Back in the days when my hair was longer, my blood hotter and my T-shirts, more tie-dyed, I used to be a rampant feminist. I earned my undergraduate degree at Oberlin College, which my fellow Americans will recognize as one of the most liberal of the liberal arts colleges. Founded in 1833, Oberlin was the first American university to allow in black students (1835), female students (1837) and, more scandalously, the cohabitation of male and female students in the same hall of residence (1969). My four years there earning a BA in Biology seem like a haze of protests, marches and carefree gigs as one of the three barefoot tenor pan players in the Oberlin College steel drum band. Despite this, the academic regimen was fierce: alongside the rigorous science classes, I was also exposed to elective coursework as diverse as Ancient Greek, anthropology, Hispanic poetry, ethnomusicology and Ultimate Frisbee.
Hippie days Spot the blogger in this impromptu gig underneath Mudd Library, circa 1989
I should clarify that I am still a feminist, if you define feminism as the desire to see women enjoy the same opportunities and rewards as men for expending the same amount of effort. I adore men too much to be in the man-hating, bra-burning category, and neither am I a person who deludes herself that women and men are not different. Instead, my feminism these days is lumped into a larger ethos, that of loathing injustice in whatever guise it might take; for example, the thought of earning less pay for doing the same job quite understandably irritates.
Today I had the pleasure of enjoying my first female power lunch since joining the ranks of staff at University College London. Organized by the indefatigable Uta Frith, a well-known developmental psychologist and Fellow of the Royal Society, these lunches take place six times a year at the RS and offer an opportunity for so-called ‘high-flying’ female academics in the sciences to network – so I was thrilled to finally get the nod.
What transpired? We discussed a recent Current Biology article that Professor Frith had sent around for us to read beforehand, a thoughtful and balanced meditation on a female life in science by the Nobel-winning developmental biologist Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. There was a lot of musing about why many at the table were earning less than their male colleagues, how UCL could get away with allowing a particular science committee to be held at an all-male private club, and what could be done to set up less formal and more frequent female get-togethers. All in all, thoroughly enjoyable.
Still, I must confess that I have always wanted to be a fly on the wall at an old fashioned, God-fearin’ old-boys-club networking session. In my mind’s eye, men are so sorted that they don’t have to talk about their situation. They are, I imagine, free to socialize and chat about sport or politics or whatever else takes their fancy. Women, on the other hand, get the opportunity so infrequently that they can’t afford to be anything other than meta about what they are trying to achieve by coming together. So I suppose that we’ll know we’ve arrived when the lunchtime topics are free to roam far beyond the constraints of gender.
how UCL could get away with allowing a particular science committee to be held at an all-male private club
What?!?
Well, this was not widely known, but inquiries are being made…apparently UCL used to be a hotbed of liberalism and it’s become increasingly more conservative. Some people blame the medics. :-)
Yay for a liberal arts education a l’americaine!
Just wanted to point you, as a London resident I believe? toward the hullabaloo that will be taking place outside Parliament on May 12th.
My imaginings of what goes on in a men’s club are similar to yours. Alas, no better informed.
Despite my loathing for irrational hatred, I think we can all blame the medics.
I have always wanted to be a fly on the wall at an old fashioned, God-fearin’ old-boys-club networking session
Don’t look at me. Never been in that crowd.
I don’t like the term ‘feminist’; it seems too restrictive. But I am a feminist, and a masculinist. The term I want to appropriate is ‘humanist’, but that has a different meaning already.
I get really cross at sexism. It is apparent (there are various weblogs around — those that are misogynist and those, written by women suffering from it, — that make me ashamed to be male, sometimes) that there is a shedload of it going on, subtle and unsubtle.
It’s not good enough. We men, we ordinary people struggling to carve out our niches are the ones responsible — and the ones who can change it. This doesn’t mean abandoning chivalrous behaviour (my view is that you should hold the door open for anyone, assist anyone struggling with a pushchair, regardless of sex) but it does mean a good, hard look at things that might not even occur to us. And we need telling. It’s not always easy to identify behaviour that is sexist.
That’s not an excuse, it’s a call for papers.
I feel very fortunate that my current work situation is pretty evenly balanced gender-wise. It’s easy to flatten sexism before it happens. It must be really tough for women in a male-dominated environment. I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it must be. (ooh, maybe I can. See Heather’s comment at my place).
Err, what Scott said.
And what Richard said.
That’s all really. I’m not sure why I bothered to type this.
You thought we might think you an unregenerate MCP?
Municipal Car Park?
“I feel very fortunate that my current work situation is pretty evenly balanced gender-wise.”
Are at least half of the group leaders at your place female, Richard? Very impressive if so.
Hoe about the department heads/deans/upper academic management? The latter in particular was something flagged up yesterday as a conspicuous problem at UCL. How about the composition of the committees who decide pay grades and promotions (ditto, yesterday).
At least, probably >60%.
Upper management male-dominated, but we actually have a husband and wife PI team.
Those are good numbers. Let’s send a team of experts down there to see what someone is doing right.
Heather, thanks for the link about the Parliament Square protest. I hadn’t heard – wonder what sort of turnout there will be? I haven’t protested anything since the war.
I was a little reluctant to call it a protest. I work with human embryos in my research so was receptive to protecting the similar possibilities my English colleagues also have. I’ve been privy to a number of the ethical debates that have sprung up around this law (via PEALS) and would have come to be there if I could. Just because one has carried the day relative to the forces of obscurantism doesn’t mean that it’s a permanent victory – witness Roe v. Wade.
When I graduated, and got my D Phil, I was not allowed to join the Oxford and Cambridge club. They have only recently changed their rules to admit women as full members, after many years of staging rearguard actions, etc. Of course, I, and no doubt others, would not wish to join a club under these circumstances, and it has had an effect on how I view the various begging letters I regularly receive from my alma mater.
That’s amazing, Maxine. How recently? This century?
If I were Maxine, Jennifer, I’d take that badly.
It is an open secret that I’m 150 ;-)
I just thought about NPG in this context:
Chair_man_: woman
Managing Director: man
Senior executive: mainly male (2 women, 7 men)
Nature senior editors: 50-50 (4 women 4 men)
Nature section editors: about 50-50
Other editors: maybe 60/40 or 70/30 women/men.
Cut me some slack – this century is only 8 years old.
Maxine’s comment about Oxbridge reminded me of one of the things that came up at lunch yesterday. Apparently women there don’t get the networking opportunities because 90% of this happens at high table and women, apparently, feel they have better things to do with their lives then sit around all night passing the port and listening to drunk men blather.
Good point, Jennifer. I do lose track of time.
This reminds me a little of lunch-time conversation in which my daughter proudly proclaimed that she had been taking painting for two years. When her brother pointed out that she started in September, she said, yes, but that was in 2007. 2008 now, ergo two years.
My definition of century had been on a sliding scale without absolute landmarks.
A professor friend of mine at Cambridge has told me that the real talking gets done in the Senior Combination Room behind the high table, as that is where the port is stored. (cf. this article.)
And I thought it was all in the men’s room. But then, being 150, I once read Helen Gurley Brown ;-)
Yes, that’s right. They don’t retire to the SCR until very late (I was subjected to this once during a job interview at Oxford) so you’re in it for the long haul. Not everyone’s cup of port.
Other (recent) horror stories. Relatively recent addition to the Fellowship of the Royal Society (i.e. 1996 I think). Female PhD student was not allowed into the Royal Society to view investiture. Male PhD student was. (Neither PhD student was an FRS incidentally)
Ah the Oxford job interview by Whisky approach. Its legendary. Usually after standing you in front of the entire departmental staff and getting you to do a recent exam paper on the blackboard. But you can see why it has to be done that way. How else could they tell whether your a good chap or not?
Being a good chap is apparently irrelevant, to some.
According to the Current Biology article mentioned above, the German Max Planck Society proudly boasted in the mid-1990ies that 25% of their female directors were Nobel Prize winners… Now there are 19 women among 266 directors.
And I’m very proud of my wife who is a professor in microbiology.
As an ex-member of the staff at Oxford I despair at the misconceptions of the goings on at Oxford (and presumably Cambridge) in the SCRs. When I left oxford 1n 1999, evening dinner at my College was attended by about 10 Dons out of a possible 60 or so. Regular attendees were unmarried new staff members (male and female), those who had some sort of pastoral duty that meant they had an open office to see students in the early evening and a couple of retired staff who probably were in town for the port. Most networking is done over lunch but because of the nature of a College, there would be only two or three at the most from any major discipline in each of the SCRs. The best thing abot College lunch was to talk to someone just back from CERN, or chat to a humanities lecturer about trade between the Roman and Chinese Empires.
Since I left Oxford there has been a gradual increase in female appointments and the make up of the staff on gender basis is not too dissimilar to that of Manchester, where I am now. There is too much mystique shrouding Oxbridge of course but these days they are not the bastions of tradition and male dominance that they once were.
Which college was that, Brian?
Corpus Christi. Home of the fanous proto-scientist William Buckland
Richard said:
And we need telling. It’s not always easy to identify behaviour that is sexist.
I agree. But I would feel awkward pointing these things out to senior staff, especially if they didn’t realise what they were doing and take the comment as an affront. And some of these guys do actually have the power to make my life a misery/sack me if they decide I’m causing too much trouble …
So, what’s a girl to do?
Anna, that’s a fair point, and one I have a great deal of sympathy for. Calling out a senior staff member can be daunting, not to say downright dangerous.
When I said “we need telling”, I was actually thinking of potential allies. As a man, it is my responsibility to do something about the sexist behaviour of my colleagues. Sometimes it’s not obvious that there is a problem.
How do men react when another man brings this sort of thing up…er…mano a mano?
There are fists involved.
;)
“And some of these guys do actually have the power to make my life a misery/sack me if they decide I’m causing too much trouble …
So, what’s a girl to do?”
Anna, I think it is wise not to make trouble. But if their treatment goes from annoying to actively harming your career, I would seek help from a sympathetic higher level and get it discreetly dealt with.
Never give in.
All good advice :)
Brian
I wasn’t Oxford-bashing – sorry to have given that impression. It’s just that the women at the lunch who’d worked there and at Cambridge said a lot of the networking did indeed happen late-night at dinner, and did involve a lot of drinking, and was not compatible with their lifestyles (either by personal inclination or due to child-care responsibilities). I was not suggesting this was a deliberate plot to exclude women. But in its own way, it might be a disadvantage. Of course good interactions can happen over lunch or coffee, without booze. But there is something about the off-duty, night-time feel that makes people be more expansive.
I developed a reputation at one of jobs of being ‘Political Correctness Man’ simply for calling out people for what I thought was out of line behaviour (colleagues and friends mind, not senior staff). I would like to say that Australia was about a decade ahead on this, which is the impression I got when I first came out the UK, but I’ve been away for so long now that I don’t know. Richard’s comments re: female group leaders is very encouraging though.
But then, I never got the angst about PC. It seems to me that what is decried as PC is usually just the idea that it might be appropriate to be a) polite and b) consider the feelings of others.
Certainly agree with the ‘don’t make trouble unless necessary’ approach. Unless you are the type of person who both is effective at it, and enjoys it (not one or other, definitely both required) it usually isn’t worth the grief.
Yes, and a tribunal, even a justly deserved one, might just kill your career. It’s a question of would you rather be right or would you rather be dead.
I like the idea of you as PC Man, Cameron. Did you wear a cape?
Or even just a reputation as a trouble maker. Men seem to be able to get away with, or even benefit from, a reputation for being a bit beligerant.
I only wear the cape when flying.
Gosh, a day late and dollar short again!
Right.
1) The Current Opinion article was very interesting. I sent it round to some female colleagues (non-bio so no access to CB).
2) what Richard said: We need telling. I remember thinking I was very PC as a young man, until one day my fiance took me to one side and took me to task over some thoughtless comments I didn’t even realise I’d made. It was absolutely gutting! I try harder now, but I often wonder how often I put my foot in it.
Which leads to #3)
”In my mind’s eye, men are so sorted that they don’t have to talk about their situation. They are, I imagine, free to socialize and chat about sport or politics or whatever else takes their fancy.”
We talk/brag/boast/moan about women, my dear.
Interesting post Jenny. It’s always fun to network, although sometimes I can get the “this is very organised and not very spontanous” feeling. (This since I had a notion of networking being more of the “chatting idly at the golf course/gentlemans club/whatever else old institution”.) I don’t think it is a bad thing that it is organised since it does happen then.
I do think however, that the ‘meta’discussions might decrease over time when everyone is more and more powerful maybe? (Sounds a bit brash but I do think it might be true. Not talking about the current situation but maybe exchanging PhDs or ideas or giving support apart from only having a drink and chatting about the latest in books…)
Personally I have realised how fun and encouraging it is to meet with [specificly] female scientists who have come further in their carreer and listen to the advice/experience and other good things, if nothing else not to feel alone in some experiences that you might have gotten…
And oh, are you the one on the far right in the photo?
:)
Here is a Correspondence to Nature by Prof Dolphin, published in 2006 (I’ll reproduce a bit here for those who don’t subscribe):
There have been three meetings of the Biochemical Society in the new annual meeting format (Biosciences 2004, 2005 and 2006) and at these 1 of 10, 0 of 10 and 0 of 7, respectively, of the plenary lectures were given by a woman. Some of these plenary lecturers were recipients of prizes and medals, and I was so shocked by these statistics that I made a rough count of the proportion of women who have received these prizes over the years, as published on the society’s website at http://www.biochemsoc.org.uk. Recipients’ initials, rather than first names, are given, so I may conceivably have misattributed the male gender to some of the earlier names.
The prizes include the annual Colworth medal, given to a promising scientist under 35: only one has been awarded to a woman, out of 44 recipients, between 1963 and 2007. The statistics for the other prizes, up to 2007, are the Novartis medal, 2 of 39; Jubilee lecture, 1 of 23; Wellcome Trust award for research in biochemistry related to medicine, 1 of 11; AstraZeneca prize, 1 of 5; Frederick Gowland Hopkins memorial lecture, 0 of 24; Keilin memorial lecture, 0 of 21; Morton lecture, 0 of 14; Biochemical Society medal, 0 of 3; and GlaxoSmithKline medal, 0 of 2. This translates into 3.2% of the prizes being given to women, a truly lamentable record.
Furthermore, the statistics have not improved. In the past ten years, none of the Colworth medals has been awarded to women — and it is prizes such as these, given to scientists early in their career, that influence their future success.….etc
(This letter was in part stimulated by a Commentary published a month or so earlier, by Ben Barres, called Does Gender Matter?.)
“And oh, are you the one on the far right in the photo? :)”
Guilty as charged.
“Not talking about the current situation but maybe exchanging PhDs”
Nice image, Asa. I can’t decide which is funnier: swapping actual degrees, or exchanging graduate students as slave labor for hire.
I know what you mean about the spontaneity. It is a bit weird, to be honest, to be put together for a particular purpose. Still, the conversation did flow; and on the walk back to UCL with one of the participants, a spontaneous and quite interesting offer of help was tendered. It was a woman I have met before but never really got a chance to talk to. Also, I was contacted by email a few days later by another woman who wants to collaborate. So – networking does work, no matter how artificially stimulated.
You certainly look (in the photo) to be enjoying yourself.
That’s always good.
Always.
Hey, Maxine, that Barres piece made a big stir amongst my colleagues. It’s always really helpful when famous scientists aren’t afraid to speak out. It might have made a lot of people think who might otherwise have realized what is happening around them – far more effective, psychologically, than a complaint or tribunal – or a scolding.
Jenny> haha, I guess I should’ve read it through one more time? But swapping degrees could be fun. But it was not what I meant. I think I thought about the general swapping, or should we call it semisabbatical or just training in another lab?, where one gradstudent can go on exchange and collaborate for a few months, or a newly graduated PhD can get a year post doc or something like that. I mean, it happens a lot today but just thinking more specifically about this when you mentioned women networking? :)
Actually surely the more important question is whether Jenny will play steel drums in August?
Alas, I sold off the pans when emigrated to Europe. But if someone could provide the kit…
hmmm, now who do I know with steel drums…
It’s a shame you’ve got those plastic wheelie things in London these days.
Come on, we’re scientists, we can figure it out.
Quite a few of us don’t even have those plastic wheelie things, either, so we are worse than useless.
(And if you live in Wales, and have those plastic wheelie things, other people steal them, I have it on good authority.)
What happens in Wales stays in Wales.
Please?
Steel drums are made out of fifty-gallon oil drums, by the way, not rubbish containers.
It’s important to be precise about your kit.
In the Antipodes we are starved for decent kit.
We have to make do. (I think Ned Kelly nicked all the 50 gallon drums).
Us Cromerians are very proud of our wheelie bins. We have big grey ones for landfill, big green ones for recycling, and (for a fee) big brown ones for garden refuse too big or woody to compost. These bins never leave Norfolk, ever, on the reasonable grounds that nothing of any utility or interest exists beyond the borders of Norfolk (I’d say beyond the borders of North Norfolk, but I’m a recent convert to Norfolkism and therefore an extremist).
You have to pay for your brown garden waste wheelie bins? Southwark Council must be more civilized than I thought. I thought the bird nesting platforms were just an anomaly.
Cambridge Council gave you your first ‘green’ garden waste bin ‘free’ (i.e. paid for through council tax) — but it was ‘leased’ (licensed?), so if it was nicked you had a buy a new one. And then they made money by selling the compost they made from it.
After a while, they got the licence to treat food waste (chicken bones, etc.) in the compost thingy, so we maintained the compost bin at the bottom of the garden for the taters and strawberries, and chucked the chicken bones etc. into the council bin. I swear one of neighbours used to go round rifling other green bins for stuff to spread on his roses.
We don’t get a free wheelie or compost bin. If we want to dispose of “garden rubbish” we have to go to our local library (hardly ever open when I am actually in my home town as opposed to at work) and purchase special “green plastic bags”. We can then put the grass mowings etc in the green bag which the
dustmenrefuse collectors solemnly hurl into the main rubbish vat in their van. Sigh.(Of course, the enviornmentally sound households in the neighbourhood take all this kind of stuff to an appropriate venue themselves, never fear.)
What with all this rubbish, I had to check our situation. Our block of flats has a communal place for rubbish with bins for:
I think we should have something for burnable waste (e.g. plastic). At the local shopping centre we have the following bins:
We can also take our cans, beer bottles and plastic pop bottles back to be recycled for a refund (“pantti”. Stop sniggering, Grant). As you can see, it’s bloody confusing living in a Nordic Socialist Utopia.
Cue the following:
I heard a story about a friend who had been overseas last year for about three months. About a day after he returned, he went to place some refuse in the communal set of bins.
A Chinese refuse collector happened on the scene and said ”Where you been”. ”Over in America” my friend replied.
Refuse man said, ”No, where you been”. My confused friend advised again that he had been away from home for quite a while.
Refuse man then says…..
”No no. Where you wheelie been”
Bdoom crash…
No, we don’t buy our brown wheelie bins: we rent them. The annual charge is about thirty quid. As for the green recycling bin – well, I’m proud to say that Norfolk recycles 45% of its domestic waste.
At the Maison des Giraffes, I have two shuddersomely huge compost heaps. One is festering darkly to itself. The other receives the incredible quantity of guinea-pig, hamster, chicken and snake bedding we generate alongside all the usual veg peelings and tea bags.
A selection of cooked food waste goes into the wormery, along with occasional bits of cardboard and newspaper. Worms are especially fond of eggshells. As well a generating compost, wormeries produce a runoff that’s liquid dynamite. Add a few drops to anything and it’s Beanstalk-Above-The-Clouds-Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum all round. I dilute this with plenty of rainwater from our rainbarrel.
I’ve added a second rainbarrel, and I’ve ordered two more; one to store ‘grey water’ from the bath when all the other rainbarrels are empty, the other to top up the pond, now full of tadpoles, each one a potential slug-slurpin’ frog.
Coffee-grinds are saved specially for dilution with water – when watered onto one’s tender plants the caffeine blitzes the slugs and snails (that the chickens and frogs don’t get to first) into molluscan hell.
Paper that doesn’t get recycled gets shredded and composted or made into hamster bedding.
One can recycle most things these days – tubs for butter and margarine are not recyclable but they make great seed trays.
Smug bastard, aren’t I?
Thanks for the anti-slug tip! I got some sort of fairly useless iron-based granular stuff but I much prefer your coffee grinds solution. Problem – I have to dig them out of those absolutely not environmentally friendly capsules sold by Nestle. Hm. But otherwise the compost heap is happy and as a result, our roses are.
“One is festering darkly to itself…”
Is one? I often have days like that myself.
Yes, but such days are often the most productive, in the end. That’s next year’s veg in that thar dark festerment, that is.
There’s a lot of hippie love in this salon.
Coffee-grinds from Turkish coffee – something that my Mom used in our old garden for years. Works wonderfully against slugs AND as fertilizer.
Nescafé?
Say it ain’t so.
Not Nescafe – real Turkish coffee.
I love the whole out-of-sync vibe we get in here sometimes. You guys on something else Turkish? Maybe involving hookahs?
kitchen sync?
(Bora – it’s Heather who seems to using the vile, unsound stuff)
The slugs have just waltzed over several inches of organic “slug repellent grit” and decimated a square meter of new hand-reared seedlings. I’ve heard about coffee, but don’t generate enough grounds. And the price of copper is now prohibitive. (The cat precludes chemical nasties.)
I’m convinced that in the context of pest (or weed) control, ‘organic’ means “doesn’t actually work but we can screw the hippies for their cash anyway”.
Slugs in the garden – its us or them. I have just been to Tatton Park in Cheshire to see their art in the garden. They call it their biennial but it is somewhat smaller in scale than the Venice biennale. While passing through the kitchen garden I saw that their National Trust approved SLUG DEATH was ferrous phosphate, which is allegedly toxic to slugs and not mammals.
If you are really
sadbored here is a slug control blogSlugs and snails: something modern science really needs to get a bead on.
They make my life hell. (Weeps into beer.) I may very well be sad enough to check out that blog, ta very much Brian!
Cooch recommends a mixture of kerosene and lamb fat. For his saplings, at least. I guess you could use it to demarcate a DMZ.
I once had a flatmate whose Sunday lunches smelled a bit like what I imagine that concoction would smell like. And it’s true the slugs kept well clear – as did we all.
I found the grounds didn’t work where we are – but then I suspect it is due to sheer weight of numbers of slugs rather than potency of the coffee. Instead we now just grow slug resistant crops – garlic is very good :) (although something ate all my horseradish!)
Coffee-grounds work for me. If you need an excuse to get a coffee-machine, or even just a cafetiere thingy, the War on Molluscs is a good enough excuse. Real coffee tastes a lot better than instant coffee, which always reminds me of Bovril.
But now, back to the topic.
A well-known and controversial academic at UCLA, a National Academician, regular author in Nature and Ssss… you know who, sponsored me as a Regents’ Professor at UCLA for the Winter Quarter of 1996. I had a wonderful three months teaching a graduate seminar course on science publication. It was a wonderful time and a superb opportunity for which I will be forever grateful. The academic concerned was keen to remind me at every opportunity how grateful he was, in turn, to have been an alumnus of Oberlin.
And I did enjoy your gig photo, Jenny. Forget Simon and Garfunkel and Kodachrome: I think all the best pix of college gigs are in black and white.
I just saw this comment to a story at the Nature News site:
_Nobel prizes in physics (1901-2006): Total awarded = 178, No. of females = 2 (Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert-Mayer). Last 20 years (1987-2006): Total awarded = 50, No. of females = 0. Source .
That be you on the Korg good Sir?
Yes, Graham, it be me
GEEK ALERT - ANYONE NOT A SAD MUSO LOOK AWAY NOW
This is one of my student bands, Karnage, which still gigs now and again, more than 20 years later. This shot is from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, Christmas Ents 1987. As far as I recall, I’m playing a Korg CX3 organ (the vintage early 1980s version), and the wee Casio controller is triggering a Yamaha TX81Z module. Today’s kit is thematically similar even if all the units are different – now I have a Hammond XK1 organ topped by a Korg TR61 synth. And now, as then, going through a Carlsbro 90W combo.
Bloody hell, Maxine. That’s terrible. The literature and peace ones are bad enough, but the sciences…
My gob is quite smacked.
Maxine – How many female scientists did not get Nobel prizes despite work they were involved with getting prizes for others? Meitner, Bell for starters
Sorry to interrupt, but I’ve just seen this. Sorry Jenny, it was irresistible:
GREEK ALERT - ANYONE NOT A SAD MUSO LOOK AWAY NOW
Do I win a chocolate watch or what Henry?? My ”n” of gig photos is small and any that I have have yet to be scanned.
This might be Steel aged 6. Go easy on me folks.
I’ve worked with many a female vocalist over the years. Todd et al was a personal fav and did a cracking job on the likes of Someone Special
Shortly, I’ll be collaborating with Estellie in Austin, TX marking my return to the land of songwriting and in this case, using 2.0 web tools.
Good God, Henry, what are you wearing on your feet?
And Graham…you’re melting my poor heart.
And Maxine, you’re breaking it.
And Richard, you’re giving it the willies.
We need the life science stats – they are bound not to be so depressing. At least I desperately hope not.
Good God, Henry, what are you wearing on your feet?
Trainers. Crocs hadn’t been invented in 1987.
From that wikipedia page Jenny,
Total phys/medicine: 185
Women: 7 (3.8%)
last 20 years: 43
Women: 4 (9.3%)
from which you might conclude things are getting better. :/
At 87 comments now, talking of statistics, I ain’t no statistician, but me thinks Jenny is on for a
cardhat-trick of centuries.More dismal than I expected, Richard. Might not be statistically significant, that doubling.
I think it’s worse than that. I reckon that those two figures are probably not significantly different from each other – or from zero.
Take heart, here is a better statistic.
Number of individuals awarded 2 Nobel Prizes: 4
Number of women: 1 (25%)
Things can only get better
The sad thing is, the person who quoted the physics Nobel statistic on the Nature news thread is using it to support his view, which is:
women in physics are generally harder working than male colleagues and are great co-workers in terms of encouragement, diligence, and backup support. They do not, however, contribute a great deal of original ideas and rigorous logical analysis to the research. Female judgment seems to more emotionally biased.
That is what really upsetting—later on, he would use my word “upsetting” as characterising women as “emotional”, see his response to a bit of an outpouring in response to his view expressed in my quote above:
being called “an idiot”, “fool”, and “male chauvinist pig” only confirms my point about female emotional reaction to the presented Nobel prize award evidence. In my honest opinion, male-female team is the best combination for original and fruitful research, as demonstrated by Marie and Pierre Curie. Unfortunately, due to the emotional animosity (see above) it is a rare occurrence.
Maybe people here would like to take a look at the story and comment thread, which you can do here. Honestly, it is all enough to make you weep, but call me an emotional woman for reacting this way.
Honestly, it is all enough to make you weep, but call me an emotional woman for reacting this way.
Either that, or you have the brain of a squirrel.
Not a topic on which I feel very inclined to smile, I’m afraid – if the Borat squirrel comment is meant to be, I can’t really tell what is supposed to be funny about it. Cue comment about women lacking sense of humour, no doubt ;-)
More seriously, I looked at the story and subsequent discussion that Maxine highlights. The discussion is depressing – from all sides. At the risk of getting flamed, the issue is more than just whether discrimination exists. It does exist, and has been shown to exist, and this fact is now too well-established to be worthy of debate. Why?
As Jenny writes in her blog post, men and women are different. This difference is value-neutral – it is as much a fact as the existence of discrimination. Given that it has been shown that discrimination exists, and that when such discrimination is removed, men and women make equal contributions in specific areas (such as, say, particle physics), what remains?
The difference, I think, is social. Some of the discussions above allude to the possibility that networking and important decisions about hiring often go on between men, after hours, in the bar. The experience of Mrs Gee, who worked for several substantial media organizations, bears this out – she said that this went on all the time.
Importantly, there is nothing inherent in one’s gender that predetermines such behavior. I’m a male and also tend not to go to the bar after work, and if important decisions are made in such locations that have affected the employment prospects of either myself or my colleagues, I have been as ignorant of such things as I would had I been a woman.
In my view this will probably change, but it might take a long time. But what amazes me is that such discriminatory practices still go on; and that women in all spheres, not just science, still work for less money for equivalent jobs than their male counterparts – despite the fact that such practices have been illegal for decades.
When it comes down to it, a lot of the reason for the inertia comes down not to discrimination but to money. I think there is an ongoing case about a large number of local-council employees (dinner ladies, care assistants and so on) whose case for inequality has been shown to be unassailable, but the employers say that to achieve parity (and, what’s more, backdate it) would be too costly to implement without cuts elsewhere (I am working from memory here so I might be wrong).
So, the final question is not that discrimination still exists, but why those responsible are still getting away with it?
Henry, what a great response – I doubt you’ll get flamed in here. (If anyone tries, I’ve got my Salon Squirt-gun at the ready.) I too am shocked by the piece Maxine has pointed us toward and can only wonder how people can still get away with it. I suspect, however, that the reason is that women just can’t make too much of a fuss without living to regret it. As I mentioned above, a formal grievance no matter how justified will lead to the closure of future prospects (and nasty coverage from the Daily Mail in certain professions, e.g. City workers); whereas informal complaints will just raise accusations of emotional reactions, whingeing, “not having a sense of humor” and the like, which won’t do anything for one’s prospects either. It really is a lose/lose situation – complain at your peril, or just knuckle down and take the harassment/lower pay/fewer promotions or however the discrimination manifests. I’ve always done the latter and I’ve always survived. I”n not happy about how some things have played out, but at least I’m still in the running.
Henry, you are a good parent. I think most working women are good parents, and make appropriate sacrifices re. missing those after-work social networking events, etc. I think many men are not, and that the society of the workplace is set up to allow them not to be, even to encourage them not to be.
I think this is true, Maxine. But there is plenty of discrimination on hand for the single, childless woman as well.
Henry, you are a good parent. Well, that’s very kind of you to say, Maxine.
And now some family history. My parents met as students at the London School of Economics. In due course they got thair LLBs and qualified as solicitors. Perhaps inevitably my mother gave it up to raise us kids, leaving my father as sole earner, slowly building his practice as a suburban solicitor from a one-man band to the biggest game in town. Now, this seemed fine to me as I was growing up, but something my father said when I reached adulthood always stuck in my mind. “I remember you and your sister when you were very small children, and then, whoosh! you were teenagers.” My father missed a whole decade of our childhoods. Those years – lost to my father – were all those when he was building up his business. (I should emphasize that me and my sister felt no lack of fatherhood).
This tale struck a chord with me and I vowed to myself that should I ever become a father myself, that wouldn’t happen. Luckily I am in the kind of job that allows a certain amount of flexibility, so I can be there for school runs, parents’ evenings, chauffering to ballet class, swimming lessons and so on.
One reason I don’t hang out after work with colleagues – even when I didn’t live a million miles from the office – was so that I could get home in time to read my children yet another exciting episode of Harry Potter and the Enchanted Courgette. Not for my kids’ benefit – but for mine.
It is a fact universally acknowledged but much less stated that the same societal forces that thrust women into career- and pension-damaging childcare are the same that keep fathers away from their children during their most crucial and formative years of growth. That, too, is sexist, and unfair. I think that management and its inertial enforcement of archaic working practices are to blame.
Couples without children complain about this – but it is a fact that children grow up better and achieve more (and pay more taxes) if raised by two parents, and these taxes will support all of us when we get old, whether we have children or not.
Eurythmics-Sex Crime
”In off the black” – (Steel posts quickly before Crok-Cromer pips in and steals the Century comment – AGAIN).
I agree, Jennifer, and I remember it well. Somehow, one has more energy to deal with it when one doesn’t have the additional demands (emotional, practical, and personal—wanting to be a “good parent” as Henry describes) when one hasn’t had children. But there is no way that this forgives it. I think that becoming a parent has made me, personally, shrug off a lot of the discrimination I was aware of and/or experienced previously, becuase I was just “too busy, tired, oversubscribed and stressed” to worry about it. I am not proud of that.
In short, I agree, it is endemic. And that is so disappointing, that our society isn’t more civilised.
Other groups are discriminated against too, of course: I’m not a monomaniac on the subject of gender discrimiation. With other “hats” on, I’ve suffered other forms of discrimination (well, one in particular, which is personal and not for discussion on an online forum, but I promise it is not interesting to anyone else, just boringly difficult for me personally). I don’t think women are a “special case”, they are just one of several groups who are discriminated against by the “alpha” or “dominant” culture in which we live. As individuals, of course, any two given women are as different from each other as a given woman and a given man, or as two men, and that too is part of the reason that the problem has proved so intractable.
This conversation is getting surreal, with its interstitial nature!
Good word, interstitial. Nice, woody word. Not as good as ekpyrotic, though, which I’ve just seen in an incming email. Darned if I know what it means. I think it’s a brand of oven-to-table cookware, but I could be wrong.
ekpyrotic
SO UNLIKE you Henry to get all heavy on us.
Oh, I get it, it’s that panspermia again.
panspermia ??
SIMPLE
After enduring a 12-day orbital mission and a fiery reentry, an unmanned spacecraft, Foton-M3, awaits retrieval in a field in Kazakhstan. The 5,500-pound capsule, seven-feet in diameter, housed experiments testing the lithopanspermia theory.
The capsule contained, among other things, lichen that were exposed to the radiation of space. Scientists also strapped basalt and granite disks riddled with cyanobacteria to the capsule’s heat shield to see if the microorganisms could survive the brutal conditions of reentry. Alas, this batch didn’t arrive alive but the scientists believe that it was at a disadvantage
Maxine (and to others)>
“That is what really upsetting—later on, he would use my word “upsetting” as characterising women as “emotional”..//...Honestly, it is all enough to make you weep, but call me an emotional woman for reacting this way.”
Well, there is that common way of making this (that) argumentation – often used. There is that thing on how you ‘define’ words to describe events. If a man is raising his voice, more often than not one calls it “active and engaged” whereas a woman would be more inclined to be called “upset, emotional or whining”. We all think ‘active’ is positive, ‘whining’ is not. and then it is easy to claim “you’re emotional and therefore I need not consider what you say”.
Furthermore it always strikes me as interesting that ‘emotional’ is a bad thing to be – especially as a scientist. I mean, couldn’t it be considered good and positive to have “feelings and be engaged” in one’s research rather than be completely like a machine? It doesn’t neccessary means that you misinterpret data just because you get interested and more focused on pursuing the analysis/investigation. Just because you have emotions doesn’t mean you get overrun by them. But I guess it is easy to make that connection and let it rest with that?!
Alas, the whole situation with the rest of the argument (male-female collaboration) is so distorted and absurd that I don’t really have the energy to write why it’s so strange in its interpretations. Let me just state that if one thinks that argument is correct; sorry for the missed collaborations with anyone since that means you would be a tad bit narrow minded.
The Nobelprize is like drawing conclusions (men are smarter than females) without consulting the underlying facts. It’s a little like the old Raven hypothesis; just because all ravens are black and all ravens are birds doesn’t mean that all birds are ravens… philosophy 101?! Or using Koch’s postulate (hey, I am a microbiologist ;) ) since that has more questions that all have to be answered in order for the hypothesis to be correct.
Furthermore it always strikes me as interesting that ‘emotional’ is a bad thing to be – especially as a scientist
- or as a man. I’m not going to whinge about how it’s difficult to be fully human when the patriarchal imperative is that women are emotional and men are strong. But I will say “Bollocks to that.” Sexism harms men, too. (That comment is directed at the neanderthals, by the way. The rest of you know it’s true).
But I’m a practical-minded fellow. The Kantoreks of this world — just how do we deal with them? While the situation as it is persists then they will not listen to women. It is easy for them, as Åsa and Maxine point out, to dismiss any complaints as whining or worse. Which means it is imperative that people like Henry (sorry Henry, you stuck your head above the parapet) and me being brave enough to put our own necks and careers on the line. Which is scary, but necessary.
It means whistle-blowing, upbraiding colleagues for their attitude, leading by example. It means a sea-change in the attitude of blokes who think they are ‘enlightened’. Actually reading some feminist weblogs, maybe, seeing what the problems are. And not in a “Let’s protect the fragile women” way, because that’s probably worse. It’s going to be cooperative.
No one claimed it would be easy.
I’d suggest waiting for the ‘old guard’ to die off but I suspect that they are self-regenerating.
PS. That comment thread at Nature – Christine Nattrass makes some fine arguments. Go read .
Agreed, Richard—there are men around who “get it” but there are plenty who don’t. Same applies to women (Mrs Thatcher syndrome).
Graham—I thought you might like the connection between ekpyrotic and panspermia!