Women Can Not be Held Back -- Interesting Take on the AAUW Report

I guess that it is all in one's perspective and that is precisely one of the big issues and problems. Jeff Jacoby in today's Boston Globe, in an OpEd piece, comments on the AAUW report, "Why So Few?" which identified “striking disparity’’ between the numbers of men and women in the so-called STEM fields: science, technology, engineering, and math. His take on this research study appears under the headlines of his article, Good News on Women in Science, which is completely contrary to recent articles in the media that he cites: “Bias Called Persistent Hurdle for Women in Sciences,’’ from The New York Times and the AOL News in the “Report: Stereotypes, Bias Hurt Women in Math and Science,’’ in which I am quoted.

Jacoby notes that: In the workforce women are now highly visible in many scientific fields. My take on this, even if there is only one of us, and, especially if we are in the minority, females tend to stick out like sore thumbs, so, obviously, we will be highly visible, even if there is only one of us! I recall giving a plenary lecture in Switzerland, yes, in the new millennium to an auditorium filled with only males. I recall when "she" would identify me since I was one of the very few women in my field. Even today, I am the only female in my subject area in my department and the level of service that I do as a named chaired professor is tiers above that done by any male but it isn't recognized nor noticed. So I get up around 3AM in the morning so that I can do my research before the official "work day" begins.

Jacoby writes: but where women do have an interest, they cannot be held back. Entering a profession does not mean that one will necessarily succeed in it and the need to prove oneself constantly never stops. Luckily, loving the research that one does plus having great students makes up, in part, for some of the extreme workload.

Here is the link to my earlier post on this blog on this subject.

A Female Academic Who Did It in Reverse Order and a Painful Anniversary

The recent AAUW report, which I blogged about, has certainly stirred up the waters, and I thank Dana Chivvis of AOLNews for further disseminating the important news about this study on how sterotypes and bias hurt women in math and science.

Now for some background on my personal history. In a sense, I was lucky, since I chose, while I was a doctoral student in Applied Mathematics at Brown University, a female as my dissertation advisor. Her name was Dr. Stella Dafermos, and she was the ONLY female who had an appointment in either the Division of Applied Mathematics or in Engineering (let's say that she was "double-counted," something I have experienced as well). She was also a mother with two children and her husband, Dr. Constantine Dafermos, was a very well-known applied mathematician, who was a Professor at Brown. I was Stella's first doctoral student and the impact that she had on me was tremendous. She was only the second female to receive a PhD in Operations Research in the world and she died at age 49 of cancer. I wrote her obituary in the top journal "Operations Research," and she was one of only a handful honored in that way.

On April 5, 2010, we mark the 20th anniversary of the death of this great female scholar, whose numerous research contributions in transportation, networks, spatial economics, game theory, algorithms, and variational inequalities have made and continue to make a great impact. Oh, the adventures that we had with Stella during conferences in Canada, Holland, Greece, Japan, the USA, among other places.

Now I am conducting research on paradoxes and the work that Stella and I did together and published I am now using years after (and many others have, in the meantime, as well). She had an uncanny intuition and great attention to detail and exceptional creativity.

As for "doing it in reverse order," female academics do not have it easy. First, I got tenure (after 4 years, which is unusually quick). Then I became a Full Professor (8 years after my PhD) -- the first one in the history (or should I say "herstory") in the Isenberg School (and the number of letters that were solicited for my Full is probably a record but one has to make sure that a female is "good enough," I guess). Then I had a child and after a month of "sick leave," granted to me less than willingly, I was back to teaching. That major event followed with my getting my driver's license (and that is quite the story in itself) but I had felt that I could be quite objective researching transportation, networks, and logistics, w/o a driver's license. Besides, while growing up in Yonkers we almost always took public transportation and spent a great deal of time in NYC and, as an academic, most of the interesting invitations that I was receiving required air travel. Robert Moses never got his license and neither did Barbara Walters, so I always thought that I was in rather "good company."

We need female faculty in technical fields to show new generations of students what is possible. Remember, once you solve that research problem that you have been struggling with, and all the pieces of the puzzle fall beautifully in place, that feeling is close to ecstasy. Noone can take that feeling away from you but also, remember, you had better publish that result, as well.