Women Outnumber Men in Forensics 3:1

The per­cent­ages listed below mir­ror my own per­sonal expe­ri­ences. I worked at a small­ish crime lab where out of about 2 dozen employ­ees, I was the only male.

Original arti­cle posted here.

By Dena Potter

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: October 16, 2008

RICHMOND, Va. — Kelly Johnson snips pieces from a blood­stained, blue-stripe shirt, then swabs the neck and armpits for sweat. Down the hall, Samantha Glass watches as a chem­i­cal reac­tion reveals a fin­ger­print on a juice bottle.

In the state’s Eastern lab, Julie Price fires a .45-caliber pis­tol into a long metal water tank.

Unlike their coun­ter­parts on TV, they’re not wear­ing low-cut shirts or stiletto heels, and their hair and makeup aren’t always per­fect. These are the real women of foren­sic sci­ence, and there are plenty of them.

An Associated Press review of accred­ited forensic-science pro­grams in the United States found that about 75 per­cent of grad­u­ates are women, an increase from about 64 per­cent in 2000.

Women say they were drawn to foren­sic sci­ence by strong role mod­els, a desire to help peo­ple and sta­bil­ity that’s often lack­ing in other sci­en­tific careers.

In North Carolina, five schools offer bachelor’s degree pro­grams in foren­sic sci­ence: UNC Pembroke, Appalachian State University, Guilford College, Fayetteville State University and Western Carolina University.

Those in the field esti­mate that the nation’s foren­sic labs are at least 60 per­cent female. At Virginia’s Department of Forensic Science, 36 of 47 sci­en­tists hired since 2005 are women.

“I used to tell peo­ple when I first came that we con­sid­ered foren­sic sci­ence Boys Town, but now it’s more like a girls world,” said Sylvia Buffington-Lester, 58, a super­vi­sor in the latent-print divi­sion who was the only woman in that divi­sion when she started in 1987.

A West Virginia University pro­fes­sor, Max Houck, the chair­man of a com­mit­tee that accred­its the field’s aca­d­e­mic pro­grams, is research­ing what draws women to the world of forensics.

Among other fac­tors, he cites the “CSI effect,” say­ing that the pop­u­lar CBS show and its spin­offs were the first to show a pro­por­tional num­ber of women in lead­ing sci­en­tific roles. Other pop­u­lar shows fea­tur­ing female foren­sic inves­ti­ga­tors, includ­ing Bones and Crossing Jordan, have followed.

“I have to think that there’s got to be some rela­tion­ship between the roles that are rep­re­sented on TV and the way women see what’s pos­si­ble for them as a career,” Houck said.

Forensic sci­en­tists say that the atten­tion from the shows has brought more peo­ple into the field, even if they are ini­tially drawn to the glam­orous work por­trayed on tele­vi­sion. Even while pok­ing at dead bod­ies, the female sci­en­tists on shows like CSI: Miami often wear reveal­ing blouses and always have makeup jobs fresh out of a beauty salon.

“A lot of them do real­ize that rid­ing around in the Hummers and wear­ing Prada is not the day-to-day things,” Buffington-Lester said. “But I tell girls that I do a lot of things in pearls and pumps … you can be a part of this used-to-be male-dominated thing but you can still be fem­i­nine, you can still be who you are.”

Female foren­sic sci­en­tists also point to char­ac­ters like crime writer Patricia Cornwell’s Dr. Kay Scarpetta, the chief med­ical exam­iner in a string of best-selling thrillers.

Women enter­ing the field today grew up when girls were being encour­aged to study sci­ence. Even the Girl Scouts have an “Uncovering the Evidence” badge, trimmed in pink with a sil­ver fingerprint.

Some say they became foren­sic sci­en­tists out of a desire to help peo­ple — both to find the bad guy and clear the innocent.

“I think all of us have kind of an altru­ist bent for the greater good, because we could prob­a­bly be doing research, chem­istry or med­ical and mak­ing more money, but every­body seems to have a pas­sion for the sci­ence and work and want­ing to help peo­ple,” said Glass, 36, a super­vi­sor in latent prints.

Studies have shown men place more impor­tance on salaries than women, and foren­sic sci­en­tists start at about $30,000, much less than many science-lab jobs.

Women also are more detail-oriented, Glass and oth­ers said, which comes in handy when match­ing up fin­ger­prints or com­par­ing stri­a­tions on bullets.

Women often pre­fer the coöper­a­tive envi­ron­ment of a crime lab over the com­pet­i­tive atmos­phere found in top sci­ence labs, said Diane Vance, the direc­tor of the foren­sic sci­ence pro­gram at Eastern Kentucky University. The more sta­ble hours are bet­ter suited for those who want a family.

Lashanda Oglesby was on her way to get­ting a Ph.D. in micro­bi­ol­ogy and immunol­ogy with a future in aca­d­e­mic research. Then she real­ized some­thing else was more impor­tant — hav­ing a family.

“Looking at women actu­ally doing what I thought I wanted to do, they seemed to have to make a really dif­fi­cult choice as to mak­ing sure that their career was suc­cess­ful and also being suc­cess­ful moms, and they did it and they did it well, but it was just a choice I didn’t want to make,” said Oglesby, who works in Virginia’s DNA lab.

Skye Mullarkey, 22 and a grad­u­ate forensic-science stu­dent at Virginia Commonwealth University, has wanted to be a foren­sic sci­en­tist since mid­dle school. Her father was a state trooper.

“I just kind of meshed him com­ing home and telling sto­ries at the din­ner table to my love for sci­ence and that kind of mor­phed into want­ing to do this,” she said.

In VCU’s forensic-science pro­gram, 33 women and 11 men fin­ished the under­grad­u­ate pro­gram this year and 20 women and two men grad­u­ated from the grad­u­ate program.