ABSTRACT
Women are underrepresented in scientific occupations, constituting approximately 12 percent of the population of scientists and engineers in the United States (National Science Board 1985). The small proportion of women in science has been attributed to a successive filtering process that tends to lower the probability of women's being engaged in scientific research. This filtering process, described by Zuckerman and Cole (1975) as "the triple penalty," is based on three potential, albeit not mutually exclusive, barriers. First, science is culturally defined as inappropriate for women (Schiebinger 1987); second, women are led to believe that they are less competent than men; and third, women are discriminated against. Furthermore, those who survive the screening process find an internal labor market segregated along gender lines.
