The Wage Gap in the Sciences

According to the 2004 US Census, women in the US earned on average 76.5¢ for every dollar that men earned. (Wikipedia) This statistic, however, is misleading as it fails to take into account issues such as choice in career (CEO pays more than cashier), education, delay of career due to childcare, or even full/part time employment status (correct me if I'm wrong on this last one). While the statistic of 76.5¢ on the dollar is quite depressing, it would be much more useful to compare like jobs and like education levels.

Well, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has a series of statistics that help us to examine exactly this! If you look at the overall situation, then it's worse than in non-science fields: Women in the sciences earn $49k on average, while men earn $70k, putting women at 70¢ on the dollar ("Median annual salary of scientists and engineers employed full time, by highest degree, broad occupation, age group, and sex: 2003", Table H-16). But once you start to control things better, the situation isn't quite as dire. For people with a Master's degree such as myself, women earn 80¢ on the man's dollar ("Primary education/employment status and median salary of 2001 and 2002 S&E master's degree recipients, by field, sex, race/ethnicity, and disability status: 2003", Table H-14).

It varies by field and age as well. Women in Biological/Life sciences can expect 88¢, while women in Math average out at 71¢ (lower than the national average!). My field, physical science, is nearly as bad at 73¢ - however young women (under age 29) can expect to make $1.14 to every dollar that a man makes! How's that for breaking the curve! Unless she's got a doctorate too, then it's back down to 72¢.

Sexism against women physicists

Anyone have access to this article? It looks to be an interesting read, but I can't access it from home.

Male Breast Cancer

In many aspects of medicine, men are treated as the "gold standard," and women as a variation upon that, and often one we don't understand very well. While this is improving in many respects, I was intrigued to find there's one aspect where women are the gold standard and men are the rare variation, and that is (as the title says), breast cancer. This lack of knowledge about how to treat men is primarily due to the lower incidence of breast cancer in men. Sadly, they have a lower survival rate than women, so more research is definitely needed.

"The Mercury 13" Receive Honorary Doctorates

The Mercury 13 were a group of women during the Mercury space program era. These women had many hours of commercial and non-combatant flight, successfully passed all the physical tests of endurance and strength (in fact, more women passed than men), successfully passed all the hurdles their employers attempted to place before them, and a number even passed psychological, and better than the men on average. None of them ever made it into space, despite arguing in front of Congress that they should be allowed to go to space (with even John Glenn arguing against them). (Ackmann and Sherr wrote a good book about them if you want to learn more.)

And now all 13 were awarded honorary doctorates from U Wisconsin, Oshkosh. And more here.