Oldal 77 [77]
WOMEN IN THE SCIENTIFIC ELITE
equalling a proportion of 6.7%. (The 2019 member election raised this percent¬
age to 8.7%,”*4 with the last election in 2022 raising it further to 10.4%.) There
were only 418 women among the 2689 Doctors of Science in the MTA, which
equals a proportion of 15.5%. Most of the female researchers interviewed were
between 65 and 80 years of age. Only 4 of the interviewees were under 60, and
only one of them had not reached the age of 50.”°
I chose the set of academicians and MTA DScs in particular because this
is one of the fields that are exceptionally male-dominated to this day (93.3%
males in the academy, 85.5% among the DScs). Since only a minor fraction of
women (6.7%, 15.5% respectively) reach the highest echelons of scientific life,
it is reasonable to investigate how the attitude towards the female question
presents itself in these strata, and to inquire into the universal attitude toward
the low percentage of women in the MTA. Significantly, it seems that regard¬
less of the fact that there are more and more women entering the scientific
field and receiving a PhD degree in high proportion (45% of PhDs), their num¬
ber in the Academy and among the DScs hardly changes at all.
An important aspect when selecting the research sample was for the inter¬
viewees to represent all scientific fields, which can potentially demonstrate
whether there is any significant difference (with regards to the questions
listed above) between women active in the technical or natural sciences on the
one hand (engineering, mathematics or physics in particular) — which are
traditionally viewed as being “masculine” — and the representatives of social
and human sciences on the other hand. A total of 17 scholars from the fields
of social and human sciences, and a further 15 from those of the technical or
natural sciences took part in the research. My assumption was that we can
also find out whether a female mathematician or physicist can indeed suffer
difficulties, “getting cozy” in those areas, and if only very determined women
can tolerate the male environment, as Magdolna Hargittai argues in her book.”
This latter phenomenon is most often described as a “chilling climate” in
other works, meaning that the male majority in a certain workplace organisa¬
tion can create an “alien”, cold ambience for new female arrivals.?? The result
of this is that the only possible route of personal mobility for these women is
through assimilation, i.e. the adoption of perceived male characteristics.
Cf. Lamm, V. — Nagy, B.: 2019 ismét a ,ndk éve” az Akadémian. Térekvések a nék tudomänyos
pályafutásának támogatására, Magyar Tudomány 180(11), 2019, 1653.
The interviewees were approached with official reguests (e-mail) for the interviews, which
detailed the specifics of the research. A suitable date was arranged in the same correspondence
or a follow-up telephone conversation after that. The interviews took 1-1.5 hours each, and
were recorded with a portable voice recorder. A word-for-word transcript has been made for
the sake of quotability, thereby assisting a thorough analysis.
Hargittai, M.: Nők a tudományban — hatdrok nélkiil, Budapest, Akadémiai, 2015, 359.
Nagy: Szervezet és nemek, 61.
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