Elections for AWN officers and counselors were held in June. The newly-elected officers are: Sue Cullen, President; Sherida Tollefsen, President-Elect; Barbara Cole, Secretary and Jo Seltzer, Treasurer. The new counselors are: Barbara Monsees and Susan Wente. Kathy Parker Ponder and Joan Downey will be serving their second year as Counselors on the AWN Board. A planning meeting will be held in August to set goals for the coming year.

Want to know the latest about AWN and its members? Just go to your computer and call up the new AWN home page. The current URL for the AWN WWW home page is: http://hdklab.wustl.edu/~awn. The home page includes the mission statement for AWN as well as information on the Board of Directors, Standing Committees, Ad Hoc Committees plus the AWN Directory of Members and the last two years of the AWNings newsletter. The home page also provides links to other women's WWW sites. Many thanks to Helen Donis-Keller for setting this up.

As reported in the April 1995 AWNings, AWN President Helen Donis-Keller and the Board of Directors sent a letter to all members of the Executive Faculty and to Dean Peck regarding the results of the AWN survey conducted earlier in the year. The letter outlined several recommendations based on the three major concerns expressed by AWN members. They were:

1. That department chairman should meet on an annual basis with their junior faculty to inform and advise them regarding the tenure process.

2. That senior faculty, and in particular women, should be represented on major University committees, including search committees for departmental chairmen.

3. That Washington University School of Medicine functions should not be held at private clubs that deny membership to women.

Helen Donis-Keller had numerous positive meetings regarding the contents of the letter with department chairmen as well as the Dean and Provost. In their final meeting of the 1994-1995 academic year, the Executive Faculty officially endorsed and accepted these recommendations. However, no formal action was taken regarding implementation.

The Anne F. Dillon Faculty/Family Art Show was held at the Kenton King Center from June 5 through June 29, 1995. AWN members Carolyn Baum, Helen Donnis-Keller, Diane Radford, and Sondra Schlessinger all displayed works at the exhibition. The show featured a variety of art work including watercolor and oil paintings, prints, pastels, pottery, photography, weaving and quilts.  

Copies of the second printing of the July 1994 AWN Parenting Resource Handbook are now available to WUMS faculty and staff. If you would like a free copy of this handbook, contact Human Resources or Joan Downey.

Ask Associate Professor Jannette L. Carey about her research, and she is enthusiastic. "I find work so fascinating that I don't even want to go home at night," she says. Carey is at ease as a scientist; less so as a pioneer. Nevertheless, she is the first and only woman hired by Princeton's Dept. of Chemistry, and now its first tenured female professor. "I'm constantly pinching myself to remember that it's 1994," she said in an interview last year. "It's been twenty-five years since I first went to college and thought there weren't going to be any of these problems."

Twenty-five years have also passed since Princeton embraced coeducation and began diversifying its faculty. Today, women are well represented on the faculties of most of the university's thirty-three departments and schools. But in the sciences, tenured women like Carey remain anomalies. If science if defined to include mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology and the engineering disciplines, Princeton has only 16 women in a tenured faculty totaling 221, a ratio of 1 woman to 13 men. Exclude psychology and molecular biology, fields in which women tend to be better represented nationally and at Princeton, and the equivalent statistics are 7 in 182, a ratio of 1 to 25. There are no tenured women in the departments of physics, ecology and evolutionary biology, chemical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering, and mechanical and aerospace engineering.

The difficulty of attracting and retaining women in the sciences and engineering isn't unique to Princeton. Universities throughout the country are wrestling with the problem and competing for women in these traditionally underrepresented fields.

Why are women less likely to take up the study of science or to drop out along the way? At the precollege level, cultural biases often are blamed for discouraging girls from aspiring to careers in science. Those who pursue science at the college or graduate levels often abandon it later, citing the lack of mentors in male-dominated departments or the stress of raising children in two-career families. But the biggest obstacle to women trying to advance their careers may be the "lack of critical mass of women in science." The solution is fairly simple: hire more women.

Ostensibly, Princeton for years has been trying to do so. According to Vice-Provost Ruth J. Simmons, the administration has long encouraged the hiring of women but has left faculty recruitment in the hands of the departments. In the view of Jeremiah P. Ostriker, the chairman of the astrophysics department, this laissez-faire policy has caused Princeton to lag behind its peers. As late as 1993, the five departments of Princeton's engineering school had, among them, just one tenured woman. In that same year, there were nine tenured female engineers at the Univ. of Michigan, eight at M.I.T., five at Berkeley and four at UCLA.

Critics of Princeton's record voiced their dissatisfaction at a 1991 symposium on women and science at Princeton. Following this conference, Professor of Psychology Joan S. Girgus convened the Committee on Women Faculty in Science and Engineering. In its 1992 report to the dean of the faculty, the committee called for more appointments of senior women and the recruitment of additional junior women. "The really startling thing was to discover that the number of junior women in science and engineering was almost exactly the same in 1992 as it had been fifteen years earlier," Girgus says.

Despite the low numbers of junior female scientists and engineers at Princeton, the committee urged as the first priority the hiring of more senior women. In departments without senior women, the committee found, female assistant professors felt isolated, experienced sexism, and had difficulty finding mentors among senior faculty members.

Embracing the recommendations of Girgus's committee, the university has encouraged science and engineering departments to be more proactive in seeking senior women and it is providing resources to help them in that effort. Last spring, President Shapiro announced that a new fund would be established for the creation of five senior positions in the sciences and engineering. The fund will enable departments to increase temporarily--for up to six years--the size of their faculties by hiring women and minorities when they become available, regardless of vacancies in a department. The plan does not call for a permanent increase in the size of the faculty, but assumes that other senior professors will retire or resign during the six-year period, so that a department's net gain is zero. The plan gives a department the flexibility to recruit top scientists or engineers when they become available, rather than when a spot opens.

Shapiro points out that this initiative, in a way, is just a twist to existing policy. "At a fundamental level, there is nothing new," he says. "We are still just looking for ways to encourage departments to move the university in this direction." He hopes that setting the funding at five positions will energize department chairmen to compete for them, and to fill them quickly. Many of Princeton's senior scientists believe that the new initiative is a critical step in overcoming institutional inertia. "There is a very strong commitment at the top," Shirley Tilghman, Professor of Molecular Biology says of Shapiro. "I think he is really committed to diversifying the faculty, and that is 90% of the battle."

The rest is up to the department chairmen, who must attract top women with the same aggressiveness they show in more traditional recruiting. Schools in the front ranks of the world's research universities routinely "raid" each other for top talent, often luring faculty superstars by promising big salaries and expensive, state-of-the-art facilities. "Senior women in science and engineering are a scarce resource," say Girgus, and in recruiting them, "you have to really be prepared to go all out. Not because they are reluctant to come to a place like Princeton, but because scarce resources go to the highest bidder."

(Excerpted from the Princeton Alumni Weekly, March 8, 1995)

The third annual Congress on Women's Health was held in Washington, D.C. in June. Topics discussed included family violence, legal and ethical issues regarding the Genome Project, hormone update, alternative medicine, professional women's concerns, cardiovascular disorders, diversity issues, nutrition, etc.

Family violence, I am pleased to see, is being taken seriously as a women's health issue. The speaker (a male physician) stressed that women physicians must take the lead with this issue. He said that sexual abuse of children was taken seriously only when the women's movement took the lead. "We must avoid gaze aversion," he said. In support of his point he said, "There is a popular notion in Japan that there is no sexual abuse of women there. Of course there is, but there is no women's movement in Japan."

An attorney discussed future ethical and legal challenges facing us with the Genome Project. She also spoke about liability issues regarding drugs that are not adequately tested on women. She raised the possibility that liability could go in the opposite direction--to drug companies and physicians for prescribing drugs never tested on women.

On hormone update, the theme continues to be "We'll know more in a few years," or "so much is still unresolved." The speaker who reported very interesting research on hormone replacement therapy and lipids said "a little bit is good, but more is not better." He acknowledged that only Premarin had been studied. "If less is better then why wasn't 0.3 mg tested?" I asked. With humility and honesty he answered: "There were only 3 arms to the study--0.6 mg, 1.25 mg and placebo. We should have studied 0.3. I have no excuse for that, only an apology."

Professional women's concerns generated lively discussion. One speaker pointed out that "micro inequities" accumulate like drops in a bucket until they hurt. She suggested that what Anita Hill experienced for the most part were "micro inequities". One man in the audience said often men face difficulties when they support women, so those men need to be very secure.

Women's Health is Political

Vivian Pinn, Director of the Office of Research on Women's Health at NIH said that the number of bills enacted regarding women's health by the Congress has increased as the number of women in Congress has increased in recent years. "There is a ground swell of attention to women's health research. However, now, we face a backlash."

Bernadine Healy, M.D., the luncheon speaker, said that we are "in the third wave of the women's movement." The first was women's suffrage in 1920. The second wave was the late 60's and early 70's when economic and educational opportunities opened up to women. "In the 1980's, pressure was "dress-for-success pin-striped suits and ties. To keep the sometimes sputtering women's movement alive, women all too often had to deny the essence of who they were, and this denial tended to pit them against the stay-at-home moms. The Third phase of suffrage is now, women's health has arrive. In this third suffrage movement, women can admit freely that they are different although they have qualities that overlap with men. This is the essence of addressing women's health issues. Women's health all too often has been held hostage to the social and political environment of the day." Healy has a book coming out in the Fall, A New Prescription for Women's Health: Getting the Best Health in a Men's World. What a title!

Politically speaking, CNN TV reported that Mrs. Clinton, who had attended the dinner sponsored by the Conference, is "softening" her image. She is focusing on women's health." "This isn't soft," to quote Healy. "The era of attention to women's health has arrived!"

In the past few weeks an angry ground swell of resentment spring up in New Jersey to support legislation that would require insurance companies and health maintenance organizations to cover a minimum of two full days of hospital maternity care. It is the first time the insurance industry has been steam-rolled in New Jersey, said Assembly-woman Loretta Weinberg, Democrat of Teaneck, an early supporter of government intervention to end what some call drive-through deliveries. New Jersey is not alone. Last month Maryland passed similar legislation requiring insurers to provide a minimum 48-hr hospital stay, becoming the first state to put a stop to a trend of abbreviated maternity care that in some states has been whittled to 12 hours or less. The bill, which may be ready for a vote by the full New Jersey Senate next week, also provides for four days of care after Cesarean births.

(from the June 6, 1995 New York Times)

AWNings would appreciate hearing the professional perspective of our members on the issue of the length of hospital stays following childbirth. Comments can be sent to Linda Pike at Box 8231 and will appear in the next issue of AWNings.

Darwin. The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist by Adrian Desmond & James Moore. Warner Books, New York, 1991.

Huxley. The Devil's Disciple. by Adrian Desmond. Michael Joseph Ltd. London, 1994.

Even for those with no love of the genre of biography, this pair of books makes great reading. The author, Adrian Desmond, has higher degrees in vertebrate paleontology and history of science, and has a Ph.D. for his work on Victorian evolution. And the evolution of Victorian science is really the central theme of these books. Darwin and Huxley were practicing science at a time when it was a hobby of the rich and ruled by politicians and the Anglican church. While Darwin fell somewhat into the mold of the then-traditional scientist, Huxley did not. In fact, he spent much of his scientific life fighting to convert science into the merit-based occupation that it is today.

The biography of Darwin traces the life of the famed evolutionist from early childhood to his death and beyond. Darwin came from a wealthy family He attended medical school for several years but never graduated, having realized early on that he did not have to earn a living but could instead spend his life working as a naturalist, depending on a family endowment for support.

By contrast, Huxley was born into a lower class family and spent his early years stepping over dead or nearly dead bodies in the gutters of London while delivering remedies from a local apothecary. Huxley made his way through his teens and early 20's by dint of hard work and intelligence, obtaining medical training at Charing Cross. He eventually was able to support himself through scientific appointments that involved extensive lecturing and writing. Despite the social gulf between them, Darwin and Huxley became close scientific colleagues. When Darwin died in 1882, it was Huxley who called in all his political favors to arrange for his friend to be buried in Westminster Abbey.

One of the interesting aspects of these books is the insight one gains into the workings of science in the mid-1800's. At that time, scientific training consisted of a limited amount of formal schooling followed by the declaration of an interest in science (often accompanied by the collection of some type of biological specimens). The truly hard core naturalists signed on for a stint aboard a vessel in the British Royal Naval. This provided an opportunity to collect and dissect new biological specimens which then became the subject of their scientific papers. In Darwin's case, he signed on as the captain's companion for the voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle. Huxley became surgeon's mate on the H.M.S. Rattlesnake. The description of these two voyages, particularly Huxley's is the stuff of which movies are made. Between storms, disease, unfriendly natives and doomed inland excursions both Darwin and Huxley were lucky to come back alive. The meat of both stories deals with the labor, delivery and rearing of Darwin's Origin of Species Although Darwin had developed the idea of evolution as early as the 1830's, he understood the dilemma his theory would pose for the British government as run by Anglicans. He refused to publish his magnum opus for 20 years and was only convinced to do so in 1859 when Alfred Wallace, an animal collector from the Malay Archipelago, was on the verge of publishing the same proposals.

While Darwin espoused the idea of evolution among lower animals, he steered clear (at least in public) of applying his theories to the evolution of man. Not so, Thomas Huxley who immediately noted the similarity of apes and man and began a series of public lectures on the topic. Darwin may have developed evolution but Huxley defended it and brought it into mainstream science.

Of the two books, the Huxley biography is by far the most familiar and the most fun. Huxley and a group of like-minded scientists founded the journal Nature to have to mouthpiece for their support of Darwin's theories and the proper practice of science. He invented the word agnostic and noted the anatomical relationship between dinosaurs and birds (Robert Bakker and others rediscovered this a century later). The frontispiece for his famous "Man's Place in Nature" features the now-familiar procession of striding primates from ape to man. While we are used to seeing this evolutionary progression today, it caused quite a stir when published in 1863. His complaints of the lack of funding for his research strike a familiar chord. And the description of several thousand lay people crowding into St. Martin's Hall to hear a Sunday evening lecture on the evolution of man is enough to bring a smile to any scientist's face.

While Huxley is amusing, the Darwin biography is not to be missed as it really sets the stage for the life of Huxley and gives you a good feeling for the slow, methodical approach of Darwin as compared to the bold and brash antics of Thomas Huxley. The prose of these books can best be described as dense. But reading these biographies is well worth the effort for the sense one gets of where science has been and how it got where it is today.