Gender gap remains in science as women's early offerings overlooked

Judith Martin - These days more women are graduating from college than men,
except in the sciences,  even while women have made achievements but have been overlooked on the back benches. 

Educators in the sciences acknowledge women's under-representation in the sciences. Only 15 of the 72 members elected into the National Academy of Science (NAS) in 2010 are women and the change in representation of women has quadrupled from 1% to 4% in the past 16 years.

The history of science has also ignored many women of achievement, some educators say, which may account for that under-representation of women in science.  How many people know, for example, that some of the most talented women of science come from the deep South of Louisiana, a place not thought of as a bastion for women of science, but nevertheless a place that birthed some of the best.  The barriers, however, were too high for them to achieve their dreams.  

Four unheralded, remarkable women had a passionate love for
math and science. Their obscurity makes their accomplishments, and those of
thousands of others like them, even more worthy of recognition. 

Madeline Voss (algebra and calculus). Solange Peterson
(geometry, trigonometry, and calculus), Joyce Siekmann (biology and chemistry),
and Cecile Dupont-Martin (botany, zoology, basic math) were women who taught in
the New Orleans Public Schools for decades. 

All of them were born in the early 20th century, to families
of modest means but that put great emphasis on learning. They went to what was
called "normal school" to learn the fine art of teaching; they had to
return to the university (Newcomb College specifically in New Orleans), to get
their teaching degrees.

Among them, Peterson and Dupont-Martin were married. Voss
and Siekmann were not.  There was no
question that all of them loved teaching.

Nevertheless, there was always a certain sadness about them,
in the classroom and outside of it.

That sadness came from the fact that they knew that they
could have gone further than they had into intense studies of math and science.
But they had been told by the male academics whose minds were still stuck in
19th century Victorian chauvinism, before World War II at all levels that
"women can't be research scientists; you will have to teach."

It was only after World War II, well into the 1960s, when
the Cold War race between the United States and Soviet Union (Russian) began in
earnest, that academics stopped saying that women could not even take electives
like "shop" because they were for boys only.  The Cold War needed all the scientists in lab
coats that could be brought out of the college laboratories and into NASA and
its like, fast. They would have to accept women at the lab tables as well, if
enough young men were not coming up through the ranks fast enough.

Voss, Peterson, Siekmann, and Dupont-Martin understood that
they had missed the boat to enter into the higher realms of academic science
and math, but they could encourage their female students to accept the
challenge to put on the lab coats themselves and do their part to help the
United States win the Cold War against the Soviets.

It was a delight for all of them to find a student,
especially a female student, who took sincere interest in math and science.
Decades past the 1960s, Siekmann was known to stop a certain neighbor's
daughter, now grown and in her 40s, on the sidewalk to ask (teasingly, not
seriously), science questions that pertained to lessons from long before! Voss
was friends with Dupont-Martin, but would not give an inch with making it any
less tough for her friend's daughter in "college prep" algebra class!

All of these women are long deceased now.  Nevertheless, in the hearts of many students, there are hopes that by having been taught by these women, other women
have been inspired to enter into the sciences.

It is encouraging to see in the news and in the broadcast media
that the work of multitudes of women in the sciences and math are being
recognized, yet that is not enough.

The gap between men and women in equal participation in
science continues, as the dreams of women in the past were extinguished by barriers that women today can surpass.