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Science 2 May 2003:
Vol. 300. no. 5620, p. 717
DOI: 10.1126/science.300.5620.717c
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ScienceScope

A push to elect more women to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) appears to be paying off. As Science went to press, NAS announced that a record-breaking 17 women are in its new class of 72 members and that four women are among the 18 new foreign associates (for a full list, see sciencenow.sciencemag.org). The domestic number shatters last year's record of 11 women, while the foreign pool has never contained more than one. The 23% women in this year's class is roughly twice the percentage of full professors at U.S. universities, and women now make up 7.7% of the academy's 2015 living members.

"What began 4 to 5 years ago has borne fruit this year," says NAS Home Secretary Stephen Berry of the University of Chicago. "People are clearly trying to identify women who have been overlooked, but the [nomination] process can take several years."

Berry says he expects the number of women to remain high in the future, although the fields of economics and geophysical sciences are still "very thin." He also notes that the academy has made little progress in electing African-American and Hispanic members and that some sort of "special mechanism" may be needed to address the issue.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)