The Role of Professional Societies in Implementing the Platform for Action Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Jean E. Taylor, Board of Directors, AAAS Mathematics Department, Rutgers University, Piscataway NJ 08855 Those of us who were fortunate enough to attend the Fourth World Conference on Women, and especially the NGO Forum held in conjunction with it, were overwhelmed by the general atmosphere of the Forum, which was one of tremendous energy, vitality, and enthusiasm. There were a few glitches however. Shirley Malcom and I put together a list of "Mathematics Lessons to be Learned from the Forum": 1. Draw maps to scale. 2. Number tents consecutively. 3. If a trip takes 90 minutes by bus, then busses should not leave only 60 minutes before a scheduled event (60 < 90). 4. The traffic at an intersection of paths is the sum of the traffic on those paths, and therefore a few extra blocks in the mud surrounding those crossings are needed for free flow of traffic. The last lesson takes a little explaining. There was a lot of rain and mud, and fairly narrow concrete blocks were put down as pathways through the mud. Two people could pass, with a bit of care. But the path intersections were something else! But in spite of such problems, it was a very positive experience, and we were all struck by the fact that there are the same basic issues, differing in intensity but not in character, across all countries. This ranges from the big issues, such as domestic abuse, to the small illustrative ones, such as the reactions to our AAAS hands-on science exhibit. It was delightful to witness the same reactions from all the women, differing a bit due to cultural shaping but really the same -- they laughed at the same places, grew wide-eyed at the same places, protested they couldn't do it while they were busily in fact doing it, and so forth. Now all of those of us active in professional societies, whether we were in Beijing and Huairou or not, need to focus on what our societies are doing and might do, what is their special role and what they can do that that other groups cannot do, with regard to implementing the Platform for Action. An essential start is to see what the governments of the world have committed themselves to. What IS it that we in professional societies should be ``pushing and pulling" to try to make sure they do? and what can we do within our professional societies, independent of governments? You can find the Platform for Action on the World Wide Web, by going to http://www.un.org/Conferences/Women; I encourage you to go browse through it. In what follows, I will use various excerpts from the Platform for Action (with the choice of what to include and what to emphasize being entirely mine; you can check the document itself to see what I've left out) to illustrate the following areas: General, Leadership, Research, and Education. I will then collect some specific recommendations for action, based in part on the excerpts and in part on my own experience within mathematics societies. Finally, I will summarize some of what the AAAS is doing. Here is one short paragraph from the Platform that to me says a whole lot: 35. [We are determined to:] Ensure women's equal access to economic resources, including land, credit, science and technology ... as a means to further the advancement and empowerment of women and girls ... enjoy the benefits of equal access to these resources... Pay attention to two particular words: credit, and science. Money in the pockets of women, that they have earned, is tremendously empowering. This is true for impoverished women AND for professional women. From hearing many case histories in the OFAN pavilion, as well as the terrific UNIFEM panel in Beijing (which was chaired, in an impressive fashion, by Hillary Clinton), I have become convinced that the route out of poverty in developing countries is through credit and appropriate technology in the hands of women. Once women are earning money, their status in the family goes way up. Men who aren't used to any independence in their women swallow many of their objections when they see money coming in. Women obtain the ability to control the number of children they bear when they have this economically-derived increased status. Even in the U.S., scientific women of my generation and older speak of the importance to them of having a real job, how it legitimizes their role (even if they had access to things like libraries and talks earlier). People used to ask me ``why do you need a job?" That question is asked much less now, thank goodness! And ``science" is in that paragraph right after ``credit." Here is another excerpt which illustrates why: 75. ... Girls are often deprived of basic education in mathematics and science and technical training, which provide knowledge they could apply to improve their daily lives and enhance their employment opportunities. Advanced study in science and technology prepares women to take an active role in the technological and industrial development of their countries... Technology is rapidly changing the world and has also affected the developing countries. It is essential that women not only benefit from technology, but also participate in the process from the design to the application, monitoring and evaluation stages. Note that in this paragraph we have education, an active role in technological development, and that women are not only to benefit from it but also to participate in the process. These are recurring themes of the Platform for Action. How is one to move towards this full participation? A key idea is the following: 202. In addressing the issue of mechanisms for promoting the advancement of women, Governments and other actors should promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in all policies and programmes so that, before decisions are taken, an analysis is made of the effects on women and men, respectively. That is a clear statement that one should attend to unintentional effects of policies and practices on women, as well as intended ones. Most men within our professional societies are well-meaning; they just might not be aware of the effects of certain policies and programs. How is one supposed to figure out how to do this? Here is something I learned from the Platform for Action: 200. Methodologies for conducting gender-based analysis in policies and programmes and for dealing with the differential effects of policies on women and men have been developed in many organizations and are available for application but are often not being applied or are not being applied consistently. The Platform for Action says a lot about leadership. Here are some samples: 186. The low proportion of women among economic and political decision makers at the local, national, regional and international levels reflects structural and attitudinal barriers that need to be addressed through positive measures. 249. Women remain largely absent at all levels of policy formulation and decision-making in natural resource and environmental management ... and their experience and skills ... too often remain marginalized in policy-making and decision-making bodies, as well as in educational institutions and environment-related agencies at the managerial level ... Even in cases where women are trained as professional natural resource managers, they are often underrepresented in formal institutions with policy-making capacities at the national, regional and international levels. And how is one supposed to address that? 256. (i) Develop programmes ... expand opportunities ... implement special measures ... The Platform for Action makes some recommendations on the type of research to be done and how it is to be done, but these are specific to particular disciplines. The same general principles hold, however: to maintain that ``gender perspective" and to involve women in the process. Here is an example from health science: 109. (b) Promote gender-sensitive and women-centred health research, treatment and technology and link traditional and indigenous knowledge with modern medicine, making information available to women to enable them to make informed and responsible decisions; (h) Provide financial and institutional support for research on ... methods and technologies for the reproductive and sexual health of women and men ... this research needs to be guided at all stages by users and from the perspective of gender, particularly the perspective of women... Professional societies need to concern themselves much more with education, including K-12 and education of the general public. Here are some of the statements from the Platform for Action concerning education: 79. ... education ... promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective into all policies and programmes ... 75. Science curricula in particular are gender-biased. Science textbooks do not relate to women's and girls' daily experience and fail to give recognition to women scientists... 82. (g) Encourage ... the development of multidisciplinary courses for science and mathematics teachers to sensitize them to the relevance of science and technology to women's lives; 85. (b) Provide funding for special programmes, such as programmes in mathematics, science and computer technology, to advance opportunities for all girls and women. 69. Education is a human right and an essential tool for achieving the goals of equality, development, and peace. (Those final words were the motto of the 4th World Congress on Women.) I now turn to some of the things mathematics societies have done with regard to trying to move toward equality for women. A very important activity has been to collect statistics. Here is an example concerning speakers in the Special Sessions of meetings of the American Mathematical Society (where nearly all speakers are invited by the session organizers); the data was compiled by the Joint Committee on Women, led by Mary Beth Ruskai. From January 1991 through January 1994, in a total of over 10 meetings, there were 111 sessions with all-male organizing committees, and 27 sessions where there was at least one female co-organizer. In the former, 7% of speakers were female. In the latter, 15% of speakers were female. This pattern held rather consistently from meeting to meeting during this period. Since the publication of this data, the proportions have been much more equal! For example, for all of 1994, 11% of speakers chosen by all-male committees were female, compared to 15% for committees with a female co-organizer. It is an example of that ``well-meaning" idea: once the facts are brought to their attention, most people in our professional societies want to be fair. It should be noted that once they make it on the program, these women's talks draw audiences and are typically more well-received than men's talks. (Perhaps the average woman makes more of an effort than the average man to make an intelligible talk?) But it is critically important that women's names be brought forward. Another interesting set of statistics is from the American Statistical Association, compiled by Juliet P. Shaffer, concerning their election of Fellows during the years 1991-1995. The raw data, in the form of a 2x2x2x2 matrix, is given in Table 1. There is a lot of overlap here, since many nominators nominated more than one individual over these years, and many nominees were nominated two or more times, but the following patterns can be extracted: 1. Among those nominated, the percent of women elected (66%) was higher than the percent of men elected (42%). (Of the 61 women nominated, 40 were elected; of the 395 men nominated, 164 were elected.) 2. Women were more successful as nominators (64% of nominees elected) than men were (43% of nominees elected). (Of the 44 nominations by women, 28 were elected; of the 412 nominations by men, 176 were elected.) 3. Women nominators were more likely to nominate women (39% of women's nominees) than men nominators were (11% of men's). (Males nominated 368 males and 44 females; Females nominated 27 males and 17 females). 4. The percent of women elected was higher than the percent of men elected both when women and when men were nominators, and women were more successful than men as nominators of both men and women. So here is a short list of some of the things that professional societies can do: -- Collect and publish data from this ``gender perspective'' -- Assemble lists of women and nominate them for positions in the ``formal institutions'' -- Remind people that explicit socially-sanctioned discrimination was not that far in the past. (For example, women were not admitted to the top-ranked graduate school in mathematics until 1970, when I was a member of that first entering group.) There are many men who were professors under that situation and who thought their behavior was perfectly honorable. -- Gather anecdotes of ``micro-inequities,'' as a reminder that the playing field isn't quite level yet. For the people who think there is now a level playing field, reminders (which can be presented in a humorous fashion) of the way women can be ignored in technical discussions serves a very useful role. -- Encourage men (and women) to be accepting of women (and men). It is important to learn to be comfortable with women as scientific colleagues, to ask what the women they meet are working on, to look for the things of mutual interest and not to criticize or judge them, to bring out the best. In the company of such people, women can relax and get down to the business of science. We should learn how to bring about that attitude in more people -- and it is the attitude under which students and colleagues of both sexes can flourish. -- Consider providing child care at meetings and other ways to reduce the stress that tends to fall more heavily on women. For example, the Middle East Studies Association has contracted with a professional provider of meetings day care, and it handles the high cost by having the parents pay about 1/3, the society contribute about 1/3, and individual members make a contribution through a check-off on the dues form. Day care is something that is extremely important for a few intense years, usually while a woman is in the early stages of her career, and many older scientists remember this and want to help out their younger colleagues in this way. -- Look for international opportunities, and as you do so there and elsewhere, maintain that ``gender perspective.'' -- Pay attention to the Platforms recommendations on research and on education, as I excerpted above. -- Cite the Platform for Action whenever possible, including in research proposals. We all here at this meeting are part of one particular professional society, the AAAS. What does it do? Internally, there are many women in leadership positions, both elective and staff. There are also many women topical speakers on this program. There are three overall directorates within the AAAS. One of them is Education and Human Resources, which is directed by one amazing person, Shirley Malcom. Anyone who attended the National Science Foundation's Women and Science meeting in December 1995 will remember her stunning speech there. A program specifically directed at girls is the Girls and Science project, which has designed and run in conjunction with the Girl Scouts. There is also the Black Church Project, which certainly ``maintains a gender perspective." Both projects have created a wealth of well-tested educational materials. And Shirley is a master at networking, connecting all sorts of people to maximize their effectiveness. Shirley was part of the UN women's conference in Nairobi in 1985, and she helped set up OFAN (the Once and Future Action Network, which was the focus of the activities with respect to science and technology at the NGO Forum in Huairou and the name of the science and technology caucus in Beijing). The International Directorate is headed by Dick Getzinger. It has a number of programs which should help African scientists, including women. Two seem particularly important to me, the Project for African Research Libraries (including CD-ROM use), and workshops on electronic networking in Africa. A good uninterruptible power supply for a computer with CD-ROM reader and/or a link to the World Wide Web should help a scientist more than anything else I can think of. And there are U.S. meetings on Science in Africa (including ``mobilization of the scientific talents and interests of African women''). There is also the Interciencia Association and the AAAS Western Hemisphere Project. Reports are available from AAAS on all of its programs, and I am assured that AAAS makes a point of mainstreaming that ``gender perspective." I want to close by mentioning the ``Declaration of Intent" produced by the Gender Working Group of the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development. It is a suggested text for inclusion in the Platform for Action, which never made it explicitly into that document but which summarizes in six goals many of the issues I have already brought forward. But the most concise summary I can come up with is that we should, in all arenas, be aware of that ``gender perspective." Don't be ashamed to ask ``and what effect will that have on women?"