TABLE 1

Degrees granted and gender,
University of Saskatchewan 1989

Degree Females Males

B. ART* 400 304
B. Science* 98 183
B.Sc. Engineering 13 207
B. Sc. Nursing 86 1
B. Sc. Nutrition 22 1
Dr. Vet. Medicine 37 30
B. Sc. Pharmacy 45 29
B. Sc. Phys. Therapy 16 5
Dr. Medicine 26 31
Dr. Dental Medicine 10 8
M. Arts 30 13
M. Science 33 99
M. Vet. Science 3 4
M. Engeering 0 1
Ph.D. 9 37

 * Incudes general, advanced certificat, advanced, honours. Not all degrees listed.

These data were obtained from the University Studies Grou;, University of Saskatchewan, Statistics, Vol. 16,1990


This side-streaming of women away from the basic sciences is perhaps best illustrated by looking at the numbers of women and men granted degrees in the arts and sciences. Table 1 shows that in 1989 at the University of Saskatchewan, more women than men were granted a Bachelor of Ans, but nearly twice as many men as women received a Bachelor of Science degree. Only 5.9% of the Bachelor of Engineering degrees were granted to women. By contrast, in what could be termed the applied or professional life science fields, either the majority or equal proportions of the degrees were awarded to women. More women than men obtained a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (55% women), a Bachelor of Pharmacy (61 % women), a Bachelor of Physical Therapy (76%), and almost as many women as men (46%) obtained a Doctor of Medicine degree.

The disproportion becomes more exaggerated with more advanced degrees. Three times as many men as women were granted a Master of Science, while three times more women than men were granted a Master of Arts. Only nine out of a total of thirty-seven Ph.D. degrees were awarded to women.

This streaming by gender at the graduate student level is shown in detail in Table 2 for 1990/91. In all the scientific fields of study, only nutrition had more female than male graduate students and only pharmacy and toxicology had approximately equal numbers of male and female graduate students. In the life sciences, geography, and in veterinary medicine, 36-42% of the graduate students were female. In chemistry, biology and mathematics, 20-26% of the graduate students were women.

There was only one female and thirty-nine male graduate students in physics. Pooling all of the science graduate students, the ratio of female to male was 1 to 3. By contrast, there were about equal numbers of male and female graduate students in sociology, law and in physical education, and in other areas women outnumbered men. In the Fine Arts, there were four times as many female than male graduate students. The overall ratio of female to male graduate students in these non-science fields (excluding Commerce) was 2 to 1.

Further up the academic hierarchy, at the faculty level, gender distribution is far from equitable. Only 15.4% of full-time faculty in 1989-90 were women (see Table 3). While about half of the male faculty are at the full professor rank, only 10% of the female faculty members are full professors. In the 1990/91 academic calendar, there were 248 professorships listed in the following selected science departments: biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics, engineering, anatomy, biochemistry, microbiology, physiology and pharmacology. Women in tenured or tenure-track positions accounted for only about six to ten of these 248 professorships.

A number of reasons why women do not choose to enter professions in the natural sciences and engineering have been proposed. These include presumed inherent biological differences between men and women, poor educational practices at all levels of schooling, lack of female role models in science, and the recent loss of appeal of science itself as a good career choice. I do not want to discuss any of these postulations here, but to focus on gender harassment and the thesis that its pervasive effects account not only for the paucity of women in science, engineering, and technology but for the difficult situation that many of us face in remaining in these fields.



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