“I H AVE SOMETHING to tell you.”
I was ready to head home after giving a lecture about
book documenting the history of sexism in science and its
today—when a soft-spoken woman approached me. She to
studying for a Ph.D. in computer science at a British univ
the only woman in her group. Her supervisor wouldn’t stop
jokes. He never picked her for workshops or conferences.
“Every interaction is awkward for me. I feel intimidated,”
of the time I just find myself counting every minute.” Her p
out the final years of her Ph.D., leave the university, and ne
I’ve had hundreds of these fleeting encounters with wo
and engineers, all over the world, in the two years since
the book—which seems to reflect back at women the kinds
they experience in their own lives. When these women a
events to quietly share their stories, I’ve found what they
is empathy, to be told they aren’t imagining their misery. T
of discrimination, marginalization, harassment, and abuse
though progress has been made, there’s a long way to go.THE SCIENTIFIC ESTABLISHMENT has long had a woeful r
comes to women.
Charles Darwin, no less, described women as the intelle
of men. Toward the end of the European Enlightenment, in
it was assumed that women had no place in academia. M
ties refused even to grant degrees to women until the 20t
alma mater, Oxford University, waited until 1920. It took un
Royal Society of London —the oldest scientific academyI
WHERE
WOMEN
ARE THE
IN
THE VAST MAJORITY of famous scientists are men. Since 1901, 96.7
percent of Nobel laureates have been men. Even today, less than 30 per-
cent of the world’s science researchers are women, says a UN report. Its
conclusion: “Each step up the ladder of the scientific research system sees
a drop in female participation until, at the highest echelons of scientific
research and decision-making, there are very few women left.”
BY ANGELA SAINIILLUSTRATIONS BY LAUREN BREVNER(Í Answer inside.)