Education and EEOC reported that they have investigated or resolved all 

 complaints filed with them or referred to them from other agencies. 

 However, agency officials told us that they could not determine whether 

 grantees have investigated Title IX sex discrimination complaints they 

 have received, since grantees are not required to report on their activities. 

 Federal agencies have provided grantees technical assistance and 

 outreach materials to encourage compliance with Title IX. The agencies 

 also obtain required assurance statements from every grantee that they 

 vkdll not discriimnate. While each of the four agencies has conducted 

 complaint investigations and provided technical assistcince, only 

 Education has monitored its grantees by conducting periodic Title IX 

 compliance reviews — agency-initiated assessments of grantees to 

 determine if they are complying with the law.^ 



Women's participation in the sciences has increased substantially in the 

 last three decades, especially in the life sciences, such as biology. While 

 women constituted only 3 percent of all scientists in the early 1960s, they 

 constituted nearly 20 percent by 2003. The proportion of women science 

 students has grown, but to a lesser extent at the graduate level than at the 

 imdergraduate level. In 2000, 40 percent of undergraduates pursuing 

 science studies were women, although they accounted for less than a third 

 of the graduate students — despite women constituting a mayority of 

 college enrollment at both the undergraduate and the graduate levels. 

 However, in that same year, in the life sciences, women constituted the 

 majority of both undergraduate and graduate students, and earned more 

 bachelors and masters degrees than men. Meanwhile, the proportion of 

 faculty in the sciences who are women has also increased since the early 

 1970s. However, female faculty members still lag behind their male 

 counterparts in terms of salary and rank, and much of their gain in 

 numbers has been in the life sciences, as opposed to mathematics and 

 engineering. A variety of studies indicate that experience, work patterns, 

 and education levels can largely explain differences in salaries and rank. 

 We found that women faculty in the sciences more often taught than their 

 male counterparts and less often were given the opportunity to focus on 

 their scientific research as their primary work activity. A few studies also 

 suggest that discrimination may still affect women's choices and 



Vhe term "compliance review" as we use it in this report refers to reviews of grantees who 

 have already received grant funding. These reviews are also known as postaward 

 compUance reviews. 



Page 3 GAO-04-639 Gender Issues 



