Celebratio Mathematica

All three au­thors have been pres­id­ents of the AWM: Sylvia Wie­gand from 1997 to 1999, Geor­gia Ben­k­art from 2009 to 2011, and Kristin Laut­er from 2015 to 2017.

This year — 2021 — the As­so­ci­ation for Wo­men in Math­em­at­ics (AWM) turns 50, March is Wo­men’s His­tory month, and last Au­gust we cel­eb­rated the hun­dredth an­niversary of wo­men win­ning the right to vote in the United States (Au­gust 18, 1920). Thus it is a good time to take stock of the state of af­fairs for wo­men in math­em­at­ics, and to give an up­date on the many pro­grams and ini­ti­at­ives launched and run by the AWM on be­half of wo­men and girls in math­em­at­ics.

The AWM’s mis­sion is “to en­cour­age wo­men and girls to study and to have act­ive ca­reers in the math­em­at­ic­al sci­ences, and to pro­mote equal op­por­tun­ity and the equal treat­ment of wo­men and girls in the math­em­at­ic­al sci­ences.” To achieve this mis­sion, the AWM of­fers pro­grams and activ­it­ies that sup­port and en­cour­age wo­men in the math­em­at­ic­al sci­ences at all levels. The AWM is an or­gan­iz­a­tion al­most en­tirely powered by vo­lun­teers, more than 200 of whom serve on the many com­mit­tees that run all the AWM pro­grams. As noted in “AWM in the 1990s” [e1], which ap­peared in the No­tices close to the AWM’s thir­ti­eth birth­day, the AWM’s mem­bers and vo­lun­teers are pas­sion­ate about the goals of the AWM. In this art­icle, we fo­cus on the as­so­ci­ation’s activ­it­ies and achieve­ments since then, par­tic­u­larly those that the au­thors are most fa­mil­i­ar with. We also provide some ob­ser­va­tions on how the status of wo­men has changed in the in­ter­im.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2016–2017 re­port on new doc­tor­ate re­cip­i­ents [e4], wo­men re­ceived 29% of the PhDs awar­ded in math­em­at­ics from 1991–2015, but still com­prised only 17% of the ten­ured/ten­ure-eli­gible fac­ulty at PhD-grant­ing in­sti­tu­tions. The situ­ation is even worse at elite in­sti­tu­tions, which typ­ic­ally provide bet­ter ac­cess to re­sources to sup­port re­search activ­it­ies. It has im­proved slightly this year, however, as Har­vard has just hired two new fe­male full pro­fess­ors for AY 2020/21, bring­ing its total to three. A study of 435 math­em­at­ics re­search journ­als found that only 8.9% of ed­it­ors were wo­men [e2]. Many math­em­aticians were en­cour­aged by the pro­gress at the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­gress of Math­em­aticians (ICM) 2014 in Seoul, which high­lighted three wo­men — Maryam Mirza­kh­ani, the first wo­man Fields Medal­ist, In­grid Daubech­ies, the first wo­man pres­id­ent of the In­ter­na­tion­al Math­em­at­ic­al Uni­on, and, Park Geun-hye the first wo­man pres­id­ent of South Korea — but the most re­cent ICM in Brazil in 2018 again saw none of the ma­jor re­search prizes awar­ded to wo­men. Tables 1–3 show wo­men fac­ulty at elite in­sti­tu­tions in 2019–2020, 1991–1992, and 1998–1999.

For many years, lead­ers of the AWM have tried vari­ous ap­proaches to ad­dress three ma­jor prob­lems con­front­ing wo­men math­em­aticians: the un­der­rep­res­ent­a­tion of wo­men and minor­it­ies in re­search math­em­at­ics; the lack of equity in re­sources, awards, and ac­cess; and the bar­ri­ers to ca­reer ad­vance­ment for wo­men and un­der­rep­res­en­ted minor­it­ies in the math­em­at­ic­al pro­fes­sion. For in­stance, it is AWM policy that the AWM Pres­id­ent write let­ters to con­fer­ence or­gan­izers who have no wo­men speak­ers at their con­fer­ences and to chief ed­it­ors of key re­search journ­als with no wo­men on their ed­it­or­i­al boards. Sim­il­arly, AWM Pres­id­ents have ad­voc­ated to the AMS Coun­cil for more di­versity on the ed­it­or­i­al boards of AMS journ­als and have writ­ten to pres­id­ents of ma­jor in­sti­tu­tions to urge them to hire more wo­men in­to their math­em­at­ics fac­ulties.

To read the full art­icle, click on the link to the PDF at the top right corner of this page.