Ever since the Guardian axed its weekly science supplement a few years ago, there hasn’t been a single British broadsheet that considered the topic interesting enough to devote more than a few sporadic column inches in the main news pages. All the major papers have magazines or sections dedicated to sport, travel, television, family, literature, money, arts and other topics, but science has been left out in the cold.
Until now. I have been awaiting the arrival of ‘Eureka’, the Times’ new weekly science magazine, ever since I first saw the advertisements in the Underground. An issue was duly procured at the newsagents, this debut morning, and I flipped through it eagerly on my morning commute. The magazine looked superficially good – lots of articles and intriguing topics, nice graphics and layout. And I was happy to see it wasn’t just a series of features about scientific facts and findings; there were many profiles of real, working scientists – most of them gratifyingly young and non-famous. But as I worked my way to the end, I slowly realized what was wrong.
‘Eureka’ was almost completely male. Of the twenty practicing scientists either featured, or asked to air their opinion, only four were women. But the masculinity cut much deeper than that, much more subliminally. The imagery, too, was almost totally male. Whenever the designers had to choose an arbitrary human figure to illustrate an article, they almost invariably chose men. There is a man’s face on the cover (appropriately labelled ‘the future face of science’, dovetailing quite nicely with the predominant gender of the young up-and-comings celebrated within its pages). There are male long-distance runners, male actors on their whimsical ‘quantum of cool’ scale, a man holding up a baby, even a male zombie. There are pictures of Robert Fitzroy, Kevin Spacey, Sam Phillips, Clarence Darrow, Richard Hammond, Charles Darwin and Bill Bryson. Aside from the four female scientists featured, women appear only in stereotypically girlish roles: a wide-eyed lover mocked up on a Mills-and-Boon-style romance novel cover; a Thirties woman playing with her nylon stockings; a scantily-clad woman in a see-through dress. The only gender-neutral sketch is of a woman yawning (probably because science is ever-so-boring to the fairer sex, isn’t it?) Oh, and there’s a snippet about how getting tromped by a stiletto packs more power than an elephant.
I am sure that none of this was deliberate, absolutely certain. And I’m not going to give up on ‘Eureka’ for something so superficial – not yet, anyway. But things like this do actually matter to me, and probably to other women scientists out there who’d like their portrayal in the media to match more closely to the situation in real life. Possibly in common with other science bloggers amongst you, I received an email from ‘Eureka’ today, asking if I would join their forums and help steer their editorial direction. This is definitely an issue I will be bringing up.
oh, I hope you can bring it to their attention and happy that they are looking for scientist out here (there) to get input and comments about their magazine. Half of the time this (the male dominance) happens I truly think that people don’t “think about it” and it ends up with the more stereotypical idea of things (the other half is probably more purposefully ignored).
I am sort of curious why there was a woman with a see-through dress though… for material purposed? And the stiletto, is that mainly because of a smaller surface than the elephant foot? (hoof?) hm, I wonder if I can find it online…
I am sure that none of this was deliberate, absolutely certain.
That’s what makes it difficult to bring something like this up without being put in the corner of a feminist crusader. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a feminist crusader.
It probably wasn’t deliberate, sure—and that’s what makes it so bad. No one noticed until it was in the shops. Or if they did notice, nothing was done about it. That creeping sexism is almost as bad as the obvious sort. At least when it’s obvious you can do something about it. This… well, I hope you do get editorially involved, because then you might be able to have a beneficial effect.
Asa, the scantily clad woman accompanied a piece about how walking is healthy for you – so, completely arbitrary. She was in summer beach mode, hence the translucency of her outfit. It’s not the sort of thing that would have bothered me at all by itself, were it not for the aggregate effect of everything else.
Stilettos apply 3 million newtons per square meter, whereas the elephant (are you listening, Eva?) is a mere 125,000. It’s not well explained but from the equations I think it’s to do with the surface area of the applied force.
Which is why stilettos are banned from dance floors but elephants aren’t.
Sorry, as you were.
Jenny – do you think they’d let you guest-edit an issue to highlight this issue and restore some balance…?
Ha! Now there’s an idea – if I haven’t already burned my bridges with their editorial team by posting this blog!
@steffi I did feel a bit apprehensive about going into crusader feminist mode – especially as it was all so very subtle. But this blog post is getting tweeted and retweeted, so I must not be the only one who found it a bit odd.
I read it yesterday and immediately noticed this, too – particularly in that profile spread of scientists towards the end – largely male as you say. Yet the editorial staff of Eureka are fairly evenly balanced across the genders.
Nature Reports Climate Change have just published the views of six people on climate change books to read on the run-up to Copenhagen. Each person asked is a man. The books, also, as far as it is possible to tell, are by men.
Yesterday on the Great Beyond, a post stated that 42 per cent of a sample of 1,700 fellows of the Royal Society and the Nat Acad of Med Sci were educated at private schools. I wonder how many of them are also men?
I despair.
(The context of that 42 % figure is that more than 90 % of the population is educated at state schools. I think it is more than 95 % actually, but not exactly sure.)
@Maxine I’m not sure about the exact numbers, but for sure the RS is largely male. Another shocking figure is the number of women who have ever given the Royal Institution Christmas lecture – I think it’s something like 3, ever since 1825. (There’s a list here) – where surely the barrier is far lower than entry into the Royal Society.
yet the editorial staff of Eureka are fairly evenly balanced across the genders.
I can’t double-check because I don’t have a copy to hand, but it looked like 2:4 F:M to me. The sample size is too small to be meaningful, but for publishing that’s quite a significant skew, I’d have thought.
By the way, Eureka is now online.
I just saw that our latest Nobellist has awareded three woman scientists a medal of honour, the greatest number ever. (According to the post at the link, in some years there have been no awards to women.)
(I knew that about the RS – my question was sarcy/rhetorical. Filter the already male-dominated RS by “privately educated” and I would be surprised to find any women included! I really do feel mad about this, especially as it is actually not that difficult to feature women scientists, invite them to join your society, ask them to write articles for your journal, etc.)
PS. Yegods.
I’ve just checked the website. If you were an alien you would think that science on earth is an exclusively male pursuit.
RPG – one of them is the astronmer royal, so maybe he doesn’t count, making it 2:2 ;-)
Your point about publishing skew is extremely apt, of course, as there are often more female editors on a publication than there are male. Mentioning no examples.
That’s fascinating. Almost makes me want to go buy a copy to get my sympathetic feminist enraged.
Maybe rather than guest editing they could include a specific feature on female scientists? On the other hand, that rather feels like drawing attention to the matter where what would surely be better would be simply a realistic representation of women in science (not as high as it should be, but a heckuva lot higher than it seems to be here).
Come now, Richard, there is mention of one woman on the entire Eureka page – in the news roundup for the rest of the Times, where we learn that one was murdered! By a man, natch. ;-)
I am uncomfortable with the idea of a guest-edited* issue. ‘Oh, let’s keep the feminists happy by doing a special issue. Yeah, look how progressive we are.’
*I mis-typed that originally, and it aptly looked like ‘gusset-edited’.
@Jenny (comments got crossed) hee hee.
Oh, and look:
http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2009/10/science-central-is-moving-to-eurekazone.html#comments
Let’s all go over mob-handed.
Bill – as you suggest, I think a “special issue” or “guest woman editor” is completely missing the point. There are plenty of women scientists doing plenty of science. All I am saying to anyone who will listen is “they are not invisible so don’t treat them as if they are” – and, to ram the point home, women editors are treating them this way as well as male editors.
Looking at the Eureka website, actually, I think the marketeers have decided that men are the main demographic for this content – hence the heavy sport advertising. Perhaps the editorial team have given it the feel of a lad’s magazine precisely because they’ve been advised to cater to that market. In which case, it was a purely financial decision – which I suppose it less easy to criticize.
You may be right jenny. But isn’t it depressing in that case that it’s assumed women will be uninterested?
There is also a tension between ‘science’ (for everyone) and ‘tech’ (undeniably male biased).
I’m depressed.
I’m really into tech, and I know many other women who are too. You know, the sorts who refuse to be caught dead with a pink mobile phone.
Science has always had to share air time and column inches with tech, ‘nature’ and the environment – the latter three being perceived as a lot more appealing to the general public. We should really be happy that at least one newspaper has brought back some science, no matter how disappointingly done.
Bill, I missed your first comment. No, I think having a special feature on women scientists misses the point, as you say. I’m tired of being put in a pen and having people feed me peanuts. I just want to be one of the normal crowd at the zoo.
At risk of having stuff thrown at me, 4 women out of 20 doesn’t seem an unrepresentative ratio.
According to Simon Baron Cohen’s THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE, ‘In the 1970s the sex ratio of those working in the fields of maths, physics and engineering was about 9:1 (male:female) and this remains the case today 2003.’ I know it’s a bit different in biology, but is it enough to balance this out?
It’s also interesting that the ratio of males to females on the autistic spectrum is around 9:1. To quote Hans Asperger:
“… we have seen that autistic individuals, as long as they are intellectually intact, can almost always achieve professional success… A good professional attitude involves single-mindedness as well as a decision to give up a large number of other interests… It seems that for success in science or art, a dash of autism is essential.”
Jenny: oh I see ,of course health and bathing suits go together… duh ^^
I want to be one of the normal crowd in the zoo too.
Going back to non-funny mode. I think the ratio of male:female scientists starts with the problem of defining scientists. As far as I remember from my studies of the demograhics of PhDs and upward in Sweden, the graduate students are dominantly female (even if Brian’s comment about the 9:1 of math/physics/engineering is towards the ‘truth’ – maybe 6:1? – there) although in chemistry/biology/humanities (but maybe not economics) the number of graduate students are more and therefore their contribution of the female ratio gets higher.
Of course, one might say that “scientists” are people who have their PhD and are either post docs or faculty researchers or private sector researchers? Then I would think the female ratio isn’t as high as when adding into the graduates. (although, the US and post doc ratio is fairly balanced as far as I remember, but this might be in my head focused on medicine/biology where there are a large female portion.)
All in all, it sounded more as the magazine were mainly written and pictures chosen to be “manly and sporty” which would subtly imply that if it gets too “neutral” men aren’t interested in reading it?!
Well, of course Brian, if you want to maintain that lousy ratio in your specialty you’re going about it completely the right way.
All in all, it sounded more as the magazine were mainly written and pictures chosen to be “manly and sporty” which would subtly imply that if it gets too “neutral” men aren’t interested in reading it?!
This argument (i.e. the marketing one), I’ve just realized holds no water. You want men to read a mag, you put in toys and… chicks. Preferably half-naked.
So a complete #fail either way. Bad Times. No increased circulation for you.
Richard – I thought about this too. You wouldn’t put in romance novel covers and stockings to appeal to men – unless you thought that the desired demographic would relate to the demeaning of women (which is, scarily enough, possible. Not sure I was to know what goes on in the minds of some marketeers).
But the 9:1 ratio (it’s more like 6:4 women:men in the life sciences, by the way) argument is irrelevant if you’re after readers, which will be a 1:1 split. And by the way, I was being generous with the figure of four women – one of those females was a market researcher collaborating with scientists, so it’s more like 3/20.
Not quite sure why am bothering to comment cos I’ll be sworn at, but hey, here goes.
The announcement of Eureka reached the Maison Des Girrafes where it was greeted with no more than a very weak galvanic flicker, followed very quickly by apathy. I have seen too many science specials done by the broadsheets to care very much any more about what newspapers do and don’t do about science.
Many years ago when the world was young, Good Housekeeping, a well-known journal of record very popular at the Maison Des Girrafes (though less popular since the achingly funny Maureen Lipman was replaced by the very much less funny Sandi Toksvig as their back page columnist), did a big feature on women in science, penned by the estimable Vivienne Parry. The feature had interviews and photos (all very professional and businesslike, nary a wardrobe malfunction anywhere, believe me, I checked) of young women making careers for themselves in everything from aarvarkology to zymurgy. The message was clear: science should be seen as attractive a career option to young women as, say, banking or accountancy.
All well and good.
I wrote a letter to GH commending them for their article but pointing out the obvious
stiletto heelelephant in the room – until career structures for scientists of all genders are improved, young women in science will face the usual agonizing choices that we’ve discussed here too often to count – should they be productive or reproductive? I’m happy to say that GH published my letter (edited, though. It was a long letter).As regards Eureka, one must account for the target readership. Perhaps The Thunderthighs thinks that readers of this section will be young men, in the same way that readers of GH are likely to be female? That’s not meant to be an excuse, but it could provide a rationale.
Targeted readership is what it’s all about – no new supplement is going to be launched unless it has advertising support, and that means the identification of a viable market. Perhaps the marketing folks at The Thunderthighs felt that more men would be interested in a science section than women, so the editorial was tailored accordingly (just sayin’). Self fulfilling prophecy? Maybe.
As well as working for your favourite science magazine beginning with N I am also a columnist for BBC Focus – I don’t believe there is a gender bias here, though I’d be receptive to views on this.
Hi Henry – yeah, we too concluded above (up there a ways) that is was likely down to the marketing demographic. I agree these things are self-fulfilling – if you market only to men, it won’t be a surprise that that’s who ends up being interested. There have been a few attempts to market science to young women in the webzine arena – Inkling seems pretty much static now (/checks, yes no new articles since the end of 2008. Pity.). Shiny shiny is hip and popular, but that’s more tech than science I guess. And it’s pretty damned pink. I can’t think of anything else. In women’s mags you get a lot of science in the form of news snippets about food/health science (“blueberries are good for you”) which I suppose is better than nothing.
LabLit seems to have loads of female readers – from feedback I’ve got it’s pretty much 50:50. I wonder why? Possibly because literature is read largely by the female demographic, if you believe the stats, and the science lures in more men, so it balances out? Not sure.
Jenny wrote:
Perhaps…. though sadly, most of this food/health science stuff as printed in such places is (scientifically) utter bilge, as many a thread on the Badscience Forum testifies. I would include the comparable bits in (e.g.) the Guardian’s G2. Need I mention the ubiquitous “drink two litres of water a day to stay healthy, and tea/coffee/caffeinated soft drinks don’t count” marketing scam/scare/con?
It is a sad fact that lots of women read The Daily Nimbyist Bungaloid Curtain Twitcher, and yet its science coverage is perhaps less sensible than it might be. A missed opportunity, methinks.
In other news, I have just learned (from Facebook) that our friend Brian Clegg was writing about physics and typed, by mistake, Large Hardon Collider, proof if it were needed that science is male, in that it consists largely of stiff phallic objects.
A stiff, phallic object. Yesterday
Oooh look, here’s another one
and another …
I’m sure you’re right in some cases, but to be fair, some mags do attempt to do it properly. I used to be an editor of a reputable food journal; some of our peer-reviewed papers would get picked up by the broadsheets, and women’s mags would pick them up thereafter. The messages would get simplified, but I have to say I was often impressed by how good a job their editors did distilling the information. Of course it depended on how well the broadsheet journo had done, initially.
Sorry, Henry, our posts crossed – my previous was a reply to Austin. That’s a lovely Gilson.
I think almost everything have been said already, but I’m stuck with one question. Why would any man who is interested in reading about scientists get any less interested if a fair proportion of these scientists were female? Would he go like "oh, women are involved in this? In that case I don’t want to learn about this new cool technique/astronomical finding/new drug? Maybe I am being very naive but I can’t imagine why it could be a bad idea, from a reader-attraction standpoint, to include more women scientists?
Jenny – if not a guest (gusset?) edited issue, perhaps a pointed op-ed piece in an upcoming issue? I think you’ve got your topic already…
Anna, I’ve blogged about this elsewhere (and goodness, and I see it’s racked up 327 comments!), but the main point about exclusion is that it’s subconscious, for both men and women. Many studies have shown this in many different ways. If asked to assemble a lecture series, for example, both men as well as women tend to instinctively think of men first – male scientists are at the forefront of their mind, whereas equally talented women aren’t. This doesn’t mean that the selection committee is sexist – apparently we are all wired to think of science as a man’s profession unless we make a conscious effort otherwise. So I suspect what happened with the good folk on the Eureka editorial team is they all sat around brainstorming who to feature, and it was mostly men who came to mind. Because they weren’t thinking of gender at all, they didn’t even notice, possibly, how very skewed it turned out to be.
Meanwhile, I don’t think you can blame the choice of images and graphics on the editorial team. The artists/designers, also responding possibly to their subconscious biases, could have thought of accompanying imagery equally innocently. Unless they were under a brief from marketing to target men – though I doubt this, actually. Articles about stilettos and nylons don’t make sense in that context.
Richard, I wouldn’t say no if they asked, but I sort of doubt they’ll want to highlight this deficit so early on in their lifespan.
Why would any man who is interested in reading about scientists get any less interested if a fair proportion of these scientists were female?
Listen, we’re talking about marketing droids here. I rest my case.
Heh. But some of my best friends are merketing droids.
Maxine wrote:
Nature Reports Climate Change have just published the views of six people on climate change books to read on the run-up to Copenhagen. Each person asked is a man. The books, also, as far as it is possible to tell, are by men.
My job is to organise talks by scientists to the general public. We’ve done at least 50 of these talks now. Off the top of my head, we’ve done maybe about six women? I invite all the speakers, many are authors recommended by their publishers or featured in book reviews. Several are award winners. The others are just people I’ve come across. There’s no obvious bias in my mind – and yet, they’re almost all men.
Ironically, we have three women speaking next week – in an event all about Women in Science.
Are men just better at self-publicity so I’ve heard of them? Do women only come to our attention when someone else specifically publicises their work for them?
Ironically, we have three women speaking next week – in an event all about Women in Science.
I’d really like to see a man at such an event. But I’m too scared to go.
On the topic of percentage of women in science: I was just reading my morning paper (which I was reading over dinner, it’s been one of those days…) and I found an article about female Nobel laureates. This year we’ve had four women awarded with Nobel prizes, which is the highest number ever. According to the paper, the explanation for this high number was an increase in the ratio of female scientists – if we are to believe my paper, “in american top universities around 25% of the researchers in natural sciences are female”. The paper doesn’t offer any definition of “researchers”, nor of course any references, but still. The argument that women are in such a minority might not hold true very much longer.
Interesting, Joanna, thanks for sharing. Again, as I touched on above, if psychological studies are to be believed, the men are at the top of your mind not because they publicize themselves better, but because your brain is wired to think of speakers or scientists as men because they conform to the schema we have for that role. People who are trying to get past this problem are told to specifically think of female candidates when they are drawing up lists. This doesn’t mean you invite weaker candidates who are female – it means you force your brain to put them onto the long-list, where they may very well compete favorably with your male candidates.
“whereas the elephant (are you listening, Eva?)”
Yes, quietly listening to talk about elephants and women scientists. I have nothing to add, though. Except that I used to write for Inkling and was sad they stopped. The editors went on to other things.
Jenny> I have also read quite a few articles in regards to the “on the top there is a man but on the third or second place you might find a woman”. It was very obvious when people are asked to give a list of three people rather than “the one and only”.
If it means that the “best” aka top scientists are men and the middle people are more female I don’t know. (I have a non-scientific hunch about the distribution in regards to full professorships vs “researchers on departmental levels” and gender but nevermind, it’s not stats at the moment.)
Wasn’t it mentioned in a previous discussion that Italy had a ratio that differed from UK/US when it comes to female professor/researchers i.e. more females than males in academia there?
I don’t know but I think that is true, at least I’ve heard the stat somewhere and I am aware of a lot of senior Italian biologists. France always struck me as rather more egalitarian, but perhaps that’s just a feeling I’ve carried over from reading Rosalind Franklin’s biography.
I’d really like to see a man at such an event. But I’m too scared to go
I’d go.
but because your brain is wired to think of speakers or scientists as men because they conform to the schema we have for that role.
Bingo. And by failing to address that, the Times has fallen into the trap. It’s not that men are better scientists, or better publicists; it’s that the patriarchal society we live in has created the roles, the schema. Most people don’t realize it doesn’t have to be like that. And they won’t unless it’s challenged wherever possible, by women and men.
We’ve barely moved on from Elizabeth Philpot being denied access to the Royal Geological Society, have we? (I’ve just read that bit!)
Hate to break it to you, Richard, but I think that part of the Chavalier novel is fictitious. She probably never would have tried because she’d have known it was futile.
No! I can’t hear you! La la la la-la la!
Non-fictional, though, is Beatrix Potter having a male colleague read her paper (in the humanities sense of reading a paper) at the Linnean society. (info )
That’s fascinating, Eva – I had no idea that Potter had scientist tendencies. It’s a pity her paper was never found.
(Incidentally, are you a great purveyor of The Australian Fungi Website?)
I know a lot of young women, as a result of being the mother of a couple, and certainly there is a big consumer market there for sci/tech applications – marketing departments take note. There are lots of – I hestitate to use the word “niches” because it implies small – but there are lots of “areas” not covered by current marketing campaigns and efforts precisely because such campaigns are too “niche” – going for certain specialist male demographics. I mean, you don’t have to go for a pink iPhone to get teens to persuade their rich parents to stump up for things ;-) (And we are always on the lookout for xmas/birthday/exam presents once they have grown out of Sylvianian families!).
On the question of asking people (scientists) to participate in things, Jo and others. I can assure you that the women are there! For example, a certain journal beginning with N a few months ago ran a news feature on “five crop scientists who are going to change the world”. They were all men. I was, er, very cross, so contacted an eminent crop scientist not unknown to Nature Network and sent the Nature news/features editor a list of 5 eminent female crop scientists. They are there. They are not invisible. Ask them, they will come. Nature Network, hearteningly, is evidence of that.
That’s a great story, Maxine – it’s just a pity you didn’t catch them before they’d published the feature.
“are you a great purveyor of The Australian Fungi Website?”
Heh, no. Just googled for a reference for the Potter story and that came up.
And we are always on the lookout for xmas/birthday/exam presents once they have grown out of Sylvianian families
Do they ever grow out of Sylvanian families? Really? There’s hope, then. Thank you for that.
What about Transylvanian families?
Oh I do hope not.
No, they never grow out of those. Crox Minor has aspirations of Goth-hood.
It had to be done.
Wow!
Mmmm, curry.
Coming in late here, with many approving nods as I read down the comments.
Not much I can add that hasn’t been said, except:
LabLit seems to have loads of female readers – from feedback I’ve got it’s pretty much 50:50. I wonder why?
I think your prominent role there, Jennifer, and leading by example, is not entirely foreign to that outcome.
I’m quite fond of curry myself. Hard to take it out here, though, as it’s dismayingly scarce. ;-)
Perhaps marketing departments haven’t yet caught on to the new demographic for cool techy stuff (aside from the mandatory pink silicon accessories to “girl” them up) because they themselves are male-dominated? I can’t find any figures in a quick scan, but maybe one of you can.
Also, check out the cover of Marketing of high-tech products and innovations. The first author is a woman professor. The only one of the three authors to consider her family an accomplishment worth mentioning in her biography. smiles and shakes head ruefully.
They have a blog on the book’s website, perhaps I should ask them what they think about how marketing high-tech stuff to young women is an unexploited niche?
I can’t work out if the figure on the left of the cover is a man or a woman. Looks mannish, except that’s s/he is doing some pretty female-looking heavy lifting – while on a phone, which suggests feminine multitasking skills as well.
Men seldom mention families in a professional context, according to Virginia Zakian’s synthesis research. She advises that women should never mention or put images of their children in their PowerPoint presentations – although men can get away with it without losing any gravitas or being instantly undermined on a subconscious level.
Yah, that’s an interesting one, innit? Although I will effuse ad nauseam about my girls to anyone who will listen, I would’t dream of putting them in a professional presentation just because; although I might (and I think I have) if I was making a relevant point.
I’m Richard, and I’m male.
I’m coming in late too – thanks Jennifer for highlighting Eureka – lots of interesting comments. Our work is all about trying to address these imbalances. Among other things, we have ‘GetSET Women’ where nearly 2,000 women have placed information about themselves, their work etc. Good hunting ground for Times journalists!
The Times might argue it can only sell copies of a science magazine by portraying men as scientists and the occasional woman as light entertainment. But that doesn’t seem right, either ethically or in terms of markets and readership.
The workforce is more than 75% male. But a Times magazine is not just for those qualified and working in science/engineering/technology. Also, we know women buy and read the Times (they’d be lost without that market) and women share their copies with men, influence men etc. And as others have said, I’d also want to check out the degree to which an image of a female scientist would put men off reading further. And would encourage female readers in.
I would hope that the Times (and other publications) has corporate values that include diversity and equality, and is clear how these inform editorial policy.
At UKRC we put forward a business case for recruiting and promoting women in science/eng/tech. But of course it is also important for ethical and social reasons. No economic decision is value free, but the bottom line is sometimes used by employers, governments etc to justify a shift in values.
- I don’t see that strong male bias doesn’t is justified in the case of Eureka.
- I hope the Times marketers and editors are reading this blog to check out reactions.
- They are welcome to talk to us to get contacts.
- I hope Henry and everyone comes to the event in Second Life on Monday.
Ruth, thank you so much for your insightful comments. On the topic of whether men would be put off seeing female scientists, I was thinking of the case of television dramas such as CSI, where there are many (rather fetching) female scientists on display. But I’ve read somewhere that detective/police procedurals/mysteries are typically watched mostly by women, so that doesn’t answer the question whether they are off-putting to men. It must be studies done somewhere.
GetSET women is a great idea – I wasn’t aware of it at all. I might should add my profile!
I"m not sure if the Eureka bods are reading here. They posted a blog on the Eureka site saying thus far all of the feedback had been “brilliant”, but that was before I posted this. UK science blogs would be an obvious place for surveillance.
Interestingly, it didn’t even occur to me that newspapers would ever have a diversity/equality mandate in their editorial policy. I just assumed making money was the bottom line.
Well, if they’re not reading UK science blogs, that invite they sent us was a lie. And they should be now.
I have to ask – how common is it that gender aspects are discussed, generally, in UK media? I have the feeling that such a feature as this would be almost impossible in Sweden – the gender aspect is neverendingly being brought up, and I’m quite sure articles are being checked for political correctness – the paper would realize how bad it would look to do something like this. Sometimes this political correctness is pushed too far and absolutely everything is just so appropriate, but I guess, looking at the alternative, it’s probably a good thing.
I hope Ruth has republished her excellent and constructive comment over at the Eureka blog – particularly with its helpful suggestion of where the Times can find women’s profiles (knowing how journalists like to have copy ideas handed to them on a plate – ooooh, nasty comment, but one does wonder how much research went on on this occasion).
Anna, I know what you mean. I am actually a bit nervous about getting labeled as some knee-jerk PC feminist, especially as the perceived problems I highlight are pretty subtle. I wouldn’t normally make a fuss like this, and I don’t want this discussion to be nasty or even unproductive. My blog was posted as constructive criticism. But yes – it can go too far in the other direction. All I’m asking for is just a little bit of balance, but expecting 50/50 would unrealistic. I’d settle for 30/70!
I better put in a link to GetSET Women! Free to sign up to, and you start getting our bi-monthly newsletter. GSW is also for women who work to support women in sci/eng/tech or advance gender equality in those sectors (eg journalists, academics, human resources professionals etc). Our GetSET Women blog hosts a different woman once a fortnight and I know some have been contacted by journalists after being on the blog.
I am looking forward to buying Eureka next week – I missed the first edition but have had a look at the website. I hope it takes off, and I reckon upping the number of women featured would be a benefit.
On the issue of company values, all companies have them but may not articulate them. But they matter, and they matter in large and high profile companies a lot. See this page on the Eureka website: it says the Times is publishing Eureka in part because of the newspaper’s long-standing committment to charting scientific progress. They understand their readers are interested in science and scientific issues (and they do not single out men in this statement). And on the same page you will see that News International has made a corporate commitment to building an environmentally sustainable business, in terms of paper suppliers, processes and power provision.
I think at UKRC we’d say they’d be helping the progress of science by upping the profile of women: diversity of minds and backgrounds is essential to innovation.
Indeed, Ruth.
I think ‘Eureka’ is going to be monthly, not weekly, though.
PS @Ruth, well done on a purple website, not a pink one!
Ruth, I can send you my copy of the first edition if you like. Thanks for telling us more bout GetSET.
@Jennifer Thanks Jennifer! Signed by you, for historic purposes! But perhaps you should keep it.
@Richard Monthly. Note made in diary. Purple indeed. We revamped the whole GetSET environment recently and its going really well. Constructive criticism always welcomed!
@ Jennifer – I agree with you completely, I think it’s great that you brought this up. I was just curious if these kind of conversations were commonplace in UK or not. Around here we have them all the time, with the benefit that people often think in genus perspectives (and the drawback that you sometimes get a bit bored, but that is in no way the case with your post, again, I think it’s great you bring it up!)
Actually, Anna, I think America is more far PC than the UK. It’s sort of nice that one can relax here and be a bit naughty on occasion without getting lynched. You know, like use the word ‘girl’ instead of ‘woman’, or tell an off-color joke among friends. It really can go too far.
Many years ago when the world was young I devised and edited a weekly one-page feature in your favourite journal beginning with N called ‘Lifeline’ in which A Scientist would answer a series of stock questions, some serious (their scientific mentors, their inspiration) and some silly (what they kept in their fridge, their favourite bedtime reading).
Imagine my surprise when I got a very rude letter from A Scientist (Male) complaining that I was a sexist pig, as very few women were being profiled. This surprised me as I was paying scrupulous attention to the very problem – or so I thought. Although I was commissioning equal numbers of men and women
and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri, relatively fewer women took the time to deliver copy (I got none at all from the SFCFACs). In the end I had to ask disproportionately more women at the commissioning stage, just to achieve parity at publication. Now, one can go into the reasons why fewer women than men returned copy, but the end result looked sexist (at least, to those who care about such things) even when I was (I thought) going to some lengths to avoid such bias. I wonder if the editors of Eureka had the same problem?Quite possibly, Henry. It’s a good point. People organizing science seminars have the same problem – although the actual pool is probably about 50:50 in your choice of female speaker in Biology, there are far fewer that seem to be on people’s radars (for various reasons of perceived worth that we’ve been talking about). So this subset is constantly asked to make up the numbers and are oversubscribed. My friends who organize these series say exactly what you’ve said – more women must be asked to achieve parity. Perhaps the women you were asking were also the token woman on every committee, symposium, PhD viva committee, recruitment exercise, lecture series etc etc etc, whereas your male respondents had fewer overall commitments?
The Eureka team are experienced editors, at least two of them experienced with science. They probably know all about this phenomenon, so I would hope that they’d know how to get around it. It’s not exactly rocket science.
Perhaps the women you were asking were also the token woman on every committee, symposium, PhD viva committee, recruitment exercise, lecture series etc etc etc
Yes, I think that was precisely the problem. Especially the ‘etc etc etc’ part.
Of course there is also the alternative hypothesis that women are less conscientious about deadlines! But from my experience in working with authors and referees in editorial, I can’t say the trend goes that way…
My experience with this feature suggests (and that’s all it does – suggests, not proves or substantiates) that the women were simply more overwhelmed with things to do than their male colleagues, much as you suspected. One female scientist told me that the commission was such that if you didn’t drop what you were doing and attend to it immediately, it would never get done. From this and some other suspicions, I got the feeling that once a scientist had agreed to the commission and received the questionnaire, the female scientists tended to get cold feet and were more reticent about ‘exposing themselves’, as it were, in public, than their male colleagues.
All that may be fair comment, but doesn’t address the imagery/graphics in the supplement.
Ah, well, I know not of the imagery/graphics of which you speak. having not actually seen a copy.
That doesn’t stop most people having an opinion.
My opinion, not having seen the copy, is that the imagery/graphics are not always under the control of those doing the editorial, so although one might have an opinion on the entire package, the origins of each are different. But graphics are very powerful, I admit, and could colour one’s opinion of the whole, irrespective of whatever else is said.
Coming in very late to this thread…skimming comments and agreeing with most. A couple of points, however (and no, I have not seen the magazine, only the online equivalent):
I agree with the points made regarding marketing droids setting the demographics, although, technically it’s the advertisers who really drive this, not the droids themselves. If this magazine followed the typical lifecycle, there were probably a bunch of focus groups commissioned, numbers wrangled, and charts produced. Then they figured what would attract the most advertising revenue, lined up ad commitments from a few very influential advertisers,and tailored the final magazine to fit what those advertisers wanted.
@ Anna and Jenny: Yes, the US is far too PC (especially in some parts of the country, including the city in which I live). However, there are those of us who make a point of being as un-PC as we can, just for the heck of it :)
It’s worse than we thought. Those 15 profiles? There were three more they couldn’t fit into the print edition. Guess what sex they are?
Sheesh.
However, there are those of us who make a point of being as un-PC as we can, just for the heck of it
If you don’t mind being called a misogynist right-wing bigot, as I have been lately, but wearing such epithets as badges of honour – then good for you.
Add Elinor Ostrom to the list of women winning Nobels this year. She is actually the very first woman to get a Nobel for economics.
Also read this article the links in it and all the comments on the bottom, for a very similar issue.
So with those three men they couldn’t squeeze into the mag (and I guess we should be grateful they didn’t bump the women to make room), we are getting even higher than Brian’s 1:9 autism stat! Hurrah (?).
Yes, I’ve been involved with print mags before, and the art is usually wholly divorced from editorial (along with the headlines, which can be even more problematic). As I said somewhere way up there, I wasn’t blaming the editorial team for the graphics. But I was suggesting that someone might want to have a quiet word with both axes.
@Henry: I have all kinds of badges that I wear, some are bloodier than others :)
@Jenny: I still have hope that you can turn this ship around somehow, if you do end up “steering their editorial direction” but it’s going to be an uphill battle. (How’s that for mixing metaphors?)
Bora, our posts crossed.
Interesting blog by Ivan, saying that no women bloggers had been voted for. I noticed it was written in 2008, before Nature Network had gained as much in prominence. I wonder whether it would be different now?
But there were lots of great, well-established female bloggers in OpenLab 2008 as well…them not coming to mind when surveys knock on the door is probably down to that same subconscious downgrading of worth of all things female in science that we’ve been talking about, as documented by Virginia Valian. Consistent with this known trend, women were just as likely to think men were the best as men were.
If you go to the original article, you will see that most suggested blogs were also written by males. Abel suggested one woman, PZ suggested one woman, Attila suggested two (but he gave a much longer list, exceeding the 3 we were asked to give) and I suggested two. The rest were men.
Making a balanced program of a conference is not easy. I explain how we do it here
and as the years go by it gets easier as our conference is now known for having an even gender split. The new Program is shaping nicely in this regard, and not all the women had to be invited – those who were here before now feel comfortable to suggest sessions, call me, pester me, etc., just like the guys do – and that is a good thing.
Ken, oddly I am disheartened by the news that the three additional scientists who didn’t make the cut for the final mag were yet more men. There is no way that the editors would not have noticed this glaring skew, with this additional data – and the fact they chose to do nothing about it means that it’s just not an issue that matters to them. I have the sneaking suspicion that a ship lacking even the most basic rudder is unlikely to be steerable. (How’s that for a ghastly extension of your metaphor?)
Also, the mailing that went out (to not just me) said: “I’ve just been having a look through your blog and I wanted to get in touch as I think you’d be a fantastic audience for a new science magazine from the Times.”
Surely if they were really reading, they would have noticed and responded to this post by now.
Bora, that’s really interesting – many thanks for sharing the information.
They don’t appear to be reading; neither have they responded to yours, Maxine’s or my comments at timesonline; neither have any of the other 67 ‘fans’ on facebook said anything about this blog (and I linked to it).
Epic.
I have noticed that the quest for ‘feedback’ is often code for ‘praise’. Yesterday we had a meeting to discuss issues about procuring supplies at our institute, for example. Lots of people said nice things, but every time I brought up a criticism, there was an immediate defensive response from the person who’d called the meeting.
Also, as I said above, it’s not in Eureka’s interest to call attention to their flaws this early. They’ve got a month to quietly get their act together — if I see changes that seem to reflect our feedback here, I’ll be happy.
Lots of people said nice things, but every time I brought up a criticism, there was an immediate defensive response from the person who’d called the meeting.
I guess the defensive response is an automatic biological response of some kind, but I agree that it is really frustrating to be confronted with this attitude. Especially on a scientific level, where we all are supposed to be raised to be able to look at problems objectively and appreciate different viewpoints.
In theory.
People tend to take such criticisms personally.
And then there’s the ’I’m doing this for you, you should be grateful!’ thing. When you’re paying for it.
We’ll see what happens next month, and then subsequently.
I’m willing to wager that someone has noticed this blog post, and our comments on their blog and Facebook
stoogefan page. And I’m further willing to wager that something will be done about it – not an overkill reversal, but enough womanly presence to address the problem while saving face. I’m betting 30:70 gender ratios in the next issue.What to wager, though?…
Whether they respond directly or not, some of us will be reading the next issue and can report back (and provide further direct feedback at the Times site) to see if any balances have been redressed or, even better, over-redressed.
Great, Maxine. By the way, that was 30:70 female:male I was wagering, not the other way ’round. Heaven forfend!
I’ll wager against you: They probably already have the articles and content for the second issue ready, so I doubt anything changed dramatically between the first and second issue. Maybe the graphics, but not the writing.
ha! Good point. How about the issue after that??
Oh come on, a monthly? We put 10 pages of Nature together from scratch from zero to printed issue in a day and a half each week (admittedly not the whole 100 weekly pages – but we don’t hang about -the rest of the “magazine” section, about 25 pages, takes a couple of weeks). A wee monthly supplement like that – peanuteroonys! And, if they have put some of it together, they can always hold over a few males and add in some newer, more 21st century content in time for the Nov issue…….
Actually, sadly, I suspect that featuring 16 up and coming scientists was not a regular feature. I get the feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more fact-and-figure type reporting, so the issue to watch will be whose research is featured and who is quoted.
Oh come on, a monthly? We put 10 pages of Nature together from scratch from zero to printed issue in a day and a half each week
uphill, both ways, in the snow. In a shoebox int’ middle of t’ road.
In a November 17, 2008 story in The New York Times, “What Has Driven Women Out of Computer Science?”:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16digi.html?em Ellen Spertus, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tells of her experience at computer camp, in which she discovered that there were six boys to every girl. (And later, she found that only 20 percent of computer science undergraduates at M.I.T. were female.)
The article says: “She published a 124-page paper, ‘Why Are There So Few Female Computer Scientists?’ that catalogued different cultural biases that discouraged girls and women from pursuing a career in the field,” and notes that her paper was published in 1991.
Computer science has changed since that time.
Today, there are even fewer women entering the field."
For what it’s worth, I’m a devotee of the New Times ‘Science Tuesday’ section, which they’ve put out for a good 20 years or so now . . .
Dan
PS — We did an editorial of our own on women in computing, at our own little CERN-based newsletter And we just now started a forum here on computing, called “iSGTW” (I know, awful title)
Dear all,
I have plenty of plans for championing women in science in future editions, but I’m afraid I will not be shoe-horning women into any issue in just for the sake of it.I’m the editor of Eureka, and yes I am a woman, and a very committed feminist. I have been following your blog, and reading your comments online. It’s taken a while for me to reply because I’ve been furiously busy, apologies for that. I do want to reply because I think you all raise incredibly important issues.
I would like to just explain our thinking about the number of women in the issue. Yes, we knew they were under-represented. Yes, we agonised about it. (I’m stung by the suggestion we didn’t notice, or that the graphics are dictated by marketing!)
But I, and my female picture editor, are absolutely committed to the principle of including ideas and pictures based on merit alone. We were looking for 15 astonishing ideas, and only 4 of the ideas we loved were being championed by women – Libby Heaney, Angela Belcher, Laura Chamberlain and Rachel Armstrong.
At one point we nearly put in a few more ideas, soley to have more pictures of women in the photo essay, but rejected the idea as patronising and ridiculous.
As for the columnists being male, I make no apologies for that. We wanted Martin Rees to be our guest columnist for our launch issue, but there will be women in that slot in the future (suggestions welcome!). The Times’ environment editor and science editor are male – but as a lifelong Times employee I can assure you that this is coincidental; there are plenty of women in positions of real power here, just not any in those two jobs. Ben Miller is male, but the market for comics with a scientific background is a niche one.
In a previous incarnation I was Deputy Business Editor of The Times and faced a similar problem; women were under-represented in senior roles in business, and getting them into our pages felt like a struggle. I came to the same conclusion then: our job is to report the world not invent it as we would like it to be.
I know that many of you felt that the furniture was male, and you are probably right. We could make more effort with the graphics etc.
If any of you have ideas for women whose work you think we would like to know about because the work is astonishing, then I would be delighted to hear about them. I can be reached at antonia.senior@thetimes.co.uk
many thanks
Antonia
shoe-horning women into any issue in just for the sake of it.
I don’t think anyone’s asking for that, and I think we’re quite clear about it. We want women to be equally/fairly represented. Big difference.
Antonia, I was merely theorizing that your team hadn’t noticed the gross gender imbalance because I couldn’t think of any other reason why you would have let the magazine go out in the state it was. In other words, I was trying to give you the benefit of the doubt. Now that I know it was deliberate, I will quietly revise my opinion of the magazine accordingly.
I was absolutely clear also that I did not want to have women shoe-horned in to achieve parity. It is entirely unnecessary for starters, as there are thousands of women doing incredible research out there.
If I were the editor of the magazine and I’d asked my team to search far and wide for “astonishing ideas” and they’d come up with such a male-centric selection, I would have stopped and ask myself: “Is this because female scientist don’t have astonishing ideas, or is there another reason?” As a female scientist for many, many years I have seen absolutely no evidence that men have better ideas than women, so I would have dug further. That this wasn’t something you thought might be a good idea does sort of suggest that your definition of ‘committed feminist’ might differ from mine.
Slightly off the beaten track, but isn’t that a Jerram I see at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/eureka/ above the Swine ’Flu heading? Thought I ought to give credit.
I come back to this after a few days, following the heads up on twitter. Interesting developments all round.
I quite agree with your latest comment Jenny. But the most interesting point I have seen in the above is the notion that even when invited to be involved, female scientists are less likely to accept. Is this true? If so what can be done about it?
PS over at lablit’s blogs, I must protest at your disgraceful characterisation of male scientists as being inordinately interested in explosions.
Quite right, Bill. We’re ordinately interested in them.
It was very good of Antonia Senior to come over here and to post. Re her request for women to feature, I’d recommend her to Ruth’s UKC4WSET list, and to the women blogging on Nature Network (Jenny Rohn, Kristi Vogel, Steffi Suhr, and many others – see Nature Network blogs home page).
But there are just so many women doing great scientific work – as I mentioned above, it really is not hard to find them. They are not invisible. I am afraid I absolutely do not buy the argument put forth by Henry and maybe others that it is harder to get women to write. I have personally commissioned literally hundreds of articles over the years, and have never found it a problem to publish those by women as well as those by men. I think every commissioning editor, whether of Eureka, or of a Nature or other scientific journal, or anywhere, can find people who are fully representative of the scientific world – gender, geographical location, etc. It really is not difficult. And if it takes an extra five minutes of phone calls/search to find a woman who isn’t into self-promotion bigtime but is doing superior work, then that is five minutes well spent.
Maxine, I agree it was good of Antonia to state her apologia here, and I see I was remiss at thanking her in my haste to post before leaving the lab this evening, but I also agree – in my own experiences in editorial – with your reiterated point that the excellent women scientists and their stories are there to be found in their multitudes. It’s possible that the Eureka team simply don’t have the time or resources to take that extra step – if this is true, then there is not much to be done.
Dan, thanks for your insights from CERN – very enlightening!
Bill, my tongue was in my cheek over at Lab Literal – having caused a few explosions of my own in my time…
Maybe they (Eureka) should a feature on Vagina Dentata! ;-)
Excellent idea! For the name alone – my God, was that inspired.
the quest for ‘feedback’ is often code for ‘praise’.
Oh, too true. Now that a dialogue has been engaged, the Eureka response to your next post in this series is eagerly awaited.
Right. I wish I could be as unbitterandtwisted as you, Heather.
The title of my post is a reference to the headline on the cover of Eureka. It wasn’t meant to be a prophecy about the world at large.
Sorry, I’m not an expert on that topic and it’s not relevant to this post either, I don’t think.
That’s ok.