Women in Oceanography: A Decade Later

Abstract

A decade ago—March 2005—The Oceanography Society published a special issue of Oceanography on “Women in Oceanography.” The issue’s goal was to explore why men continued to vastly outnumber women at the higher levels of the field, even as the number of female graduate students grew steadily. We captured our story through statistical measures, longer narratives, articles describing some innovative US programs that were conceived to promote women and retain them in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, and one-page autobiographical sketches written by women oceanographers. In stitching together this latest compendium, “Women in Oceanography: A Decade Later,” the steering committee used the same tools to illuminate both the progress that has been made in addressing career barriers since the last volume was published and areas where further attention might still be needed.