Lisa Pratt feels like she has it all. Geologist, mother and wife, she's made it into the elite of her profession while still making time to have a family. \nSome would say Pratt's success is a sure sign that women are now welcome in the world of science.\nBut Pratt doesn't say that. In fact, she says her success is a matter of luck.\n"I feel like I've led a sort of charmed existence, that the timing all worked out for me that I could have both," said Pratt, an IU geology professor.\nBut Pratt said she worries most women might not have her luck. And she might be right. There is still no sure path to success for women in the sciences, especially those who want to have families. And although signs are looking good for women -- who are entering science at record rates -- the hard fact is that women still make up only 11 percent of natural and mathematical sciences tenure-track faculty at IU, according to a 2002 report on the status of women at IU. \nThe challenge of balancing a fast and unrelenting career with family is a major reason women lag behind, Pratt said. This is where she says luck kicked in for her: she didn't have children until she was tenured -- at nearly 40 years old.\nAnd while the days of "old boys' clubs" are almost certainly over, some say an unwelcoming, masculine culture persists, keeping women away.\nBut although progress might feel slow, it is clearly happening, said Scott Long, an IU sociology professor and editor of a National Academy of Sciences study on women in science.\nThe greatest change is in the number of women entering science, he said. In some cases -- especially the life sciences -- the percentage of new female doctorates is approaching 50 percent. The physical sciences are lagging behind at a little less than 25 percent -- still a large increase compared to just more than 5 percent in 1973. \n"No one would have predicted this 25 years ago," Long said.\nAnd although men still dominate the elite levels of scientific academia, it's only a matter of time before women catch up, Long said. As old-guard male professors retire, women are being hired to fill their posts, and the population is changing, Long said.\nThe best news for women in science is that they are wanted, Long said. Universities are working hard to recruit and promote them, which means they are becoming a powerful force for change on campuses. \n"In years past, there was this notion that women couldn't be good scientists," Long said. "I don't hear that anymore."
Which clock ticks louder?\nWhen Kay Connelly had her first child in graduate school, she took off a semester to care for him. However, her thesis adviser had a hard time abiding by her decision, said Connelly, who attended the University of Illinois. Six weeks after her first child was born, he threatened that if she didn't return to work, he would take away her thesis project. She went back, this time unpaid.\nConnelly hears stories like this all the time, she said. But some of them end differently: sometimes, the women don't go back, she said.\n"It's difficult, I think, and scary for a woman to decide when she's going to have a family," said Connelly, who will start as an assistant professor of computer science in the fall.\nAlthough most universities -- including IU -- have flexible policies that allow women to take time off to have children, many female scientists pursuing doctorates and tenure fear that actually using them will damage their careers permanently. Besides social pressures within departments, even a semester away can leave a researcher falling behind the cutting-edge.\nBut since professors usually achieve tenure in their 30s or later, it is often not an option for women to wait.\nThe result is that many women simply drop out, Long said. Some 17 percent of female doctorates in science don't take full-time jobs after they get their degrees, compared to only 6 percent of men.\nThis trend is noticeable at IU, where talented female scientists often take non-tenure-track jobs as research scientists or are on part-time grants, said Jean Robinson, who recently stepped down as dean of IU's Office of Women's Affairs. \n"In some cases, that might be women's choice, because they feel this is the only way they can both keep their hands in science and have a family life," she said.\nUniversities that want to turn this trend around should start with creating facilities for families, Long said.\n"Personally I would advocate finding a way that any faculty member -- male or female -- feels that there is not just adequate, but excellent childcare facilities," Long said. "I think it's critical, and universities have been very slow-moving."\nBut people's perceptions must change as well, Long said. Universities need to remove the stigma associated with taking time off, he said.\n"If a person who takes it is viewed as being inferior, or somehow inadequate in some way," Long said, "that kind of kills the advantage of having it."\nLisa Pratt said she thinks that if she'd had her children earlier, she likely wouldn't have become a full professor at a major research university. Her first child was born when she was 39 -- right about the time she was tenured.\nLike Connelly, she took time away from her research. But professors -- male and female -- are expected to have a slump just after they're tenured, she said, so in her case no one took notice.\n"It was invisible," she said.\nBut while the strategy worked for her, she doesn't recommend it to other women, if only for medical reasons.\n"That's very late in life to be starting your family," Pratt said.
Climate change\nThroughout Claire Walczak's lab students move between desks and lab benches, writing up data on computers or setting up experiments. Walczak's office sits in the middle of this flurry of activity -- the command center of her bright, shiny lab in Myers Hall. \nWalczak, a cell biologist, is in a field that is approaching parity. Most of the laboratories she's worked in have had nearly equal numbers of men and women. And in contrast to many other women researchers, Walczak, an assistant professor of Medical Sciences, said she has not felt cultural barriers to being a woman scientist. She and her husband -- also on IU's faculty -- manage the challenge of their careers and raising two young children together. \nAnd although she does not specifically recruit women, she said she finds that her success attracts a disproportionate number of female students.\n"My lab is very unbalanced between X chromosomes and Y chromosomes," she said.\nAlthough the insistent ticking of the tenure clock and the biological clock is the most obvious challenge to women in academic science, other more subtle issues of work climate add stress to women's experiences. But, as Walczak's lab demonstrates, a woman-friendly workplace can lead to women's success.\nBeing woman-friendly sometimes just means having women around. Research shows that once women form at least 15 percent of the students in a classroom, they begin to feel comfortable answering questions and participating in class. Women scientists have not reached this critical threshold in many science departments at IU. \nPratt and her two female colleagues in the geology department noticed they weren't being listened to in faculty meetings, she said. One of them would make a comment, but a few minutes later a male colleague would make essentially the same comment and receive credit for it. Now they speak up when they see ideas being incorrectly credited.\n "It's not confrontational," Pratt said. "But we reclarify for the record, 'Oh, wasn't it Claudia who said that just a minute ago?'"\nAlmost every woman in computer science deals with harassment over her career, Connelly said. She's walked into computer labs with porn on the monitors and been surrounded by sexist conversations. Men rarely have equivalent experiences, she said. \nHowever, Connelly emphasizes that only a small percentage of people actively engage in behavior that is demoralizing to women. \n"A lot of times when you read about women's issues it's an 'us' against 'them' kind of thing," she said. "And I don't take it that way at all. I love this field, and I like my coworkers. It's these little pockets that demoralize women, I think, and turn them off from a male-dominated field."
Reaching for the stars\nIU professor of astronomy Caty Pilachowski said she feels lucky to have known many of the women giants of astronomy early in her career.\nOne of these giants was Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin. The first woman to receive a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard, Payne Gaposchkin discovered that stars are made of hydrogen.\nHer results did not match what astronomers had previously thought about stars. \n"They looked at her work and said, 'No, no that can't be right.' So she said, 'Well, this is what I got,'" Pilachowski said. "It turns out she was right, and the guy who told her that she was wrong published it several years later."\nSurviving and even thriving in a male-dominated discipline is possible with the right network of role models and mentors of both genders. Starting out at a time when only 4 percent of astronomers were women, Pilachowski said she relied on a chain of mentors that have guided her entire career. Her high school chemistry teacher showed her that women could do science, even co-authoring her own textbook; encouraging male faculty and the presence of a few eminent women paved the way for the middle of her career; at IU, emeritus professor of astronomy Frank Edmondson has opened doors for her and has given her a greater perspective on the history of her field.\n"If any one of them hadn't been there, it would have been a major block," she said.\nIt's not that women can't succeed as scientists if they don't have women faculty mentors, Robinson said. But many women need role models to feel comfortable with the issues that affect them. \n"Like whether they can have a personal relationship outside of work, whether they can have children, how they can manage it, and whether in fact if they have those things, they're still going to be treated as scientists," Robinson said.\nMany institutions are wising up to the need for women mentors. IU has a formal networking program called the Women in Science Program, which matches young scientists with mentors and tutors and helps with career development. And Connelly has helped establish a group called Women in Computer Science at IU. \n"What we try to do is actually plan events in the department and that gives us kind of a natural way to bond with each other," Connelly said. "So we plan panel discussions aimed at graduate students or undergraduates in helping them make choices. Men and women -- anyone in the department -- are welcome to these, but it's the women who are organizing it."\nWalczak recently won a prestigious Junior Women in Cell Biology Award from the American Society of Cell Biology. A female graduate student she has mentored nominated her for the award.\n"It was unique that a student brought up the nomination," she said. "So it was not only the scientific success, but also the student perspective that I was a good mentor and teacher and sort of a well-rounded scientist."\nThese networking and mentoring programs are making being a woman in science much easier, Pilachowski said. But it could still be better.\n"One of the most difficult things about being a woman in science is isolation," Pilachowski said. "Get more women is the bottom line"
