Summary
Zena Werb was born in Bergenbelsen, Germany to Polish Jewish parents. As a post-war refugee, with her family she moved from Wroclaw, Poland to Milan, Italy. From there they immigrated to Canada, first to Saskatchewan and then to southern Ontario, where Zena grew up on a farm. She went to the University of Toronto, where she read Honours Biochemistry, receiving a BSc in 1966. Studying with the late Professor Zanvil A. Cohn, Zena received her PhD in cell biology from The Rockefeller University, New York. Her post-doctoral work was at the Strangeways Research Laboratory in Cambridge, UK. After one year on the faculty of Dartmouth Medical School in Hanover, New Hampshire, she joined the University of California, San Francisco, as an Assistant Professor in the Laboratory of Radiobiology. She is currently Professor and Vice-Chair of Anatomy and a member of the Program in Biological Sciences and Biomedical Sciences Program at the University of California, San Francisco.
Zena's research is on the roles of matrix metalloproteinases in normal and pathological tissues, concentrating on mouse models of bone and mammary gland development. She has demonstrated the importance of proteolysis as a mechanism of altering extracellular signaling. She has shown that remodeling of the extracellular matrix and the cellular microenvironment by stromal and inflammatory cells contributes to development of tumors as aberrant organs.
FMW: What changes for women in science have you observed during the course of your career?
ZW: THEN: When I started college, women were accepted as science undergraduates, so long as they did not rock the boat. I remember being told that I could not go on a field course because there were "no accommodations for women". Sexism was the rule of the day. Some professors would not even take the time to talk with women students. In graduate school the prevailing attitude was that women students were there primarily to keep the male students from becoming too randy. Many laboratories would not take women students, or made the environment so inhospitable that women would not apply. Women who dared to have families were excluded from many postdoctoral positions and fellowships. Those women who did combine science with having a family found that they did the lion's share of childcare and housecleaning, in addition to trying to maintain scientific competitiveness. Pressure for sexual favors was frequent and exploited by both men and women. Tenured women role models were essentially absent and the few tenured women faculty were nearly invisible. Mentors for women were men, when they could find them. The number of women hired into academic positions was small, and they tended not to have tenure track positions. The number promoted was even smaller. The salaries were much lower for women than men. A conference without any women speakers was the norm.
NOW: The biggest change is that women now make up more than 50% of biology graduate students and medical students. There is an awareness that women have not been treated equitably. The most egregious of the problems are no longer blatant, but that is not to say that gender bias is gone. Sexism has not disappeared, but since officially it is not tolerated, it has gone underground. The usual excuse for sexism now is that there are no qualified women available. Salaries at the starting levels (student, post-doctoral, faculty) are generally equivalent. At the other end of the scale, women are still promoted to full professor at slower rates and receive proportionately fewer endowed chairs. Still fewer women are nominated for, let alone awarded, the special honors (e.g., Fellowship of the British Royal Society or membership of the National Academy of Sciences in the USA), although the number is slowly rising.
The pipeline of female applicants shrinks by the time the academic job hunts start in earnest. There is still dissatisfaction among women with a system that pits childbearing years against the research years required to achieve tenure. More women opt for non-tenure track positions or other positions with less pressure and less opportunity. The rules at many institutions have been liberalised to allow the tenure clock to be lengthened, but that has not erased an attitude that those who choose to take longer are of lower quality than those who do not. Going home to deal with child care still raises eyebrows, whereas going out for a run does not.
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Gender differences in style and personality still work against women. Forcefulness is often equated with a lack of collegiality. Women tend to feel less entitled, which is equated with weakness, rather than strength. Women scientists are more nurturing, and thus often end up with trainees that need more attention.
Conferences have more women speakers than 20 years ago, but meetings with no or only token women still take place. I have yet to attend a meeting where whole sessions have only women speakers, never mind the whole program. However, the lines for the women's restroom at conferences demonstrate that women are now significant contenders, something the venue architects clearly failed to anticipate.
FMW: How has your research career impacted on your personal life and vice versa?
ZW: If I had not become a researcher, I probably would have had a family. I did not choose career over family. I never thought that I was anything but superwoman. But finding a partner who would accept that (i.e. the male equivalent of Lois Lane), proved less than successful. I found I could control my access to great science, but not to great men! Science can be a very individual and lonely pursuit, and it has impacted on my personal life by playing to my tendency to be a hermit.
My career has given me a great scientific family. My students have become the children I never had.
FMW: Do you feel that being a woman is an inherent advantage/disadvantage for a career is science? Why?
ZW: Both. The greatest advantage for women in a scientific career is that they can take chances, since there is nothing to lose. Lacking patrons, there has never been any benefit to women to work on the hottest topic, since they can only be followers. Women have a clear mandate to be different and to tread new ground. Successful women find their own niches and develop their own systems over years, long before they are recognized by the scientific community.
The greatest disadvantage is that it is rare for a woman to have a patron, and many more lack the mentorship needed to navigate the waters of science politics. Mistakes by women are much more lethal. One poorly prepared lecture will not be forgotten or forgiven for decades. Since women tend to have smaller laboratories and a more hands-on style, their labs are less successful in recruiting the type of trainee (male or female) that takes chances and makes major breakthroughs.
FMW: What are your remaining career ambitions?
ZW: What will be my scientific legacy? Most research lasts less than 5 years. It is the next generation that you train that lasts. I want to train terrific scientists for the future. I have been fortunate in making the right decisions that have fostered my career in spite of challenges. I now feel a responsibility to give back to the community, to develop science that is humanistic as well as creative and exciting. I want my curiosity never to wane, but I want to have the sense to retire while I am still a scientific leader. Finally, I still hope to attend a conference where several of the sessions or symposia are all-women and no one finds that curious.
Footnotes
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