A recent study done by researchers at the University of Chicago has found that female elementary school teachers who have math anxiety seem to transfer that anxiety to their female students, negatively affecting those students’ performance in math. According to an interview with the lead author on the study by ScienceDaily:

“Having a highly math-anxious female teacher may push girls to confirm the stereotype that they are not as good as boys at math, which in turn, affects girls’ math achievement,” said Sian Beilock, Associate Professor in Psychology and the Committee on Education at the University of Chicago, lead author of a paper, “Female Teachers’ Math Anxiety Affects Girls’ Math Achievement” published in the January 11 issue of theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Beilock is an expert on anxiety and stress as they relate to learning and performance.

When one considers that 90% of all elementary school teachers are female and that those teachers are given very little math training, it is easy to see how this negative effect could be having huge consequences for American girls. This effect was further discussed in ScienceDaily’s interview with the lead author of the study, Sian Beilock:

Other research has shown that elementary school children are highly influenced by the attitudes of adults and that this relationship is strongest for students and adults of the same gender. “Thus it may be that first- and second-grade girls are more likely to be influenced by their teachers’ anxieties than their male classmates, because most early elementary school teachers are female and the high levels of math anxiety in this teacher population confirm a societal stereotype about girls’ math ability,” Beilock said.

In addition, the study showed that simply believing the stereotype that boys are better at math than girls has a dramatic and negative impact upon performance. Specifically, the study found that girls who believed this stereotype did markedly worse in math achievement than girls who did not. Boys’ performance was not affected.

In addition to this study, previous research done by Dr. Matthew McGlone at the University of Texas at Austin had found that standardized test scores were influenced by gender identity questions asked immediately prior to the exam. Dr. McGlone discussed his findings in a UT interview, an excerpt of which is found here:

Survey researchers have known for years that identity issues influence the way people answer opinion questions, especially in the context of political research. Women respond differently in political opinion surveys depending on the gender of the survey administrator, with a tendency to report more liberal attitudes when asked by a woman.

“What’s surprising is that identity issues can come into play into what is ostensibly a test of your knowledge,” said McGlone. “Heightened awareness about your identity as a man or woman or member of a certain group could influence your performance on a standardized math test.”

This phenomenon is called stereotype threat—the fear that one’s behavior will confirm an existing stereotype of a group with which that person identifies, leading to impaired performance. It was first articulated by Aronson and social psychologist Claude Steele of Stanford University.

“Stereotype threat can be induced by a variety of subtle cues in the testing environment,” McGlone said, “such as the gender composition of a class or being asked to indicate one’s ethnicity or gender on a test demographics question. These cues heightened awareness of people’s ‘ascribed identities’—for example, identities based on things about themselves that they can’t easily change.”

McGlone acknowledged that many aspects of personal identity are achieved—membership in social categories based on individual achievements—rather than ascribed. He contended that deficits in test performance caused by stereotype threat could be mitigated by reminding test takers of the achieved identities they possess for which there are positive performance expectations.

“In other words, by putting women in a situation where they’re not preoccupied with negative gender stereotypes, you can significantly reduce the gender gap in standardized testing performance,” he said.

“These results suggest that priming a positive achieved identity (selective private college student) can alleviate women’s anxiety about confirming the negative stereotype that ‘women can’t do math,’” said McGlone. “When we primed this positive identity in men—for whom there is no negative stereotype regarding their math acumen—their performance was no better than when their gender was primed.

McGlone tested his hypothesis by priming different social identities among undergraduates prior to administering the Vandenberg Mental Rotation Test (VMRT), a standardized spatial reasoning test linked to math performance. The VMRT typically produces the largest documented gender difference in any cognitive ability, a difference some academics have attributed to genetic differences in intelligence favoring men.

McGlone and his colleagues asked male and female students at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., to take the VMRT. Prior to the test, the participants completed one of three short questionnaires composed of six questions designed to cue a particular social identity: their residence in the northeastern U.S., their gender, or their status as students in a selective private college.

He found that women who were primed to contemplate their identity as students at a selective private college performed at a significantly higher level on the VMRT than those primed to contemplate their gender or a test-irrelevant identity. In contrast, priming selective private college status among the male participants did not improve their performance. However, priming their gender status (men are better at math) did improve their performance.

Applications for these findings might include eliminating subtle cues from standardized math testing environments that might make gender identity issues salient to women and impair their performance.

“We’re pushing for the College Board and other standardized testing organizations to move demographic questions to the end of the test,” said McGlone. “Testers think they’re just collecting data in asking for gender, ethnic and geographic information, but there’s a subtle—and consequential—communication going on here. It says, ‘Your gender matters.”‘

“By simply manipulating when questions are asked we can appreciably improve SAT scores,” he said. “Ideally, cues that heighten awareness of any negative stereotypes—ascribed or not—should be eliminated from testing environments.”

Photo Source: HeraldTribune

A recent report by Science indicates that the current economic downturn is resulting in an increasing trend of young scientists doing multiple postdocs. This isn’t good news for young scientists because postdoctoral positions are only slightly better paid than the teaching or research assistantships that graduate students receive. In addition, the workload of a postdoctoral researcher is generally the same as that of a graduate student, which often translates to 60 plus hours in the lab per week.

Overall, this trend has two very negative consequences for PhD scientists: 1. It extends the amount of time before a PhD scientist can actually start earning a reasonable salary and thus begin investing in their future and saving for retirement; and 2. For women, it puts incredible constraints on the timing for having children.

Adding more years to the scientific training period is nothing new. In fact the trend, even before this economic downturn, has been that it takes more and more years to become a PhD scientist than ever before. Most of our PhD advisors managed to get their PhDs in only 3 or 4 years, but that was back in the 1970s. Today, the national average is 5.5 years to earn a PhD in chemistry and, unlike in the ’70s or ’80s, a postdoctoral appointment is almost always necessary in order to obtain any academic position, as well as many industry positions. Considering that most postdoctoral positions are 2 to 3 years in length, if one must now complete 2 postdocs before they can find a job, then we are talking about a 15 year investment of time into higher education before landing one’s first job!!! That means that someone who goes straight from high school through college without taking any time off will be 33 years old before they have their first job, which is also the age at which women start encountering tremendous risk and difficulty in having babies.

The additional problem with such an extraordinary investment in time is that women cannot easily have babies if they are working in a laboratory. Due to the dangers that chemicals pose to a pregnancy, women will have to leave the lab. Although there are some research advisors who can find other work for pregnant women to do, it is usually a hindrance to one’s career to have to stay out of the lab for such a long time (10 months). Additionally, as a postdoc, one is performing a short contractual job that requires extraordinary productivity. Most women feel that they will not be fulfilling their job demands if they get pregnant during a postdoc. That means that they must either risk never having children or limiting their job prospects.

The current outlook for PhD scientists seems to be one of outlandish time investment and diminishing returns. Financial planners will tell you that waiting until you are 33 or older to begin saving money for retirement is a huge mistake, but that is the unfortunate situation that most PhD chemists find themselves in these days. Had PhD chemists chosen different fields that offered better returns, in many cases they would have found much more financial security at the end of the day.

Instead of seeking a second postdoc position, we would recommend that PhD scientists broaden their job searches and goals so that they can start reaping the rewards of their higher education sooner, rather than later. However, we know that it is a very difficult place to be in and there are no easy answers. We hope that future scientists are warned sufficiently of the future they face and that economic prosperity will buoy the market again for chemists.

Photo: http://www.math.cmu.edu/~shaikhet/

One of the central ideas in this book is its philosophical stance regarding the topic of ambition. Today most successful women shy away from calling themselves ambitious, for fear of being labeled as the “b” word. There is good reason for this since, historically, ambitious women have been viewed as evil and unfeminine, e.g., Hillary Clinton, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martha Stewart. In an effort to not be villified for their ambition, most women have not only stopped calling themselves “ambitious,” but have decided that ambition in and of itself is wrong and immoral. This creates an inconsistency for many successful women who clearly have an ambitious drive to succeed, but at the same time believe that ambition is unethical.

This book argues that it is now time  to make peace with this historically loaded word, “ambition,” and learn to accept it with open arms.  Why do we hate this word so much? What image does it invoke in us? According to MSN Encarta’s dictionary, being ambitious simply means that “you have a strong desire for success.” Being ambitious doesn’t mean that you will become a sadistic monster who will hurt anyone who gets in your way.  Rather, ambition is an extraordinarly useful human drive that can give rise to extraordinary achievements. It is no coincidence that the most prolific and notable scientists we have met, including several nobel laureates, have also been extraordinarily ambitious people. If we don’t learn to use and cultivate our ambition, we are throwing away one of our most useful tools for achieving success.

In addition to the philosophical aspect of the book, Dr. Condren offers a multitude of practical tips for being successful, from learning to confront coworkers that sabotage your work to getting paid what you are worth. One important lesson we learned from reading this book was the importance of taking credit for our ideas. Something that we have observed in the lab environment many times is the propensity of people to not credit ideas properly. Here’s an example:

Let’s say that you give someone an idea for how to get their chemistry to work- perhaps you know a better route to a synthetic target, have an idea of a better reagent to use, or know a technical trick to use at the lab bench. Let’s say your advice solved the problem, but the person you helped fails to credit you for your valuable input in front of the boss, implying that it was all their doing. Do you just let this person get away with this? No. Using as much tact and humor as possible, you need to let your boss know that you were instrumental in solving that problem. You don’t need to make a huge show of it, but you could just say something in front of the boss like “I am glad that the synthetic route I suggested to you seems to have worked well.” If you never take credit for your contributions how will your boss know that you deserve a raise, promotion, or authorship on a scientific paper?

Dr. Condren’s book is full of real-world examples that serve to instruct the reader on both the right and the wrong way to handle obstacles, along with the outcomes of the approaches taken. Although many of the examples are in the context of a traditional business office, the problems are the same as those encountered in the laboratory and in academia. We recommend this book to any feminist chemist who has ever been faced with obstacles in her workplace that she didn’t know how to handle, or who simply wants to prepare ahead of time for the inevitable.

Chemistry is essential to the developments we need to make in energy, sustainability, health, and security.  But science in general and the central science of chemistry in particular are not adequately valued by the public.  The chemical sciences are the lowest funded of the physical sciences at NSF.  Discover Magazine, a popular science magazine, covers eight categories of science – none of which are chemistry. This is not just a U.S. problem. Chemistry suffers an image problem everywhere. Concern about this image problem led chemical societies around the world to launch the idea for the UN to designate 2011 as the International Year of Chemistry.I will take ACS to a leadership position in the International Year of Chemistry, partnering with our sister societies around the world to make the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve the image of the chemical sciences. I will use the International Year of Chemistry to demonstrate chemistry’s value and the need for chemistry to address society’s most challenging issues.

As chemists, we couldn’t agree more that our field needs some help in the image department. Unfortunately, ignorance is rampant in our society regarding chemistry and people tend to think of any “chemical” as bad. The truth is, however, that chemistry does indeed improve the lives of humans everyday and in huge ways. In fact it is so much a part of our lives, that most people don’t realize just how dependent we are upon chemistry. Irrational fears that exist within the public can only be erased through education.

Jackson plans to do everything in her power to increase the education of the public on all issues concerning chemistry. We are very pleased that she was elected and look forward to watching her in 2011.

Today at UCLA, in an undergraduate organic chemistry lab, a male student repeatedly punched a female student and then slashed her throat, in front of his classmates.  This incident comes not long after the horrific murder of Annie Le in another science lab at Yale.   Although UCLA and YALE claim that they are not at fault, we believe that the environment they are fostering in their labs is certainly a contributing factor. Having been teaching assistants for undergraduate chemistry labs ourselves, and having suffered through a PhD program in chemistry, we can tell you first-hand that the environment in academic science can best be described as something from “Lord of the Flies.”  In fact, we have witnessed male violence against female graduate students ourselves, and then watched as those incidents were minimized  by male professors and swept under the rug.  There is a complete and utter lack of a human resources presence in academic science labs, a presence which is sorely needed to maintain a professional and female-friendly environment.  These are not occurrences that are borne out of randomness.  They are the most extreme examples of the aggressive and misogynistic behavior that is not only allowed in academic science labs, but also encouraged. (Photo: LA Times)

A great article in Science Daily summarizes a recent study on how our current American culture nurtures (or fails to nurture) boys and girls with exceptional math talent. The study draws on decades of data from extremely difficult mathematics competitions aimed at the most elite student math performers, including the collegiate William Lowell Putnam Mathematics Competition and the pre-collegiate International and U.S.A. Mathematical Olympiads. The study was conducted by:

1.  Joseph A. Gallian; a professor of mathematics at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and current president of the Mathematical Association of America

2. Janet Mertz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of oncology;

3. Jonathan Kane, a professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater who is involved with math competitions, and

4. Titu Andreescu, a professor of mathematics education at the University of Texas at Dallas and a former leader of the U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad team and director of AwesomeMath, a summer program for mathematically gifted children.

The research findings include the following:

We show that many girls exist who possess extremely high aptitude for mathematical problem solving. The frequency with which they are identified is due, at least in part, to a variety of socio-cultural, educational or other environmental factors that differ significantly among countries and ethnic groups and can change over time.

Titu Andresscu believes that:

Innate math aptitude is probably fairly evenly distributed throughout the world, regardless of race or gender. The huge differences observed in achievement levels are most likely due to socio-cultural attributes specific to each country.

The report also finds evidence for a more pronounced negative cultural influence on would-be girl math whizzes than would-be boy math whizzes:

In elementary school, girls do as well as or better in math than boys. In middle school, girls with an inclination for math begin to lose interest and fall behind, mostly due to peer pressure and societal expectations. Throughout middle and high school, social stigma and lack of appropriately challenging educational opportunities for the mathematically precocious becomes a hard reality in most American schools. Consequently, gifted girls, even more so than boys, often camouflage their mathematical talent to fit in well with their peers.

Journal Reference: Titu Andreescu, Joseph A. Gallian, Jonathan M. Kane, and Janet E. Mertz. Cross-Cultural Analysis of Students with Exceptional Talent in Mathematical Problem Solving. Notices of the American Mathematical Society, November 2008

• 154.7 million - The number of women in the United States as of Oct. 1, 2008. The number of men was 150.6 million. For a grand total of 305.3 million people in the U.S.
• 100,000 – The approximate number of chemistry Ph.D.s awarded over the last 75 years.
• 1 in 3000 (.03%) of people in the United States today are Ph.D. chemists.
• 34 percent – The percentage of female Ph.D. chemists in the United States today.
• 1 in 9000 (.01%) of people in the United States today are female Ph.D. chemists.

See, now doesn’t that make you feel unique? You have worked so hard to get where you are. You have put up with sexist lab mates. You survived a male-stacked dissertation committee. And every other degrading depressing form of gender discrimination. And you made it!

C’mon, admit it. You’re special.

Photo: Carol Sonstein

Marye Anne Fox is chancellor of the University of California San Diego, and a professor of chemistry.

This article from C&EN 2007 caught our eye recently. Fox is putting feminism in action by being appointed to a position of power, and we respect her greatly. Moving from lab to classroom to chancellor, Fox is a great role model for Feminist Chemists.

When asked: “UC San Diego has a very high enrollment of women, but in the U.S. in general, this hasn’t translated into women in academic careers in science and engineering. What is missing?”

Fox replied: “We are indeed very proud that so many women are interested in science and engineering here. But you correctly capture the challenge we face in recruiting women to academic positions, whether it’s faculty or administration. I can’t tell you why that is. I can tell you we work very hard to make sure there is gender equity in candidate pools and that the evaluation of work from men and women is fair and equitable.”

Given recent conflicting reports regarding academic hiring of women, we find it informative that even powerful women like Fox, doing everything that they can to increase equity in STEM, still have more questions than answers. And unfortunately, there are still more men than women.

Keep up the great work Mary Anne Fox, you are a beacon of hope.

Scientific research can be an extremely exciting endeavor, but also an extremely stressful one at times. A recent article in Science Careers magazine highlights the top stressors facing research scientists:

Competition
Many scientists have mission- or ambition-driven personalities and work in highly competitive environments in which they are forced to “sink or swim.” Because competition is keen, colleagues and supervisors sometimes compete with colleagues instead of supporting them. 

Limited Job Opportunities
Stress also results from a dearth of future job prospects. Many perceive a “bottleneck” in the opportunity pipeline in academia because tenured positions are rare and senior scientists seem to be retiring older. 

Mismatch Between Job Demands and Rewards
Even scientists fortunate enough to secure positions find that they are called on to meet exceedingly high standards. Their jobs require tenacity and precision over long hours. Many science jobs offer inferior financial compensation compared with other fields. “Academia seems like a recipe for underpaid, overworked scientific martyrdom,” said one respondent to the Science Careers poll. Supervisors, who often lack management skills, may add other demands that exacerbate stress.

Lack of Control
Scientists have limited control over their own research. The positive results they hope for can turn out negative. Their work may be stymied for months or years because they are unable to execute an experiment, for any number of reasons, such as too few subjects, methodology problems, broken equipment, or lapses in funding. Many trainees say that career success can be elusive, a matter of good luck and insider connections rather than a reward for hard work and performance. The “flavor of the month”–research topics hot with funders and hiring committees–can change quickly, said another respondent to the Science Careers poll.

Lack of Support
Many scientists, especially women, juggle career, family, and children with minimal or no support from supervisors and their institutions, adding another element of stress to their lives. 

We found this article to be very insightful and agree that the stressors listed above are indeed present in chemistry.  An additional stress, one that was not mentioned in the article and is specific to chemistry, is the danger of working with chemicals that are pyrophoric, carcinogenic, and/or explosive! Most chemists work with dangerous chemicals on a regular basis. 

Finally, we must point out that female chemists have to deal with all of these stressors PLUS the stress of dealing with sexism in the lab. 

What should you do if you are stressed? If you are a chemist, male or female, chances are high that you are stressed out right now. This is what we have found that works to alleviate stress:

1. Exercise.
2. Learn how to say “NO.” Your time is worthwhile. Don’t give it away.
3. Set boundaries with colleagues in a professional manner.
4. Chit-chat less with your colleagues and cultivate inner silence at work.
5. Try group therapy. 
6. Watch comedies.
7. Keep a journal. 
8. Set realistic goals and forget about being perfect.
9. Find a mantra, like “May I find joy in my day today.”
10. Do something to help someone else who is in pain (volunteer 1 hour a week to deliver food to shut-ins).
11. Scream at the top of your lungs (preferably at home and not at work).

For other tips on dealing with stress, go to the MayoClinic stress center.