doctorates in science or engineering from 1997 to 2001, more had received bachelor's degrees from Berkeley than from any other college.)

BERKELEY, Calif. -- The University of California at Berkeley is known for having an activist faculty and a diverse student body with liberal politics and for providing a high-quality education at a fraction of the price charged at Ivy League schools.

The flagship university of the country's most populous state, for decades a leading scientific research institution, has another distinction that is not widely known: It is the nation's top producer of women who receive doctorates in science or engineering.

A National Science Foundation study last year reported that of the women who earned doctorates in science or engineering from 1997 to 2001, more had received bachelor's degrees from Berkeley than from any other college. With the exception of Cornell University, which ranked second, and Harvard University, which ranked fifth, the top 10 were all large state universities like Berkeley. Math doctorates are counted as science degrees in the study.

A National Science Foundation study done in 1998 identified Berkeley as having directly awarded doctorates in those fields to more women than any other college during the early 1990s. By that measure, the nation's 10 leaders were again state flagships, except for Cornell University and Stanford University. Harvard ranked 12th.

Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers's controversial remarks in January about the roles of ''issues of intrinsic aptitude," discrimination, and work-family balance in limiting the number of female professors of science and math called attention to the number of women with doctorates in those fields, the prerequisite for permanent jobs on university faculties.

Because of his comments, Summers faces votes on two motions when Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences meets tomorrow. A motion admonishing him for the remarks and for his managerial style is considered more likely to pass than the other, a motion of ''no confidence."

Nationally, the percentage of women earning doctorates in science, engineering, and math has grown more than four-fold since the 1960s, suggesting considerable change in public attitudes about those fields being for men. Women have gone from receiving 8 percent of science and engineering doctorates in 1966 to earning 37 percent in 2001. In mathematics, the increase has been from 6 percent in 1966 to 25 percent in 2000.

According to a study last year by the American Mathematical Society, Berkeley ranked fourth in granting math doctorates to women from 1995 to 2003, behind the University of Maryland, UCLA, and the University of Illinois. In an earlier survey by the Providence-based society, Berkeley was second to MIT in doctorates awarded to women in the 1980s.

In the case of Berkeley's math department, its relative success with women doctoral students appears related to programs developed on campus that interest girls before they reach college in studying the subject, provide an extra year of training for doctoral candidates whose undergraduate colleges lack rigorous math programs, and engage women students in a scholarly support group.

But despite the department's women-friendly atmosphere, the presence of women on the math faculty falls far short of the national pool available, with them holding only 3 of 58, or 5 percent, of active, tenured teaching posts. Some women say issues of gender bias linger.

Theodore A. Slaman, chairman of Berkeley's math department, said that when seeking top faculty talent, ''we really don't care where that person comes from, how they look, or what gender they are. The primary concern for us is mathematical ability."

Some women are admitted into graduate study through the Math Opportunity program, which Slaman said is designed to boost the performance of students who did their undergraduate work at smaller schools.

''They don't have the level of training that you would get in a place that is pumping out the scientists like Berkeley or MIT," he said. ''We give them an extra year to get up to speed to enter the program. We have allocated 10 percent of our admissions to people in that situation."

Because mathematics is a field where work is done individually, rather than in a team, interaction with faculty and colleagues is critical to ignite the spark of inspiration. ''It's mentoring and it's also peer support," Slaman said.

Typically, a small circle of scholars in the same specialty probe their chosen mathematical conundrum in circumstances that may appear informal but involve serious work -- for example, in pubs or on the golf course. According to Jenny Harrison, a Berkeley math professor, women are sometimes left out of these preponderantly male sessions.

The Noetherian Ring was founded at Berkeley in 1991 by female graduate students in math who sought personal and academic reinforcement from other women scholars amid a sea of male peers. They named their group after a mathematical principle discovered by Emmy Noether, a German mathematician who taught at Bryn Mawr College in the 1930s.

Sami Assaf, a fourth-year graduate student who is an officer of the Noetherian Ring, said it sponsors seminars ''in a more nurturing setting," where women can be comfortable giving talks and where question-and-answer sessions help prepare scholars for lectures and colloquia.

The University of Maryland at College Park, which produces the highest number of women graduating with math doctorates, hosts a similar organization, Women in Mathematics. Besides Berkeley, campus chapters of the Noetherian Ring exist at other colleges, including MIT, Princeton University, and Johns Hopkins University. Assaf disputed hypotheses that math ability is gender-related and that family demands hinder the advancement of women in the field.

''An individual brings something that is very special into mathematics, and that creativity can really help open up new areas of mathematics for exploration," she said. ''Academics, at least in math, is very conducive to spending time with your family. Math is something I can do anywhere."

Despite the increasing number of women earning math doctorates, Assaf suggested that girls being taught to believe that they cannot do math, or that the subject is for boys, remains an obstacle.

''Socialization, I feel, is the real root of the problem," she said. ''You are going to have fewer women going into graduate school, because every step along the way there have been cutbacks in the number of women who are encouraged to go."

Several decades ago, Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science began the Equals program to address that problem.

Equals offers tools and strategies to students, educators, and parents that make math more accessible to children who have trouble with the subject. Equals now has a presence in California and other states, including Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois, whose universities are seeing more women doctoral candidates, although no one has systematically tracked the education of program participants over the years.

Karen Mayfield-Ingram, coordinator of Equals, said that while boys get toys that encourage mathematical thinking, ''girls have things, traditionally in society, that reinforce their language skills -- playing with dolls, writing, music, and drama. Those things are learned experiences."

What is needed, she said, is access to more experiences to develop their confidence in math and science. ''If you wait until you get to the college level to have these experiences, you have quite a bit to make up," she said.

Even in Berkeley's graduate math program, the level of acceptance of women is described as uneven.

Harrison, for example, accused the department of sexual discrimination when she was denied tenure in 1986. Her case continued acrimoniously within the university and in the courts, until a settlement was reached and she was granted tenure in 1993.

Harrison said that while it was difficult during that period, there have been improvements. ''I appealed to the chairman for help because I needed support for my research, because it was breaking through to some new territory, and he came through and gave me what I needed," she said. ''So I really have no complaints in the last couple of years." But, she added, ''It's not perfect."

Assaf said her shorter experience has also been mixed, but said she sees growing equity for minorities and women.

''I think there is a lot of consciousness about it," she said. ''Look at the trends . . . As math is seen to be more attractive and well connected with the rest of science, even the biological sciences, it will make it more attractive to a lot of people." When asked whether he sees growing equity in math and sciences, Slaman said, ''I think there is a lot of consciousness about it, and my personal guess is that the answer is yes."