Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS A comparison of industrial and government employment for women scientists and engineers suggests several parallels: in both sectors women and men are distributed differently both in terms of rank or grade level and in terms of work activities; women with identical education and work experience as men earn less and have less expectation of advancement. That this situation, a reflection of the general historical patterns of employment, should still obtain for older employees is perhaps no surprise: the very fact that they were disadvantaged in employment over a long period may now make them less experienced and knowledgeable and therefore less qualified. That newly trained women scientists face a very similar future despite nearly a decade of equal-opportunity mandates is cause for grave concern. This is not to minimize the very real gains which have been made: the increases in the proportion of new hires in both government and industry, the reduction of salary differences for new hires in industry, and the growth in promotion rates and consequently salaries for women in government, represent significant advances. But they are only first steps. While the percentage of women scientists employed in industry remains low, at about half that of their presence in the work force, it has increased dramatically in recent years. Even if women were hired at a utilization rate equivalent to men in each specialty, however, their total number in industry would remain relatively small in the forseeable future. This is especially true for minority women scientists who still represent less than one tenth of one percent of all doctoral scientists. For women in general, the proportions of new doctorates in the engineering, mathematical and physical sciences â the dominant fields for Ph.D.s in industry â are small and are expected to rise relatively slowly. Industrial employment of life and social scientists, with large fractions of women, is much lower than in the BMP fields. Nonetheless, the disproportionately high unemployment rate of women scientists, especially in the physical sciences, suggests that recruiters may not be tapping this pool of available talent or that the doctoral women themselves may not be aware of opportunities in industry.2 A study to explore the reasons for low recruitment and hiring of women scientists in industry is now being planned by this Committee. iThe conditions reported here also prevail in the academic sector, as documented in a previous report by this Committee, Climbing the Academic Ladder: Doctoral Women Scientists in Academe. 2As of 1977j unemployment rates for male and female Ph.D.s, respectively, were: in physics, 1.0 and 5.7 percent, and in chemistry, 0.9 and 5.0 percent. See Science, Engineering, and Humanities Doctorates in the U.S., 1977 Profile, p. 30. 39
Support of this effort is urged. Too little is known about general industrial needs and recruitment of doctoral scientists, on the one hand, and about the employment choices of women scientists on the other, to make any specific program recommendations at this time. The markedly different distribution of primary work activities for men and women in industry suggests persistent sex stereotyping of jobs, which is generally recognized as the basic cause of salary differences. The fact that a disproportionately high fraction of women scientists and engineers remains engaged in basic or applied research, without promotion to management, and that their placement in "other", undefined work functions is even more unbalanced strongly implies a need for more effective equal opportunity monitoring at professional levels. A question that has been raised but cannot be answered at this time is to what extent women apply for these lower positions. Salary differences between men and women persist even when controlled for field, full-time equivalent years of experience, or work function. Given the necessarily very small number of women scientists and engineers in a particular field, experience level, or function in a specific company, no general statistical analysis can reveal whether such differences may be justified in individual cases. The utility of regression analyses of the type widely used in assessing faculty salary differentials3 should be explored. In any case it is recommended that, in addition to federal compliance requirements, companies internally conduct analyses of salaries and focus efforts on speedy rectification of any unjustified differences. With regard to emp]oyroent in federal agencies, where salaries are fixed according to grade levels, our data suggest that far more attention should be paid to equal initial job placements. If women scientists, on the average, are consistently assigned to lower starting grades than men regardless of their similarity in education and attainments, as our data indicate they are, then affirmative action within government agencies must focus on these initial grade placements. A special effort should be made to effect retroactive adjustments, where necessary, for women hired within the last few years. Finally, greater attention must be paid to holders of other degrees. This Committee has been primarily concerned with doctoral women scientists and engineers in the past, although the above recommendations are intended to apply to bachelor's and master's degree recipients as well. Our brief review of government employment of women scientists and engineers at the lower degree levels shows that inequalities in grade assignment and consequently in salary are proportionately far more serious for this much larger group than for women doctorates. This finding suggests and urgent need to study in depth the employment of women with bachelor's and master's degrees in industry. 3Alan E. Bayer and Helen S. Astin, Sex Differentials in the Academic Reward "jstem, Science, Vol. 188, 1975, pp. 796-802. 40
The fresh recognition of the importance of industrial research and development to our national future underscores the need for full use of available talent and hence the salience of equal industrial employment opportunities for women scientists and engineers. 41
