VOA慢速英语 女性在科学界面临的问题

　　But Maria Goeppert-Mayer worked without pay as a volunteer. Later she became a professor of physics at the University of Chicago in Illinois. In nineteen sixty-three, Maria Goeppert-Mayer won the Nobel Prize in physics along with two other scientists.

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　　VOICE ONE:

　　During World War Two, many American women worked in factories. Their inventions improved fighter planes, containers for fuel and cameras. But after the war, women were expected to stay at home and have babies while their husbands went back to work in factories and laboratories. Women who continued to be scientists were often told it was not natural for women to work outside the home.

　　VOICE TWO:

　　Even today, many experts say women scientists often are not treated fairly. Women receive fewer patents for their inventions. A patent forbids others from copying an invention and makes the invention valuable in the world of business. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, anything a woman invented belonged to her husband under the law. But even in two thousand two, fewer than eleven percent of patents were awarded to women in the United States.