Women in Science

* Re “We Undervalue Women in Science at Our Peril,” Commentary, Sept. 19: Jaleh Daie barks up the wrong tree by blaming workplace hostility for the scarcity of female scientists. A more plausible explanation is that society (both men and women) gives women choices while still expecting men to be primary breadwinners. Without the option of being househusbands or jumping from career to homemaker and back, most men are pressured to either lock themselves into higher-paying jobs that are also high-hour, stressful or hazardous, or else to wind up homeless or incarcerated.

The solution is to help liberate men from gender roles, just as we’ve done for women the last three decades, not to blame them for having the jobs we’ve historically expected them, as males, to have.

BILAL JACKSON

Los Angeles