The Joint Committee on Women in the Mathematical Sciences (JCW),
founded in 1971 as a committee of the American Mathematical Society
(AMS), is now a joint committee of seven mathematical and statistical
societies: AMS, American Statistical Association (ASA), Association
for Women in Mathematics (AWM), Institute of Mathematical Statistics
(IMS), Mathematical Association of America (MAA), National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), and the Society for Industrial and
Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The charge of JCW is "to identify some
of the disadvantages that women mathematicians now experience, and
recommend actions which those societies should take to alleviate
these disadvantages, as well as to document its recommendations and
actions by presenting data."
As the number of organizations represented on JCW has grown over the
years, it has become increasingly difficult to hold JCW meetings in
conjunction with other scheduled meetings and conferences. Members of
NCTM and the statistical associations do not routinely attend the
Joint Mathematics Meetings in January; the timing and expense of
attending such meetings is often prohibitive even for those having an
interest in the program. While JCW is able to conduct a fair amount
of business by e-mail, the committee's experience with meeting in
the fall at a central location such as the O'Hare Hilton has proven
to be very useful.
The first annual intensive meeting at the O'Hare Hilton was held on
17-18 September 1994. The meeting was very
successful and those who attended agreed that the modest cost to the
participating societies was worth that cost because the meeting was
extremely productive.
For each of the years 1994, 1995, and 1996, JCW has held an annual
face-to-face intensive weekend meeting at the Chicago-O¹Hare Hilton
Hotel. In 1997, however, JCW did not hold its annual meeting in
Chicago, owing to serious scheduling conflicts on the part of the
chair. JCW did hold one small face-to-face meeting on Friday 10
January 1997, in conjunction with the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San
Diego. As anticipated, attendance at this meeting was poor. An
attempt to schedule a JCW meeting in Baltimore in January 1998 failed
since only two members indicated that they would be able to attend.
In the Spring of 1999, MAA Secretary Martha J. Siegel contacted
Harriet Lord to determine if she was willing to chair JCW. Lord
agreed under 2 conditions: that the MAA would fully fund the travel
expenses of its representatives, and that the MAA would comply with
the resolution adopted by the Board of Governors concerning data
collection with respect to the participation of women in the MAA.
JCW met on 16-17 October 1999 at the O'Hare Hilton. The discussions
at that meeting focused on the role of JCW, and the information it
needed to fulfill its role. The committee determined that the most
important information it needed was data from all member societies,
including regional chapters; that raw data was preferred to
percentages only, and that in each category both the number of men
and of women be given. The data provided by each society, both national and regional,
should include at least the following:
Other information that the committee believed was important for it to have is the procedure of nominating and choosing committee members, and how the candidates for various offices of the society are determined.
During this meeting the members of JCW felt that it was time to amend
the charge to the committee.
The charge at that time was,
The charge of JCW is ``to identify some of the disadvantages that women mathematicians now experience, and recommend actions which those societies should take to alleviate these disadvantages, as well as to document its recommendations and actions by presenting data''.
JCW decided that the charge should be amended to read
The charge of JCW is ``to identify mechanisms for the enhancement of opportunities for women in the mathematical and statistical sciences, recommend actions to these societies in support of these opportunities, and document its recommendations by presenting data'.
The reason for amending the charge was to better reflect the current situation of women in the mathematical sciences, and to take a more positive view. We contacted each of the member societies for their approval of this change in our charge.
This change was not accepted by the Council of The American Mathematical Society, which objected to the recommendation being made to the Society rather than the Council of the Society.
``to identify mechanisms for the enhancement of opportunities for women in the mathematical and statistical sciences, recommend actions to the governing bodies of the member societies in support of these opportunities, and document its recommendations by presenting data''.
This amendment of the charge has been accepted by ASA, MAA, and ISM. We are waiting to hear from the other member societies.
At the September 2000 meeting we discussed the financial support
provided by the member societies to their representatives. We did not
know if SIAM provides such support and did not know how AWM determined
it support for its representatives.
In our discussions on data collection Mary Flahive, MAA representative, reported that the MAA was still not collecting the data according to the Resolution adopted by the Board of Governors in January 1996. The data it does collect has rarely been published in the Focus. Flahive and Segal will contact the Focus editor about publishing the data that is available.
We noted that although there has been an improvement in the participation of women in the AMS Special Sessions, the participation is still low. We felt that we needed to recommend a partial solution to the AMS Council.
We observed that we needed to obtain information about data collection, and publication of this data, from the other member societies.
Diane Herrmann presented a summary of Report in AWM July-August 2000 newsletter on ``Proportions of Women Faculty and Students in the Mathematical Sciences: A Trend Analysis by Institutional Group''. A copy of her report is attached to this report. She will attempt to find out the number of women in tenured positions by rank at Group I, II, and III institutions. It was clear from this report that women who obtain their Ph. D.'s from a Group I institution are less likely than men who obtain their Ph. D.'s from a Group I to be hired into a tenure-track position at a Group I institution.
Members decided to continue trying to obtain copies of guidelines provided to meeting/session organizers of the various societies.
At this meeting we noted that a number of member societies had not yet responded to our request for changing our charge. We agreed that representatives for the non-responsive societies needed to contact their respective societies to get a response.
We continued our discussion on data collection. NCTM indicated in March, 2001 that it had voted to collect the requested data. We are interested in finding out where and when it will be published.
The motion adopted by the NCTM Board of Directors states
that the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics collect data about the participation of women at all levels of activities of the Council. Specifically, the following data by gender should be collected:We have no information from the ASA or SIAM. We encouraged the two present ASA members to ask their society for this data.
- Membership
- Officers (elected, nominated, appointed)
- Committee members & chairs
- Editors, editorial board, editorial staff
- Speakers at meetings: both regional and annual. Data also should be collected that indicates, by gender, who is a featured speaker and whose expenses are paid or who receives an honorarium.
- Council sponsored conferences: presenters, attendees
- Awards given by the Council and the Mathematics Education Trust
- Council staff by organizational level
We agreed that it is important for all member societies to have this data published in ``hard
copy''. It was pointed out that SIAM may not have a venue for this
publication.
We also discussed the problem of getting the MAA to collect and publish the data that it agreed to collect. In fact, although the following motion was passed by the MAA Board of Governors on January 9, 1996 it has never been implemented.
The MAA shall annually assemble and publish on a regular basis information on the relative numbers of women and minorities in at least the following categories:
- MAA membership
- elected officials
- committee members and chairs
- members of editorial boards
- hour speakers
- speakers at special sessions
- organizers of panels
- nominees and winners of awards/prizes
We also requested that the AWM representatives ask AWM to get statistics on the number of awards and panel participation by gender, as well as the number of applicants for its various grants, and the number funded.
At this meeting we also discussed the administration of JCW. The committee members welcomed the the response of John Ewing, AMS Executive Director, to our request for assistance by offering to keep track of membership, remind member societies to fill vacancies when they occur, and send out invitations to the annual meeting. Karen Butler of the AMS has already provided us with the first accurate membership list we've had in recent years.
Harriet Lord, chair of JCW, told the committee that she was not able to continue as chair and would resign as of January 31, 2002. The committee elected Gail Ratcliff as the new chair for JCW. She agreed to serve a 3-year term under the assumption that she would be named as one of the AMS representatives to JCW. We learned in January that she was not appointed to JCW; Diane Herrmann agreed to serve as interim chair until the committee met in September 2002.
We suggested that the JCW website be moved from H. Lord's home directory to the directory of the AMS, with each member society having a link to the JCW website from their society's home page.