Introduction: Careers of Women in Science: Issues of Power and Control

Abstract

made the now much-quoted observation that in every arena in which women are active, they need not just fair treatment and equal opportunity but power. In this special issue on Women and Science, we take power to mean not just power over their own lives (control), but power over the institutions and the policies that govern their work. Alice Huang (2001), biologist, member of the National Science Board, and faculty member at California Institute of Technology, carries this insight over to women in science. She advocates informed and self-conscious pursuit of one's career as a way of accessing power. And once in power, quoting the late Polly Bunting (a biologist from an earlier generation), women must work on behalf of other women.Implied in Albright's and Huang's commentary is that power ought to be sought to "move the mountain," to change existing institutions and arrangements such that women will succeed and gain equivalency in position, recognition, and pay. But not all women scientists, even those who would demand equivalency, are committed to achieving power. This issue of the Bulletin was inspired by a 2000 conference on "Women in Science: Gender and Power," where the organizers were surprised to find that few of the papers addressed power per se. Instead, they found the notion of power on the part of our respondents to be problematic. For example, two articles were submitted examining women's attitudes toward power, one on the British Civil Service by an Englishwoman, Patricia Ellis, and the other by an Italian, Giavanna Gabetta.From these reports, it would appear that what female scientists care most about (or are most willing to acknowledge) is not their ability to reshape the wider world but to control their immediate environment and have access to the resources they need for

‘With a rope around their neck’: grant researchers living in suspended time

“…Therefore, reconciling scientific work (across all areas) with family demands and other cultural activities can be an extremely difficult endeavour. Along the way, as work becomes more demanding in terms of productivity and of the need to prove individual skills and ability, the career profile itself may change accordingly, revealing, for instance, a tendency towards masculinisation and celibacy (Delamont, 2001; Erwin et al. , 2003).…”