Some years ago I was perusing one of my favourite journals of record and came across an article extolling the virtues of science as a career option for women. The article featured various young women, photographically arranged in winsome poses, who were making their way in science of all kinds, from ecology to high-energy physics. Conspicuous by its absence in this article was any discussion of how shaky science is as a career – how nomadic, how insecure – and how this career structure, or lack of it, might serve as an active deterrent to women even more than it does men. I was moved by this lacuna to write a letter to the journal concerned, which they had the grace to publish in abbreviated form (well, it did go on a bit).
Some time later I met the journalist who’d written the article and congratulated her on it. Her response, as I recall, was dismissive. Perhaps she realized, as had I, that simply encouraging more women to become scientists will be counterproductive unless science itself acquires a meaningful career structure that is less demanding on the requirements of family life, and that phenomena such as the postdoc trap are consigned to history.
I also recall the occasion – it was an evening reception in a bookshop in central London at which various people were required to defend their favourite book. The initial choice of half a dozen would be winnowed down to a single one, which would win a prize. My task was to defend The Lord of the Rings, in ninety seconds, to an audience of left-wing intellectuals from the adjacent London School of Economics. Christians fed to lions could have hardly fared any worse. I went away with the booby prize – a copy of Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons, a diatribe which takes more than 600 pages to say what Tom Lehrer managed in just fifteen words, in Bright College Days:
Hearts full of Youth
Hearts full of Truth
Six parts Gin to one part vermouth!
Some related issues were raised in Jennifer Rohn’s lambently lucent blog, in which Dr Rohn referred to the gender balance in editorial office of journals, suggesting that it was about four-fifths women, a proportion that seems about right in my own experience. She also went on to document the entirely regrettable phenomenon of (female) editors being on the sharp end of the criticism of established (male) scientists who wonder what business these young women, all ‘failed scientists’, have making decisions about ‘their’ work, the implication being that failure as scientists (and, possibly, the fact that they are women, who, as all fans of Borat know, have no more brains than squirrels) render them incapable of making such decisions. I do not know how commonplace such an attitude is. Yes, I am an editor, but also, when I last looked, male. I’m also bigger and look fiercer than most scientists, so I don’t get the ‘failed scientist’ jibe, either. But perhaps the accusation of failure is levelled disproportionately at women. If so, that makes the matter even worse.
Railing that such attitudes are sexist will get us nowhere. Of course they are, and everyone knows it. But accusations are divisive. A while ago I ran a series of profiles in Nature called Lifelines in which scientists were asked serious questions about their careers, their attitudes to mentoring and so on, mixed in with impertinent demands to know the contents of their fridges and their most recent bedtime reading. I scrupulously invited as many women as men to participate, so it was a surprise to me to learn (as perhaps it should not have been) that women featured disproportionately rarely in the published result. I admit that this only came to my conscious notice when I was accused, rather rudely, of blatant sexism. Naturally enough I was somewhat riled by this, more so because the accuser was male (the unsaid implication that women, poor loves, wouldn’t have made such a complaint themselves). Getting editors riled is never a good way to achieve what you want. Nevertheless, I went back to my procedures, girded up my loins, and realized that I’d have to ask at least twice as many women as men in order to achieve parity at publication.
Why? A gender divide soon became apparent. Women were less likely to respond positively (or at all) to such an invitation, and when they did, were almost always too busy to complete the task. One of the reasons, I suspect, is that because women in science are outnumbered by men, they will always find themselves co-opted onto more committees and such, as well as taking on the traditional familial chores.
What, then, is to be done? The first thing is to remind those male, mid-career scientists that discrimination against people is a Bad Thing. The second is that in so doing, science is losing a potentially very great resource. If such hard-bitten old scrotes persist in the equation of women with failure as science, they should wonder precisely what it is about science that is a turn-off to women. And not just women – I looked for a career outside science when close observation of colleagues slightly older than me revealed that a to pursue science was to take an indefinite vow of poverty, if not chastity, when people my age doing other things could afford all those things that equate with an entitlement to simple human rights and dignity – a settled life; a home under a roof; and even a mortgage one could afford, noch. And should my right to such things be denied simply by my career choice?
It could be, however (now, I’m not going to be popular for saying this) that even when balanced rigorously for equality of opportunity, some activities tend to be more attractive to people of one gender rather than another. Men and women are, after all, different. There is no sexism in trainspotting (and no sex, either), but trainspotters tend to be men. Last night, I had the great pleasure of attending a dance show
in the venue whence this blog gets its name, in which my younger daughter had a small part, being a pupil of the dance school whose show this was. I learned two things from this show: the first was that it was remarkably polished and professional; the second was that of the 200 children and teenagers who took part, only three were male. Bloody Idiot Billy Elliot is alive and well. I am sure that the dance school will welcome anyone they can get – at least one of the dancers had a mild disability, and several had physiques which, to be charitable, were hardly sylph-like. So why so few boys? The answer to this is probably a long one, but all sorts of things play a part, parental expectations being less important than the peer pressure that is so important in shaping childrens’ attitudes. If you are a little girl, you’ll want to pursue activities with your friends, who will be little girls, who will do ballet, and a positive feedback loop is formed that’s hard to break. If you are a little boy, it’s more likely that you’ll be playing football. Explaining to your friends that you can be a ballet star and play football might, in some circumstances, be hard without getting smacked in the mouth teased. Not that people don’t break the mould – my niece, aged 11, is the star goalie of her school’s girls’ soccer team.
What was this journal of record, then? Some rugged, manly magazine such as Nature? No? Science, perhaps? Campanologists’ Quarterly? You And Your Goat? None of the above—it was Good Housekeeping, required reading of all Ladies of a Certain Age (and their husbands). At least you couldn’t accuse them of not trying.
In some areas of science, at least, things seem to be getting better. It’s an open question whether this is a peculiarity of ecologists.
I now have this image of the playground discussions of young ladies revolving around how they want to be editors of science journals when they grow up.
I did have a look at that blog entry, Bob, and found it most interesting. The ecology business—possibly. I wonder about the degree in which peoples’ career choices are influenced by role-models. I suspect (and it is only a suspicion, unsupported by anything other than my own native
prejudiceintuition), that women might be attracted to field ecology, anthropology and so on from the examples set by famous female researchers such as Jane Goodall or Dian Fossey. The irony is these ladies were mentored by the late Louis S. B. Leakey, whose motivations for choosing female researchers were, it has been alleged, not always entirely honorable.I wouldn’t want to comment role models in ecology, having arrived in ecology via a circuitous route, and only because I wanted to experience a real winter. Also, the data says nothing about other subjects, so they might be very different: it would be interesting to see.
I also think Borat’s comments about women’s brains and squirrels needs to be placed in context. Here is a photo of two hunters with an Asian Pygmy Red Squirrel:
Cripes. If that’s the pygmy variety, one should definitely
hide one’s nutskeep well away from the full-sized variety.“Explaining to your friends that you can be a ballet star and play football is hard.” What perfect timing, Henry! I just got back from ballet class (no star, me—taking ballet up in middle age one lacks a certain—flexibility, shall we say?), during which my legs were quite heavy from this morning’s 8 am football match. Who says Nature editors aren’t well rounded?
It’s true that periodically one will hear the comment that we would be PIs if we’d have been good enough scientists, but I suppose that’s why we are flogged as callow editors—to build up the thickened epidermis so necessary to stay in this career.
Hi Angela! Football and ballet in one day? I hope you are relaxing in a hot bath (remembering to save the water afterwards, of course).
I’ve just come back from another performance of my daughter’s ballet show and will now have to revise my estimate of the number of boys upwards. There are a few more boys, but they are disporportionately young. The girls stick at it, and more come in – but the boys generally drift away long before they hit their teens.
I think we would have become PIs if we’d been dedicated enough scientists – if there weren’t other things we found we’d rather pursue. Some of the teenage girls I saw doing dance tonight were in as many as nine or ten different routines. Something like that takes a kind of singlemindedness that forbids virtually any other extracurricular activity. When you hear sportspeople giving interviews, they often say that the secret of their success is the ability to concentrate on one thing, and one thing only. Sure, I did a PhD, but my mind was on music quite a lot of the time, and writing stuff for much of the rest.
Yes, hot baths (plural) were de rigeur, as it was in the low 40s and raining. Is this not the first week of May?
I am singleminded—just about many things!
Angela, I salute you. Time is also a limiting factor. You must be one of those people who’ve been blessed with 36-hour days, whereas the rest of us must try to squeeze everything into a mere 24. Being a husband and father does rather take up a lot of time, but in persuance of these tasks I have discovered quite a lot of talents I didn’t know I had. I’m pretty good at self-assembly furniture, and, when pushed, DIY. Being half of a couple that works remotely a loit of the time, I’m having to learn more about IT than I ever thought I’d need. And I am beginning to find out lots of things about Pokemon and soccer trading cards.
This was a well written post about the things that I currently have reason to think more about than before…(being a post doc and all that). I do wonder if it [non safety and employment] isn’t one of the things that nowadays also spill in to why some male scientists are leaving science? I definetly think there are proof to show that severeal female scientists are leaving science due to un’safe’ employment and hard times to combine with the ever lasting quest of keeping family and bigger family together as well as being a scientist. [larger question altogether but still, had to mention it.]
However, I wonder if you have looked into the situation in Italy for example? Last I heard, their universities had a high proportion of female scientist, partly based on the lower salaries found in Academia…but still leaving the ratio female-male scientist tipping to the ‘other’ side. I haven’t checked it for a while so I might be wrong but if nothing else that might be interesting to compare with the British/American reality?
Always fun to read your posts btw!
“soccer”, Henry? Oh dear oh dear.
I would like to recommend the following text for further reading:
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. Women in science—passion and prejudice. Curr Biol. 2008;18(5):R185-7.
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard not only won a Nobel Price for her Drosophila work (and there is a lot of her personal exprience in science in the paper), but also set up a foundation to help support women in science. Her foundation is different in that they do not give away grant money, but rather pay for the help needed at home. Christiane Nüsslein-Vollhard (who has no children) thinks that women should have the same freedom from these obligations in their research as most of their male colleagues.
@Asa: Thanks for your kind words.
However, I wonder if you have looked into the situation in Italy for example? Last I heard, their universities had a high proportion of female scientist, partly based on the lower salaries found in Academia…but still leaving the ratio female-male scientist tipping to the ‘other’ side
That’s a very interesting comment. I wonder if NN’s own Massimo Pinto has a view?
@Cath: I meant ‘football, of course. But I used ‘soccer’ to avoid all possible transatlantic ambiguity.
@Martin: what a great idea. Three hearty cheers to Nusslein-Vollhard!
Maybe this post by Massimo Pinto would be useful? http://network.nature.com/blogs/user/massimopinto/2008/04/12/how-much-are-we-worth
Cath – I have previously expressed some views on any foundation, person or organisation that makes the assumption that women need support for domestic/childcare matters. This seems to me deeply sexist, because after the breastfeeding phase, the care of an infant resides with parents, not women. This is why I view an initiative that supports women with “home help” to be possibly perpetuating a male assumption about women’s roles with which I emphatically disagree.
@Asa – I looked up Massimo’s post. Gosh, those salaries are low. But scientific salaries aren’t that fantastic wherever you look, who why are there more women scientists in Italy in particular? Could there be some other demographic factors at work, such as the fact that the birth rate in Italy is collapsing? I’m surely not the person to answer that question.
@Maxine – your views are well taken, but what one has to deal with are the facts on the ground. One fact you haven’t addressed is that many families these days consist of single parents, and that parent – perhaps because of inequities in the child-custodial system that is biased heavily against fathers – awards children to their mothers. And sexist or not, these mothers will need assistance with childcare if they are to pursue careers in science.
I don’t think many regular readers would have mistaken you for a big American Throwball fan, Henry, but I take your point!
Maxine, your comment confused me no end until I realised that you are probably addressing Martin?! I do agree with you though, for the most part (you are assuming that all female academics have a partner to assist with childcare. I would argue that there are more academics who are single mothers than who are single fathers).
Ooh, spooky post crossing moment.
... And another things. There is also the situation in which there are two parents who are both scientists and have children, but because of the family-unfriendly nature of science, they can’t get jobs in the same city, or even the same continent. Children will, as a rule, want to stay with their mother (I dare you to tell me I’m wrong on that) so that mother will, on a day-to-day basis, be a single parent.
This is an English-language link that explains the initiative by Nüsslein-Vollhard, here in partnership with L’Oréal Germany and the UNESCO.
... because they’re worth it.
Henry> I am not sure. I guess I could speculate based on child care etc but I did find an EU report at this place:http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/she_figures_2003.pdf
at page 30 and 31 fig 1.5a and 1.6a you can see the numbers/% researchers and women in EU in 2003 devided by country. I have to admit I haven’t read it all (just found it), but give me some time and I’ll see if I can find some suggestions on why there are some vast differences (and starteling to me would be that some ‘equality countries’ have a higher disparity between women and men in research positions rather than the opposite way…) Although, it is nothing new I am afraid.
Things are [very] seldom what they seem to be.
Åsa, thanks for the numbers. Germany has the lowest percentage (21%) of women researchers in the higher education sector, compared to 37% in the UK. And the numbers are lower for senior academic staff (full professors: 8% in Germany and 14% in the UK). It looks to me as if more has to be done in Germany than in some other countries in the EU.
Thanks for that link, Asa. It makes very interesting reading. The things that struck me immediately were that the numbers of male researchers vary hugely, whereas the numbers of female researchers were always low. So in countries in which women appear to be represented more (such as Italy and Greece) it could be that the number of researchers overall is low, not that women are especially well-represented. It also seems to be the case (though I may be wrong) that in countries where there are more researchers, a greater proportion tends to be female. If that’s the case, then it could be that countries that value research more will also tend to value its researchers more, irrespective of sex.