The lack of women in science: 'A wicked problem,' McGill's Elena Bennett says

"The discussion started at my book club, but it might as well have started with Adam and Eve. We read The Awakening, a 1899 novel by Kate Chopin that describes the fight by a young woman, Edna Pontellier, for independence against the conventions of the time. We are all married working mothers. No matter how far society has come from Edna’s, most of us find the bulk of child care and the more banal duties of running a household fall to us. We felt for Edna.

The conversation rolled around to women in science, about which so much has been written and where so much effort is directed, with the same result: women are equally capable, but not equally represented, in the science world.

As it turns out, within weeks of that meeting, one member of our club, Elena Bennett, is being presented with a prestigious prize in Ottawa on Tuesday, Feb. 16. She is an associate professor at McGill University in Natural Resource Sciences and School of Environment. Bennett, 43, talks about her experience as a woman establishing her career and how much work is left to be done to balance the equation."

Read full article Patricia Crowe in The Montreal Gazette