Fellowships for Women

One popular way of encouraging female graduate students is through special fellowships for women. Again, the opinions are divided on the psychological effects. On the negative side, the same student who complained about female-only contests wrote:

I am a senior, applying to graduate programs in computer science, and was just offered a fellowship from [X]. At first, I was very pleased and proud (called my parents, went out to celebrate), but then I went back to my fellowship application material and saw that certain fellowships are awarded particularly to women and minorities in fields in which they are most underrepresented. (I can't tell if my fellowship is in this category. I will try to find out.) While I can understand how such awards might be good for women who were very worried about costs, the offer has left me feeling more bad than good. For a few hours, I was thinking of myself as the best of the best --- i.e. as having won the fellowship on merit --- but now I feel like I wasn't allowed to play in the big league.

In contrast, I was offered a RA [stipend and tuition waiver in exchange for research] next year by my bachelor's thesis supervisor. That made me feel great. If I thought the offer were related to my being female, I would have rejected it.

I'm glad I'm not in a similar position --- you know I'm trying to improve my self-confidence, and I'd feel so unsure in a world that wouldn't tell me whether I was good or just the recipient of a less-deserved award.

I don't want anyone ever to think that I got where I am because of special favors granted to me because I'm female. I decided ... that I would not apply for any fellowships or special programs for women. I [don't want people to] think that I don't have to work as hard as a man to succeed in my chosen career.

The majority of women who expressed an opinion, however, supported special fellowships and urged women to accept them. One female computer science professor wrote:

While I was a graduate student at [X], I got a fellowship that was earmarked for women. Initially I felt ... that while I was glad to get the fellowship, ... it was second class in some way. Two things have changed my mind on this. First, I found out that my fellowship was in fact harder to get because it was a national contest rather than a intra-university contest. This solved my initial problem with respect to the particular fellowship.

The second thing completely changed my attitude about what it takes to be successful. Now that I am faculty, I realize how hard it is to raise money. I now actively search for sources of funding that are slightly unique to me: funding for women, funding for first year faculty and so forth. And why not? Others look for funding that is particular to VLSI say.... [W]e are judged on our output, and ... we should take advantage of any opportunity that comes our way. That initial ... fellowship has caused doors to open for me all along my career --- job offers, research funding, etc. In hindsight I would have been an idiot to decline it.

I now realize that my initial feelings about the fellowship said more about my attitude toward women than reality. That fellowship wasn't second class, I just thought something special for women must be. I've been taught an important lesson.

Another issue is whether such programs are morally justified. There would be an outcry against a publicly-funded scholarship for which only men were eligible, so a women-only scholarship program might not be morally justifiable. On the other hand, as this report has documented, women face so many biases that there is reason to believe that practically all women are unfairly handicapped in some way relative to men. Different people will have different opinions on whether a biased program is a legitimate response to existing bias in a community.