500 Women Scientists discussion

Inferior opens with the discussion of how few women were in her classes and how Nationally, women are underrepresented in STEM careers

Entomology has a high percentage of women earning their PhDs, but most jobs (2/3) are held by men
https://entomologytoday.org/2018/09/0...

I'm a PhD student right now in a Biology department that seems to be >50% women at all levels- faculty, grad, and undergrad. I'm TAing the undergrad Evolution class, which is 85% female students. But my department didn't just get this way on it's own, it's this way because department leaders specifically acted to put policies in place to make it fairer and more welcoming for women.

Dynamic Ecology is now running a poll on gender balance. Interested to see these results for the field of Ecology

https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/...

I'm in applied math and the number of female Ph.D.s is usually around 30-35%. But then for Tenure-track jobs only 23% of hires is female (and 25% for non-tenure-track).

I'm a postdoc in a cardiology/molecular biology lab. During my graduate studies, my molecular biology department was almost 50% women, including the faculty and there was actually a little more female graduate students than males. However, in my current department at a different institution, ~30% of the postdocs are women and only ~20% of the faculty are women.

I'm in fisheries. A recent paper found that "74 percent of federal fisheries scientists or managers are men, as were 73 percent of the university assistant professors, 71 percent of associate professors and 85 percent of full professors."

Dynamic Ecology reports 59% of tenure-track asst. professors of ecology hired in N. America during the 2017-18 job season are women. It’s 57% women over the last three years.

https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/...

I'm in environmental epidemiology now (as a postdoc), and it seems fairly even as far as I can tell (haven't counted), but I spent a lot of time in physics before this and over a period of several years I counted the women in the room at every conference or collaboration meeting I went to: consistently 10-12%.
When I was an undergrad I remember 3 female profs and maybe they hired anotherwhile I was there, and then again when I started as a PhD student at Davis I think there were only 3 female profs, and over the time I was there they hired a few more.

Mechanical engineering. The field overall is something like 7% women. The percentages are highest in graduate programs, but low in undergraduate, faculty, and industry.

I definitely feel isolated in 500WS. Most of the events seem to be dominated by or geared towards the fields with high representation of women.

Pam wrote: "Mechanical engineering. The field overall is something like 7% women. The percentages are highest in graduate programs, but low in undergraduate, faculty, and industry.

I definitely feel isolated..."

I feel you there. I'm in aerospace engineering which is like 8% and decreases the further up you go. :/

I have a friend from undergrad in aerospace! She says the field is brutal in this regard.

Hello Pam and Kate. I am so sorry you feel isolated! I brought up your comments during the leadership call today. Some good news, we are actively working on a partnership with the Society of Women Engineers. If you want to help us in this endeavor and represent your field of science, email me! Pods@500womenscientists.org. We need help :) We need more women engineers in our leadership! We would love your input.