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Every time I feel the need to whine about teaching and research in the humanities, I simply click on over to the science blogs authored by women. And then I feel much, much better about my field.
See, while women have flooded the gates of the humanities over the past 50 years or so, the sciences have been considerably less welcoming of women. While there are notable exceptions, such as primatology and botany, most disciplines have all kinds of barriers that keep the participation of women low or render it invisible.
Here's a round-up of the past month's news:
Dr. Free-Ride shares an episode from "the snakepit" of academic science: MIT Professor Susumu Tonegawa's communication with faculty candidate Alla Karpova, an exchange that ended with MIT losing out on hiring Karpova.
Propter doc responds to letters sent to Nature in response to its article on Ben Barres, a scientist and a man who used to be a woman. The Barres case has highlighted the way that a woman in science--one with the exact same capabilities and interests as one of her male peers--is subject to a different set of assumptions about and standards for her work. Propter doc writes,
If the problem of ‘women in science’ is defined as women not being prepared to battle away in the current system, then it is not affirmative action that it needed, it is the system that needs to be changed. There is really no need for aggression in science, and in general, women are less equipped to deal with an aggressive environment and peers.
In "Truth, Justice, and the Academic Way," another post related to the Barres case, Yami at Green Gabbro raises what I believe to be some excellent points, including these:
A scientific conversation about sex differences is (ideally) neutral, but it is difficult, if not impossible, to have a neutral scientific conversation in the midst of a heated political argument. I don’t see many neutral conversations on gendered brains; I see people* taking a perfectly good conversation about sexism, and transforming it into a conversation about sex differences, and that is not a neutral act. At the very least, it says “I don’t think your conversation about sexism is as important as my ideas about our spicy gendered brains� or “I am too stupid to recognize that a claim about the existence of discrimination is not a claim about the nonexistence of biology�; sometimes it says “stop talking about sexism, it’s all because of neurology, we do not need to seek social or political change�. Always it contains an implicit claim about the merits (and the lack thereof) of the pre-hijack discussion.
Ms.PhD at YoungFemaleScientist writes that she is the only woman where she works at her stage of her career. As a result, she feels isolated. Her options are not pretty:
I've run out of people to talk to where I work. The few women who have similar interests are younger than me and naively competitive (and a bit arrogant, which I try to ignore); the older ones are burned out and bitter (not that I can think of any of those- I may be one foot in that category, but we don't have a support group on campus).
The men who should be my 'peers' either view me as threatening, or want to 'collaborate' with me in ways that make it clear that they would steal my stuff if they saw even the slightest opening (needless to say I need collaborators badly enough that I'll take what I can get and just sleep with one eye open).
Female Science Professor wonders about when to be nice, to keep her mouth shut, or to let the sarcasm fly. What would you do in this situation she describes?
One thing I've struggled with is whether it is OK to be silent in the face of some amazingly blatant discriminatory remarks or situations. My first reaction would be to say No! but then there's real life. Example: I was a participant in a federal panel involving the sciences, and, on the first day, a senior male scientist expressed his opinion that we women were just there to fill a quota for diversity and this was too bad because it deprived the committee of people with 'expertise'. There were some extremely accomplished women on that panel, but no one responded to this statement. I thought "We'll show you..."
Click on over to her blog to see
