VARIATIONS IN THE OUTLOOK FOR WOMEN IN

SCIENCE

Just as the opportunity for employment and progress is greater in some scientific fields than it is in others, so within a given scientific field or specialization, the prospects for individual women vary, not only with their aptitude and training for the work but also with their location and their characteristics. These variations, as noted below. should be considered in relating information of the type presented in these bulletins to the employment or training plans of an individual

woman.

Geographic Variations in the Outlook

Opportunities for employment in science are not equally good in all parts of the United States. Although this fact presents no problem to the woman who can move to any locality in which jobs are available, it is significant to the woman who, because of home or other responsibilities, is tied to a particular area. One of the differences between young men and women noted by many employers of scientific personnel was the tendency of the women to prefer jobs within 25 to 50 miles of their homes. To what extent this preference is prompted by choice, to what extent it arises out of necessity, is not known. But other studies of the Women's Bureau indicate that the responsibilities of single as well as of married women for financial aid or for personal services to the other members of their families are considerable. Improvement in labor-saving devices which reduce homemaking tasks, a greater supply of practical nurses and household service workers, higher family incomes, and further improvements in transportation facilities over the long-run will improve the occupational mobility of women. Meanwhile, lack of mobility limits the individual's choice of jobs and makes a woman a less desirable employee on jobs where travel or probable transfer may be involved.

Most scientific work is concentrated in cities where medical and industrial laboratories are located or in college or university towns or cities where scientific research and teaching are carried on. This is true, for example, of the work of most chemists, engineers, bacteriologists, and physiologists. It is also true of the proportionately large teaching groups within the fields of botany, zoology, and geography. The principal exception to this generalization is work which involves

the location, study, or treatment of organisms or objects in their natural environment, if that environment is limited to certain areas. The marine biologist, the regional geographer, the field geologist, the mining engineer, the forester are occupations in which travel to, or location in, remote places is likely to be characteristic. Women with limited mobility should avoid such occupations.

In astronomy and meteorology, employment is confined to a relatively few centers of research or observation. In geology, where field work is also a deterrent, employment, except in teaching, is concen

Figure 21.-Medical laboratory technicians at work in a hospital.

trated in the oil-producing States of Texas, California, Louisiana, Kansas, and Illinois and in Federal and State capitals.

Chemists and bacteriologists, on the other hand, are found in every large community. Hospitals, medical schools, and public-health laboratories as well as widely dispersed dairies and other food plants and chemical manufacturers employ them. However, quantitatively, because of the concentration of large manufacturing industries, there are greater opportunities in some parts of the country than in others. Before the war, according to the Census, almost three-fourths of all chemists were employed in the Northeastern or North Central States; the South ranked third and the West last with one-tenth of the total. The proportion of women among chemists in the various sections of

the country was highest in the Northeastern States (3.5 percent), and lowest in the South (2.3 percent). (See Bulletin 223-2 for detail.)

This prewar concentration of employment opportunities for chemists in the Northeastern and North Central States was confirmed in the 1943 study of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (36). The State of New York alone employed 13.5 percent of all chemists; Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois ranked next. The Middle Atlantic States of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania absorbed as many as half the Ph. D.'s produced in chemistry in the entire country during the period 1930-1940 (15).

The geographical distribution of the physiologists surveyed in 1945 shows the direct relation of the demand in that field to the location of medical schools. Nearly one-half of the physiologists were in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, and Massachusetts, where one-third of the country's medical schools and 42 percent of its medical students were located. No physiologists were reported from three other States in which there were no medical schools (9).

Allowances for this type of variation in the location of employment should be considered by young women who intend to work in a scientific field outside of teaching and who are restricted by circumstances to a given area.

Variations for Women With Special Employment Problems

The difficulties individual women may encounter in entering an occupation are legion and vary with the person and the circumstances which surround her. But there are four large groups of women who are likely to encounter special problems in obtaining employment in most fields. The older woman, the married woman, the Negro woman, and the woman with a physical handicap often find that their opportunities do not follow the usual pattern.

Older Women.-Among those registered in the physical and biological sciences and in engineering and in architecture with the National Roster of Scientific and Specialized Personnel at the end of 1946, 325 women and more than 21,000 men were 60 years of age or older. However, the median age of the women in each of these scientific groups was 7 to 9 years lower than the corresponding median for the men, which ranged from 35 in the physical sciences to 48 in architecture, with the other two groups at 40 (38). This relative youthfulness of women reflects the greater withdrawals of women before retirement age, due to marriage and family reasons, rather than lack of opportunity for the older woman already established in her field. In research and teaching, there is virtually no age limit for the scientist with long experience who has kept abreast of new developments in her field.

But the woman who wishes to enter a scientific profession at the age of 30 or 40 or the one who wishes to reenter after some absence has a different problem. During the war, the demand for women trained in science was so great that a woman in the forties who had had any training in science or engineering or any laboratory experience, regardless of its recency, could obtain work, though often at a level below that of her training. A woman civil engineer, after 25 years of absence from her profession, for example, returned as a draftsman with a Federal agency while her husband was in military service. Many former chemists likewise returned to the laboratory. However, ordinarily, it is difficult for a woman over 40 to do laboratory work, whether it be in chemistry, bacteriology, botany, zoology, or geology, unless she has worked continuously in a laboratory and has retained her manipulative skill. Even teachers of science may lose this skill which only daily experience can maintain.

Except in college teaching and in research, which "knows no age limit" according to one laboratory director, and in which evidence of work done is the main criterion, young women are definitely preferred to older women for entering jobs both in industrial firms and Government agencies. Most of the women over 40 and the few over 50 found in the Women's Bureau study of laboratories had been with the same employer for many years. A few had been hired during the war period, either because they had a certain type of specialized experience wanted by the employer or because younger women were not available. The constant standing in most laboratory work, the importance of adaptability and of manipulative skills, and the recent and rapid changes in the sciences are the usual reasons given for preferring young women. Stamina, spryness, and the ability to withstand inclement weather are needed in meteorological observation and scientific jobs entailing field work, and for this younger persons are preferred. Extreme youthfulness, however, may also be a handicap. Several employers reported that most of the girls under 21 whom they had hired for chemical laboratory work during the war were not as reliable as women over 30, although they were faster. Their turnover rate was also higher.

Opportunities, then, are good for older women who have worked continuously as college teachers or as research scientists and who have kept abreast in their fields. For the less highly trained or less experienced woman, they may be limited to her specialty and perhaps to her employer, if her field is not one for which there is an active demand.

The woman who wishes to return after a considerable absence faces two obstacles. She must catch up with the many changes the intervening years have brought in her field. And she will find laboratory

work both difficult to obtain and difficult to do. Technical library work, patent searching, or editing are better possibilities for a woman of this type, if she can qualify for such work.

There are always exceptional women and exceptional circumstances, however. One woman, long out of school, became interested in medical laboratory work through the illness of her husband. She took training in New York and became an outstanding research assistant in a medical laboratory there. Another, after 15 years of teaching experience, took a degree in architecture and practiced successfully until her retirement. To prepare for and enter a scientific field after the age of 30, however, is seldom desirable for any woman unless she has had fairly continuous training or experience in a related field such as medicine, nursing, or the textile or foods phases of home economics. Married Women.-The fact that many of the women covered in this study were married indicates that homemaking can be combined with

Figure 22.-Among the women scientists who are also homemakers is this bacteriological research worker whose husband, like herself, was graduated as a chemical engineer and whose daughter is studying science.