The major focus of the equity movement is to transform the academic culture itself — to make it more attractive to women by rendering science less stressful, less competitive, and less time consuming.

Nikola_S · 2008-05-18T15:24:07+00:00

If men were as gender-organized as women, they might lobby for Title IX reviews of the many departments — such as psychology, education, sociology, literature, art history, and the life sciences — where they are woefully “underrepresented.” And women now represent 77 percent of students in veterinary schools, so they can obviously manage hard technical science where it interests them.

gender-organization is what we're missing.

2008-05-18T21:51:46+00:00

Most of the women I'm friends with are in the life/natural sciences, I only know one in engineering... she has access to more educational support that we do because of the field she's chosen (scholarships, internships, etc., I would assume due to gender organization?) but we're just not that into it. Another point: I just read the article about living in Iceland, and their social structure (especially regarding childbearing and university) I think highlights a major area that we could use a lot of improvement in. The fact is that the hard sciences ARE just that demanding, period, and a lot of women feel like they have to choose between having a family or having a career in science. Perhaps women who would otherwise be attracted to things like physics and engineering just find the options too limited to make the choice appealing or even doable.

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