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Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering
2006, National Academy Press. Executive Summary available as a pdf

Daniell, Ellen, 2006. Every Other Thursday: Stories and Strategies from Successful Women

From Publishers Weekly

Molecular biologist Daniell and fellow women scientists created a support network to commiserate and strategize about the difficulties of being female in the still male-dominated world of science. Founded on the precepts of radical psychiatry, the group (called simply Group) gathers every other week with a format that will be familiar to anyone who's sat through a women's group session: time is set aside for each member to discuss issues in her life, and others encourage her to verbalize all of her emotions while offering support. The lesson that a feminine support system is important to a modern career-driven woman is not new, nor is it limited to science. But the book's real failing is that instead of addressing Group members' journeys through science as women, it focuses on the same career roadblocks, personal disasters and need for self-empowerment that one finds in any self-help book ("I am entitled to be myself. I'm entitled to be successful"). Rather than hard-nosed help for aspiring young women scientists, this book, while it includes interesting passages on the machinations of university politics, essentially offers material that should best have remained within the Group. (Mar.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Daniell, former professor of molecular biology and 25-year member of a support group for women scientists, offers a personal look at her group based on the principles of radical psychiatry. Daniell and her sister scientists established a group dynamic in which each member asks for a specific time period in which to raise an issue and seek constructive and practical feedback. The group explores ways to navigate through such professional problems as time management; the challenges inherent in university structures, including the publish-or-perish edict; the hard road to tenure; and mentoring students. Issues outside their professional lives come under scrutiny as well, including family problems, illness, and retirement plans. These successful, high-achieving women hope to foster cooperation in the increasingly competitive academic world, offering guidelines for women and men who are interested in establishing their own version of a working group. Daniell's sharp writing style and focus make this a pleasurable and informative read. Pamela Crossland

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Etzkowitz, Henry, Kemelgor, Carol, and Uzzi, Brian, 2000. Athena Unbound: The Advancement of Women in Science and Technology

Heim, Pat and Golant, Susan K., 2005. Hardball for Women: Rev. Ed.

Reviews are from the first edition

From Publishers Weekly

In this constructive, no-nonsense guide, business consultant Heim addresses women executives who, despite technical proficiency, hard work and managerial skills equal or superior to those of their male co-workers, have been passed over for promotions. With Golant ( No More Hysterectomies ), she stresses the need for women to study the sports-modeled, competitive culture of men, focused on money and status, and to learn to work according to its rules without betraying their "inner selves." Using sports jargon and examples, she advises such techniques as attacking a problem--not the person responsible--adhering to team goals and accepting criticism from a "coach." She also offers valuable tips on positive body language (no tears), dressing and more, and reminds women that "in a man's world--as in sports--winning is all that matters."

Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The game of business (and here you can substitute any profession) is hardball, played according to the rules of the male culture. Heim acts as an interpreter, explaining the different behaviors and mind-sets boys and girls learn and carry into their lives as adult men and women. For example, boys learn to compete; girls learn to get along. Each chapter begins with a summary of the hardball lessons boys learn and the house-and-doll lessons girls learn and concludes with key pointers for playing hardball successfully. Concepts are illustrated with compelling real-life examples. This landmark work will likely become essential reading for professional women everywhere. At the same time, it offers men considerable insight into the strengths and contributions of the female culture. Highly recommended.

- Nancy Myers, Univ. of South Dakota Lib., Vermillion

Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc

Preston, Anne E., 2004. Leaving Science: Occupational Exit from Scientific Careers

Book Description

The past 30 years have witnessed a dramatic decline in the number of U.S. students pursuing advanced degrees in science and an equally dramatic increase in the number of professionals leaving scientific careers. "Leaving Science" provides the first significant examination of this worrisome new trend. Economist Anne E. Preston examines a wide range of important questions: Why do professionals who have invested extensive time and money on a rigorous scientific education leave the field? Where do these scientists go and what do they do? What policies might aid in retaining and improving the quality of life for science personnel? Based on data from a large national survey of nearly 1,700 people who received university degrees in the natural sciences or engineering between 1965 and 1990 and a subsequent in-depth follow-up survey, "Leaving Science" provides a comprehensive portrait of the career trajectories of men and women who have earned science degrees. Alarmingly, by the end of the follow-up survey, only 51 percent of the original respondents were still working in science. During this time, federal funding for scientific research decreased dramatically relative to private funding. Consequently, the direction of scientific research has increasingly been dictated by market forces, and many scientists have left academic research for income and opportunity in business and industry. Preston identifies the main reasons for people leaving scientific careers as dissatisfaction with compensation and career advancement, difficulties balancing family and career responsibilities, and changing professional interests. Highlighting the difference between male and female exit patterns, Preston shows that most men left because they found scientific salaries low relative to perceived alternatives in other fields, while most women left scientific careers in response to feelings of alienation due to lack of career guidance, difficulty relating to their work, and insufficient time for their family obligations.

"Leaving Science" contains a unique blend of rigorous statistical analysis with voices of individual scientists, ensuring a rich and detailed understanding of an issue with profound consequences for the nation’s future. A better understanding of why professionals leave science can help lead to changes in scientific education and occupations and make the scientific workplace more attractive and hospitable to career men and women.

Rosser, Sue. V. 2004. The Science Glass Ceiling: Academic Women Scientists and the Struggle to Succeed

Review

A dean at the Georgia Institute of Technology and one of the foremost experts on women in the sciences interviews some of the nation's top female academic scientists to illuminate the obstacles to gender equality and propose practical strategies for their elimination.

–Chicago Tribune

Book Description

In 1996 several female faculty members at MIT released a shocking report charging institutionalized discrimination at the university. They revealed some alarming facts: there were 22 women and 252 male faculty, and men and women of equal rank and seniority were routinely given disparate forms of compensation, all favoring the men, from better pay to more lab space to more research assistants. These revelations rippled through the halls of academia and made everyone take a closer look at similarly respected science institutions. In 2001, the administrations at all of the major science and technology universities knew they had a major problem to deal with.

In this timely and invaluable study, Sue Rosser chronicles the plight of women faculty across the country noting the difficulties, double standards, and backlash that they routinely face. Interviewing some of the country's top female scientists about their research and the routine barriers faced, she came up with suggestions and solutions for changing the science and technology culture at universities in order to establish a more level playing field.

Seymour, Elaine, 2000. Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave The Sciences

Valian, Virginia, 1999. Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women

From Kirkus Reviews

A scholarly and convincing explanation of women's slow progress in the professions. Whether in business, law, medicine, or academia, women are not advancing at the same rate as men. They're not paid as well, they occupy less-powerful positions, and they are not as respected. In this copiously researched book, Valian (Psychology and Linguistics/Hunter Coll.) attempts to explain why. She argues that we all have unarticulated, often subconscious ideas about gender that affect both our behavior and, perhaps even more importantly, our evaluations of one another. For instance, we think men are logical, women are social; men are competent, women are flaky. As a result, men are consistently overrated and women underrated by coworkers, bosses--and themselves. The resulting advantages and disadvantages may be small, but they accrue over time to create large gaps in advancement. Valian reviews numerous studies, enlivens her material with personal anecdotes, and offers both personal and societal solutions. She looks not only at the workplace, but at its context--data on how girls and boys are raised and educated differently and the extremely inconclusive biological research on men and women's ``inherent'' differences (she has a refreshingly balanced take on the latter, noting that there may be a few differences, but they don't justify our discriminatory assumptions and practices). Throughout much of the book, Valian is in effect synthesizing the work of other researchers--but her take on the material, which draws richly on a linguist's sensitivity to nuances of verbal exhcanges, is fresh, and it's worth doing, since few readers will ever see the obscure studies she cites. Probably too academic in tone for most readers, but for anyone concerned about gender inequality--or perhaps even more importantly, readers who think they aren't--it's worth a look. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Why So Slow? is a breakthrough in the discourse on gender and has great potential to move the women's movement to a new, more productive phase."

Publisher's Weekly

Xie, Yu and Shauman, Kimberlee A., 2003. Women in Science: Career Processes and Outcomes

Review

Nature : Do young women take fewer mathematics and science courses in high school than young men, leaving them less prepared and therefore less likely to major in science and engineering fields in college? Is a woman with a bachelor's degree in science and engineering more likely to have begun her college career as a science major, or on a non-science track? This book, ten years in the making, offers definitive and surprising answers to these and other long-standing questions about women in science.

--Abigail J. Stewart and Danielle LaVaque-Manty

Choice : Sociologists Xie and Shauman have prepared this detailed and scholarly study of the career paths of women in science, remarkable for the comprehensive scope of its contents as well as the detail and precision of its findings...It is the most carefully argued and well-documented investigation of both the gender differences in science and the reason women leave science presently available--an important and praiseworthy contribution.

--M. H. Chaplin

Contemporary Sociology : Xie and Shauman's volume Women in Science is a source of rich and detailed empirical analyses that take a bold and justified leap beyond the pipeline model, challenging assumptions and revealing complex processes. The findings and perspective of this study also frame areas for further research.

--Mary Frank Fox

New Scientist : Yu Xie and Kimberlee Shauman explore why so few women opt for a science career. They debunk plenty of myths.

Xie and Shauman skillfully analyze 17 data sets to pinpoint forces that lead fewer women than men into careers in science or engineering. Their scope is the whole life cycle - from high school to graduate school to combining jobs with families. This is the book to read on why most scientists and engineers are men.

--Paula England, Northwestern University

This is an impressive piece of work and is likely to become the standard reference for understanding gender differences with respect to involvement in science for many years to come. The authors are to be particularly congratulated on the scope of their project in terms of the breadth of the life cycle that it covers.

--Christopher Winship, Harvard University

I have not seen any other volume that covers the career process of women as thoroughly as this investigation of how women become scientists and engineers and what causes them to leave these fields at much greater rates than men.

--Suzanne M. Bianchi, University of Maryland

Articles and Short Reports

Achieving Gender Equity in Science Classrooms: A Guide for Faculty compiled by Women Science Students and Science Faculty and Staff of the New England Consortium for Undergraduate Science Education, 1996.

Barres, Ben., "Does Gender Matter?" Ben Barres is a transgendered (female to male) scientist at Stanford. He definitely has a unique perspective and gives some interesting anecdotes about how differently he was treated when people starting perceiving him as a male scientist, as opposed to a female one

Malcolm, Shirley, Hall, Paula Quick, and Brown, Janet Welsh, 1976. The Double Bind: The Price of Being a Minority Woman in Science