...AND A MISALLOCATION OF OUR PRECIOUS RESOURCES!!!!!
Well, if you think this resource misallocation problem is just the inherent inefficiency of the public sector, the second article of this post deals with women and the more "efficient" private sector and "objective/value-free" scientific community...perhaps we will see a more efficient allocation under the leadership of our science patriarchs (oops science committee chairs) Sherwood Boehlert and Ernest Hollings.
Diane
The two related articles follow:
Feb 11, 2002
WASHINGTON LOOKOUT Bush Appointments Include Fewer Women
By Marie Tessier - WEnews correspondent
(WOMENSENEWS)--Far fewer women are making policy decisions in President George W. Bush's administration than during the Clinton administration, a development some observers are calling a major step backwards for women's representation in government. Yet women hold an unprecedented number of power posts on the White House staff.
Of the 402 Bush nominees so far whose positions require Senate confirmation, 102 are women, or about 25 percent, reports the Brookings Institution, a progressive Washington think tank. These numbers are down sharply from the 37 percent level in the first 512 Cabinet and sub-Cabinet appointments in the Clinton administration, as measured by a Knight Ridder news service analysis of comparable data in 1993.
Bush had 510 positions open for appointments in his first year in office. He held over 42 Clinton appointees and another 63 positions are yet to be filled.
"What's disheartening to me is what [the data] reflects about the access of women to the White House, especially when we see who does get access--i.e., Enron," said Roselyn O'Connell, an Arizona Republican who is president of the bipartisan National Women's Political Caucus, which promotes women in elected office. "We would be seeing different policies and priorities if there were women in more of these key positions."
O'Connell is also co-chair of the 2001 Women's Appointments Project, a bipartisan coalition that has advocated representation of women in presidential administrations since 1976. The project has had few opportunities to put forward names and resumes in the current Bush administration, project officials said.
The data underscore a trend first reported by Women's Enews last July. At the time, leaders of women's groups said they had been "shut out" of the appointment process for the first time since the Nixon presidency.
Bush Hired Staff Includes Women in Top Jobs
The Bush administration's initial round of appointments did include a number of high-profile women. The administration named three women to the Cabinet and two others in Cabinet-level positions, including Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman; Interior Secretary Gale Norton; Labor Secretary Elaine Chao; Christine Todd Whitman, head of the Environmental Protection Agency; and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice. Chao is Asian American and Rice is African American, offering further diversity to Bush's advisors.
Pat Carpenter, executive director of The WISH List, a pro-choice Republican political action committee for state and national women candidates, declined to comment on whether she is satisfied with the representation of women among the president's appointees. However, she said that she's impressed with the influence of women advisers like White House Communications Director Karen Hughes.
"I think he has a lot of bright, outstanding women in the administration," Carpenter said. Hughes is widely viewed as the most powerful woman ever to work officially in the White House. And while scholars said the percentage of women in top staff positions--as opposed to cabinet and sub-cabinet posts--has remained constant with the change in administration, many agree that more women have this president's ear than any previous commander in chief allowed in the past.
Examples include Hughes, director of the Domestic Policy Council Margaret Spelling and Vice President Cheney's adviser Mary Matalin. These staff positions and that of National Security Adviser Rice are not subject to Senate confirmation and so do not show up in the Brookings data.
"It's true that there are fewer women throughout the administration, but if you were to look at how much 'face time' women advisers get with the president on a daily basis, then Bush can arguably claim the lead," said G. Calvin Mackenzie, a Brookings Institution visiting fellow who has developed and tracked appointee data going back to the Eisenhower administration.
Burk: "We Are Not Talking About a Special Interest Group"
But Martha Burk, president of the National Council of Women's Organizations, said many more women deserve to be around the table when policy priorities are being set. Their input is important because women and men look at issues in different ways, she said.
"We're not talking about a special interest group here. We're talking about a majority of the voters," said Burk, whose coalition of women's groups represents 6 million women. "We are long past the time that people can claim that qualified women can't be identified. There's a lack of will to make this happen."
The data from the Brookings Institution do not include U.S. attorneys, U.S. marshals or ambassadors, nor do they include many other positions that are appointed but do not require Senate confirmation. Brookings tracks the progress of individuals through the appointment process and attempts to promote administrative reforms and assist nominees navigate background checks and confirmation hearings.
The raw numbers are not exactly comparable from administration to administration because not all appointees' terms expire with a change in administration, agencies get reorganized and job titles and responsibilities change over time. Brookings based its comparison between administrations on percentages of similar positions.
For more information:
Also see Women's Enews - "Women's Appointments Plummet Under Bush," July 1, 2001, - http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/600/
The National Women's Political Caucus: - http://www.nwpc.org/
The National Council of Women's Organizations: - http://www.womensorganizations.org/
2001 Women's Appointments Project: - http://www.appointwomen.com/
The WISH List: - http://www.thewishlist.org/
**********************************************************************************************************
Feb, 12, 2002
SCIENCE & TECH Stubborn Equation Keeps Women on the Minus Side
By Phoebe Nobles - WEnews correspondent
NEW YORK (WOMENSENEWS)--Despite significant advances, women in science have cause for frustration to equal their pride.
A new report by the National Council for Research on Women says the gender gap in science and math performance is narrowing in elementary and high schools. The report also shows, however, that women are still underrepresented in top positions in academia and business, where much of the power to change American science lies.
That concern was foremost in the minds of scientists and educators who gathered at a conference at Barnard College on Thursday. Most present had hoped that the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, which banned gender discrimination at institutions that receive federal funding, would open the doors wide for women in science.
Thirty years later, much remains to be done.
"All you have to do is go into a science building and look for women's bathrooms," said Barbara Lazarus, Carnegie Mellon associate provost for academic affairs. An appreciative mutter of recognition arose from the crowd, though none had to search far at Barnard, a women's college.
The council's report tempers each celebratory statistic with a bleaker one. Using the most recent data, the report said women are still in a significant minority among those gaining physics and engineering degrees. In physics, women took just 19 percent of degrees in 1996 and a mere 18 percent of engineering degrees. In contrast, women earned half of all undergraduate degrees in biology in 1995, compared with only 29 percent in 1979. And, while the ranks of undergraduate women in biology have swelled, their numbers drop off in the corresponding graduate and doctoral programs.
Computer science, a field that at its inception attracted women to procure 37 percent of its undergraduate degrees in 1984, has steadily lost women. In 1999, women received less than 20 percent of computer science degrees.
In addition, though women have earned a quarter of all science doctorates since the 1970s and female associate professors have almost quadrupled in number, women have made little progress in securing full professorships. In 1973, only 3 percent of women instructors had attained that level. By 1995, the figure had not reached 10 percent, according to the report.
Women's absence from scientific leadership positions not only leaves them out of decision-making, but exacerbates the lack of role models vital for younger women scientists, conference attendees concluded, and a lack of visibility at the top perpetuates itself by allowing women without mentors to slip through the cracks.
The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same
Of special concern to those at the conference was why girls and women drop out of each stage of scientific pursuit at higher rates than men. The reasons cited ranged from cultural influences to lack of teachers to bias.
Lazarus said one explanation for the attrition of girls and women in science programs may be a particularly American notion about natural ability.
"In Japan, hard work is considered positive, not an indication that you're not really good" at math or science, Lazarus said. Americans, she argued, are less likely to encourage students to persevere at something they don't pick up immediately.
New York City Public Schools Chancellor Harold Levy said, "The shortage of math and science teachers is pernicious." He vowed to concentrate on professional development (over 30 percent of math and science teachers in New York are uncertified to teach their disciplines), and voiced hope that the new administration would be receptive to the effort.
Citing young women's lack of interest in science because they correlate it with death, war, or the military, Sue Rosser, Dean of Georgia Tech's Ivan Allen College, maintained, "When girls see its social usefulness, they are interested in science."
At Carnegie Mellon, aggressive outreach has brought the incoming computer science class from 7 percent women in 1995 to 40 percent in 2000. Lazarus recommended the restructuring of college entrance requirements to allow young women to explore areas of study in which they might not have previous experience or may not have received a high score on the aptitude tests commonly used to determine course placement.
But further along in the pipeline, women tend to drop out of science because of family commitments--a factor Rosser cited as the primary concern among women scientists.
However, Evelynn Hammonds, director of the Center for the Study of Diversity in Science, Technology, and Medicine at MIT and a associate professor of the history of science, said that "what is coming out from minority women is that discrimination issues rank equally to work and family concerns."
Phoebe Nobles is a freelance writer in Brooklyn, N.Y.
For more information:
National Council for Research on Women: - http://www.ncrw.org/
National Science Foundation: - http://www.nsf.gov/
Clare Booth Luce Program: - http://www.hluce.org/3cblfm.html
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