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Introduction

Even compared to other sciences, physics is anomalous in the under representation of women (Ivie and Stowe, 2000). In 1998, women received over half the bachelors’ degrees in life science, and over 40% of those in chemistry and mathematics. In physics, women received only 19% of bachelors’ degrees.

The under representation of women in physics gets worse at every step up the academic ladder.

The representation of women at all levels of physics is gradually improving, but the pattern of decreasing participation persists. This is despite many years of effort by the physics community. Women who drop out have ability and achievements equal to the men who stay, so this is a loss to physics, as well as to the individual women involved. (Xie and Shauman, 2003; Seymour and Hewitt, 1997)
Why are there so few women in physics? No one really knows; it’s probably due to many small factors acting together, rather than just one major cause.
There are some obvious answers that are known to be wrong:
There is no credible evidence that women are less skilled, or less interested in physics than men.
Formal barriers to women’s participation have largely disappeared, and there is very little evidence of outright discrimination. (“No, you can’t have this job, or do this research, or take this class, because you are female.”)
The goal of this project is not to investigate why women are underrepresented in physics. Rather, it is to understand why some physics departments do better than others in recruiting and retaining female majors. And to encourage all physics departments to become more female-friendly.
Why focus on undergraduate physics majors?
Work needs to be done to encourage women and girls in science at every level, from preschool through senior faculty.
The Committee on the Status of Women in Physics (www.aps.org/educ/cswp/visits/index.cfm) site visit program is helping physics departments to be more encouraging to women faculty and graduate students.
Undergraduate majors form a large leak in the “pipeline” of physics. If we can understand how to encourage more women to select and persist in an undergraduate physics major, we can greatly increase the pool of women available to enter the physics community.