On 7 November 2010 Michael Sylvester wrote: >Didn't the Soviet Union and the Soviet block countries >in Europe had an overwhelming amount of women in >physics and the other hard sciences?
It is certainly not the case that in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries there was "an overwhelming amount of women" in physics and other hard sciences, but I think women were considerably more represented than in most Western countries at the time. Nevertheless, a Google search brought up the following about the Soviet Union: In specialised secondary schools (i.e., in which students were selected on the basis of tests of academic ability) girls "were heavily concentrated in the fields of education, health and the humanities, where they constitute 80 percent of all students." Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, *Women in Soviet Society: Equality, Development, and Social Change* (1978), p. 147: http://tinyurl.com/35g2wqy >And it is my understanding that medicine was viewed >as a female profession then. My recollection on this is that such a view was not necessarily evidence of a favourable attitude to women's employment, because a G.P.'s salary was rather poor relative to other professions that men preferred to enter. Allen Esterson Former lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London [email protected] http://www.esterson.org --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=6308 or send a blank email to leave-6308-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
