Berkeley Chem Engineering Department Discovers Gender Inequity

by CKR

I am a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, chemistry department. The chemistry and chemical engineering departments jointly publish a very slick magazine, Catalyst, for their alumni. The chairs of both departments write short opinion pieces for the magazine.

Jeffrey A. Reimer is chair of the chemical engineering department. He seems to have discovered Virginia Valian’s book, Why So Slow. Of course, Valian’s book is hardly the first to discuss the lack of women on prestigious science faculties. Reimer cites the atmosphere of 1977, when he was a graduate student and all things seemed possible, even that stereotypes of race and sex might fall.

He is puzzled that one-fifth of the Ph.D. students recently admitted to the ChE department are women, and only three of the seventeen faculty are women. He pats himself on the back that the national percentage of women on ChE faculties is half that of Cal’s, but notes that the department has no African-American professors.

Surely there have been no overt policies and practices of sexism.

Too bad he didn’t read the rest of that Spring 2007 issue of Catalyst.

“To be of use: Research in Pasteur’s Quadrant” is the theme of the issue. Four faculty and alumni are featured...

four very different individuals. Three were born in the United States—two in the east and one in the west—and the fourth was born in Asia. Their fields are different—one chemical engineer, one physical chemist, one synthetic chemist, and one chemical biologist.

They are all male, the one non-white having won the Nobel Prize, which may be what is required to be noticed by the reigning white guys.

In the short topics, we find four male professors (two white, one African-American, one Asian) honored with “prestigious national awards,” four articles focusing on technical advances, a two-page spread of alumni event photos (31 men pictured, 23 women, although eight of the women are in a single picture, apparently doing a dance routine), and then of course the class notes, which I will not attempt to quantify.

So hello, Dr. Reimer! Would you consider an alumni magazine almost totally devoted to men an “overt practice of sexism”? Ah yes the usual explanation: there has been such a predominance of men in the previous classes that of course the balance is tipped in their direction. We’re working on that, just like we were back in 1977. And working and working. But not too hard.

BTW: The cover on the Spring 2007 Catalyst is the famous portrait of Louis Pasteur in his laboratory by Albert Edelfelt. I didn't realize that Edelfelt was Finnish until I read this issue. It's a portrait that inspired me as a child who wanted to become a scientist. But still, another couple of dead white guys.