July 22, 2008, 7:44 pm
A Natural Selection
(The fourth part in a series celebrating Charles Darwin.)
Last week, I discussed how evolutionary biology has changed since 1859, the year Darwin first published “On the Origin of Species.” But the subject of evolution isn’t the only thing that’s changed since then. There’s been plenty of actual evolution, too. For although we tend to think of evolutionary change as being something that only takes place over the course of millions of years, it isn’t. It’s going on here, now, all around us. So, this week, I thought I’d round up some examples of recent evolutionary change in nature. (What do I mean by recent? Within the last 40 years.)
I’m not intending to be comprehensive — that would take a book or two. Instead, I want to sketch a few examples of natural selection that have caught my fancy, and through them consider different aspects of evolutionary change, and what it takes to show it.
Galápagos finches. No discussion of evolution in nature would be complete without mention of the evolution of beak size in finches in the Galápagos archipelago.
Every year since 1973, large numbers of medium ground finches (Geospiza fortis) living on the island of Daphne Major have been marked, weighed and measured, and so have their chicks. In these finches, survival largely depends on the ability to open seeds; this depends on beak size. Bigger beaks allow the opening of larger seeds. How many seeds there are depends on the weather; some years seeds of all sizes are abundant, and the finches thrive. In other years, most seeds are scarce, and many birds die. Large-scale death affects the genetic make-up of the population, because both beak size and body size has a large genetic component. If all the birds with smaller than average beaks die in a given year, they take their genes with them.
Over the course of 30 years, annual measurement of finches shows that both body size and beak size evolved significantly. But they didn’t do so in a smooth, consistent fashion. Instead, natural selection jittered about, often changing direction from one season to the next.
As the abundance of different seeds fluctuated, so too did the beak sizes. One year, larger beaks were more successful; then it was smaller beaks. Over time, the average shape of the beak kept shifting, but it did so in an unpredictable, erratic sort of way, like a drunk man staggering about. Thus, some of the most dramatic changes were later reversed, and if beaks had only been measured at the beginning and at the end of the thirty years, the total amount of evolutionary change would have been underestimated. (Beak size has continued to evolve: the arrival on the island of a competitor for large seeds has subsequently favored small beak sizes in Geospiza fortis. Many individuals with larger beaks starved to death.)
Field mustard. Between 2000 and 2004, southern California had a severe drought. For many plants, including field mustard (a scrawny annual plant with little yellow flowers), a drought means a shorter growing season. A shorter growing season means that plants that flower earlier are more likely to leave seeds than plants that flower later — which are in danger of dying before they’ve finished reproducing. Since flowering time has a large genetic component, a drought — by favoring plants that flower earlier — could cause an evolutionary shift towards early flowering.
Has it?
Yes. The beauty of plants is that they make seeds — small packets of genes that can be stored for a period. This means that the genes of the past can, in principle, be compared directly with the genes of today. And an experiment in which field mustard plants grown from seeds collected in 1997 and in 2004 were planted together, under controlled conditions, showed clear differences in flowering times: the plants from 2004 flowered significantly earlier.
Moreover, in both years, seeds were collected from two sites, one where the soil is sandy and doesn’t hold water well, and the other where the soil stays wet for longer. As you’d expect, plants from the dry site showed a more dramatic shift than plants from the wet site. In the course of just 7 years, then, natural selection caused the plants to evolve an earlier flowering time.
Croatian lizards. In 1971, five pairs of adult wall lizards (Podarcis sicula) were brought to the tiny Croatian island of Pod Mrčaru from the nearby island of Pod Kopište. These five pairs have since given rise to a thriving lizard population — and one that has developed some interesting differences from the lizards that live on Kopište.
Lizards on Mrčaru now have larger heads and stronger bites than those living on Kopište, and they eat far more in the way of leaves and other plant material. Whereas the diet of native Kopište lizards is only about 7 percent plant matter, Mrčaru lizards are much more prone to a vegetarian habit. In spring, their diet is about 34 percent from plants; in summer that almost doubles, to 61 percent.
Plants are hard for animals to digest, and most plant-eaters rely on micro-organisms to help them. They also, typically, have complicated stomachs — think of the fermentation chambers in a cow, or the enlarged crop of that strange leaf-eating bird, the hoatzin. Intriguingly, the Mrčaru lizards appear to have evolved something similar. Their stomachs now have cecal valves, which divide the stomach into compartments, allowing for slower digestion and fermentation. Cecal valves are rare among lizards and snakes: fewer than 1 percent of species have them. At the same time, the Mrčaru lizards have acquired some novel micro-organisms in their guts (but whether these are helping break down plant fibers, or are some sort of sinister parasite, remains to be seen).
This study is one of the most intriguing I’ve come across. It suggests that arrival in a new environment can result in dramatic changes to an organism within fewer than 40 lifetimes. But so far, the basis of these various changes remains unknown: there’s an outside possibility that they are induced by leaf eating, and are thus due to the environment rather than genetics. (This seems unlikely — even lizards that are just hatched, and haven’t had a chance to do much eating, have the valves. But without doing the genetics, we can’t be sure; until that has been looked at, the changes cannot definitely be attributed to natural selection.) For now, natural selection for efficient plant-eating is the main suspect for this whole suite of changes, but the case is not yet closed.
Other examples. I don’t have space to go into other examples in detail, but to give a sense of what else is out there, here’s a partial list.
The fruit fly Drosophila subobscura has been evolving bigger wings in higher latitudes in North and South America; mosquitoes that live in pitcher plants hunker down for the winter later in the year than they used to; in a forest in southern England, great tits have been shrinking (great tits are songbirds).
Double the time frame to the past 80 years, and I’d have to add many more; of these, my favorite is the decline in head size of Australian frog-eating snakes in response to the arrival of poisonous toads in 1935 (a smaller head makes it harder to eat a deadly toad). And I haven’t even begun to mention the countless examples of pests that have evolved resistance to pesticides and bacteria that have evolved resistance to antibiotics, nor the thousands of laboratory experiments showing evolution in the simple environments of test tubes and petri dishes. Also omitted: several examples of new species that are in the process of forming (I want to look at these in a future column).
In short, evolution never takes a vacation: it’s going on all the time.
Yet we tend not to notice it. Why? The finches can help us here. That study tells us two things. First, from one year to the next, even the most dramatic changes are, to our eyes, small — which is to say, you have to measure them to detect them. The reason is that although birds differ from one another in their abilities to handle the various seeds, the differences are subtle. It’s not as if one bird has a beak 100 times mightier than another’s. When you add to this the tendency of natural selection to jerk around, it’s no surprise that we often don’t notice evolution as it happens. It also sheds light on why changes in the fossil record often appear to be slow: these studies show that change can be continual without really getting far from the starting point. Second, getting data as good as that is hard work. Most datasets are not so complete or robust.
At least one other lesson can be drawn from all these studies. Natural selection has its most dramatic effects when an organism’s environment is perturbed in some sustained way — prolonged droughts, the arrival of species that compete for food, warmer winters, the use of pesticides. If we humans continue to increase our impact on the globe, we’re likely to see lots more evolution. And soon.
**********
NOTES:
For beak size in Galápagos finches, see Grant, P. R. and Grant, B. R. 2002. “Unpredictable evolution in a 30-year study of Darwin’s finches.” Science 296: 707-711 and Grant, P. R. and Grant, B. R. 2006. “Evolution of character displacement in Darwin’s finches.” Science 313: 224-226. For evolution of flowering time in field mustard, and for its genetic basis, see Franks, S. J., Sim, S. and Weis, A. E. 2007. “Rapid evolution of flowering time by an annual plant in response to a climate fluctuation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 104: 1278-1282. For the evolution of cecal valves in Croatian lizards, see Herrel, A. et al 2008. “Rapid large-scale evolutionary divergence in morphology and performance associated with exploitation of a different dietary resource.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 105: 4792-4795.
For wing size in fruit flies, see Huey, R. B. et al 2000. “Rapid evolution of a geographic cline in size in an introduced fly.” Science 287: 308-309 and Gilchrist, G. W. et al 2004. “A time series of evolution in action: a latitudinal cline in wing size in South American Drosophila subobscura.” Evolution 58: 768-780. For hunkering down time in mosquitoes, see Bradshaw, W. E. and Holzapfel, C. M. 2001. “Genetic shift in photoperiodic response correlated with global warming.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 98: 14509-14511. For body size in great tits, see Garant, D. et al 2005. “Evolution driven by differential dispersal within a wild bird population.” Nature 433: 60-65. For head size in Australian snakes, see Phillips, B. L. and Shine, R. 2004. “Adapting to an invasive species: toxic cane toads induce morphological change in Australian snakes.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 101: 17150-17155.
Many thanks to Dan Haydon, Gideon Lichfield and Jonathan Swire for insights, comments and suggestions.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Where the Girls Are Debunks Boys' Crisis, Gains Media Attention
On May 22, AAUW released its latest research report, Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education. The report presents a comprehensive look at girls' educational achievement during the past 35 years, paying special attention to the relationship between girls' and boys' progress. The report debunks the idea of a "boys' crisis," showing instead that both boys and girls from elementary school through college have made steady educational gains over the years. This report is also the first to analyze gender differences within economic and ethnic categories. The data show that academic success is more closely associated with family income than with gender.
Where the Girls Are enjoyed major media coverage on its release. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, PBS's NewsHour, and many other news sources prominently featured the report. Visit www.aauw.org to download a free copy of the full report or the executive summary and help spread the word.
Where the Girls Are enjoyed major media coverage on its release. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, PBS's NewsHour, and many other news sources prominently featured the report. Visit www.aauw.org to download a free copy of the full report or the executive summary and help spread the word.
AAUW Celebrates House Passage of Paycheck Fairness Act
WASHINGTON – AAUW applauds the House of Representatives for passing (247-178) the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 1338). If signed into law, the measure would strengthen and update the Equal Pay Act—passed 45 years ago—and would provide critical tools in the fight to close the sizable wage gap between men and women.
Nearly a century after AAUW called for a repeal of salary restrictions in the Women’s Bureau, women working full time earn, on average, about 77 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn.* Women of color face an even larger wage gap. AAUW’s 2007 Behind the Pay Gap report found that the pay gap between college-educated men and women appears the first year after college—even when women are working full time in the same fields as men—and continues to widen over time.**
“AAUW has long supported a fair playing field and a fair paying field—the Paycheck Fairness Act represents both,” said AAUW Executive Director Linda D. Hallman, CAE. “AAUW continues to be on the frontline of the pay equity fight. Our members have worked tirelessly to pass this bill.”
Championed by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the Paycheck Fairness Act would deter wage discrimination by strengthening penalties for equal pay violations and by prohibiting retaliation against workers who inquire about employers’ wage practices or disclose their own wages. Under the bill, employers would have to show that wage gaps truly are the result of factors other than sex discrimination. It would also require the U.S. Department of Labor to reinstate activities that promote equal pay, including collecting wage-related data. The bill had 231 co-sponsors when it passed.
“This vote was a fair measure of representatives’ stance on pay equity issues,” said Lisa M. Maatz, AAUW director of public policy and government relations. “AAUW will include the vote in our Congressional Voting Record for the 110th Congress, and we’ll make sure our members have the information they need to hold their elected officials accountable.”
Among their top issues, younger women especially identified equal pay for equal work as a main concern.***
“Concerns over pay equity will be one of the key issues that drives women to the polls,” Maatz said. “In this economy and this election year, AAUW believes now is the time to address these issues.”
--------------------------------
*U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (August 2007). Annual Demographic Survey.
** AAUW Educational Foundation. (2007). Behind the Pay Gap, by Catherine Hill and Judy Goldberg Dey. Washington, DC.
***Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. “Unmarried Women and Pay Inequity.” May 29, 2007. Retrieved July 16, 2008 from http://www.wvwv.org/assets/2007/10/22/payequity6.1.pdf. In a January 2007 Women’s Voices, Women Vote survey of 1000 unmarried women, pay equity ranked at the top of vote-driving issues.
Nearly a century after AAUW called for a repeal of salary restrictions in the Women’s Bureau, women working full time earn, on average, about 77 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn.* Women of color face an even larger wage gap. AAUW’s 2007 Behind the Pay Gap report found that the pay gap between college-educated men and women appears the first year after college—even when women are working full time in the same fields as men—and continues to widen over time.**
“AAUW has long supported a fair playing field and a fair paying field—the Paycheck Fairness Act represents both,” said AAUW Executive Director Linda D. Hallman, CAE. “AAUW continues to be on the frontline of the pay equity fight. Our members have worked tirelessly to pass this bill.”
Championed by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the Paycheck Fairness Act would deter wage discrimination by strengthening penalties for equal pay violations and by prohibiting retaliation against workers who inquire about employers’ wage practices or disclose their own wages. Under the bill, employers would have to show that wage gaps truly are the result of factors other than sex discrimination. It would also require the U.S. Department of Labor to reinstate activities that promote equal pay, including collecting wage-related data. The bill had 231 co-sponsors when it passed.
“This vote was a fair measure of representatives’ stance on pay equity issues,” said Lisa M. Maatz, AAUW director of public policy and government relations. “AAUW will include the vote in our Congressional Voting Record for the 110th Congress, and we’ll make sure our members have the information they need to hold their elected officials accountable.”
Among their top issues, younger women especially identified equal pay for equal work as a main concern.***
“Concerns over pay equity will be one of the key issues that drives women to the polls,” Maatz said. “In this economy and this election year, AAUW believes now is the time to address these issues.”
--------------------------------
*U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (August 2007). Annual Demographic Survey.
** AAUW Educational Foundation. (2007). Behind the Pay Gap, by Catherine Hill and Judy Goldberg Dey. Washington, DC.
***Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. “Unmarried Women and Pay Inequity.” May 29, 2007. Retrieved July 16, 2008 from http://www.wvwv.org/assets/2007/10/22/payequity6.1.pdf. In a January 2007 Women’s Voices, Women Vote survey of 1000 unmarried women, pay equity ranked at the top of vote-driving issues.
Diversity, Learning, and Inclusive Excellence
Diversity, Learning, and Inclusive Excellence:Accelerating and Assessing Progress
October 16-18, 2008Long Beach, California
Diversity, Learning, and Inclusive Excellence: Accelerating and Assessing Progress aims to help campuses take diversity efforts to the next level of comprehensive, coordinated action, where educational benefits for all students -- and for the institution more broadly -- can be demonstrated in meaningful ways. It will highlight curricular, co-curricular, and institutional models that enable higher education leaders to develop, implement, assess, and continually learn from the experience of fostering diverse learning environments -- environments in which all students develop, in increasingly sophisticated ways, critical knowledge, skills, and capacities for work and citizenship.
With keynotes and plenaries by:
Alma Clayton-Pedersen, AAC&UMildred Garcia, California State University-Dominguez HillsJamie Merisotis, Lumina Foundation for EducationDaryl Smith, Claremont Graduate University
You can learn more about the conference highlights and workshops online.Register now online.Early registration -- through September 23, 2008.
October 16-18, 2008Long Beach, California
Diversity, Learning, and Inclusive Excellence: Accelerating and Assessing Progress aims to help campuses take diversity efforts to the next level of comprehensive, coordinated action, where educational benefits for all students -- and for the institution more broadly -- can be demonstrated in meaningful ways. It will highlight curricular, co-curricular, and institutional models that enable higher education leaders to develop, implement, assess, and continually learn from the experience of fostering diverse learning environments -- environments in which all students develop, in increasingly sophisticated ways, critical knowledge, skills, and capacities for work and citizenship.
With keynotes and plenaries by:
Alma Clayton-Pedersen, AAC&UMildred Garcia, California State University-Dominguez HillsJamie Merisotis, Lumina Foundation for EducationDaryl Smith, Claremont Graduate University
You can learn more about the conference highlights and workshops online.Register now online.Early registration -- through September 23, 2008.
House Set to Vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act!
The House is expected to vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 1338) in the next few days. Because this is such a critical opportunity for Congress to make real progress on pay equity, AAUW reminds you to take action now! Even if you have contacted your representative about this legislation before, we now ask you again to urge your representative to vote yes on this legislation and oppose any attempts to weaken it.
The Paycheck Fairness Act would update and strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963, closing loop holes and improving the law's effectiveness. The Paycheck Fairness Act would, among other things, deter wage discrimination by strengthening penalties for equal pay violations, and by prohibiting retaliation against workers who inquire about employers' wage practices or disclose their own wages. The bill also requires employers to show that wage gaps are truly a result of factors other than sex, collect better data on wages, reinstate activities that promote equal pay at the Department of Labor, and develop training for women and girls on salary negotiations. The bill's measured approach does not impose arbitrary caps on damages, ensuring that women can obtain the same remedies as those discriminated against based on race or national origin.
AAUW released a 2007 report, Behind the Pay Gap, which shows that just one year out of college, women working full time already earn less than their male colleagues, even when they have the same major and occupation. Ten years after graduation, the pay gap widens. With a record 70 million women in the workforce, wage discrimination hurts the majority of American families. In addition, wage discrimination lowers total lifetime earnings, reducing women's benefits from Social Security and pension plans and inhibiting their ability to save not only for retirement but for other lifetime goals such as buying a home and paying for a college education.
Equal pay for equal work is a simple matter of justice for women, and a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act is a critical step forward in our goal to close the persistent and sizable wage gaps between men and women.
Take Action!To urge your representative to support the Paycheck Fairness Act when it comes up for a vote next week, just click on the "Take Action" link in the upper right corner or copy and paste the following URL into your Internet browser. Then follow the instructions to send a message to your U.S. Representative. http://capwiz.com/aauw/issues/alert/?alertid=11683451
If your representative has already signed on as a cosponsor, you will be able to send him or her a separate message urging a vote against any amendments that may weaken the bill.
AAUW continues to have "I am the face of pay equity" signs and stickers available for use at AAUW events. Visit AAUW's Pay Equity webpage and download the Pay Equity Resource Kit for ideas, tips, and resources to use in your community throughout the year.
The Paycheck Fairness Act would update and strengthen the Equal Pay Act of 1963, closing loop holes and improving the law's effectiveness. The Paycheck Fairness Act would, among other things, deter wage discrimination by strengthening penalties for equal pay violations, and by prohibiting retaliation against workers who inquire about employers' wage practices or disclose their own wages. The bill also requires employers to show that wage gaps are truly a result of factors other than sex, collect better data on wages, reinstate activities that promote equal pay at the Department of Labor, and develop training for women and girls on salary negotiations. The bill's measured approach does not impose arbitrary caps on damages, ensuring that women can obtain the same remedies as those discriminated against based on race or national origin.
AAUW released a 2007 report, Behind the Pay Gap, which shows that just one year out of college, women working full time already earn less than their male colleagues, even when they have the same major and occupation. Ten years after graduation, the pay gap widens. With a record 70 million women in the workforce, wage discrimination hurts the majority of American families. In addition, wage discrimination lowers total lifetime earnings, reducing women's benefits from Social Security and pension plans and inhibiting their ability to save not only for retirement but for other lifetime goals such as buying a home and paying for a college education.
Equal pay for equal work is a simple matter of justice for women, and a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act is a critical step forward in our goal to close the persistent and sizable wage gaps between men and women.
Take Action!To urge your representative to support the Paycheck Fairness Act when it comes up for a vote next week, just click on the "Take Action" link in the upper right corner or copy and paste the following URL into your Internet browser. Then follow the instructions to send a message to your U.S. Representative. http://capwiz.com/aauw/issues/alert/?alertid=11683451
If your representative has already signed on as a cosponsor, you will be able to send him or her a separate message urging a vote against any amendments that may weaken the bill.
AAUW continues to have "I am the face of pay equity" signs and stickers available for use at AAUW events. Visit AAUW's Pay Equity webpage and download the Pay Equity Resource Kit for ideas, tips, and resources to use in your community throughout the year.
Do Science & Quotas Mix?
Published on Scientific Blogging (http://www.scientificblogging.com)
Gender and Science in the News: Should We Have Grant Quotas For Women?
By adaptivecomplexity
Created Jul 20 2008 - 9:11pm
OK, I'm about to dive into an issue I probably shouldn't be talking about on a blog, at least if I have any hope of convincing a hiring committee to consider me, but I'm going to dumbly rush ahead.
John Tierney at the NY Times has been looking into the issue of whether Congress is considering "Title IX'ing" science, by requiring some sort of gender quota in funding decisions by federal science agencies. Tierney argues that in this day and age, it is less a matter of discrimination and more a matter of which subjects women choose to pursue:
"The members of Congress and women's groups who have pushed for science to be "Title Nined" say there is evidence that women face discrimination in certain sciences, but the quality of that evidence is disputed. Critics say there is far better research showing that on average, women's interest in some fields isn't the same as men's."
Check the links in the comments for some good, and sometimes not-so-good discussion of the issue. I have no clue about the quality of the evidence Tierney is talking about, but I think gender-quotas in funding decisions would be horrible. That kind of policy would certainly make women second-class citizens in science, because they could never be judged on their own merit.
And merit they have. Perhaps mine is a generational view: I'm a younger scientist (male, in case it wasn't clear) who has had outstanding senior women scientists as role models, and outstanding younger ones as fellow students and colleagues. My personal, anecdotal view is that discrimination is on its way out: these days, it tends to mostly take the form of some older professors who had tenure while the baby-boom generation was still in grad school. Yes, these old boys still wield a lot of power, make sexist comments in seminars, and have caused serious anguish to the previous generation of women scientists who had to build their careers in an adverse environment.
But women are entering science in ever larger numbers, and I hope that as this younger generation works its way up the career ladder, the number of women in tenured faculty positions will go up. My female peers can successfully compete on their own, and something like gender grant quotas would undermine the reputation that this generation of women scientists is building.
If there is one thing that needs to be done to help promote women in science, it's better support for those who choose to have a family. Having children is obviously more of a burden on women than on men in most cases, and we need an environment where having children is not a career terminator. Talented women can go on maternity leave (long or short), and come back and be excellent scientists, but they have to work against a funding and promotion system that is stacked against them in that case.
There is one more major pet peeve of mine in these discussions: inevitably, someone makes the claim that women go for the soft sciences, while men go for the hard ones, meaning women go for biology, and men go for chemistry and physics. Let's get one thing straight: biology is not a soft science. If you take 'hard' to mean quantitative, then consider that genetics and biochemistry have always been quantitative sciences (and have long had women working in them: two US Postage stamps honor a female geneticist (Barbara McClintock) and a female biochemist (Gerty Cori), both Nobel Prize winners). But all of biology now is 'hard': there is almost always a quantitative aspect to biology experiments these days, and moreover, if hard is defined to mean a field in which you can formulate unambiguous hypotheses and perform definitive, rigorous tests against nature, then biology is a hard science. Biology may not involve the same kind of mathematical thinking required in theoretical physics, but the thinking has to be equally rigorous in delineating alternate hypotheses and devising clever experiments to distinguish them - something that tends to set the natural sciences off from the social sciences.
And anyway, biology is where it's at these days, so it's where any young scientist, male or female should be going. Biology today is what physics was in the 1960's and 70's, the place where some of the most exciting questions in science are.
ION Publications LLC
Gender and Science in the News: Should We Have Grant Quotas For Women?
By adaptivecomplexity
Created Jul 20 2008 - 9:11pm
OK, I'm about to dive into an issue I probably shouldn't be talking about on a blog, at least if I have any hope of convincing a hiring committee to consider me, but I'm going to dumbly rush ahead.
John Tierney at the NY Times has been looking into the issue of whether Congress is considering "Title IX'ing" science, by requiring some sort of gender quota in funding decisions by federal science agencies. Tierney argues that in this day and age, it is less a matter of discrimination and more a matter of which subjects women choose to pursue:
"The members of Congress and women's groups who have pushed for science to be "Title Nined" say there is evidence that women face discrimination in certain sciences, but the quality of that evidence is disputed. Critics say there is far better research showing that on average, women's interest in some fields isn't the same as men's."
Check the links in the comments for some good, and sometimes not-so-good discussion of the issue. I have no clue about the quality of the evidence Tierney is talking about, but I think gender-quotas in funding decisions would be horrible. That kind of policy would certainly make women second-class citizens in science, because they could never be judged on their own merit.
And merit they have. Perhaps mine is a generational view: I'm a younger scientist (male, in case it wasn't clear) who has had outstanding senior women scientists as role models, and outstanding younger ones as fellow students and colleagues. My personal, anecdotal view is that discrimination is on its way out: these days, it tends to mostly take the form of some older professors who had tenure while the baby-boom generation was still in grad school. Yes, these old boys still wield a lot of power, make sexist comments in seminars, and have caused serious anguish to the previous generation of women scientists who had to build their careers in an adverse environment.
But women are entering science in ever larger numbers, and I hope that as this younger generation works its way up the career ladder, the number of women in tenured faculty positions will go up. My female peers can successfully compete on their own, and something like gender grant quotas would undermine the reputation that this generation of women scientists is building.
If there is one thing that needs to be done to help promote women in science, it's better support for those who choose to have a family. Having children is obviously more of a burden on women than on men in most cases, and we need an environment where having children is not a career terminator. Talented women can go on maternity leave (long or short), and come back and be excellent scientists, but they have to work against a funding and promotion system that is stacked against them in that case.
There is one more major pet peeve of mine in these discussions: inevitably, someone makes the claim that women go for the soft sciences, while men go for the hard ones, meaning women go for biology, and men go for chemistry and physics. Let's get one thing straight: biology is not a soft science. If you take 'hard' to mean quantitative, then consider that genetics and biochemistry have always been quantitative sciences (and have long had women working in them: two US Postage stamps honor a female geneticist (Barbara McClintock) and a female biochemist (Gerty Cori), both Nobel Prize winners). But all of biology now is 'hard': there is almost always a quantitative aspect to biology experiments these days, and moreover, if hard is defined to mean a field in which you can formulate unambiguous hypotheses and perform definitive, rigorous tests against nature, then biology is a hard science. Biology may not involve the same kind of mathematical thinking required in theoretical physics, but the thinking has to be equally rigorous in delineating alternate hypotheses and devising clever experiments to distinguish them - something that tends to set the natural sciences off from the social sciences.
And anyway, biology is where it's at these days, so it's where any young scientist, male or female should be going. Biology today is what physics was in the 1960's and 70's, the place where some of the most exciting questions in science are.
ION Publications LLC
A New Frontier for Title IX: Science
By JOHN TIERNEY
Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual discrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. But now, under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies have quietly picked a new target: science.
The National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Energy have set up programs to look for sexual discrimination at universities receiving federal grants. Investigators have been taking inventories of lab space and interviewing faculty members and students in physics and engineering departments at schools like Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, M.I.T. and the University of Maryland.
So far, these Title IX compliance reviews haven't had much visible impact on campuses beyond inspiring a few complaints from faculty members. (The journal Science quoted Amber Miller, a physicist at Columbia, as calling her interview "a complete waste of time.") But some critics fear that the process could lead to a quota system that could seriously hurt scientific research and do more harm than good for women.
The members of Congress and women's groups who have pushed for science to be "Title Nined" say there is evidence that women face discrimination in certain sciences, but the quality of that evidence is disputed. Critics say there is far better research showing that on average, women's interest in some fields isn't the same as men's.
In this debate, neither side doubts that women can excel in all fields of science. In fact, their growing presence in former male bastions of science is a chief argument against the need for federal intervention.
Despite supposed obstacles like "unconscious bias" and a shortage of role models and mentors, women now constitute about half of medical students, 60 percent of biology majors and 70 percent of psychology Ph.D.'s. They earn the majority of doctorates in both the life sciences and the social sciences. They remain a minority in the physical sciences and engineering. Even though their annual share of doctorates in physics has tripled in recent decades, it's less than 20 percent. Only 10 percent of physics faculty members are women, a ratio that helped prompt an investigation in 2005 by the American Institute of Physics into the possibility of bias.
But the institute found that women with physics degrees go on to doctorates, teaching jobs and tenure at the same rate that men do. The gender gap is a result of earlier decisions. While girls make up nearly half of high school physics students, they're less likely than boys to take Advanced Placement courses or go on to a college degree in physics.
These numbers don't surprise two psychologists at Vanderbilt University, David Lubinski and Camilla Persson Benbow, who have been tracking more than 5,000 mathematically gifted students for 35 years.
They found that starting at age 12, the girls tended to be better rounded than the boys: they had relatively strong verbal skills in addition to math, and they showed more interest in "organic" subjects involving people and other living things. Despite their mathematical prowess, they were less likely than boys to go into physics or engineering.
But whether they grew up to be biologists or sociologists or lawyers, when they were surveyed in their 30s, these women were as content with their careers as their male counterparts. They also made as much money per hour of work. Dr. Lubinski and Dr. Benbow concluded that adolescents' interests and balance of abilities - not their sex - were the best predictors of whether they would choose an "inorganic" career like physics.
A similar conclusion comes from a new study of the large gender gap in the computer industry by Joshua Rosenbloom and Ronald Ash of the University of Kansas. By administering vocational psychological tests, the researchers found that information technology workers especially enjoyed manipulating objects and machines, whereas workers in other occupations preferred dealing with people.
Once the researchers controlled for that personality variable, the gender gap shrank to statistical insignificance: women who preferred tinkering with inanimate objects were about as likely to go into computer careers as were men with similar personalities. There just happened to be fewer women than men with those preferences.
Now, you might think those preferences would be different if society didn't discourage girls and women from pursuits like computer science and physics. But if you read "The Sexual Paradox," Susan Pinker's book about gender differences, you'll find just the opposite problem.
Ms. Pinker, a clinical psychologist and columnist for The Globe and Mail in Canada (and sister of Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist), argues that the campaign for gender parity infantilizes women by assuming they don't know what they want. She interviewed women who abandoned successful careers in science and engineering to work in fields like architecture, law and education - and not because they had faced discrimination in science.
Instead, they complained of being pushed so hard to be scientists and engineers that they ended up in jobs they didn't enjoy. "The irony was that talent in a male-typical pursuit limited their choices," Ms. Pinker says. "Once they showed aptitude for math or physical science, there was an assumption that they'd pursue it as a career even if they had other interests or aspirations. And because these women went along with the program and were perceived by parents and teachers as torch bearers, it was so much more difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that the work made them unhappy."
Ms. Pinker says that universities and employers should do a better job helping women combine family responsibilities with careers in fields like physics. But she also points out that female physicists are a distinct minority even in Western European countries that offer day care and generous benefits to women.
"Creating equal opportunities for women does not mean that they'll choose what men choose in equal numbers," Ms. Pinker says. "The freedom to act on one's preferences can create a more exaggerated gender split in some fields."
Applying Title IX to science was proposed eight years ago by Debra Rolison, a chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory. She argued that withholding federal money from "poorly diversified departments" was essential to "transform the academic culture." The proposal was initially greeted, in her words, with "near-universal horror."
Some female scientists protested that they themselves would be marginalized if a quota system revived the old stereotype that women couldn't compete on even terms in science. But the idea had strong advocates, too, and Congress quietly ordered agencies to begin the Title IX compliance reviews in 2006.
The reviews so far haven't led to any requirements for gender balance in science departments. But Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written extensively about gender wars in academia, predicts that lawyers will work gradually, as they did in sports, to require numerical parity.
"Colleges already practice affirmative action for women in science, but now they'll be so intimidated by the Title IX legal hammer that they may institute quota systems," Dr. Sommers said. "In sports, they had to eliminate a lot of male teams to achieve Title IX parity. It'll be devastating to American science if every male-dominated field has to be calibrated to women's level of interest."
Whether or not quotas are ever imposed, some of the most productive science and engineering departments in America are busy filling out new federal paperwork. The agencies that have been cutting financing for Fermilab and the Spirit rover on Mars are paying for investigations of a problem that may not even exist. How is this good for scientists of either sex?
Further Reading
"U.S. Agencies Quiz Universities." Y. Bhattacharjee. Science, 2007.
"Why Can't A Woman Be More Like A Man?" C. Hoff Sommers. The American, 2008.
"Women in Physics and Astronomy, 2005. R. Ivie and K. Nies Ray. American Institute of Physics Report, 2005.
"Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth After 35 Years." D. Lubinski and C.Persson Benbow. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2006.
"Why are there so few women in information technology?" J.L. Rosenbloom, R.A. Ash, B. Dupont, L. Coder. Journal of Economic Psychology, 2007.
"The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women, and the Real Gender Gap." S. Pinker. Scribner, 2008.
"Title IX as a change strategy for women in science and engineering." D.R. Rolison. Women, Work & the Academy Conference, 2004.
"The freedom to say 'no.'" E. McArdle. Boston Globe, 2008
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual discrimination in education, has been limited mostly to sports. But now, under pressure from Congress, some federal agencies have quietly picked a new target: science.
The National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Energy have set up programs to look for sexual discrimination at universities receiving federal grants. Investigators have been taking inventories of lab space and interviewing faculty members and students in physics and engineering departments at schools like Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, M.I.T. and the University of Maryland.
So far, these Title IX compliance reviews haven't had much visible impact on campuses beyond inspiring a few complaints from faculty members. (The journal Science quoted Amber Miller, a physicist at Columbia, as calling her interview "a complete waste of time.") But some critics fear that the process could lead to a quota system that could seriously hurt scientific research and do more harm than good for women.
The members of Congress and women's groups who have pushed for science to be "Title Nined" say there is evidence that women face discrimination in certain sciences, but the quality of that evidence is disputed. Critics say there is far better research showing that on average, women's interest in some fields isn't the same as men's.
In this debate, neither side doubts that women can excel in all fields of science. In fact, their growing presence in former male bastions of science is a chief argument against the need for federal intervention.
Despite supposed obstacles like "unconscious bias" and a shortage of role models and mentors, women now constitute about half of medical students, 60 percent of biology majors and 70 percent of psychology Ph.D.'s. They earn the majority of doctorates in both the life sciences and the social sciences. They remain a minority in the physical sciences and engineering. Even though their annual share of doctorates in physics has tripled in recent decades, it's less than 20 percent. Only 10 percent of physics faculty members are women, a ratio that helped prompt an investigation in 2005 by the American Institute of Physics into the possibility of bias.
But the institute found that women with physics degrees go on to doctorates, teaching jobs and tenure at the same rate that men do. The gender gap is a result of earlier decisions. While girls make up nearly half of high school physics students, they're less likely than boys to take Advanced Placement courses or go on to a college degree in physics.
These numbers don't surprise two psychologists at Vanderbilt University, David Lubinski and Camilla Persson Benbow, who have been tracking more than 5,000 mathematically gifted students for 35 years.
They found that starting at age 12, the girls tended to be better rounded than the boys: they had relatively strong verbal skills in addition to math, and they showed more interest in "organic" subjects involving people and other living things. Despite their mathematical prowess, they were less likely than boys to go into physics or engineering.
But whether they grew up to be biologists or sociologists or lawyers, when they were surveyed in their 30s, these women were as content with their careers as their male counterparts. They also made as much money per hour of work. Dr. Lubinski and Dr. Benbow concluded that adolescents' interests and balance of abilities - not their sex - were the best predictors of whether they would choose an "inorganic" career like physics.
A similar conclusion comes from a new study of the large gender gap in the computer industry by Joshua Rosenbloom and Ronald Ash of the University of Kansas. By administering vocational psychological tests, the researchers found that information technology workers especially enjoyed manipulating objects and machines, whereas workers in other occupations preferred dealing with people.
Once the researchers controlled for that personality variable, the gender gap shrank to statistical insignificance: women who preferred tinkering with inanimate objects were about as likely to go into computer careers as were men with similar personalities. There just happened to be fewer women than men with those preferences.
Now, you might think those preferences would be different if society didn't discourage girls and women from pursuits like computer science and physics. But if you read "The Sexual Paradox," Susan Pinker's book about gender differences, you'll find just the opposite problem.
Ms. Pinker, a clinical psychologist and columnist for The Globe and Mail in Canada (and sister of Steven Pinker, the Harvard psychologist), argues that the campaign for gender parity infantilizes women by assuming they don't know what they want. She interviewed women who abandoned successful careers in science and engineering to work in fields like architecture, law and education - and not because they had faced discrimination in science.
Instead, they complained of being pushed so hard to be scientists and engineers that they ended up in jobs they didn't enjoy. "The irony was that talent in a male-typical pursuit limited their choices," Ms. Pinker says. "Once they showed aptitude for math or physical science, there was an assumption that they'd pursue it as a career even if they had other interests or aspirations. And because these women went along with the program and were perceived by parents and teachers as torch bearers, it was so much more difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that the work made them unhappy."
Ms. Pinker says that universities and employers should do a better job helping women combine family responsibilities with careers in fields like physics. But she also points out that female physicists are a distinct minority even in Western European countries that offer day care and generous benefits to women.
"Creating equal opportunities for women does not mean that they'll choose what men choose in equal numbers," Ms. Pinker says. "The freedom to act on one's preferences can create a more exaggerated gender split in some fields."
Applying Title IX to science was proposed eight years ago by Debra Rolison, a chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory. She argued that withholding federal money from "poorly diversified departments" was essential to "transform the academic culture." The proposal was initially greeted, in her words, with "near-universal horror."
Some female scientists protested that they themselves would be marginalized if a quota system revived the old stereotype that women couldn't compete on even terms in science. But the idea had strong advocates, too, and Congress quietly ordered agencies to begin the Title IX compliance reviews in 2006.
The reviews so far haven't led to any requirements for gender balance in science departments. But Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has written extensively about gender wars in academia, predicts that lawyers will work gradually, as they did in sports, to require numerical parity.
"Colleges already practice affirmative action for women in science, but now they'll be so intimidated by the Title IX legal hammer that they may institute quota systems," Dr. Sommers said. "In sports, they had to eliminate a lot of male teams to achieve Title IX parity. It'll be devastating to American science if every male-dominated field has to be calibrated to women's level of interest."
Whether or not quotas are ever imposed, some of the most productive science and engineering departments in America are busy filling out new federal paperwork. The agencies that have been cutting financing for Fermilab and the Spirit rover on Mars are paying for investigations of a problem that may not even exist. How is this good for scientists of either sex?
Further Reading
"U.S. Agencies Quiz Universities." Y. Bhattacharjee. Science, 2007.
"Why Can't A Woman Be More Like A Man?" C. Hoff Sommers. The American, 2008.
"Women in Physics and Astronomy, 2005. R. Ivie and K. Nies Ray. American Institute of Physics Report, 2005.
"Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth After 35 Years." D. Lubinski and C.Persson Benbow. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2006.
"Why are there so few women in information technology?" J.L. Rosenbloom, R.A. Ash, B. Dupont, L. Coder. Journal of Economic Psychology, 2007.
"The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women, and the Real Gender Gap." S. Pinker. Scribner, 2008.
"Title IX as a change strategy for women in science and engineering." D.R. Rolison. Women, Work & the Academy Conference, 2004.
"The freedom to say 'no.'" E. McArdle. Boston Globe, 2008
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
NIH Helps Advance Women in Biomedical Research Careers
For every bright mind that doesn't reach her or his full potential, biomedical research loses a new idea, a new approach, or a new perspective.
In an effort to advance talented women in leadership positions, including those from underrepresented backgrounds, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published today a Request for Applications (RFA) to support research on causal factors and interventions that promote and support the careers of women in biomedical and behavioral science and engineering. The initiative will provide $2 to $3 million to fund up to eight R01 awards in fiscal year 2009.
"Through rigorous research efforts, the NIH and others will continue to close the gender gap in science and engineering," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. "Collecting data to understand what affects the career trajectories for women and men will inform the development and adaptation of intervention strategies."
The RFA seeks to support research on causal factors explaining the career patterns of women in biomedical and behavioral science and engineering. It also aims to test the efficacy of programs designed to eliminate sex/gender disparities and to promote the careers of women in these fields. Areas of interest include family and economic circumstances; institutional/departmental environment and organizational structure; disciplinary culture or practices; and issues related to broader social and cultural context.
The initiative, sponsored by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), emerged from the NIH Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers, co-chaired by Dr. Zerhouni and Dr. Vivian Pinn, Associate Director for Research on Women's Health and Director of the Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH). The Working Group was created to examine and address the issues highlighted in the National Academies report, "Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering", with attention to both extramural and intramural communities.
RFA-GM-09-012: Research on Causal Factors and Interventions that Promote and Support the Careers of Women in Biomedical and Behavioral Science and Engineering (R01). The receipt date for applications is October 22, 2008. To view the announcement, visit http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-GM-09-012.html. For more information about the NIH Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers, visit http://womeninscience.nih.gov/.
NIGMS supports basic biomedical research that is the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. For more information, visit http://www.nigms.nih.gov. ORWH serves as the focal point for women's health research at the NIH. For more information, visit http://orwh.od.nih.gov/.The National Institutes of Health (NIH) - The Nation's Medical Research Agency - includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
In an effort to advance talented women in leadership positions, including those from underrepresented backgrounds, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published today a Request for Applications (RFA) to support research on causal factors and interventions that promote and support the careers of women in biomedical and behavioral science and engineering. The initiative will provide $2 to $3 million to fund up to eight R01 awards in fiscal year 2009.
"Through rigorous research efforts, the NIH and others will continue to close the gender gap in science and engineering," said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. "Collecting data to understand what affects the career trajectories for women and men will inform the development and adaptation of intervention strategies."
The RFA seeks to support research on causal factors explaining the career patterns of women in biomedical and behavioral science and engineering. It also aims to test the efficacy of programs designed to eliminate sex/gender disparities and to promote the careers of women in these fields. Areas of interest include family and economic circumstances; institutional/departmental environment and organizational structure; disciplinary culture or practices; and issues related to broader social and cultural context.
The initiative, sponsored by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), emerged from the NIH Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers, co-chaired by Dr. Zerhouni and Dr. Vivian Pinn, Associate Director for Research on Women's Health and Director of the Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH). The Working Group was created to examine and address the issues highlighted in the National Academies report, "Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering", with attention to both extramural and intramural communities.
RFA-GM-09-012: Research on Causal Factors and Interventions that Promote and Support the Careers of Women in Biomedical and Behavioral Science and Engineering (R01). The receipt date for applications is October 22, 2008. To view the announcement, visit http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-GM-09-012.html. For more information about the NIH Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers, visit http://womeninscience.nih.gov/.
NIGMS supports basic biomedical research that is the foundation for advances in disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. For more information, visit http://www.nigms.nih.gov. ORWH serves as the focal point for women's health research at the NIH. For more information, visit http://orwh.od.nih.gov/.The National Institutes of Health (NIH) - The Nation's Medical Research Agency - includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
