Workshop aims to double number of women in physics

“When someone says ‘physicist,’ you see Albert Einstein, not one of us [women],” says Meg Urry, an astronomy professor at Yale University. “When our colleagues are hiring, we all have a picture of someone like Artie Bienenstock, rather than one of us. These things are very subtle and hard to uproot. One thing that helps is when the numbers are sufficient to reach a tipping point.” Urry was a panelist at the “Gender Equity: Strengthening the Physics Enterprise in Universities and National Laboratories” workshop sponsored by the American Physical Society (APS) in May.

The workshop’s goal was to kick-start a doubling of the number of women in physics over the next 15 years. Some 50 department chairs from leading US research universities, 14 division leaders from national laboratories, and administrators from NSF and the Department of Energy came together to examine the underlying causes for the scarcity of women in physics and to recommend ways to improve recruitment, retention, and promotion. With women making up only 13% of US physics faculty members, according to 2006 statistics from the American Institute of Physics, the field lags behind other sciences. The workshop audience, says MIT’s Mildred Dresselhaus, consisted of “high-level people with the power to effect change.”

“I think that for many, the biggest eye opener at the meeting was the discussion of implicit bias,” says Urry, “and that unexamined decisions are likely to be biased against women in an arena that is currently dominated by men.”

Inspired by a similar event in chemistry, the “workshop was the first of its kind” in physics, says Nora Berrah of Western Michigan University, who, with APS president-elect Bienenstock of Stanford University, organized the workshop. The idea, says Berrah, “is to make changes in the culture, policy, and funding to draw more women to physics.” Such changes, she adds, will also benefit men.

Most of the recommendations formulated at the workshop are familiar: Invite more women to interviews, treat all faculty members equally, nominate women for awards, provide childcare for meetings and travel, and so on. One idea that was new to Natalie Roe, a senior scientist and chair of an advisory committee on hiring at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was the concept of a centralized university office to help a trailing spouse find a job at the same university, another school, or in industry.

“We have tried many things to improve the climate for women,” says Jonathan Bagger, physics and astronomy chair at the Johns Hopkins University. “The workshop reminded us that we cannot relax.” Adds David MacFarlane, SLAC’s assistant director for elementary-particle physics, “For me, the main message was the need to continuously examine institutional progress and self-assess various practices—hiring, promotion, and family-friendly environment—that impact gender equity in the field.”

“We asked all chairs and managers to take at least two recommendations for actions back to their institutions,” says Berrah, “[and] to document their actions every six months for the next two years in a password-protected APS website.”

In addition, Berrah says, “Funding agencies are willing to do what it takes to double the number of women in physics. I am convinced that they will do all they can to facilitate the implementation of our recommendations.” It is not widely known, for example, that research grants can be put on hold when someone has a child or for other family reasons.

A follow-up meeting is planned for upper-level administrators in two years.