A riddle: A man and his son were in a bad car accident. When they arrived at the hospital, the doctor on duty said, “I cannot operate. This is my son.”

What relation is the doctor to the boy?

The answer is the doctor is a woman, the boy’s mother. This riddle is often used to illustrate the stereotypes society holds about roles of the two sexes.

Today, more and more women pursue careers in scientific fields. Women’s Week is next week and several programs at Iowa State will focus on the issues women face and their place in society.

Science and technology are two terms very much associated with ISU, but not often associated with women.

Mary Anne Evans, director of Women in Science and Engineering, said, “Over the last ten years the number of women in science and engineering has increased by over 50 percent.”

She said according to the registrar’s office statistics, this year there are 669 undergraduate women and 3446 undergraduate men in engineering. There are 129 graduate women and 617 graduate men in engineering.

Even though women hold a minority of the positions in the science departments at ISU, the few that do are important.

Lee Anne Willson

Lee Anne Willson, university professor of physics and astronomy, is the only female professor in the Physics Department.

Willson said she became interested in the sciences when she was about 12 years old. When she began reading science-fiction magazines, she connected the science-fiction readings with the dawning of the space age. She said, “I decided I wanted to be involved in that great adventure.”

Her father, a scientist, encouraged her and growing up around him provided her with an idea of what scientists did.

While pursuing her undergraduate degree at Harvard-Radcliffe, she was one of two or three women in a class of 60 physics majors.

Willson said she felt there should have been more women in the field. One professor told her not to take his class because “he did not like girls.” Wilson said, “Tough,” and enrolled anyway.

“I was pretty hard to intimidate,” she said.

She does not think the men in her field paid much attention to her or saw her as competition. With half of the human race being female, Willson said “we are not getting the best we can get” if we put gender up barriers.

“It is a very interesting way to spend your life. You get to go a lot of places and meet a lot of people and think of interesting ideas. It is a career I would recommend if you are willing to work hard,” Willson said.

Willson said until recently her role models whose success she tried to analyze, were men. She said she has discovered the behavior of men does not always work for women who demonstrate the same characteristics, for example in teaching.

Carole Heath

Carole Heath, associate professor of chemical engineering, also became interested in sciences at an early age.

While in high school she wanted to become and M.D. and went to the University of Rochester, Minn. Her high school counselor never mentioned the opportunities in the field of engineering.

After taking pre-med courses, Heath realized she did not like the competition in the medical courses and started to learn about the engineering program at the university.

“I found that a combination of biology and engineering worked for me. So I ended up putting them both together,” Heath said.

“I think there are a lot of opportunities in the field [of engineering] for women. We’re seeing more and more women coming into the field,” she said.

She said as more women pursue engineering degrees, others seem to find it easier to get involved and it is “less intimidating when there are more women in the classrooms.”

“I think engineering is a good field; it pays well, and I think women deserve to be a part of that,” Heath said.

She said women can sometimes provide a different perspective than male engineers and that women can be very good at engineering.

“My standard recommendation is to pursue what you like to do,” Heath said.

Despite difficulty and dislike, Heath said “there will always be something you don’t like about what you do” and sometimes it may take a little bit longer but she said to persevere.

Gail Nonnecke

Gail Nonnecke, associate professor of horticulture, followed her heart to a career studying plants.

“I think I had a love of the outdoors and plants. I was interested in that as a child, then I had encouragement from teachers and faculty members in college,” Nonnecke said.

As a woman in agricultural sciences, it was not uncommon for her to be the only woman in some of her courses.

“When I was an undergraduate there were few women in classes with me. I think as you go through the classes you develop confidence,” she said.

In the past she had felt isolated at times. Now she imagines it is is very nice for women in her classes to have female classmates.

She said, “It is great that students come to the university and they assume they can major in anything, specifically in the agricultural sciences and horticulture that women assume they can be successful an competitive in these fields, and I do not know if that was true 30 to 50 years ago.”

As a woman scientist, Nonnecke said she is treated equally to her departmental colleagues at Iowa State. She said, “We’re not the same people, but I know I am treated the same.”

However, she thinks women probably struggle with equal treatment depending on where they are located in the United States, what profession they are in, and what university they work at.

Willson said she had a colleague at ISU ask her if he should treat her as though she is a “real colleague.” She said she wonders how else she would be treated, “as a puppy?”

Nonnecke said women should know that they can do it. “They are very capable… The opportunities are there for them and all they need to think about is getting the training,” she said.