"Thirty years ago I thought the answer was simple — that it was a pipeline issue; that if you waited long enough, encouraging women to study chemistry would, with time, build up their representation in academia and industry," said Jacobs, who is editor-in-chief of Chemical & Engineering News.
But over the course of her career as well as in-depth studies of many others, Jacobs said she's learned that the real answer to why women are behind in chemical careers "is very, very complex."
For example, "some women don't want to work in academia because it's not always conducive to family life — and men agree," Jacobs said. "In order to succeed in your field, you're working every day of the week and late at night. If you want to have a baby, you'd better plan to have it in the summer and you'd better be back to work in eight weeks."
Among the first journalists to write an in-depth study of women's issues and trends in chemistry — in 1970, during her first stint at C&EN — Jacobs returned to the magazine in 1993 after 14 years at the Smithsonian Institution, where she rose to head of public affairs. First as managing editor and now editor-in-chief of a publication that reaches most faculty and industrial leaders in chemistry, Jacobs tries to keep the issue before her readership.
"We publish scorecards of the number of women on faculties and in the top 50 chemical corporations to show how the trends change," she said. "Others do it for Fortune 500 companies, but we do it for women in chemistry."
She is also a popular speaker with a reputation for cutting to the heart of the matter. "I'm in a position to have an audience that can go after the leadership in chemistry, to tell them you're going to lose your best and brightest," she said. "I'm very passionate about using all of our resources to get ahead in science, and women are one of them."
The ACS Award for Encouraging Women into Careers in the Chemical Sciences is sponsored by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. Jacobs, who received a bachelor of science in chemistry with honors and distinction from George Washington University in 1968, is the first ACS employee to receive the award.