TORONTO, March 5, 2001-- U.S. educator and feminist activist Sheila Tobias offers a new strategy for advancing women in science called "end-running the field".

The popular author of Overcoming Math Anxiety, Breaking the Science Barrier, and Re-thinking Science as a Career, will be at York University to discuss these and other issues concerning women in science, including the impact of the science wars, on March 8 and 9, sponsored by the Bethune College lecture series, The Second X: Women in Contemporary Science, and the School of Analytic Studies and Information Technology Brownbag Seminar series.

Tobias quotes findings from a U.S. study of top-performing men and women in science over their career lifetimes that reveal a pattern of selection of field, collaborators, and working styles that has smoothed pathways to success. The study shows that successful women scientists publish marginally less than men but are cited more, that they select niches in which their particular talents can shine, and that they avoid large collaborative groups.

"They take risks; they make waves; they make themselves indispensable and they are making it easier for males with 'non-standard' backgrounds and styles to make their way in science as well," says Tobias. She says the younger generation of women in science will need protection from the fallout of the science wars, in which some scientists have attacked the feminist study of the relationship between gender and science, and insisted that science is not gender biased.

The wars were sparked by New York physicist Alan Sokal's hoax on a well-known cultural studies journal for which he produced a sham article parodying post-modernist thought and its abuse of science. He expanded on this critique in his book, Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science (Picador, 1998).

"To be sure, science has been biased, not just in its recruitment and advancement of women, but in its findings as regards women themselves," says Tobias. But she says today's feminists are divided into those, like herself, who want to employ the powerful analytic tools of feminism to dissect the effects of "gendering" on women in science, and those who are veering off in the direction of "postmodern" feminism. "The attempt to delegitimize the scientific method and its findings, simply on account of centuries of domination of science by men, is itself being delegitimized, " says Tobias.

She will give two lectures in Bethune College Gallery, Room 320, York University, Keele Campus, 4700 Keele St. The first, Proposing a Strategy for Women in Science: End-Running the Crowd, will take place on Thursday, March 8, 4-6 p.m., followed by a discussion of the impact of the science wars in Maintaining Diversity in Science in a Post-Sokal Environment, on Friday, March 9, 12:30-2 p.m.

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