Opening Statement By Rep. Brian Baird

Good morning and welcome to this hearing on the discussion draft of Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Act of 2008.  I want to thank my dear friend Ms. Johnson for bringing this important legislative proposal before the subcommittee.

According to NSF, women earned more than half of all science and engineering bachelor’s degrees in 2005, although they continue to earn only 20 percent in engineering, computer science, and physics.  Similarly, while there remain considerable differences across fields, women are receiving science and engineering PhD’s in steadily increasing numbers.  However, even in the life sciences where women now earn more than 50 percent of PhD’s, they hold only 30 percent of all associate and full professor faculty positions -- and that’s by far the highest number for all natural science and engineering fields.

In October of last year, we held a hearing on Women in Academic Science and Engineering to review the findings and recommendations of a National Academies panel that carefully examined the reasons why the attrition rate for women in academic science and engineering continues to be higher than for men at every step along the academic pipeline.

The panel found that most of the barriers to women in academia are not created with intent to discriminate.  In fact, even policies that seem gender-neutral in theory might not be so in practice.  They recommended that Federal science agencies sponsor workshops on gender bias in order to raise awareness of and provide strategies to overcome the collective effect of many small and subtle incidents of subconscious bias that are often built into academic culture.  The draft bill under consideration creates a program of such workshops.

The National Academies panel also highlighted the need for better data collection, to understand the extent of gender inequity and to have a basis for evaluating policies to address the gap.  The draft bill therefore requires Federal science agencies to collect detailed demographic data on the grant making process, and encourages universities to collect better data for the purposes of evaluating the gender bias workshops.

In today’s hearing we seek feedback on these and other provisions of the Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Act of 2008.  We also welcome suggestions for other programs or language that we might consider including.

We can not afford to continue losing our best and brightest women from academic science and engineering careers.  The programs in this bill are a small but critical part of what is needed to tackle the barriers that women face.  But Congress has a limited role in helping to overcome what are ultimately cultural and institutional barriers.  The universities, disciplinary societies, funding agencies and other stakeholders need to step up to do their part, and I am happy to see such a movement starting to take hold. 

I want to thank Congresswoman Johnson once again for her tireless work to promote the role of women and minorities in science and engineering.  I thank all of the witnesses for being here today and I look forward to your testimony.