“Sometimes women get isolated in the sciences because there just aren’t that many women,” Cyrier says. “This organization is designed for undergraduates and graduates to meet each other.”

Hanover, the math and physics concentrator, says she was angry when last year the women at the dinners voted not to allow men to attend.

While men were in fact invited to attend this year, Hanover says the vote represents reverse gender discrimination in the sciences.

“I feel very strongly that the obstacles are an illusion and that [women] put them there,” Hanover says. “I’m sure some guys are bigoted, but there’s always going to be some subjective thing holding people back.”

But Julia G. Fox, who heads up a mentorship program for women in science through the Ann Radcliffe Trust, says that though many women in science do not think they are any worse off than the men—but that does not mean support structures should not exist for them.

“You don’t always want to feel like you’re struggling,” Fox says. “Young women enjoy the camaraderie of other young women in their projects, in their classes. That’s why we instituted this mentorship program with graduate students who have stuck it out.”

Trumpler says she feels young women in the sciences need mentors, both for their support and for the example they provide of the model for a successful scientific career.

In a spring 2002 survey of 408 undergraduates, The Crimson found that less than half of the female science concentrators surveyed felt they could identify a professor or teaching fellow as an academic mentor. Among the male science concentrators surveyed, on the other hand, more than half said that they had a mentor.

Trumpler says the mere presence of women professors in the classroom can be a huge boost for female science concentrators.

“Young women really need…to see how to present yourself…what kind of personal styles you can have,” she argues.

Fox says the board of the Ann Radcliffe Trust created its mentorship program last year to help female undergraduates gain a better view of what science can be like after college.

The program matches up female undergraduate science concentrators with graduate students who volunteer to be mentors for a year.

Last year’s pilot program matched up roughly 10 undergraduates with a half dozen graduate students. This year, there are 24 pairs of mentees and mentors.

Participants meet monthly with their mentors to get advice about careers in science, research and classes.

The program also invites undergraduates to attend everything from barbecues, co-sponsored with WISHR, to teas to luncheons with female scientists.