The beginning of a school of physics research in Romania can be traced back about a century. The "first wave" of women physicists doing systematic research in various branches of physics in our country started at the beginning of the 1960s. Historically, the number of women full professors in physics has been small and is still small. Far fewer girls than boys finishing high school with a background in mathematics and natural sciences were potential candidates for a career in physics in the 1950s and the 1960s. Although there has not been a dedicated study, our immediate experience places the girls/boys ratio in the 1960s between 1:3 and 1:5. This was a result of the European tradition that assumed that an art-based profession is much more appropriate for a young girl than one based on science. The post-war "socialist" rule resulted in a dramatic inversion of this ratio toward the end of the 1970s and 1980s: the number of girls getting a high school diploma with a basis in mathematics and natural sciences surpassed that of boys. As a result of this trend, which reflected the lack of interest of boys toward "knowledge for the sake of knowledge," the number of women graduating in physics significantly increased. However, the number of women getting a Ph.D. degree and working in research institutes and in university physics departments was by far lower (about 20%). A possible explanation for this apparent paradox is to be found in the school system developed during the "golden epoch" (Ceausescu's period), when the free spirit stimulating freedom of thought was not considered as something fundamental. In the purely scholastic vein, knowledge was regarded as coming from the communist party leaders and the founding fathers of the "scientific socialism," rather than the result of unrestricted, innovative minds. In this spirit, it was the quantity of knowledge, rather than its quality and the process of its discovery, that was offered to youngsters, both girls and boys.
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