Session S4 - Keeping Girls/Women in Science I.
INVITED session, Wednesday afternoon, March 24
517C, Palais de Congres
The participation of women in physics has increased in recent years, but the percentage of women in undergraduate physics is still less than half that in mathematics and chemistry. This is due in large part to the “leaky pipeline”—the participation of women in physics decreases with every step up the academic ladder. The largest decrease occurs between high school and college graduation, so it is worthwhile looking at how undergraduate physics departments try to make women undergraduates comfortable. With a team of women physicists, I visited nine undergraduate physics departments and compared those that are successful in producing a large percentage of women with those that are more typical of the national average. We found that the most important factor is a warm and female-friendly department culture that reaches out to introductory students. I’ll discuss the factors that make up a female-friendly culture, and describe other results of our research.