Last year, the University began investigating the fact that women on campus are underrepresented in certain leadership positions, like USG and eating club presidencies. This week, The Daily Princetonian revisited the issue with an article about the conclusions drawn by the Steering Committee on Undergraduate Women’s Leadership and a column by Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux ’11 and Jane Yang ’11, who are both members of the committee. Both pieces alluded to the fact that a major hurdle in addressing the issue is defining it because, as they both noted, women seem to gravitate toward different types of leadership positions and are well represented in more “behind the scenes” roles. The issue, then, is to find out whether this disparity in interest is natural or a result of women on campus being discouraged from taking on certain roles.
Recently, another article in this paper addressed a similar issue, talking about the rate at which women were earning Ph.D.s. The article stated that more women than men are earning Ph.D.s, but the conclusion that this means that we are trending toward some sort of educational parity is misleading. A woman quoted in the column by Thomson-DeVeaux and Yang said that she knows many women who are more reluctant than their male peers to attend office hours because they’re intimidated by the professor’s authority. And it is well documented that women are underrepresented in the physical sciences and engineering, comprising just 20 percent of undergraduates in some science and engineering subjects.
The cause of this schism has been a topic of debate for as long as women have been part of the work force. Some say women just prefer different majors and careers, while others say that women just don’t have a natural capacity for technical subjects. Many women themselves allude to the nebulous social pressure that makes them uncomfortable with those types of fields. When we discuss creating equal opportunities for women, we often concentrate on ridding society of this pressure, focusing on how we can make women feel more comfortable in the academic environment — but this approach is lacking.
What is more troubling to me than a male-dominated USG is the fact that people felt that the most likely explanation for the dearth of women in these roles was that the women were being shy, and that the only solution is to clear the path further so that women can be coaxed up to the plate. Is it impossible to believe that no women wanted the position or that there are women here who don’t make their decisions based on the social oppression of The Man? We need to give ourselves a little more credit than that, and as a community we also need to give women more responsibility for their own actions. Overcoming the pressure of what people think is truly difficult, but it is something that comes from within, and it’s something we can do without the permission of our society.
My grandmother was the first female medical director of the Ashanti region of Ghana, and she received her medical degree from the University of Glasgow in 1962, when being a black woman in higher education was still a rarity. People stared, whispered, and asked, completely seriously, if the brown rubbed out of her skin, but she carried on because stares were not going to keep her from finishing her degree. Because of her, I know it’s possible to carry on even if people act like you shouldn’t be where you are. While it’s true that eradicating things that contribute to an oppressive environment on campus is a good thing, the bottom line is that we need to find it in ourselves to tear down the mental barrier.
This isn’t to say that the problem resides only with women. Women still experience disparities in pay and workplace treatment that are real and out of their control, but we need to take an active role in leveling the playing field. Just talking about needing to increase the level of women in male-dominated fields won’t change the fact that only about 3 percent of Fortune 500 companies have a female chief executive. If the major barrier is social pressure, what we really need is to encourage women to eschew those social norms to do what they want, be it writing a novel or building a rocket.
This doesn’t mean that as women we need to aggressively claw our way through the patriarchy until we get our due, but if we want a change, sometimes we need to be bold. If we can keep from shying away from things because of a vague notion that we’re “just not good at them,” and lead in the roles of our choosing confidently and competently, we’ll be on our way to a more equal future. It’s safe to say that in these modern times we face significantly lower hurdles than suffragists of the past did, but like our suffragist predecessors we need to take to the streets — or the labs, or the board rooms — and be our own advocates.
Sophia LeMaire is a mechanical engineering major from Longmeadow, Mass. She can be reached at slemaire@princeton.edu.
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