Wyden
Convenes Hearing on Enforcing Title IX for Math, Science, Engineering
Education
Working
to Triple Number of Women Graduating with Math, Science Degrees
October
3, 2002
Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) today convened a
hearing of the Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space to discuss
stronger enforcement of the Title IX statute with respect to math,
science and engineering education. Wyden, who chairs the Subcommittee,
announced earlier this year that he wants to help triple the number
of women graduating with degrees in these fields. Evidence indicates
that women face various forms of discrimination as they seek to study
or work in math, science and engineering. Title IX is the Federal
statute enacted in 1972 that prohibits discrimination on the basis
of sex in any educational program or activity receiving Federal funding.
Wyden opened today's hearings with the following brief remarks:
Senator Wyden's Prepared Remarks
"This afternoon the Subcommittee on
Science, Technology and Space convenes the third in a series of
hearings on the subject of women studying and working in math, technology,
engineering and the so-called hard sciences such as physics and
chemistry.
"Congress may not be able to legislate
away the entrenched attitudes of the math and science establishment,
that women are somehow second-class scholars in these fields. But
as Chair of the Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space, I'm
determined to see the Title IX statute fully enforced to give women
equal opportunity in science, engineering and math education.
"As one of today's witnesses knows,
the enforcement of that common-sense rule has brought women much
closer to parity – if not all the way – in high school and college
sports. In my view, if Title IX can do that on the playing field
it should certainly do so in the classroom, where its help was originally
directed. Making sure that Title IX protects women in and out of
the sports arena is more important now than ever before, as the
Administration fires up a commission to review and possibly revise
Title IX rules.
"In June of this year, I laid down a
new challenge in this Subcommittee. In this hearing room, I called
on NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe to determine how his agency could
help triple the number of women graduating and working in math,
science, and technology. At a hearing in July, Dean Kristina Johnson
of Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering encouraged the
enforcement of Title IX to ensure equal opportunity for women in
math, science and engineering education.
"Title IX states a simple principle.
The entire statute reads: 'No person in the United States shall
on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied
the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational
program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.'
"The evidence of discrimination against
women in math, science and engineering education is both empirical
and anecdotal. The numbers will raise your eyebrows, but the stories
should raise your hackles. Pregnant PhD students have been told
they might as well give up their studies. According to the National
Research Council, young women studying science and math are pushed
into traditional female roles such as teaching, while their male
counterparts receive almost all the research fellowships that pay
more completely for graduate school.
"Without a research background, women
are less likely to obtain tenure-track faculty positions. They earn
less money and lose the chance to encourage more young women. And
the discrimination doesn't stop with students; full professors who
happen to be women tell stories of losing their lab space to associate
professors who are male.
"The consequences of this systematic
discrimination are immediately visible for women, and more subtly
damaging to our country as a whole. The Hart-Rudman Commission on
National Security warned that America's failure to invest in science
and to reform math and science education is the second biggest threat
to our national security. Only the threat of a weapon of mass destruction
in an American city is a greater danger. Yet in essence, 51 percent
of the population is being actively discouraged from entering these
fields that desperately need new experts and practitioners.
"Last week the Commerce Committee approved
an amendment I offered with Senator Cleland. The amendment calls
for a 10-year retrospective report on NSF programs to promote participation
of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and
engineering. This week, I will offer another amendment to the NSF
authorization bill. I want the National Academy of Sciences to report
on how universities support their math, science and engineering
faculty with respect to Title IX. This can cover hiring, promotion,
tenure, even allocation of lab space.
"The Federal government should share
some of the spotlight. I will request that the Academy's report
also detail how many Federal grants for scientific research are
given to men and women and why. It's time Congress quantified and
qualified the realities facing women in the sciences. Only then
can we find fully effective solutions."
Witness testimony from the hearing is
available online at: http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/hearings0202.htm
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