Success and Sacrifice

Amber S. Hinkle; Jody A. Kocsis, editors. Successful Women in Chemistry: Corporate America’s Contribution to Science. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 2005. Distributed by Oxford University Press. xiv + 202 pp. $74.50.

Reviewed by Geoffrey and Marelene Rayner-Canham

The title of this book says it all: if we have to identify successful women in chemistry, they must be lacking. Even after years of progress women do not appear in chemistry in equal numbers or have equal influence on its culture. Successful Women in Chemistry provides some success stories in the corporate field, but with each account comes hints of the life adjustments the woman has had to make.

The book begins with a must-read preface by Madeleine Jacobs, executive director of the American Chemical Society, identifying the problems facing women in chemistry. In the introductory chapter Frankie Wood-Black and L. Shannon Davis provide statistics showing persistent gender discrepancies in chemistry. These include a much greater “leak from the pipeline”—a smaller proportion of women seek doctorates after masters’ degrees. Women chemists are twice as likely to be single than their male counterparts; nearly one-third of married male chemists have spouses who are not working for a paycheck and who can, one assumes, focus on child rearing and housekeeping. For working women marriage and family are an added burden, while for men marriage usually eases the workload.

The book’s strength is the 26 short chapters in which individual women describe their success in an amazing range of careers. Each biography includes a background section on the woman’s education and early influences. Subsequent sections are specific to the individual; typical titles include “Balance,” “Mentoring,” and “Success and Advice.” The content of the “Balance” sections is best captured by Ellen A. Keiter: “It’s a constant juggle” (p. 48).

The biographies are succinct and easily digestible, but their upbeat tone may mislead young women chemists into thinking that everything is rosy. Although not as uplifting, it might have been beneficial to include a few explicitly negative experiences as a reality check so that young women chemists encountering workplace difficulties do not blame themselves.

There are numerous references to the importance of “family friendly” workplaces. In chapter 27 Shirlyn Cummings concisely articulates the 11 key factors that make a workplace family friendly. In the reviewers’ opinion every woman chemist should use this list to determine how well (or poorly) her employer fits this description.

The closing chapter, “Lessons Learned,” by Arlene Garrison, pulls together common threads in the individual accounts, including the importance of family support and mentoring. Garrison muses that gender parity in higher-level chemistry positions may not occur in the foreseeable future: “Some studies have indicated that women select lower-stress, non-management positions as a means to balance their personal and work lives” (p. 177).

The compilation does an invaluable service in providing accounts of women chemists who have made it to the top in corporate America. There are role models for young women chemists to emulate, but as Jacobs notes, “A lack of self-confidence and a lack of self-esteem are nearly universal problems that haunt women at some stage in their development.” In our experience, nearly every brilliant woman student has had her own demons of self-doubt. We suspect that most young women will see the individuals in this book as “exceptional” superwomen, not people whose footsteps they are likely to follow. But hopefully some, when they encounter barriers and disillusionment, will gather strength from the life stories in this volume and forge ahead, finding their own pathways to the top.