...and the view of some of our men

We also asked a few male physicists why they thought there were so few women in physics, and how having more women in physics would change the field.

As chairman of the CERN Equal Opportunities Committee, CMS physicist Tiziano Camporesi believes that the under-representation of women in the sciences comes not so much from biased hiring practices as from a dearth of women with doctorates. 'For the last five years, CERN has been hiring what the market could offer,' Camporesi said. 'If you were to take a snapshot in the mid-nineties of a woman's chances for a career in the sciences, you would get a much worse picture than you would today.' But 20-25 % of the work force isn't fifty-fifty; to get it up there, says Camporesi, we need to get rid of the prejudices that keep young girls from pursuing scientific careers in the first place. Providing girls with positive female role models is one way to show them that being a scientist doesn't mean you can't be normal, successful and female. 'We need to convince women that they have the same opportunities as men when they engage in a typical scientific or engineering career,' Camporesi said.

For CMS physicist Dave Barney, increasing the number of female physicists means increasing the diversity of viewpoints brought to the table in a collaboration, which is good news for a profession that revolves around discussion. 'If you have one perspective--male/female, old/young, all people from the US/all people from Germany--you might try to look for some things but you wouldn't look for everything,' Barney said. 'You have to have everybody, otherwise you'd never get it right.' He suggests that young people of both genders may shy away from physics because of prejudices about the way a scientist looks and acts. When he takes schoolchildren on tours of CMS, he tries to dispel the myths that paint scientists as uniformly bearded and lab-coated by sporting a football t-shirt. Anyone who wants to be a physicist, says Barney, should be encouraged to be one. 'Age is really no limit; gender shouldn't be, either,' he said.

Django Manglunki of AB/OP has been teaching accelerator physics at the University of Brussels for nearly ten years. He says that, over that time, the percentage of women in his twelve-person class has stayed constant at around 15-20 per cent. Accelerator physics, as a field, has a particularly low percentage of female representation. However, thanks to the most recent recruitments, the representation of women in the Accelerator Operations group is increasing. Manglunki claims that having more women in the control room is already creating a healthier work environment. 'You can't change things overnight, but it's going in the right direction,' he said.