Donna Nelson, associate professor of chemistry, said being a female chemist was once described to her as being like “death by pinpricks.”

Nelson said that in her 18 years in the OU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, she has been subjected to isolation from many of her colleagues. During her time at OU, two other female chemists have come and gone for reasons of sexual discrimination and isolation.

In 1996, Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a study revealing gender discrimination within its science programs that has garnered national attention.

The study found that there were significantly fewer female faculty members than males. They had lower salaries, less work space and funding, and there were also fewer senior women faculty members.

Nelson said this results in a high turnover rate among women in the academic field, pushing many into the private sector.

“A lot of women do a lot of moving to find a better place,” she said.

Harassment

The most recent female chemist to leave the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry is Michelle Hanna, who left in 1996. She said she has tried very hard to put thoughts of OU behind her.

“My experience at OU was one of the worst academic experiences I have ever had,” she said. “And I’ve been in chemistry departments at several institutions.”

Hanna said she feels that many of the faculty in the OU chemistry and biochemistry department ignore instances of sexual discrimination and harassment, even at the top. Glenn Dryhurst, chairman of the chemistry and biochemistry department, declined to comment Tuesday.

“I left the university because of my absolute disgust at the way the department handled a sexual harassment event involving several women in my lab,” Hanna said. “Several of the chemistry faculty were clearly upset with me for turning in the man who was responsible, and one of the biochemistry professors told me flat out that he thought I should have kept quiet about it because the man was a good scientist.” Hanna said she found this attitude throughout the department.

“I had to listen to many, many complaints from female students at all levels about both discrimination and harassment,” she said.

Jerry Jansen, OU equal opportunity and affirmative action officer, said the university cannot release information on specific complaints made against the university.

Isolation

Another woman who came and left is Amy Miller. She began her career at OU in 1986, joining her husband who was on the faculty in the physics department.

Miller remembers the feeling of isolation she felt in the department. She said it started with Dryhurst.

“My department head could carry on a conversation with my husband but not me,” she said. “I never had a casual conversation with my department head.”

What made things worse was Miller’s second year, when she became pregnant with her first child.

“They’d accuse me of, for example, having a kid instead of trying to get tenure,” she said.

Miller said people in the department did not find her pregnancy a discussible subject. She said a friend later helped her realize what was happening.

“(Pregnancy) made it difficult for people to ignore that I was female,” Miller said. “A woman you can kind of ignore, but one running around the hallways nine months pregnant -- it’s a little harder to ignore.”

Miller said she felt the OU chemistry department had problems supplying her with graduate students. She was able to meet one on her interview on campus, who joined her when she started her first semester. But after the graduate student left, Miller was not able to replace her. The department did not have a system in place for all the faculty to meet with new graduate students. Neither Miller nor Nelson saw any new graduate students.

“It’s absolutely crucial” to have graduate students, Miller said. “The mere fact of not having students would have denied me tenure.”

Miller said the department went through a pretense of trying to be accommodating, asking her what it could do to help her. That’s when she tried to get a graduate student to help with grading.

“I would tell them and they would say ‘well, we can’t do that,’” Miller said. “It always went through this pretense.” By her fourth year, a system was in place for all faculty members to meet new graduate students, and she was able to get a part-time grader. But she had already decided to leave at that time and everyone knew it, she said.

Disrespect

Miller said she also remembers examples of belittlement. She was teaching a graduate-level course when she found out another professor was interfering with her teachings.

“Without telling me, he had run a help session for my course,” she said. “He’d really broken the interaction I’d had with students. They were going to him every Saturday for his help session on my course without me knowing it. One of my students told me about it at the end.”

Nelson said she has seen examples of this before.

“That’s very typical,” she said. “It gives the perception that you have no expertise.”

Nelson said she has not been given the chance to teach a special topics course in chemistry until this year.

“It’s your opportunity to present your knowledge about your field of expertise,” Nelson said.

Nelson said that instead of being given opportunities to teach advanced courses in her field, she has been pushed into teaching organic chemistry. Because of the difficulty of the course, student evaluations of the instructor are generally low, Nelson said. When she was reviewed for tenure, her low evaluations were used against her, she said.

But she was able to show that her average evaluation was the same as others who taught the course.

Nelson said she has filed complaints against her department many times, with some results. She said retaliation is something she must deal with. “You can have resources cut off or reduced from you, resources you need to survive,” she said.

Nelson presented information on problems she has perceived in the physical sciences concerning women and minorities to Congress last October.

Supported

Others in the department contend they are very happy with how the department is run. George Richter-Addo, professor of chemistry, said the department’s chairman is the main reason he came to OU eight years ago. He said he has received tremendous support from Dryhurst, and has been exposed to only a positive environment at OU, and for himself and others.

“I’m surprised to hear that there could be something like that in this department,” he said. “This is one of the better places I’ve been in terms of support.”

Richter-Addo said he believes Dryhurst works hard at making all of the faculty in the department feel involved, appointing people to different committees. He said there are two other women in the department, assistant biochemistry professors Ann West and Helen Zgurskaya.

Both are junior faculty members in the department, with West being in her sixth year and Zgurskaya in her first. Richter-Addo said he feels both have done well because he has the opportunity to interact with both on a regular basis.

But Richter-Addo admits he doesn’t know as much about Nelson, who has been on the faculty for 18 years. He said he doesn’t interact with her very often.

West has won several awards while at OU, including a junior faculty research award in 1997 and in 2001 the Irene Rothbaum Award, which goes to the outstanding assistant professor in the College of Arts and Sciences.

West said the OU chemistry and biochemistry department reflects MIT’s findings in that of the 26 faculty members in the department, only three are women. Low numbers of women is something that occurs in departments across the country, she said. But the department has been very supportive of her.

Life vs. physical

Nelson said there is a difference in the perception of women who study a life science, rather than a physical science. Biochemistry is considered a life science, while chemistry is considered physical.

“It’s just different if you are in a biological science,” Nelson said. “Things are easier because of the nursing connection.”

Nancy Hopkins, professor of biology at MIT who is on the committee that conducts the MIT study, said findings have shown that physical sciences, such as math, physics and chemistry, treat women the worst.

Hanna, who contends she had to deal with harassment in the department, said she came to chemistry and biochemistry from OU’s botany-microbiology department. She said her time in that department was better.

West said OU combines biochemistry and chemistry into one department, and doesn’t think she would be treated differently if her field was chemistry.

“I myself have felt that the department itself has been extremely supportive of all its junior faculty members, female or male,” West said. “I haven’t experienced any overt gender discrimination at all.”

In with the new

Hopkins said this coincides with MIT’s study. Junior women faculty feel well supported within the department. In contrast, tenured women faculty feel marginalized and excluded from having a large role in the department. Nelson said her experience was much the same.

“When I first came here I really believed that there was no discrimination,” Nelson said. “It took 10 years for it to be beaten through my head.”

Nelson said what results is fewer women in academia in the physical sciences. In addition to turnover, women studying physical sciences see what their mentors go through and decide they don’t want the same experience.

“They’re starting to not apply because they see the environment,” Nelson said. “They see what their mentors go through and don’t want it.”

Hopkins said gender discrimination in the sciences is most times not conscious or deliberate. She recommends the book Why So Slow, by Virginia Valian, for people to learn why women are not valued.

“There’s a lot of data from psychologists from studies that show both men and women undervalue the achievements of women relative to the achievements of men of absolutely equal accomplishment,” Hopkins said.

“People are not as objective as they think they are. For people to continue to say it couldn’t happen is just to fly in the face of all this evidence.”

Moving on

Amy Miller and her husband left OU 12 years ago and took a job for less money at the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Mass. She said leaving OU for her new job was not a difficult choice.

“Women are much more sensitive to their work environment and they are much more likely to take a low pay or an uncertain job in return for a much better environment,” she said.

Hanna left OU for Arizona and started her own biotech company, Designer Genes Inc. She presides over the company as president and CEO.