AWNings April 1994

AWNings

The newsletter of the Academic Women's Network at Washington University

Vol. 3, No. 2 April 1994

AWN Leadership Award

Presented at Annual Dinner

The annual AWN Spring Meeting and Dinner was held on Thursday, April 28 at Balaban's and was attended by approximately 45 women. For the first time, the AWN Leadership award was presented. This award was set up by AWN to be presented annually to one woman in the graduating class of the M.D. program and one woman in the graduating class of the Ph.D. program who have demonstrated outstanding leadership in service to or advancement of women within the community. Nominations for this award were solicited from AWN members, from Drs. Leslie Kahl, Cathy Lazarus, Pat Cole and Mort Smith in the Dean's office, from Barb Fox in the graduate student office and from women in the 1994 graduating classes.

Based on this information, the award to the graduating M.D. was presented to Victoria Akins. Victoria organized the Women's Issues Seminar series and served as a student representative to the Committee on Medical Education. She will be doing her residency training in Pediatrics at St. Louis Children's Hospital. The award to the graduating Ph.D. went to Lori Singer. Lori completed a very demanding thesis project and in addition to the many hours she spent in the lab, made time to volunteer at a crisis-intervention hotline during her graduate training. She completed her Ph.D in December and is currently doing postdoctoral work in Pennsylvania. The award brings with it a prize of $200 plus an engraved paperweight.

Earlier in the day, AWN sponsored a talk by Terry Karl on sexual harassment. Dr. Karl is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, specializing in South American Affairs. She presented an extremely interesting and lively discussion of sexual harassment in the academic setting based on her own personal experience in dealing with a case of sexual harassment. Dr. Karl has become an expert in this area and has helped both Harvard and Stanford Universities devise policies and procedures to deal with this problem. She presented examples of how men and women view sexual harassment differently and described how things have changed since 1981. She also answered questions from the audience.

Kudos

Carolyn Baum, Ph.D was featured in the Washington People section of the Record.

Ruthmary Deuel, M.D. was featured in the Washington People section of the Record.

Joan C. Downey, M.D., MPH, was promoted from Instructor to Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics, division of Newborn Medicine.

Ellen Li, M.D., Ph.D., received the Young Investigator Award from the Gastroenterology Research Group and the American Gastroenterology Association for her project titled "Structure and Function of Intestinal Vitamin A Binding Proteins". She received the award during the groups' research symposium held in Chicago, where she spoke on "Modeling of Retinoid Transport Within the Enterocyte: The Role of Cellular Retinol Binding Proteins".

A number of WUMS faculty, including several AWN members, have been listed in a new directory of the leading physicians in the United States and Canada. Included on the list are: Nancy Bridges, Barbara Cole, Susan Mackinnon, Susan Mallory, Joanne Mortimer, Penelope Shackelford, Deborah Shure and Teresa Vietti.

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Washington University to Establish Breast Cancer Tissue Registry

WUMS is one of four U.S. medical centers designated by the National Cancer Institute to develop a regional breast cancer tissue registry. Information gathered from the regional registries will be pooled to create a national, computerized breast cancer tissue database. The National Cancer Institute is funding the local project, called the St. Louis Breast Tissue Registry, with a $500,000 grant to the School of Medicine.

The database is being established to help provide breast cancer tissue to researchers studying the disease, says (AWN's) Helen Donis-Keller, the grant's principal investigator in St. Louis. Progress in identifying a particular gene or genes that may predispose women to breast cancer has been hampered by the lack of available tumor tissue from patients with known outcomes. "The database should dramatically improve access to breast cancer tissue," says Donis-Keller. "In the long term, large quantities of tissue also will enable researchers to better predict which types of breast cancer are most treatable and which therapies are most effective."

A team of investigators at the School of Medicine, led by Donis-Keller, will enter information into the database for an estimated 8,000 tissue samples from seven area hospitals. Beginning in 1995, scientists studying breast cancer will have access to the database, which will include patient information regarding tumor type, diagnosis, treatment and outcomes. At that time, an estimated 20,000 breast cancer tissue samples will be available for study, says Donis-Keller. Researchers will be able to request tissue samples through the National Cancer Institute. The other medical centers involved in establishing regional breast cancer registries are: Fox Chase Cancer Center in Pennsylvania, University of Miami in Florida and Kaiser Foundation in Portland.

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Women's Health Update

by Helen Kornblum

Last month the NIH issued new guidelines on the inclusion of women and minorities as subjects in clinical research. The NIH must:

Ensure that women and members of minorities and their sub-populations are included in all human subject research.

For Phase III clinical trials, ensure that women and minorities and their sub-populations must be included such that valid analyses of differences in intervention effect can be accomplished.

Not allow cost as an acceptable reason for excluding these groups.

Initiate programs and support for outreach efforts to recruit these groups into clinical studies.

These guidelines reaffirm NIH's commitment to the fundamental principles of inclusion of women and racial ethnic minority groups and their subpopulations in research. This policy should result in a variety of new research opportunities to address significant gaps in knowledge about health problems that affect women and racial/ethnic minorities and their subpopulations. The FDA guidelines are still in draft form. However, the Women's Congressional Caucus thinks that they will need to be strengthened.

Politically Speaking:

The Congressional Caucus for Women will take a position regarding the controversial issue of how mammography will be handled in the Clinton Health Plan. The Caucus' position will be that the plan should pay for women over 50. The Caucus wants explicit coverage for women in their 40's but with co-pay and deductibles. They would ask to delete the clause "when medically appropriate" as that decision should be entirely between the woman and her physician.

There is much concern that reproductive choice in the guaranteed benefits package could be compromised to get the Plan passed. Congressman Gephardt is a key player in this. If you live in his district, express your opinions now!!

On the Home Front:

"Issues in developing drugs in women--The Industry Perspective", was presented by Janice Bush, M.D. of Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. at a meeting sponsored by The Human Studies Committee. Bush acknowledged the role activists have played to bring about changes in women's health and include women in more clinical trials. While this "activism" obviously challenges drug companies, in my opinion, it speaks to the need to see that we have more women in Congress. Activists want regulations not just guidelines. Bush also spoke about the need to balance autonomy with responsibility for safety. I took exception to her comment that Bristol-Myers was working to include more women in clinical trials even before it was "fashionable." It is not "fashionable", it's fair and good science!

The Institute of Medicine has recently published two volumes, Women and Health Research and Ethical and Legal Issues of Including Women in Clinical Studies. An analysis of the principles of justice makes up the central chapter of the report. "The committee chose to shape its report around considerations of justice in light of its understanding that calls to rectify women's alleged 'underrepresentation' in clinical studies are based on concerns about the unequal distribution of the benefits of biomedical research. The books address the various challenges--scientific, social, ethical and legal--to achieving justice in clinical studies. Each of the recommendations developed flows from the central presumption embraced by the committee: that women and men should have the opportunity to participate equally in the benefits and burdens of research." I highly recommend these two books.

Tenure Status of Women

in Medical School Faculty

Although the number of women medical school faculty grew 130% from 1970 to 1992, they continue to lag far behind men in achieving tenure, according to the new AAMC report Women in Academic Medicine Statistics. Only 6% of women faculty are tenured full professors, but 22% of men have achieved this highest, most secure rank. Women fare better in the basic sciences, making up 13.6% of all tenured basic science faculty compared to 10.5% of clinical faculty.

Excerpted from: Academic Physician and Scientist, Nov. 1993.

Address by Virginia Weldon

Virginia Weldon, Vice-President for Public Policy at Monsanto and former WUMS faculty member, spoke at the AAMC Women in Medicine Lunch in Washington D.C. on November 9. In her address, Dr. Weldon pointed to the strides women have made in academic medicine and elsewhere, but noted, "For the vast majority of American women, the reality of the workplace has not changed a great deal." Dr. Weldon cited the "troubling" findings of a recent Families and Work institute study in which more than half of those surveyed said they would rather work alongside people of their own race, culture and gender. In addition, the study showed that far more women managers rated their personal career opportunities as "poor" or "fair" than did their male counterparts. "What all of these findings suggest to me is that the so-called 'Year of the Woman' may be something of a myth," said Dr. Weldon.

Employers ignore work force diversity at their own expense, she warned. For example, studies show that diverse employee teams outperform homogeneous teams of any composition. "Diversity is an asset we've been hiding from ourselves; a neglected resource we have not used," she said. She illustrated her point with a story about the recent peace negotiations in Norway between Israel and the PLO which, instead of taking place in the customary formal meeting halls, were held in the home of foreign minister Johan Jorgen Holst and his wife, Marianne Heiberg. The secret talks went on for 18 months, and when communication would break down, Ms. Heiberg would invite her four-year old son into the room to ask the negotiators to play. "These men, hardened toward each other by literally centuries of history and hate, played together on the floor."

While the activity certainly released tension, said Dr. Weldon, it also made the critical point that children's futures were at stake. "Marianne Heiberg did something very powerful and very much like a woman," she said. "She changed the context. . . That is a vital and often overlooked strength that women bring to the workplace in our corporations and in our medical centers."

From: Academic Physician and Scientist, Jan. 1994.

Women in Science '94

The March 11, 1994 issue of Science includes a special section on Women in Science. Having focused primarily on the United States in this section for the past two years, this year the journal set out to look at conditions elsewhere in the word and encountered some surprises. First, there wasn't much literature comparing women in science across cultures. So reporter Marcia Barinaga assembled what studies did exist and then sought out female researchers who had lived in more than one culture. This process yielded the second surprise: Her interviews suggested that compared to women scientists working in the United States, Great Britain, Germany and Japan, female researchers in such nations as Italy, Portugal, Turkey and the Philippines may be finding their lot an easier one. Data from a study by Jim Megaw in 1990 showed that the participation of women in physics varied dramatically among countries. Japan had the lowest percentage of women physics faculty (1-2%), with Canada, West Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Korea, the United States, U.K. and Mexico all having less than 5% women physics faculty. At the other end of the spectrum, Hungary had 47% women faculty in physics. Thailand, USSR, Philippines and Portugal all have greater than 25% female physics faculty.

Several explanations have been put forward to explain the discrepancies in the participation of women in science in different countries. Beatriz Ruivo who works for the National Board for Science and Technological Research in Portugal looks at the statistics and suggests that they are related to economic development. In countries now undergoing economic development, including Mexico, Argentina and the countries of Eastern Europe, women make up from 20% to 50% of the scientific researchers compared to less than 10% in the United States and northern European nations. She speculates that in countries that have had large scientific establishments for centuries, science and technology became firmly established as a male domain during an era when women weren't in the labor market. Nations like Portugal only began developing science and technology during the 20th century when society was more open to women's participation in general. As a result, women were able to establish themselves in these fields.

Despite this hopeful picture, Ruivo says she is not so optimistic as she was in 1987. Although there are plenty of women in science, she has observed that the glass ceiling is in place in Portugal. Women are concentrated in the lower levels of the scientific establishment and are not rising to the top ranks.

Ruivo suggests that the high participation of women in science in developing countries may not reflect society's high regard for women, but, conversely, the low esteem in which academic science is held. In countries that are still undergoing economic development, basic science isn't as closely integrated into the production of goods and services as it is in the economies of Europe, Japan and the United States. In developing countries, she says, "to work in scientific research is more of a cultural activity". Not only does it have low status, in some countries it is quite low-paying, making it a pursuit undesirable to men and therefore left open to women. Several sociologists noted that there is a growing sociological literature, across cultures, showing that the lower the status and pay of an occupation, the more likely it is that women will be found there--and that seems to hold for science. Several studies have shown that in the former Soviet Union, a very high percentage of the physicians were women. But that was not considered a high prestige position. The pay wasn't good. The scientific occupations that were highly valued were held by men.

The relatively low status of science isn't the only factor that may open the field to women. Another is class. In certain countries, the pecking order is rich men, poor men, rich women, poor women; and in other countries it's rich men, rich women, poor men, poor women. In Mexico the class system is very strong and education is limited to the upper classes. In Mexican academia, women fare better than in Britain. The chair of the astronomy department at the University of Mexico is a woman, as are about one-third of the faculty.

Even if a society is fairly open to women, young women will never succeed in science as a profession unless they have taken lots of courses in science and math at school. Polish-born physicist Iwona Sakrejda thinks the high numbers of female researchers in former communist countries are due partly to educational policies requiring both boys and girls to study math and science through secondary school. That policy gives students the chance to see whether they like science and can excel at it. Her biggest criticism of schools in the U.S. is that physics and math are optional--not mandatory. "It is too easy to get out of science which students do too often because it has a tough reputation. Other women cite the positive effects of education in all-girls schools. In that environment no subject is considered unfeminine. A 1992 survey found that 58% of the female members of the British Institute of Physics had attended girls' schools, dramatically higher than the national average of 13%. Similarly, a survey by the U.S. National Coalition of Girls' Schools found that 25% of girls' school graduate plan to pursue careers in math or science--four times the national average.

Social attitudes and policies toward child care, flexible work schedules, and the role of men in families also dramatically color women's experiences in science. Astrophysicist Sara Beck contrasts the United States, where she was educated and held her first faculty job, to Israel, where she is a tenured professor at Tel Aviv University. Israel comes out ahead. "The USA is just a horrible place to try to raise a family and have a career," say Beck. "When I was working in the USA, it was a struggle to find decent day care and if I missed a half-day of work because my kid had a temperature of 104, I was lectured on how this let down the department. In Israel there is 3 months paid maternity leave, day-care centers on every block, and if you don't take off from work for your kid's birthday party the department chairman will lecture you on how important these things are to kids and how he never missed on while his kids were little." Beyond availability of day care, women speak of a general view of the integration of work and family life that makes more allowances for family in Latin and Mediterranean countries. And that, they say, levels the playing field for the genders. "Here in the U.S., the way the universities are structured, the kind of demands that are put on faculty are the kind of demands that can be fulfilled by someone who has a wife at home," says Italian-born computer scientist Maria Paola Bonacina. The Protestant work ethic makes life revolve around work in countries such as Germany, Canada and the United States. "But," questions astronomer Judith Perry of the University of Cambridge, "to what extent is that Protestant work ethic predicated on the service of women behind the men who are working?"

(Excerpted from "Surprises Across the Cultural Divide" by Marcia Barinaga, Science 263:1468-1472.)

The issue also included individual articles on women scientists in Germany, Italy, Sweden, Turkey, the Philippines and India which make for interesting reading.

Did you know--

Jerry Berger noted in his column that Dr. Bill Peck, Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean, has been admitted into the all-male, all-white, Log Cabin Club. When concern was expressed on how federal funding of the center might be affected by his membership in the club, Don Clayton, Associate Vice Chancellor for Medical Public Affairs indicated that "no federal funds go into private clubs. Bill paid his own initial membership fee". (But who pays the annual fees?) Comments anyone?