Sciences lag behind in female faculty

Although department heads and administrators claim to be doing
all they can to combat the problem, the number of female faculty
members in the sciences at UCLA continues to fall behind the number
of males.

Professors attribute the disparity between male and female
science faculty to a variety of factors, including an early
education that discourages females in science, to institutional
obstacles that affect women from receiving tenured status.

Margaret Kivelson, a professor in earth and space sciences, said
the constantly changing nature of scientific fields makes it more
difficult for women to keep their knowledge current if they need to
take time off for family responsibilities.

“In the scientific disciplines, there are such rapid
changes in the level of knowledge and the things that one needs to
understand well that it’s not possible to take time off if a
person needs to take time off for family responsibilities, and come
back in again and progress with a career,” she said.

Early on in her career, Kivelson decided not to stop working to
tend to family responsibilities and instead chose work part-time
and maintain her level of expertise in the field, she said.

She added that the procedure for gaining tenure is also an
obstacle for women who have children.

The requirements for promotion to tenure after a limited number
of years was adopted decades ago, when there were few women in
faculty, and now needs to be rethought, she said.

“Those few years during which a person has to achieve the
distinction necessary for being advanced to a tenured faculty
position are particularly trying years for many women, in which
they’re likely to be having children or have young children,
and possibly other family responsibilities,” Kivelson said.
“It’s not deliberately opposed to women, it’s
just that it’s a policy that was adopted at a time when women
weren’t part of the picture.”

Andrea Ghez, a professor in the department of physics and
astronomy, said she thought the lack of women in the sciences can
be traced to the early stages of education, and will continue to be
a problem until it is addressed.

Ghez said female scientists have to work harder to prove
themselves.

“You’re assumed stupid until you prove yourself
otherwise. So I think for women there’s a real emphasis on
being very good, because if (women) slip, they all point and say,
“˜see she’s not very good.’ That’s
particularly hard early in people’s careers. The more
advanced you are, the more time you’ve had to prove yourself,
the less these things are an issue,” she said.

But Ghez said UCLA was a “wonderful environment” for
female scientists, and added that though it varies throughout the
campus, her own department was accommodating to her needs when she
had children.

Debate continues over whether female professors with children
are adequately accommodated by the university. Yahya Rahmat-Samii,
the chair of the electrical engineering department, said his
successful female colleagues tend to start families later, and that
even those with younger children can still publish research
effectively, depending on the individual.

The electrical engineering department, which out of 43 full-time
faculty has only three females, struggles with attracting new
female faculty.

“We would definitely like to see more representation of
the female faculty into our faculty membership,” he said.
“Not having enough (women) might indicate to the fact that we
may not be searching for them. But we definitely are searching for
good female faculty.”

Rahmat-Samii said the small pool of female PhD students
indicates a problem earlier on of too few female role models in the
sciences who would encourage young females to pursue science. He
added that the department makes an effort to encourage female PhD
students to pursue faculty positions in the department.

Judith Pike, director of academic personnel for the Henry
Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, said recruiting
of professors is handled at the departmental level, but that the
university makes great efforts to attract female faculty, offering
financial packages and additional incentives such as child
care.

Most recently, the engineering school lost a female professor
candidate to another university.

“She was not only a female, she was also a minority, an
area we were desperate (to fill). We were just so anxious to try to
get her to come because we knew that we needed to build up a
faculty in that area, but it just wasn’t enough,” Pike
said.

Still, the discrepancy between male and female faculty is not
equally large in all departments.

Utpal Banerjee, the chair of molecular, cell and developmental
biology, said that unlike many other departments, his own has a
nearly equal number of men and women, with 10 male and eight female
full-time faculty, down from nine females since the recent death of
a female professor.

Banerjee said that life sciences were neither dominated by men
or women.

“We almost never have to … think about the issue,”
he said. “We sort of take all the applicants, line them up as
the best applicants, and inevitably we get excellent women on top
of the applicant list.”