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posted by janrinok on Tuesday August 02 2016, @09:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the and-why-not? dept.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory "... partners with the state of Tennessee, universities and industries to solve challenges in energy, advanced materials, manufacturing, security and physics." It grew out of the super-secret Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Denise Kiernan's book, The Girls of Atomic City chronicles the development of the lab, project, and city from several perspectives, most notably the perspective of several young women recruited to work there.

Kiernan's book also gives a wonderful introduction to Lise Meitner for those of us who aren't aware of her. Lise Meitner, together with Otto Hahn, led a small group of physicists who first discovered nuclear fission of uranium which led to the development of nuclear weapons. From the Wikipedia article: "In the 1990s, the records of the [Nobel] committee that decided on [the 1944 Nobel] prize [in Chemistry, awarded for nuclear fission] were opened. Based on this information, several scientists and journalists have called her exclusion "unjust", and Meitner has received a flurry of posthumous honors, including the naming of chemical element 109 as meitnerium in 1997."

At least part of the reason Meitner was excluded may very likely have been her gender. So, it's not at all unreasonable to wonder how things in our modern, enlightened times compare with the Bad Old Days when women were actively excluded from physics.

In an article today (Aug 1) in Nature , Ramin Skibba reports on a special issue of Physical Review Physics Education Research devoted to the gender divides in physics and engineering.

[Continues...]

The special issue addresses the reasons why relatively few women enter the field of physics, as well as the factors that deter them from completing their degrees. They include a lack of role models, entrenched stereotypes and an undervaluing of their abilities. Many authors also highlighted the fact that women are -- usually inadvertently -- made to feel like they don't fit in.

Women comprise between 49% and 58% of undergraduates and graduates in the social and life sciences at US universities. By contrast, only about 20% of US undergraduate and graduate students in physics are women, according to the US National Science Foundation. That gap has persisted over the past decade.

Lack of role models, policies that address work/life balance, stereotypes, self-confidence, and social contribution are some of the hurdles and issues identified in the special issue.

Addressing these problems means significant changes at the university level, argues Ramon Barthelemy, AAAS Science Policy Fellow in Washington DC, who co-authored several studies in the special issue. Those changes could include an explicit code of conduct at conferences, striving for more diverse faculty and updating mentoring and teaching styles.

There is reason for hope, however. "More and more people are paying attention and getting passionate about these issues," says [Sarah] Eddy [a biologist at University of Texas at Austin].


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @12:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @12:07AM (#383408)

    Whenever a story is posted about the progress of women in science or tech on one of the tech sites, most of the responses will be arguing about whether

    1) the story deserved to be posted

    and/or

    2) whether the program or attention shows how SJWs have taken over our society

    Typically, none of the responses will be about the specific subject of the article.

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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @12:39AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @12:39AM (#383425)

    The article is about a Jew who left Germany during the Nazi era. Why isn't the regular Godwin's Law good enough? Everything has to have a special female version?

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @02:47AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @02:47AM (#383471)

    Laid out clearly here:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRnTovm26I4 [youtube.com]

    If it is interesting enough to know about, putting up a flashing neon sign of OH, BY-THE-WAY, SHE'S A WOMAN, trivializes the accomplishment. The focus is then on the woman, not the science, and is as back-handed as

    Did you know Wernher von Braun was German? I suppose Germans are capable of doing science

    On the other hand, Alan Turing's homosexuality is pertinent to how his life ended.

    But no one cares because he loved the cock. His accomplishments far exceed anyone trying to score points for their pet cause.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @06:16AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 03 2016, @06:16AM (#383508)

    There's an old quote, attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, that Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. I think that is and remains an accurate insight into society. Discussing gender is a subset of discussing people. One can only imagine her fine choice of adjective for such minds. This article mentions role models. Stephen Hawking has been an inspiration for myself and countless others. That a human who drools on himself without assistance; defecates upon himself without assistance is one of the most influential and inspirational voices in science, and physics today, is perhaps the greatest testament to the fact that in science people care not about your identity or condition, but instead about your contributions and your merit. Bickering over quixotic barriers in such a field is no more productive than battling those etymological windmills.