SEE NO EVIL...

Few women in the sciences at Harvard say they feel disadvantaged because of their gender.

Most female math and science concentrators say they have not felt any discrimination—and have gotten used to being in the minority.

Blythe M. Adler ’05, a math concentrator, says the gender disparity in her department—which boasts no tenured female professors and only one female undergraduate adviser—is irrelevant to her and may be natural.

“It doesn’t bother me just because in most of my math classes I’ve gotten used to having not so many women,” Adler says. “Some people say the male brain is better at thinking quantitatively. Part of me thinks that there are so many more males [in math] that maybe they do think differently.”

Some science concentrators even say gender discrimination runs in the opposite direction at Harvard.

Julia I. Hanover ’04, a math and physics concentrator, says the services that are available to female science concentrators provide women with an unfair advantage.

“Right now it’s almost easier to be a girl than a guy,” she says. “It seems like there are all these setups to help women out...That’s really unfair, especially with the mentoring. That’s something a lot of guys need, too.”

Hanover says support systems—like scholarships limited to women in science—only hold women back.

“I don’t feel that any source of discrimination is going to be helpful,” she says. “It kind of degrades the value of the scholarship if it’s only for women. It implicitly states that women aren’t as good as men.”

THE MICRO-INEQUALITIES

Despite the doubt of some female science concentrators, many professors say inequities still exists—though in subtle forms.

Nancy H. Hopkins, an MIT biology professor who spearheaded that university’s initiative to improve conditions for female faculty, says she thinks women who believe they are on a level playing field with men are in denial.

Hopkins says it took her 20 years to realize that she was being treated differently than her male colleagues.

She explains that for her, and for most talented female scientists, the notion that one could be treated differently because of gender was unthinkable.