Home / News / Somehow “We told you so” just doesn’t cover it

Image: Koren Shadmi

Pfizer, Microsoft, Cisco, Alcoa and Johnson & Johnson sponsored a study of women in science, engineering and technology to be published in the Harvard Business Review in June. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the founder of the Center for Work-Life Policy, a nonprofit organization that studies women and work, and creator of the study, says, “All the predatory and demeaning and discriminatory stuff that went on in workplaces 20, 30 years ago is alive and well in these professions.”

This New York Times piece, oddly placed in the “Fashion & Style Section,” provides the hard facts that we are painfully aware of and that the mass of men in science choose to ignore.

When the leaders in industry are beginning to put money into studies on sexism we can’t help but be a little hopeful.

  • Bob
    When I first started in chemistry very many years ago, women in the lab were a novelty. Now, men who stayed in are now management. I would bet that things get better when they retire and younger men and women take over. At the end of my time a Monsanto, women were being "push up the ladder" to make quotas. those women are the ones with a shot a senior management and can make a real change.
  • I was on the phone with a speech coach today and she asked, "Is it true?" And I said, "Yeah, it pretty much is..." But I'm with ya...if we're talking about it, hopefully that means things will change.
  • Ugh, the New York Times's habit of putting *anything* to do with women in Fashion & Style is really annoying.

    As for this report, the results aren't surprising but I think I'll join you in cautious optimism. At least the ingrained sexist culture in SET is being talked about.
blog comments powered by Disqus