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Dr Shock MD PhD
Not only in the medical academic workforce are women underrepresented this also counts for science in general.
Women earned 31.3% of chemistry PhD degrees between 1993 and 2003 but in 2002 were hired for only 21.5% of assistant professorships. Similar disparities exist for new faculty appointments in physics, engineering, and mathematics.
As far as mathematics are concerned women continue to lag behind on math related careers. This gender gap has been tried to explain from a biological point of view but this ingrained prejudice has never been proven. Results from a wide range of studies shows contradictory results and remains inconclusive.
From a recent review on this subject it’s concluded that factors for underrepresentation in math intensive field are:
- Math-proficient women disproportionately prefer careers
in non–math-intensive fields and are more likely to leave math-intensive careers as they advance;- more men than women score in the extreme math-proficient range on gatekeeper tests, such as the SAT
Mathematics and the Graduate Record Examinations Quantitative Reasoning sections;- women with high math competence are disproportionately more likely to have high verbal competence, allowing
greater choice of professions;- in some math-intensive fields, women with children are penalized in promotion rates.
In even a more recent study it was shown that women who believed their math …