 "Photo: Karina Jacques/The Daily Texan")
Female science majors shared their challenges and gender stereotypes within the male-dominated field with four industry panelists Monday.
Five female students and Sarah Coates, a First-year Interest Group mentor, listened to the panelists speak about success, status and sexism in the technical professions.
Coates said women are underrepresented in computer science, and the goal of the FIG is to recruit and retain females in the major.
“A lot of people might come into [the major] and feel the minority and get out really fast,” Coates said.
Between 2000 and 2005, the number of college women studying computer science in the U.S. plummeted 70 percent. Last year, only 21 percent of computer science graduates were women, down from 37 percent in 1985, according to the Forbes Web site.
But the lack of equality is not only limited to the student body. Representation of women faculty members in the Jackson School of Geosciences has barely improved when the school, which only had one female faculty member in 2006, added six in the fall of 2008, according to the UT Gender Equity Report released in 2008. There were a total of 42 professors in the school in 2008, according to the report, which is meant to assess the climate for and representation of female faculty at the University.
The report also outlines how women must compensate for being treated unfairly, stating that “women faculty members — generally those in the physical sciences — are more likely to feel that they have to work harder to be perceived as legitimate scholars by their colleagues.”
Patti Spencer, computer science director of operations, and computer science professor Kathryn McKinley shared their own experiences and advice in the science field.
One computer science student asked how to deal with sexism among peers.
“To be competent and to dissipate sexism, get A’s,” said McKinley. “Study harder than others. You have to be willing take the extra time.”
Spencer shared her own experience while she was in graduate school in the 80s.
“I had a professor say only young, white men could do math,” she said. “Sexism is clearly still functioning, or we would have more women in our field.”
Panelists also talked about committing to the field. Spencer said that if someone is not thrown in over their head, they’re not going to grow.
“The single most important thing is to take yourself seriously internally,” McKinley said.
The article suggests that the lack of women in the field discourages prospective scholars from entering it. That's not sexism, that's a positive feedback loop (which may have been started by sexism many years ago).