The purpose of the Women & Science: Celebrating Achievements, Charting Challenges Conference was to take stock of the achievements that women have made, assess what works best in the classroom and workplace, and to begin to chart a new course to address the challenges that remain.

The 1995 Conference and Conference Report are a joint effort of the seven directorates of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Seven hundred women and men from colleges and universities, industry, nonprofit groups, schools, and community groups assembled in Washington, DC, on December 13-15, 1995, to take part in plenary sessions, breakout sessions, and a special showcase of posters and demonstrations.

The Conference Report summarizes each of the Conference's twelve breakout sessions that were organized around NSF disciplines and a set of crosscutting themes in research and education. The Conference breakout sessions examined the challenges and reflected on possible solutions, some tried and some new. Strategies for expanding gender diversity and opportunities for women at all educational levels and throughout the workforce were recommended. The summaries provide findings and recommendations as viewed by the participants. In addition, the Report contains a section devoted to resources for women in science and engineering, excerpts of plenary speeches, and a listing of names and addresses of those who attended the conference.

The Report makes the following seven overarching recommendations:

1. Communicate with women and girls about the importance of being scientifically literate. Increase public understanding of the role that women do and can play in science and engineering while dispelling myths and stereotypes.

2. Rather than relying on local fixes to local problems, seek to transform the systems of education and the sciences by holding institutions accountable for their performance as employers and places of learning for all people.

3. Recognize and reinforce the importance of mentoring and being mentored at all levels of education and career.

4. Enable women and girls to participate fully in science and engineering by making available a greater variety of resources such as career awareness and career planning assistance, and opportunities to interact within and across disciplinary fields and sectors of the economy.

5. Accommodate the needs of women by recognizing a diversity of approaches to learning and the multiple paths women take to becoming literate citizens and career professionals in science and engineering.

6. Strengthen connections among organizations that have a stake in the participation of women in the sciences, such as the corporate and academic worlds, the formal and informal education sectors, associations of women and associations of sciences, and between higher education and K-12 schools.

7. Place greater emphasis on determining what works best in increasing opportunities for women and girls and how this knowledge can be shared and used by others.