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NIH Announces Creation of Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers Right Click to Download MP3 File Brief Description: Transcript: AKINSO: The director of the National Institutes of Health Dr. Elias Zerhouni has announced the creation of the Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers, designed to help women fulfill their potential as scientists and engineers. Dr. Vivian Pinn, Director of the Office of Research on Women's Health, and co-chair of the Working Group, said there are a number of issues to overcome, but the group is ready to tackle the issues head on by developing innovative strategies and tangible actions to promote the advancement of women in research careers both within the NIH intramural community and throughout the extramural research community. PINN: There are a number of obstacles that have been identified for girls and women to think about entering biomedical careers or advancing in biomedical careers and we have dealt with a number of these over the years. Looking at the fact that we still see disparities in rewards, and by rewards I mean salaries for men and women at the same level of achievement or at the same faculty level or in the same positions. In terms of promotions, it has been documented that very often men and women starting at the same time, perhaps with the same credentials and with the same abilities, do not seem to be promoted at the same rank. We hope these factors are changing but we see those continuing. We see another fact and that is the fact that so many women are involved in their duel responsibilities and have more family responsibilities. They have to be the family person; they have to be the mother. Unfortunately with all of our science we haven't yet learned how to have men have the babies. So we're still having women carrying most of the child care and family care responsibilities even though I'm pleased to say men are participating more in this. And at the same time we're seeing more women enter into scientific career positions. So that duel responsibilities, that so many women have to face can not only effect their success but probably has a major impact on their advancement in their careers especially within the area of academia where often there is a limited time that men and women have to gain promotion or to become tenured faculty. AKINSO: The barriers that women face in hiring and promotion at research universities in many fields are identified in a recent National Academies report, "Beyond Bias and Barriers, Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering." The report, funded by the ORWH, called for an urgent broad national effort to maximize the potential of women scientists and engineers in academia. Dr. Pinn talked about how this may help a young woman who has an interest in science. PINN: To any young girl who's interested in pursuing science, I would say "hang in there — do it." It's so exciting. Just to imagine having an opportunity to be involved in a career where you may discover some truth about human lives or about living or even about the world, about our ecology, about science in general that's never been found before is an excitement that is just hard to dream about but can be just so stimulating; really can just make you feel so good. If you decide to go into a career in medicine, or dentistry, or pharmacy, or nursing, that I hope that they will consider research. Because research is so important to furthering the science. But at least speaking for myself, I can't think of any career opportunity that could provide a more exciting and stimulating life as well as really make you feel that you're making a contribution to humankind than being in science. AKINSO: For more information about the NIH Working Group on Women in Biomedical Careers, visit http://orwh.od.nih.gov. This is Wally Akinso at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. |
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This page was last reviewed on February 9, 2007 . |
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National Institutes of Health (NIH) |
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