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Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
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10

Reports from the Breakout Sessions

Following the presentation described in Chapter 9, breakout sessions were organized to enable more extensive discussions among the workshop participants. The following questions and statements were suggested to the breakout groups as possible topics for discussion.

  • What are the unwritten agendas and folktales of career prospects for women in chemistry and chemical engineering? Are they realistic?

  • Are there rewards for an institution that improves its record with respect to hiring and promoting female chemists and chemical engineers?

  • How rapidly can organizations change? How rapidly must they change?

Discussion leaders from the breakout groups then reported in plenary session what they believed to be important ideas and topics that had emerged in the discussions.

Frankie K. Wood-Black, Phillips Petroleum: Our group began by talking about some of the folklore issues, and then we jumped to the last of the proposed questions. Do you remember the last two questions? How rapidly can this change happen, and when should this change happen? Yesterday would not have been too soon. But the reality is, how quickly it can happen will depend on the structure that you are dealing with and what the drivers are for your particular organization. Nothing will happen without the drivers.

We then talked about some of the different agendas and folk tales that are out there. Where are the students going? This looks like an issue that several of us are going to take back to the various groups that we work with.

A common piece of folklore is that students receiving M.S. degrees are now available to go to industry, and that industry is coming in and hiring at a progressively higher rate. There are computer jobs; we all know the dot-coms—dot-corns are taking everybody. I hear anecdotally from parents who want their kids to get a 4-year degree, that if the kids are good in computer science, they get an internship during the summer and forget about going back to school because they can make a million

Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
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dollars in 2 years. There is a woman chemist in Tulsa who says she was able to organize a start-up because her son had already established a dot-com, and he was able to sponsor her start-up.

Another anecdote concerns whether students receiving B.S. degrees are going into medical school at a greater rate. That question is there, and we need to look at it. Data will show the reality, but as you have seen over the last day and a half, the reality isn't so hot either.

We spent most of our time talking about rewards and where they were. One suggestion was to generate a list of how different departments rank with respect to women. If such a list were published, would that really work and would it drive what you were after? I'm not so sure. Sometimes the negative press would dominate, and sometimes the positive press would.

We talked about the structure for research grants. The big driver is the pocketbook, so where is the money coming from? Is it coming from the federal agencies, is it coming from the state organizations? And there is accreditation. We talked about the ACS Committee on Professional Training (CPT) and whether or not there should be a question or a focus issue about women in the accreditation process.

It came up continuously that everybody has become so politically correct that you worry about the legal whiplash. If we do some things, we may be opening ourselves up for a counter discrimination suit. So possible legal issues may create a barrier as we talk about things —we need to either stand to the side or take the risk. And if we let the lawyers at it, we all know what the lawyers are going to do.

Awards are another issue. We focused on big awards, because the small awards are merely a bit of recognition that could be funded out of pocket. What are these rewards supposed to drive? Presumably, their goal is to change the infrastructure.

We probably have the equivalent of the old route system. Remember Route 66 and Route 25 and Route 50? Frequently, that wasn't efficient to get where we needed to go. What changed? We developed the interstate highway system, which took a massive change in thinking. Now we are trying to change the infrastructure to help women move forward.

My final point is, “Do something.” I'm going to leave you with a piece of evidence for which we actually have some anecdotal support. It is okay to fail. It is okay to try and fail and say, “This didn't work for this situation, and this is why.” It is not okay to not try. You must go out and try. Just sitting and doing your own thing will not be a catalyst for change—it will not be an agent for change and nothing will happen. We all must do a part. I can tell you from my position as chair of the ACS Women Chemists Committee, that we have been trying to get women recognized with ACS awards. We have been following the numbers, and we have been trying to get women recognized. But I can tell you, it doesn't matter how much preaching gets done, women are not participating in the ACS awards process. The numbers are appalling, when you start looking at how few women submit a nomination document. This is a problem that we all can work to fix without having to get involved in a group, without having to spend a whole lot of time. Sometimes we only talk; we need to be out there making the change ourselves.

Cecily C. Celby, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University: We also focused on organizational change and asked why we were interested in it. We have been talking a lot about symptoms of climates that are unhealthy for women, so why are we moving from symptoms and disease to organizational change? It is because we talk about all the sad tales—but productive talk about sad tales, as the symptoms of an underlying pathology—and to meet our goals, we have to look at institutions as a whole.

As we look at institutions, we notice that one of the symptoms of disease is failure, although as a biologist, I'd rather talk about failure to adapt. We all know that the healthy surviving organism is the

Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×

one that adapts to changes in the environment. So looking at institutions, there is a very simple conclusion—they only change when the leadership is effective and strong.

Focusing for the moment on academe, retention of talent is a major question. We know there are problems with retention of talent at all levels, and all kinds of talent—not just female talent. What do we know about the retention of female talent? I think the reason for dropping out can be traced to when the climate in the workplace is discongruent with the person's values—when the behaviors in the workplace are discongruent with the person's own behavior—women more than men will opt out. So I go on that assumption, and we have that kind of data.

Looking at institutions as a whole, one question is, Can they change rapidly? We had one or two examples, both academic and industrial, of institutions changing very rapidly when the leadership wanted it to—when the leadership was committed to the kind of goals we're talking about.

How soon? I think our message has got to be, the sooner the better, not just for us, but for science, for technology, for men and for women. What is good for women is good for science and engineering and good for men.

How will we know what we will want to change? What are we after? How will we know that we have succeeded? It was mentioned that one of the signs of success will be when some of the goals suggested in this workshop can be seen at an institution—when individuals can see themselves represented in the institution, either as students, as faculty, or as administration. I can even add corporate board members. In other words, we'll know we have succeeded when everyone who wanted to succeed, succeeds. This is not to say that everyone should study science or everyone should want be a scientist. But for those who have made the choice, they will have the opportunity to succeed—the climate is favorable.

We can even go beyond this and say that our real concern is, Who will do science in the 21st century? This is important. My particular point of view is that we need to get the public—in the broad sense, from taxpayers all the way up to leadership—to care about who does science. This has to be done for the sake of science and for the sake of society. Who is going to choose to do science, who is going to be enabled to be successful? If they are going to be successful, they must have the kinds of environments that are congruent with their values, their ambitions, their tastes, their styles, and so on.

We discussed diversity quotients as a strategy, talking about the value and limitations of quantitative data, and about the transparency of data. That is a very important issue, as we all know today, because of the arguments about privacy versus transparency. In the best cases, private companies are required by law, by practice, and by stockholders to be much more transparent than academic institutions have to be at the present time. To what degree will social changes be forcing more transparency on academic institutions, and what are the implications of that? Take MIT's “secret data.” What implications would such transparency have for faculty privacy? There are many privacy issues.

A major concern is diversity quotients. We could use them in a variety of ways. But how could they be constructed to include not just numbers? How can we build in attitudes, values, perspectives? Could we rank institutions like the automobile industry ranks automobiles? They find a way to rank automobiles by a whole variety of criteria, some quantitative, such as drivability, and some aesthetic. And we evaluate our students by quantitative and qualitative data, so we ought to be able to do that.

These last points respond to what was suggested this morning by Ms. Sendall, who mentioned the business reasons to motivate needed or desired change.1 I've suggested some academic reasons to

1  

A written contribution for this presentation, “Gender Diversity in the Workplace: The Leadership and Organizational Imperative,” was not available for inclusion in this report of the workshop.

Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
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motivate academic change. However, there are complications that I don't believe we could possibly have talked about in detail in this meeting. Those who are ultimately in charge of academic change are the boards of trustees, and those who implement academic change are the deans and faculty. But the beneficiaries of academic change are students, so we have a very complicated constituency. I remember years ago learning that one of the troubles in academe is that you tend to have very, very conservative board members and very liberal faculties. In other words, the interests of the board and the interests of the faculty are not necessarily congruent.

My personal plea is that you find academic reasons for change that will motivate boards, deans, and faculties and be understood and valued by the students. I suggest that we must add to our current arguments about human rights, equal opportunity, and human capital the argument that everything we are talking about will be good for science and technology in the future—and certainly for the future scientists and technologists. I would love to see us think more about how diversity could help our fields.

Barbara K. Warren, Union Carbide Corporation: I would add that we talked about how to increase the representation of women at intermediate levels in academia and industry. My suggestion is that we might share examples, and we might actually encourage management in both universities and industry to take chances and bypass some of the bureaucratic procedures, some of which may hurt women. A lot of exceptions were made for men in the past. Since we see a big need to put women at intermediate levels, why don't businesses and universities take the chance, give us the rope, and allow us to risk hanging ourselves? Why don't they go ahead and make exceptions and see if we can do these jobs? They need to think creatively about how to promote women. Give women the chance to fail in these intermediate positions. Try to make progress and do it quickly.

W. Sue Shafer, University of California, San Francisco: We looked at a number of myths. I think one of the myths already mentioned here is that the civil rights movement and the EEO movement have solved all our problems. I think we have heard enough to realize that is not the case.

There was one myth I hadn't heard before, but which could be insidious. One young woman was told by a male colleague that one of the dangers of women going into academia was that they would end up being divorced. It appears that this myth is being used to discourage women. I guess it shows how a comment made jokingly during a cocktail hour conversation—“If you come work for us, you're probably going to get a divorce” —can have a profoundly negative effect on someone.

Another myth is that women who have children will inevitably fall behind. You have to decide for yourself if you want kids, and when you want them; it's a very personal decision. We know people who have succeeded and you hardly realize that they took the time to have kids. But on the other hand, we have also heard about people having children and having difficulty getting back into the laboratory, getting proposals funded, and getting restarted. The Office of Research on Women's Health has programs for people who need to reenter the workplace, for whatever reason. But they are programs that have fairly specific rules, so you might want to talk to people at NIH about them, if that is an issue for you.

Another myth is that women have research grants but get fewer dollars per research grant. When I first went to NIH, that was true; however, when I left it wasn't true. The reason it was once true is that women used to ask for less. They have gotten smarter. So at least on the individual grant basis, they are no longer funded less frequently (in terms of success rate) or less generously than men.

The question was raised in our group about whether women have fewer grants than men. I'm not certain if they do or if they have a harder time than men getting the second or third grant. I hope we look into that.

We have heard it asked if industry can use the bottom line as a justification for increasing the

Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×

number of women. If the academic sector is more intellectual, does this mean it ought to increase the number of women because it is the right thing to do? I think the answer in both cases is yes, but you can't necessarily expect academics to be more altruistic than the rest of the world.

One member of our breakout group described a program funded by the Luce Foundation, which evidently targeted institutions that had poor records of having women—I'm not sure if it was in chemistry or science. They made essentially a 5-year chair award that would give summer support for scientists and support for other things such as undergraduate fellowships in science, women in science offices, and so on. This has the effect of asking an institution to make a commitment to increasing the number of women in science. Is that the kind of program that could be extended further and that could be considered by agencies such as NIH or NSF?

Another topic that came up was about scoring departments on their diversity standards and somehow connecting their eligibility to receive more funding with these improvements in diversity standards. For instance, if there were a report card on diversity standards that could be used by universities, might this be a better tool than federal enforcement through EEO or civil rights legislation? If you give an institution a positive incentive instead of bringing in a big federal bureaucracy to try to do this, the results might be better. Nevertheless, there is much to be said for the notion of possibly using Title IX as a weapon.

It was noted that the National Science Foundation has some requirements —which many of you know better than I do, I'm sure—for describing a department's atmosphere and diversity. Many times, these requirements are not addressed in the applications, but they are supposed to be addressed in both the applications and the reviews. Perhaps NSF could be stricter about not reviewing applications that don't appropriately describe such things and perhaps it could give reviewers more direction as to how they should be weighted in review.

There is anecdotal evidence that search committees tend to have their own agendas and that they nitpick in an effort to be seen as evaluating things appropriately. Sometimes this can reach ridiculous levels, not only discouraging applicants but also ending up with the wrong people. So one needs to look at how one is running one's search committee and how even-handedly one is treating men, women, and minorities. When somebody does something outrageous, you need to call them on it right then and there.

Another way to effect change is to organize brown-bag lunches, to get the word out on things like the discussions at this meeting, and to suggest actions that people could take. One member of our breakout group reported that she had volunteered to organize her departmental administrative review, because that was the way that she could get her agenda items considered along with those of the rest of the department.

Finally, “Network, network, network.” Sound familiar? We talked about enlisting males and people with star power as allies in what you need to accomplish.

Are there ways in which we could reward departments that produced good students who go on to take positions in academic departments? I didn't hear any specific suggestions on how this could be done, but it is something we all need to think about.

A member of our group said that one of the most important things in his development as a scientist had been the opportunity to go to regional meetings for students and faculty, where he and other graduate students could start early to present their research in a friendly environment. That might be something to consider organizing for women faculty and students, as a way of reaching women particularly.

To summarize, I think there are two areas where we need some more data. First, does having a

Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×

family delay career progression, and if so, how systematically? And second, are women as successful as men in getting a second or third grant?

I think we need to do something. We each need to take home three things that we think are the most important things we can do. They may be local, they may be regional, they may be national. But I urge you on your flight or your drive home to think about the three most important things you could do. Write them down and carry them around with you until you have checked them off. Then I think you will have accomplished something.

Maria K. Burka, National Science Foundation: We are, as you may recall, the group that has chemical engineers. One of the first comments we heard was that there aren't any folk tales in chemical engineering—because we are the first generation of women in academia. But as the discussion went on, we discovered there were some folk tales. We started by discussing the notion that to be treated the same as men, women have to be two and a half times as good. It isn't clear whether that is reality or myth.

Another folk tale is that you should have children only after you have tenure, because once you have tenure, life becomes easy and things are much smoother—you don't have anything to worry about. That certainly does not seem to be the case.

It was reported that in some schools, these problems don't exist anymore because there are very enlightened people in leadership positions—deans, department chairs, and so on—who have taken the proper steps and are addressing the situation. We should be fair and give credit where credit is due. The problems are not universal. There might be problems in some departments, but other departments are really taking the proper steps.

When you have one woman in a department—which is very often the case in a chemical engineering department, and very often in industry as well—that woman is appointed as the token woman on every single committee. This takes time away from her scholarship, it takes time away from her research, and ultimately —when she comes up for tenure or promotion—the response is, “Well, she hasn't performed.” But the woman's time had been sapped by the activities of all these committees to which she was appointed. In some schools, department chairs have addressed this problem and put a stop to the practice. Nobody in that department can be put on a committee unless the department chair agrees, and the department chair will shield women and minorities, so that they are not penalized by having to sit on every single committee.

Many students believe that because you are a woman, it is easy to get a job and it is easy to get promoted. This is a serious problem that we do have to address, because the misconception exists on a lot of campuses.

Some people argued that it is not fair to paint all men as villains, because there are many men who just don't understand what the problems are and who are looking for information. The reality is that if we communicate, we can handle some of these problems without a confrontation. What about the idea that men over 50 are the enemy? Again, it was argued that this is not accurate, because there are many men over 50 who are in fact very anxious to mentor and help. It is really important to keep in mind that the pull at this time has to come from white males, so we all have to work together.

Women have a societal problem that is not confined to chemistry or chemical engineering or to universities. Many women have low self-esteem, and a lot of them feel that no matter what they do, they are wrong. In other words, if they have a career and they have children, they are not doing a good job of either. On the other hand, if they stay home and raise their children, they are asked, Is that all you're doing? This is a big problem, although I'm not sure how we can solve it.

There is another folk tale—that fixing the pipeline will do the trick. This is something that is

Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×

constantly used against women and it is not fair. We should not permit that to be used, because the pipeline problem is not a valid excuse.

Another point that was mentioned was the feeding frenzy when you are out there looking for a job. Everybody wants you. The companies and the schools make these great promises. Then as soon as you're hired and you've signed on the bottom line, the honeymoon is over. You can't get the lab space, you can't get any of the things that were promised to you initially. This is a big problem, particularly for women, because men seem to be better at camping out and demanding that they get the lab space, demanding that they get the promotions. Perhaps women are not trained to be quite as assertive.

Our group discussed rewards to the institutions to improve their records. For industry, the ranking system is important, because executives pay attention. The cover of a recent copy of Woman Engineer magazine showed rankings for the top 50 companies—how welcoming they were and what kinds of places they were for women to work at. Companies paid attention to that.

We need to talk about work quality issues. In industry, managers are compensated according to how good a job they do. This is not necessarily the case in academia, and this might be something we could learn from.

We also talked about the trickle-down effect. That is, if companies perceive that a university is not as diverse as they would like, they don't go there to hire and they don't give donations. So academic institutions do need to keep these things in mind, because this is the reality.

It was suggested that the reward system at academic institutions is much more tenuous. Louisiana State University has just graduated 12 African-American women with Ph.D.s, and this has made companies take notice. They are sending interviewers there, because there are people they want to hire. So there is a positive pull.

Then there is of course the pull that students are needed for the future, in the face of a decreasing number of applicants to graduate school. Universities do have to take notice, because if they can 't get the graduate students they need, they are going to have to be more diverse.

We talked about the U.S. News and World Report, which is the bible for a lot of academic institutions. They wave it around, saying, “We're number one.” I know whenever I visit a school, it is astonishing: as soon as that issue comes out, the first thing every department chair says to me is, “We're number two” or “We're number four.” There is a real possibility that if the ranking included diversity as part of the metric, people would sit up and take notice.

We also discussed something negative—the backlash. When that MIT report came out, several articles were published. A woman from Alaska said that the report was nonsense, that the women at MIT were just whining, and that they didn't have any hard data. That person's perspective was picked up by the media even though she didn't have any data either. This is a clear example of the problem with backlash. This one comment was given credibility, even though there was little to back it up. It was suggested that frequently there may be a backlash, so one should expect it and ignore it.

There is also the question of speed. How rapidly do organizations change? And how rapidly must they change? The answer to the first question is, Very slowly. How rapidly must they change? Much faster. Of course, those are the easy answers to the question. We discussed this in detail. Some people in our group reported that their institutions were working on this, that schools were doing equity surveys, that committees had already been established, and that administrations were listening. One person said that at her institution, she had seen real changes in 18 months, because all these reports are coming in and people are paying attention.

But you need somebody in a leadership position who is willing to pay the price. It may be a dean who is willing to say “Yes, we're going to do such and such, we're going to make these changes.” Often

Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×

these people pay a price for their actions. You need somebody who is willing to pay that price, but those people don't always exist.

There may be dangers in making changes too quickly. Sometimes if you promote a woman—or if you move her up into positions for which she doesn't have the proper training, background, or reputation—more damage is done than good. What happens is, everybody points to her and says, “Look, she was promoted without the proper credentials, without the proper background; she only got it because she is a woman.” So the implication is that women who are not competent get promoted. Therefore, we have to be careful to make sure that the women who are promoted are properly trained for those positions. The counterargument to that, however, is that we really need to get our foot in the door. So there is some balancing to be done here.

We also heard that if we can move more quickly, if some data are collected and published on the lack of diversity in the faculty and so on, then alumni of these institutions would react by refusing to give money. This may be a mechanism we can use for quicker change. We really don't have that much time. I heard from a number of people that apparently the pipeline to that middle level is empty. While the situation varies from institution to institution, there is a feeling of urgency.

What are my conclusions? We need surveys. Surveys are important; they provide data, they provide ammunition. But we also need publicity. Publicity is very important, and it is especially important if we use it properly and for positive change.

Last but not least, Why is the makeup of this particular group—the workshop participants—what it is? Where are the deans, where are the department chairmen, where are the decision makers? A number of people said they had been sent by their dean or supervisors. But the supervisors are the ones who must take care of this problem. The question is, Why aren't those people here?

Lou Ann Heimbrook, Lucent Technologies: What I am going to be discussing today is plans for change. We have heard a lot about a variety of areas, and our group talked about where we need to go. I will share with you some points that you will be able to think about as you leave the workshop.

Let me start with plans for change. There is a need for linkage among industry, academia, and government. The first link we need is with the Morella Commission, which is an 11-person commission on the advancement of technology.2 You should know about that commission because it is an avenue that will help you to follow up on some of the discussions we have had here. And you should link up with the AXXS '99 as well.

My second point concerns recommendations to the ACS Board of Directors and its Committee on Professional and Member Relations. We are all ACS members: How is our ACS board being run? Who are its members? What do we want them to be doing? What are they looking into? Are the issues raised here being looked at by the ACS Board?

Then there is political activity in your home states. Be politically active in supporting and sustaining the appointments or election of women to high positions at the federal, state, and local levels. Why is this important? If we look at the current Administration in Washington, we see women in various positions of power. We need to continually support this type of political activity, especially if we are going to be raising issues of women in the work environment, in this case, the field of chemistry. So we want people to know first that we applaud the efforts of women and second that we want them to

2  

Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering, and Technology Development (CAWMSET); the full Commission report, “Land of Plenty: Diversity As America's Competitive Edge in Science, Engineering and Technology, ” was published in August 2000.

Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×

continue. Whether that means being active at the federal, local, or state level, it is important to make sure that we keep up the activity.

The other thing is action—whatever is possible for us to do—to get an executive order applying Title IX to academic institutions. This is a tough one, a tough one. But we need to see what actions we can take, and clearly there is some related activity.

All you have to do is look around the United States and at the processes of government and you see that lobbying is one of them. Actively lobby your state and local legislators to support the advancement of women. In particular, push your institution to make this a priority. As you know, in industry, lobbying is an activity, and it can be for universities too.

We can work to implement a diversity ranking. Here are some ways of doing that. Use the ACS as a locus. Publicize the ranking. If it gets into print, let's make sure we use it well. Also, suggest and show the implications for the budget if enrollment drops because you do not fare well on this ranking.

This is an individual commitment; we have spent 2 days away from our respective industrial, academic, or governmental institutions. Commit to one action. What I plan to do is a series of actions. I think everyone is going to be taking action following this workshop. I am currently working in industry, so I will make sure that when my company looks at co-ops and at postdocs, we pay attention to the institution they are from. What is the male-female faculty ratio? What are its policies? Is the institution forward looking?

We also need to look at whether industry is giving back. I have probably not been involved in enough lecture activities. I need to get involved in that again, so people can see what I am doing.

We need to prepare and submit proposals to funding agencies on the issues that we have talked about here (an example is COACh). Work the issues into your proposals, look for funding for them, because it is only through money that we can truly address the problems.

We also need to engage our ACS student affiliates. This is very, very important. Students are our future, we know that.

We have heard that in industry we celebrate diversity. But industry is not yet the shining star it should be. There are a lot of faults, and we can still make many improvements.

Let's do just one activity: let's celebrate Women's History Month. That can be quite easy to do. It can be done in many ways, and one of them is celebrate your great scientists. As I look out at the audience, I see a lot of people I can invite to Lucent Technologies' Women's History Month. So you may be hearing from me.

Also, put these activities on the list of the ACS speakers bureau. This will help in getting industrial representatives to talk about these issues at universities. If visitors are speaking on their science, they can address these women's issues afterwards, in meetings with administrators. So, after you finish your excellent scientific talk, when they ask if you want to meet the dean, you should answer yes. Then you can bring up the issues we've been talking about here.

Dr. Hopkins is the one we clearly need to thank, not just for her excellent science but also for courage. We could use her as a template for how to become an agent of change in our institutions. If you are not at MIT but at another university where things are working well, then you have a template you can share with others.

The other thing that I would end with is this: Include women's issues in the purview of the ACS Office of Graduate Education. I hope this will stimulate some activity as we try to bring about change.

Nancy B. Jackson, Sandia National Laboratoriess: I was in that group, and I just wanted to add to one of your comments about the ACS Board of Directors. Since ACS has all the data, it could very quickly do a ranking of universities. So it would be possible to request—through one of the board

Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×

members, several of whom are here—that ACS get these statistics in order and do a ranking ASAP. It may take some work to pull the data from the Directory for Graduate Research, but the data are there: they are collected by the ACS Committee on Professional Training. This is something that could be done and published quickly. I would like to see it in the student affiliate newsletter.

Robert L. Lichter, Dreyfus Foundation: I want to follow up on the comment about money. You don't need money to do a lot of things, but it surely does help to have it. I want to make an offer here: the Dreyfus Foundation will be very open to proposals that deal with many of these issues. I refer you to <www.dreyfus.org>. Look under the special grant program and follow the instructions.

Barbara K. Warren, Union Carbide: Is anybody here willing to set up a listserve so that we may share our ideas? ACS/CPT not only collects data on women faculty, but looks at how many women are on the faculty and what their level of development is. If it seems to ACS/CPT that women are not being promoted or are not getting sabbaticals or equipment, it asks questions. This is not done for every school, but it is something that ACS has been doing for a long time.

Participant: I think year 2000 is again the year for surveying all women chemists, am I not right? So when you get that survey form, please answer it, buy the book, and use it when you go to your dean, or your supervisor, or your director.

Shannon Davis, Solutia, Inc.: I want to take Barbara up on her challenge. I have hosted a Web site for quite some time for my own personal network, and now I am going to open it up. It is on yahoo.com, and I'll send everyone the address.

Janet G. Osteryoung, National Science Foundation: I would like to make a few concluding remarks. One of them has already been made both directly and indirectly by others, but I want to reinforce it. There are a lot of people here from senior ACS leadership. Your presence is very noticeable, and we really appreciate it. I think there is a potential for doing some good things.

Specifically, Frankie Wood-Black and I have already talked about having a symposium at the San Diego ACS meeting that is based on this workshop. We will work to develop that.

I would also like to thank the ACS for its assistance in getting Rep. Johnson to be dinner speaker last night. This was something that I don't think we could have done by ourselves.

Let me finally say something about NSF. Everything that has been said about what NSF does or doesn't do or thinks or doesn't think is very much in the folklore category. You have to be careful about things like that. It is a diverse organization that has a lot of temporary people moving through it, and one person's experience at one time in one part of the institution does not tell you very much about what NSF does or doesn't do. The practices and attitudes are actually quite variable.

In the Chemistry Division, I would say that we have worked diligently, although not very successfully, to do some positive things about the kinds of problems that have been discussed at this workshop. My mind has been stimulated to come up with some new ideas.

I should also mention that there is a new program in the works at NSF. Its clever name is Advance, and it will be designed to address some of the issues that were brought up here.

Finally, let me tell you two things people have said to me. One is, “I've changed my thinking.” I think that is excellent. That is what you would like a workshop to do. The other is, “My head hurts!” I like that one a lot.

Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
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Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
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Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×
Page 127
Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×
Page 128
Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×
Page 129
Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×
Page 130
Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×
Page 131
Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×
Page 132
Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×
Page 133
Suggested Citation:"Reports from the Breakout Groups." National Research Council. 2000. Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10047.
×
Page 134
Next: Appendix A: Workshop Participants »
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For a period of history no women worked outside the home. Bust as years have gone by and society has changed, Women are working varying jobs every day. They are, however, underrepresented in some sectors of jobs. This includes women in the engineering and science fields. To matters worse, women do not ascend the career ladder as fast as or as far as men do.

The impact of this and related problems for science, the academic enterprise, the U.S. economy, and global economic competitiveness have been recently examined. The Chemical Sciences Roundtable evaluate that the demographics of the workforce and the implications for science and society vary, depending on the field of science or engineering. The roundtable has organized a workshop, "Women in the Chemical Workforce," to address issues pertinent to the chemical and chemical engineering workforce as a whole, with an emphasis on the advancement of women.

Women in the Chemical Workforce: A Workshop Report to the Chemical Sciences Roundtable includes reports regarding the workshop's three sessions—Context and Overview, Opportunities for Change, and Conditions for Success—as well as presentations by invited speakers, discussions within breakout groups, oral reports from each group.

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