SGER: Lessons from the Current Debate on the Under-representation of Women in Science

摘要：从当前关于女性在科学领域代表性不足的辩论中吸取教训本提案旨在从正在进行的关于女性在科学领域代表性不足的辩论的各个方面吸取教训，这场辩论自2005年1月以来一直很激烈，包括四位主要大学校长、数十位学者、许多学生、各种性别平等活动家和媒体。这个项目将需要系统地采访广泛的参与者，了解他们在辩论中的作用以及他们对利害攸关的问题的理解。该项目将特别关注在这场辩论中缺少历史和当代关于科学领域女性的学术研究的相关发现。其目的是了解为什么当时发生了这场辩论；为什么它不会消失；公共辩论如何为促进科学领域性别平等的政策做出贡献；以及如何确保过去、现在和未来关于科学领域女性的学术研究能够以一种有效的、吸引人的和持续的方式对决策者和公共辩论者进行常规访问。该项目旨在弥合过去二十年中关于科学领域女性的大量奖学金的实际可用性与在公共辩论和日常政策制定中缺乏作为关键资源的代表性之间的差距。该项目认为，这一差距在很大程度上要对延迟公共政策中善意倡议的影响负责，也要对公众理解为什么尽管努力解决科学中的性别平等问题仍然滞后负责。该项目将通过对有组织的辩论活动、会议和组织倡议的参与者观察、口述历史访谈和对有关该主题的已发表文献的分析，从广泛的辩论参与者中提取主要主题。PI将通过组织美国科学促进会（AAAS）关于这一主题的会议，通过以集成册的形式传播从这场辩论中产生的经验教训，将在辩论过程中出现的无数问题综合起来，并通过更广泛的相关参与者的真实声音，为21世纪科学中的性别平等政策议程提供信息，从而引起公众的注意。该项目既及时又依赖于时间。最近举行了许多会议和辩论，以回应哈佛校长拉里·萨默斯的评论，现在是PI利用这个机会来研究这些问题的时候了。该提案的智力价值包括更好地理解（由历史学家、社会科学家、性别理论家、科学家、政策分析家、传记作家）关于科学中的女性的跨学科奖学金如何影响或未能影响公众舆论和科学的结构变化。该项目的更广泛影响源于它能够发现在公民和政策领域传播和应用关于科学领域中妇女的基础学术研究的结果所遇到的意想不到的障碍。然而，广泛影响的另一个来源是项目的促进活动，它突出了这场辩论内外的众多声音，从而丰富了对科学和社会中的性别平等这一关键问题的投入来源。

Abstract: Lessons from the Current Debate on the Under-representation of Women in ScienceThis proposal seeks to draw lessons from various facets of the ongoing debate on the under-representation of women in science, a debate raging since January 2005 and including fourmajor university presidents, dozens of academics, many students, various activists for genderequality, and the media. This project will entail systematic interviewing of a wide spectrum ofparticipants on their role in the debate and their understanding of the issues at stake. The project will pay special attention to the absence from this debate of pertinent findings from historical and contemporary scholarship on women in science. The aim is to learn why thedebate erupted when it did; why it will not go away; how can the public debate make contributions to the policy of improving gender equality in science; and how to ensure that past, present, and future scholarship on women in science become routinely accessible to decision makers and public debaters in an effective, engaging, and ongoing manner.The project aims to bridge the gap between the actual availability of extensive scholarship onwomen in science in the last two decades, and its lack of representation as a crucial resource inpublic debates and routine policy making. The project contends that this gap is responsible to a large extent for delaying the impact of well meaning initiatives in public policy, as well as public understanding of why gender equity in science continues to lag despite efforts to address it. The project will extract major themes from a wide range of participants in this debate by means of participant observation at organized debating events, conferences, and organizational initiatives, oral history interviews, and analysis of published literature on the topic. The PI will bring those themes to public attention by organizing a AAAS session on the topic, by circulating the lessons emanating from this debate in the form of a collective volume that will synthesize the myriad issues that surfaced in the course of the debate, and by informing the policy agenda for gender equality in science in the 21st Century with the authentic voices of a broader range of concerned participants. The project is both timely and time dependent. Many conferences and debates have recently taken place in response to the comments of Harvard President Larry Summers, and now is the time for the PI to take advantage of the opportunity to examine these issues. The intellectual merits of the proposal include a gaining a better understanding of howinterdisciplinary scholarship on women in science (by historians, social scientists, gendertheorists, scientists, policy analysts, biographers) affects, or fails to affect, public opinion andstructural changes in science. The broader impact of the project stems from its ability to detectunexpected obstacles to the diffusion and application of findings from basic academic researchon women in science in the civic and policy arenas. Yet another source of broad impact stemsform the project's enabling activity in highlighting a multitude of voices in and out of this debate, so as to enrich the sources of input into the critical issue of gender equality in both science and society.