Women in THE SCIENTIST

[Janet Mertz]

Cindy Fuller wrote: "We may get the postdocs, and some of us may get
> the first academic positions, but what happens at tenure time?  What
> happens when it comes time to find a new department chair?  

	I am on a Committee on Women in the University here in Madison. Our 
analysis of the data at the University of Wisconsin is that getting 
tenure used to be a big problem for women, especially in the physical 
sciences. However, recently the rates of achieving tenure have been 
similar for men and women (except in the medical school?), possibly 
due to the institution of both informal mentoring with other women 
faculty  and formal, required mentoring and annual review of all 
tenure-track faculty. The big remaining leak in the pipeline is in 
the hiring of women into tenure-track positions in the first place. 
Women and minorities continue to be grossly underrepresented in the 
pool of applicants. Are women self-selecting themselves out of 
high-powered positions and/or white males inducing applications 
through the old boys network?

	Janet Mertz