INTRODUCTION

1 Although much has been written on ‘women in science’ (e.g. Ramirez and Wotipka 2001; Andres and Adamuti-Trache 2007; Burke and Mattis 2007; Ceci and Williams 2007; Xu 2008), and there are numerous references in the Wisconsin Bibliographies in Women’s Studies (ca. 1994), less has been written about female Canadian scientists and engineers (Heap 2003; Ainley 2006), and still less about Canadian women in the geosciences. In 2002, in the United States, women made up only 16% of all employed scientists, compared to 45% of all employed people, suggesting that the growing demand for science and technology workers would not be met without a policy aimed at recruiting women to senior positions at universities, government and industry (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 2006). However, some women have commented that they have felt a backlash and discrimination as a consequence of affirmative action programs. Also, they have reported that the most common problem for women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) positions has been balancing work and family responsibilities (Rosser 2006).

2 The problem of not producing sufficient scientists in Canada has been even more acute: there were 1163 science graduates per 100 000 employed people in the 25 to 34 year age group, compared with the OECD average of 1295 (Tibbets 2007). However, such statistics must be viewed cautiously because critical to the matter is the capacity of a country to absorb its graduates into the workforce. For university programs in mathematics, engineering and computer science, enrollment of women in Canada increased from 441 students in 1972 to 9805 in 1995, but the increase in female doctoral students was modest, from 2.7% in 1972 to 10.4% in 1994 (Gadalla 2001). The data reveal that for engineering and applied sciences in Canada, women are still under-represented at postsecondary institutions (Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) 2008). This is not the general case, however, given that 58.5% of the 698 607 undergraduate students at Canadian universities in 2006–2007 (calculated as full-time equivalent enrolments) were female (CAUT 2010, p. 25).

3 Why are females so under-represented in the sciences? A number of reasons have been proposed. For instance, Astin and Sax, as quoted in Pasztor and Slater (2000, p. 335), stated that"…science teaching was seen as alienating many students by encouraging competition, which was counter to the sensibilities of women who favour the connectedness of science to social consciousness and human welfare."Could these differences in approaches and interests explain why women have not seen science as relevant, and could men be asking research questions that women have perceived as not sufficiently relevant to themselves or society? Research questions, after all, are selected by researchers and in this sense, science is not as objective as has been advertised (Harding 1986). Would women researchers be more interested in selecting different research topics? Or could it be that women do not receive enough research support? In this regard, only 17% of the 1000 chairs awarded in the Canada Research Chairs Program went to women, even though women constituted 26% of full-time faculty, a discrepancy that prompted a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission (Birchard 2004).

4 There is also a gender gap in average salary at universities, according to the annual University and College Academic Staff Survey; in 2005/2006, male faculty earned at least $15 000 more per annum than female faculty at several Canadian universities (Statistics Canada 2008). However, in Canada in 2007, female Full Professors earned 95%, Associate Professors 97%, and Assistant Professors 96% of the salary of their male counterparts (CAUT 2010, p 5), so overall the salary gap is narrow. More recent Statistics Canada data based on the annual survey for 2008–2009 showed that the University of Toronto had the largest salary gap, paying its male full-time teaching staff (excluding medical and dental faculty) an average of $20 362 more than comparable female faculty members, which was explained by university officials as a consequence of past hiring practices favouring men, as well as the age, rank and gender distribution among different disciplines having different pay scales (Cross 2010). For all Canadian geoscientists, the Canadian Geoscience Council 2001 Census of Geoscientists showed, according to Coultish (2002, p. 101), that"A gender-based differential in compensation is not evident for males and females less than 40 years old, but is present for older respondents even after standardizing for educational level."

WOMEN IN THE GEOSCIENCES FROM A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

CAREER CHOICES AND BARRIERS

8 Among young women, over 40% of the effect of gender on majoring in science at university has been attributed to inadequate high school preparation (Haines and Wallace 2002). In particular, in many countries high school science courses are prerequisites for postsecondary science studies. In Holland, for instance, where this has been the case, many female students did not select enough science and mathematics courses in secondary school, and while the exact reason for this remains unclear, it was determined that those female students with higher IQs and more educated parents chose more science and math subjects than those with lower IQs whose parents were less educated (Van Langen 2006). Given the magnitude of this problem in terms of subsequent barriers to university science programs, this issue should be examined further.

9 One of the major problems encountered by women geologists between the 1700s to about the 1970s was field work. This problem manifested itself in practices ranging from requiring chaperones (in the earliest days) to sexual harassment (Burek and Kölbl-Ebert 2007). Employers often would not permit women geologists to travel to remote locations. In the case of Alice Wilson, for instance, Meadow-croft (1990, p. 208) noted that "…it would have been considered scandalous, in 1913, for a woman to camp out with a group of men." At the Geological Survey of Canada, women were not allowed to do field work until 1970 (Ainley 1990) but Alice Wilson was excluded from this restriction because the Ottawa area was not considered remote.

10 Teaching and research opportunities for women in the sciences generally, including Earth Science, were affected by lateral and hierarchical segregation, which was explained by Ainley (2006, p. 252) as follows:"Women often experienced hierarchical segregation when they remained in under-valued and underpaid positions. They were laterally segregated when they were channelled into certain areas of science considered suitable for women, such as botany or household science."Both types of segregation were experienced by women in Earth Science because over time the various tasks of geology had gained different degrees of importance, with field work (from which women were excluded) being valued most, to laboratory work, which was considered of intermediate value and from which women were also excluded, to office work, which was valued least (and dominated by women) (Ainley 1994). In later years, the formation of all-female geological field parties at the Ontario Geological Survey, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the Geological Survey of Canada, and elsewhere, solved the problem, but this only happened after a critical mass of women geoscientists had been hired.

11 Questioning the commitment of a female geoscientist deciding to have a family was also prevalent. As an undergraduate, Ann Edging had a supportive male professor, but when she went on to her masters studies at another university, she felt that she was not taken seriously as a married student with a family; nevertheless, she went on to complete her Ph.D. and subsequently began a successful academic career (Rosser 2004). Among men, married male faculty had higher positions and earned more than single male faculty (Bellas and Toutkoushian 1999), but the commitment of married male faculty deciding to have a family, in contrast to married female faculty, was apparently not in question. The desire of many women to have children has also conflicted with the tenure process. In fact, the lack of female geoscience academics, according to Gail Ashley (quoted in Reed 2003), is because"…many women in their mid-30s are deciding not to continue an academic career and face the pressures of making tenure because the tenure process occurs at the same time in their lives when the decision whether or not to have a family becomes biologically critical."Ashley believed that a change in the tenure system could solve this problem. Another issue has been a difficulty in understanding the weighting of the criteria for awarding of tenure, and these vary considerably from one institution to another. For example, 628 US geoscience departments were surveyed to investigate the criteria used; 280 of the completed questionnaires revealed the following average percentage weights in judging faculty for tenure (Foos et al. 2004): teaching, 47.9%; research, 37.1%; service, 14.2%; other, 0.8%. The range of responses varied widely, probably depending on whether the institution focused on teaching or research. How these criteria are weighted should be made clear to all faculty members at their particular institutions. In this regard, more time teaching correlates with lower research output, and women have been found to teach more than men only at research universities (Bellas and Toutkoushian 1999). This disparity in teaching loads, and the importance of research to career advancement at research universities, suggests a division of labour disadvantageous to women.

12 The low proportion of women geoscience faculty (12.5%) in US colleges and universities around the year 2000 was explained by de Wet et al. (2002) in this way:"A combination of biological factors, lifestyle choices, dual career pressures, double standards for social and professional interactions, and gender-based discrimination creates an effective filter, reducing women in geoscience departments to a surprisingly low level."

STATISTICS ON WOMEN GEOSCIENTISTS

THE ISSUE OF FEWER WOMEN SCIENTISTS AND EFFORTS TO INCREASE THEIR NUMBERS

DISCUSSION

21 In Canada, CAUT (2008) pointed out that more than 6000 (67%) of the 9000 full-time university teachers hired between 1984 and 2004 were women. From 2001 to 2007, the percentage of full-time female university teachers increased from 28% to 34%, and for 2006–2007, 40.6% of the 2616 appointments of full-time university teachers were female (CAUT 2010). However, in the geosciences the percentage of women appointed to tenure track positions between 1983 and 1993 was only 13% (Pe-Piper 1994), and in 2006–2007 females accounted for only 28.6% of the 21 appointments (CAUT 2010), below the average for all fields.

22 Many early women geologists were attracted to paleontology, possibly because of its close relationship to biology. With the dramatic drop in enrollments in geology between 1980 and 1985, following the plunge in oil prices, geoscience departments added more environmental geoscience programs (Rhodes 2008). For example, Schneiderman and Sharpe (2001) developed an Environmental Earth Science course with a ‘feminist’ perspective, but this kind of initiative is at an early stage of development. Given the increase in Environmental Earth Science programs, it would be interesting to obtain recent percentages for men and women in this field versus the more traditional specialties, such as petroleum geology or economic geology. Information for the USA has shown that at institutions granting Ph.Ds, the decreasing order of female representation in geoscience faculty by specialty was as follows: geochemistry, paleontology, oceanography, soil science, geology and geophysics (Holmes and O’Connell 2003).

23 Based on USA B.Sc. degrees awarded from 1964 to 2001 in the geo-sciences (Huntoon and Lane 2007), female and male undergraduate percentages should have reached equal numbers in 2008. However, the trends for US geoscience Ph.D. degrees (Crawford et al. 1977, 1987; Holmes et al. 2008), suggest that equal numbers of male and female Ph.Ds will not be reached until about 2021. The question that naturally follows is, "At what rate should women faculty be recruited to achieve parity with men if parity is considered desirable?" If male/female parity is considered a desirable goal, then the rate at which it is to be achieved should be fair to both genders. Hiring the best qualified person of either gender seems reasonable, but the ‘best qualified’, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The most objective criteria for hiring might be course grades and research productivity, but many positions have very specific requirements, and references may not reflect a candidate’s potential.

CONCLUSIONS

24 Improvements should be made at the secondary school level to ensure that female students obtain at least the required science and mathematics prerequisites. The lower percentage of science students compared with other OECD countries, and the lower percentage of geoscience students in particular, makes recruiting more women into the geosciences at all levels, from students to senior positions, a priority. A consideration of the history of the geosciences has shown that women geoscientists have been disadvantaged by societal norms as well as by lateral and hierarchical segregation, especially in terms of field work; preferentially promoting married male faculty with children while questioning the commitment of women starting families of their own reveals a double standard. In addition, women have noted that the optimum child-bearing years correspond with the pressures of the tenure process and that appropriate accommodations should be made to correct this. Furthermore, the tenure process should be made more transparent so that the relative weightings for teaching, research and service are understood by everyone. Another problem faced by women is their greater teaching load at research universities compared to men, a situation limiting available time for their own research and related promotion opportunities. To improve the representation of women geoscientists in North America from the current ratio of about 1 female to 4 males, much needs to be done.