EDITORIAL
A man and a woman Women chemists are not getting their due; it is high time to right the injustice
4 y J J J|J J J J.. 4 X / o u ' v e come a long way, b a b y but not nearly far enough. We're talking about women, of course. The current women's lib movement has its fair share of zany if not nutty adherents, but no amount of male ridicule, guffaws, off-color jokes, or ignorance can strip away the basic argument: Women, and more particularly for our purpose, women chemists, gen erally are getting short-changed. And it's short change right across the board, whether you're talking pay, opportunity, or responsibility. It isn't hard to make the case. We cite a few statistics gathered by C&EN's woman-chemistturned-journalist, Madeleine Polinger (see story, page 26): • Women B.S. chemists with five to nine years' experience make only 78% of what their male counterparts (same experience) make. For Ph.D.'s, the figure is 7 3 % . • Furthermore, and this is surprising, the more the experience, the wider the gap. Thus, salary of a woman B.S. chemist with 25 to 29 years of experience is only 66% of that of her male col league. For M.S. chemists, the figure is 63% and for Ph.D.'s 70%. So much for the old saw that marriage and pregnancy cause salary differences by removing women from professional life early. Mrs. Polinger sees a number of reasons for the disparities. Job descriptions often differ, since women often are placed in jobs entailing less responsibility, hence less pay. Also, women have tended to go into fields of chemistry that pay less (teaching, pharmaceutical, pharmacol ogy). Furthermore, starting salaries for women tend to be lower than those for men since women face such a poor job market. Any way you slice it, though, much of the prob lem goes back to some form of discrimination-
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overt and therefore illegal ( dispa rate pay scales for the same work) or covert wherein women are sim ply not employed in equal jobs. The picture in career opportuni ties is no better. Again, here are some of Mrs. Polinger's figures: • No women can be found among the ranks of the 681 corporate offi cers and board members of the 20 largest chemical firms. Nor are there any women vice presidents. • Only 4.5% of women chemists hold management or supervisory positions, vs. 22% of all chemists. Now, let's take a look at a few other facts. ACS itself wouldn't appear to have any better track record. You'll find no women among the 82 presidents or the hundreds of mem bers of the Board of Directors since the Society's founding in 1876. In fact, the highest elected position in the Society held by a woman has been membership on the Council Policy Committee, with three women since 1954. Awards lists look little better. Though no ACS national award bars women, the only one that has gone to women (other than the Garvan Medal, which is for wo men only) is the Conant Award in High School Chemistry Teaching. No American woman chemist has won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry; only three women of any nationality have won the prize (Marie Curie—1911; Irene Joliot-Curie— 1935; Dorothy M. C. Hodgkin-1964). Reasons for the discrimination are complex and probably date back to primitive man. Whatever the reasons, none hold water today. In his "Re public," Plato made a case for equality of the sexes. Some 2400 years later, it's still not here.
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C&EN editorials are signed and represent only the views of the signer. Unless stated to the contrary they do not represent the official position of the American Chemical Society. Rather they are aimed at focusing attention on some controversial point, at sparking intelligent discussion, at raising legitimate Questions.
OCT. 26, 1970 C&EN
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