104 4. WOMEN MATHEMATICIANS5. The situation today
To bring the story of the progress of women in mathematics up to the present would
require writing about people whose careers are still continuing. Even when people
are willing to write about themselves, reporting on what they wrote is risky; there
is a danger of putting the wrong emphasis on what they have said and giving an
impression that they did not intend. For that reason we shall not discuss any more
biographies, but consider only how the small window of opportunity available to
the pioneering women mathematicians has been enlarged to a size comparable with
that available to men, and ask what more needs to be done. For examples the
reader is referred to the book of Henrion (1997), which contains interviews with a
number of women and is aimed at overcoming persistent stereotypes about women
in the profession of mathematics.
Although a mathematical education was formally available to women through-
out the twentieth century, social conditioning discouraged young girls from aiming
at such a career. As a result, few of them ever even realized that they might
have the talent to be mathematicians or scientists. Colleges of engineering and
medicine were full of young men; colleges of education and nursing were full of
young women. There was very little "osmosis" between these two "cells" until the
women's movement began in earnest in the 1970s. Only when significant numbers
of women sought admission to scientific careers did the difficulties experienced by
the few women already in those careers come to public attention. What was re-
vealed was a wide variety of ways of discriminating—women not being admitted
to some of the universities where the best work was being done, being ranked at a
lower priority when applying for jobs, being asked personal questions about their
families, offered lower salaries, being ignored in class, not being taken seriously in
applications for graduate work, not: being guided and mentored properly so as to
encourage them to seek advanced degrees, being asked to do menial administra-
tive work during probationary periods, and the like. Overcoming these problems
required both antidiscrimination and affirmative-action legislation. It also involved
patiently educating the public, men and women alike, in new ways of "conducting
business." University administrators had to learn how to mentor young women
faculty members to channel their work into areas likely to lead to tenure. The fac-
ulty members themselves had to learn to fight against the "good citizen" impulses
that got them onto too many committees, into too much curriculum work, and the
sacrifice of a great deal of time trying to be the best teacher possible, all at the
expense of research.^22
What now remains to be done? If we assume that the offices of affirmative
action/equal opportunity at our major industries and universities are doing their
job properly - and if they are not, legal redress is available for those with the
courage to pursue it the main work remaining is educational. Most of all, both
boys and girls in their early teens need to be shown how scientists actually spend
their time, what their jobs consist of. Without that kind of information, they
are likely to judge a profession by the difficulty of the courses they are taking
(^22) This sentence was written from the point of view of what is in the best interest of a faculty
member seeking tenure. The best interest of the institution and its students and the greater
good of society as a whole may very well be advanced through working on committees, develop-
ing curricula, and being the best possible teacher; but unless the prevailing attitudes change at
major universities, a probationary faculty member is not advised to pursue tenure through those
activities.