The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys' Club

I loved this book and read it in two sittings. I found it compelling, but flawed. My reaction is mixed because while I could relate to and appreciate her story, the book was not what I expected. The last third of the book goes the direction the sales blurbs suggest, an informal study of why women leave STEM. Instead, the book, for the first two-thirds, is more of an explorative memoir analyzing why the author herself did not survive STEM. Then she seeks to find a confirmation of her one dimensional conclusions through other women's experiences or opinions. This by no means invalidates her experiences, and she's not wrong, but hers is more of a consensus of opinions than a hard hitting study and analysis. There are a few things she forgets to mention, such as the reason she was one of the first two women to get a physics degree from Yale was because Yale had only just started to admit women. Other women studied the hard sciences at many national and regional universities for many years before she showed up at Yale. However, I am certain every one of them faced very similar experiences in their fights to finish. I know this is so because I was an Applied Mathematics and Engineering major in the early 70s, pre-dating her, and there was not one day I felt accepted or welcome or comfortable. Everything she says has a ring of truth. But for those of us who persevered and then continued out into the world to make our marks, the adverse environment of college was just the beginning. So, for me, her memoir, full of self analysis, feels like regret and seeking validation for her choice to leave it behind. But in the end, this book is very much needed, and one I will recommend and buy for friends and family to read. First of all, so little has changed in forty years. Second, no nation can afford to close the door to half of its most talented people and continue to progress. Women now make up half of all medical school students and more than half of all law school students, but in STEM fields the numbers hover in the low double digits. For example, less than fifteen percent of engineers are female, up from the one percent when I began, but nowhere near what it could be. Why is that? If we can be a doctor who delivers babies, or a surgeon who operates on brains, or a lawyer who takes on the big pharmaceuticals, we can be an engineer who works on engines or roads or power plants or missiles, or a scientist who discovers new galaxies or finds a new subatomic particle or cures a disease. Eileen Pollack may have cracked that door open a sliver wider by asking the right questions, but what we really need are better answers.

If you are a scientist, a teacher, a university student or a parent, you need to read this book.Eileen Pollack crystallises so many unspoken ideas, zeroing in on some deep set problems in how we teach ideas, differentiate between boys and girls, and train the next generation of scientists and engineers. This book is full of stories of tragedy and lost opportunity in physics and astronomy - an unflinching indictment on me and all my colleagues who love this field and who claim to want to pass that excitement onto others. However, there is hope for the future, both in the small things we can all do to mentor and encourage, and in the deep societal changes needed to meet the challenges of the future.

I am a pharmacologist who is just a few years older than the author. I couldn't put the book down. I identified with so many of her experiences and outcomes. She helped me put so many of my own life experiences in perspective. Now my daughter is beginning her career in science, and I left the book with her. I hope it will help her feel that she is not alone, when she is the only woman in the room. Yes, maybe attitudes have changed in academia, but maybe they are just more subtle.

T,his is an important book for anyone involved in education, science or being a parent. Me. Pollack lays out in a painfully personal way the real affects of bias in the academic science and math fields. It is well worth the time.

Eileen Pollack has written a courageous and highly personal agonizing account of her undergraduate days as a physics major at Yale. Her experiences with indifferent to sexist professors bites. My own student days at UPenn, years earlier, were the same: discouragement and outright misogyny. Few of us escaped without scars. No wonder we went west. Pollock's memoir is a challenge to change: support young women.

I read this in one sitting. She does a great job of demonstrating how unconscious bias affected her life and how it is still operational. I laughed out loud in many places! I am older than she is, and am a retired physician, and although my experiences were not as awful as many of hers, I could empathize.

Since I started reading this book I have had a hard time putting it down. Even when I'm not reading it, Im thinking about when I can read it again. The subject is fascinating to me and the authors story was interesting. As a female in a male dominated field, I appreciated the sentiment behind this book.

This presents the facts and how changes MAY happen. It reminds me of the book Smart Girls Marry Money by Daniela Drake, MD. The fact is the percentage of women in business and in science means we have to follow the money. Facts don't lie. Teach your daughters science from an early age.