The New Agenda welcomes this new writer, an optical engineer and president of her local chapter of the Optical Society of America.  The views she presents are her own, not necessarily those of The New Agenda.

It is my goal to illuminate the topic of women in the physical sciences (and being an optical engineer, I have some experience with illumination).  I also want to encourage women and girls to take a walk on the wild side, marvel at how the world around you works, and find resources to support your curiosity.

Physics is a scientific discipline that has struggled over the years to entice young women to its ranks. If you were to ask many of the young women that I went to High School with back in the 80’s what a physicist looked like, they would probably have answered a tall, lanky, white guy in a lab coat, with thick rimmed glasses. Considerable progress has been made in the past 25 years in regard to changing that mindset of who can and will become a physicist. The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has performed numerous surveys of women physicists from the US and from across the globe to find out exactly how we tick, how we chose our discipline, and what some of the biggest hurdles were for us within our career. In 2001, and again in 2005, AIP surveyed more than 1350 women from over 70 countries to elicit information regarding their educational backgrounds, career and family balancing, and how they felt about their careers. 40% of those women surveyed were from the United States.

Many of the women knew they wanted to pursue a career in physics early in their lives; particularly by the time they reached high school. When asked where they received the most influence in pursuing physics, 50% of them pointed to their high school teachers as being the largest influence. This shows the importance of including a physics curriculum early on in junior high as well as high school and providing qualified and motivating teachers to influence their students. As the women progressed to college and graduate school more than 60% of them had support from at least one other person to give them encouragement throughout their studies and their research. They also stressed how important “hard work, will power, and determination” were for them as the progressed.

The issues of managing a career in physics with marriage and children showed that although the balance was challenging, the women didn’t consider it any more challenging than what any other working woman faces. 72% of the women from the developing countries surveyed claimed their husbands had a positive effect on their career. Many of the women surveyed had married other scientists, particularly other physicists (I relate, my husband and I are an optics couple). The biggest hurdle for the majority of these women was the attitudes of others in regard to women being in a physics related field. These attitudes can be seen first hand when talking to guidance counselors about career choices. When a woman excels in the sciences and mathematics, more often than not she is guided to the biological sciences for a career; if she is guided to the sciences at all. University Presidents have been quoted in the media saying that women can’t succeed in science, that there are innate differences that make us inferior to men. What AIP has seen and what I have seen in the past 25 years is that women are an integral component in the physical sciences. We bring a positive different perspective and a voracious drive to our field. When asked if we loved our field, 3 out of 4 of those surveyed said they would choose physics again in a heartbeat.

I hope in future blogs that I can show everyone how exciting physics can be and how perfectly suited everyone is to make it an important and exciting part of your life.