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OCR
WOMEN IN THE SCIENTIFIC ELITE equalling a proportion of 6.7%. (The 2019 member election raised this percentage 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 regardless 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 number in the Academy and among the DScs hardly changes at all. An important aspect when selecting the research sample was for the interviewees 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 organisation 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. 22 a 22 à 22 a
