Why There Are No Women in Science
thusspakezuska | August 5, 2008In the past it's not been my practice to read the business section of the newspaper but lately I've been paying more attention to it. Sunday, the Philadelphia Inquirer's business section featured an article I just couldn't resist: Hacker Camp: Computer programmers get to play attacker in order to learn how to do security better.
Early in the article we learn that all the "campers" are men. This is discouraging. I don't know how attendees were recruited or selected but I'm guessing there wasn't a lot of outreach to women. This is the part of the article that really woke me up, however:…
thusspakezuska | August 4, 2008Jenny F. Scientist reports the following:
Recently, three women joined my lab, more than doubling the female population. (Just in time for me to leave.) There was instant bonding, which I had only seen before among married postdocs or among single grad students. But it is lovely to have other women about. We go to lunch together; every couple weeks we all go out together for drinks or dinner. (Which I love, by the way.) Every so often one of the men comes along- we are outnumbered about 3:1- but mostly, not.
Dr. S argues that this is discriminatory of me. What if the poor dears fell left out…
thusspakezuska | August 4, 2008A great post at eduwonkette looks at gender and stereotype threat in math performance. Stereotype threat has been well-documented in "laboratory" settings, but eduwonkette reports on a study in a real-life setting:
These men and women were, by all accounts, in the pipeline for math and science careers. Students in the "gender nullifying" treatment read just a few extra sentences before taking their tests:
What about gender differences? This mathematics test has not shown any gender differences in performance or mathematics ability. The test has been piloted in many mathematics courses across…
thusspakezuska | August 1, 2008Female Science Professor has a great Q&A post, So They Had To Hire A Woman. Here's a sample:
Question: So you're going to get a Ph.D.? Couldn't you find anyone to marry you?
Answer 1: Why would I want to get married when so many men are just like you?
Answer 2: That's right, and I want to be a professor so that there are fewer people like you saying things like that.
I much prefer the first answer. Heh.
But really, once you start perusing the comments, it's absolutely stunning how many women report having some variant of this question thrown in their face. Like this comment from…
thusspakezuska | July 29, 2008You all may be aware of the moronically stupid column by John Tierney that ran in the NY Times recently, an opinion piece disguised as reporting. I haven't had a chance yet to give my own response to this piece of tripe, or to show you how it is but one more piece in Christina Hoff Sommers's American Enterprise Institute-funded propaganda campaign against women in science.
The Association for Women in Science wrote a letter in response to Tierney's trash. Naturally, the NY Times refused to run it. However, you can read it here. In addition,
[AWIS] constructed an in-depth op-ed, also…
thusspakezuska | July 16, 2008Hello, dear readers...if there are any of you left...I've been away for a week taking care of mom, plus the usual migraine breaks...back home now, and hoping to get back in the blogging groove asap.
Meanwhile, Physioprof is off guest-blogging at Feministe for two weeks and you absolutely have to read his deconstruction of a really atrocious piece of reporting in the New York Times about Title IX and science, Teh Ladeez Jus Don Liek Teh Scienz. Warning: the quotes from the NYT will make your teeth hurt.
thusspakezuska | June 19, 2008A number of my Sciblings have taken up the challenge of the last "Ask A ScienceBlogger" question, "Why do you blog, and how does blogging help you with your research?" (See for example Alice and Janet and PhysioProf and Grrl and DrugMonkey.)
I am not currently involved in research, nor am I even employed, so the second half of the question is not very relevant for me. I thought I'd turn the first part around, though, and share with you all the reasons why I shouldn't be blogging, at least not about gender and science. These are culled from comments over the past I-can't-believe-it's-been-…
thusspakezuska | May 12, 2008A friend of mine recently accepted a job in academic administration. He is extremely excited about the job and eager to do good things in his position. He is also a dedicated father and truly shares equal parenting responsibilities with his spouse. His spouse is in a career that is less time-flexible than academia is - or could be.
At my friend's prior job, he generally started his workday a little later than the norm, in order to care for the kids until departure for school. He worked from home very early in the morning, was accessible by cell and email, and came into the workplace…
thusspakezuska | May 7, 2008Everybody ought to read this comment by Grimalkin. Especially those of you who are so enamoured of "just speculating" and/or "considering the possibility" that women's essential biology causes them to "not be interested in" math, science, and engineering. After you read it, please stop parroting unthinking, unreflective, misogynistic crap about why women just don't go into [name your favorite technical field here].
thusspakezuska | April 30, 2008UPDATE: Apparently it was not clear to some people that the second "quote" below is a parody written by me, of the first quote written by someone else. I hope this clears it up.
You may want to advocate for gender equity in science and engineering. But you are just wasting your energy. Pat O'Hurley tells us so.
I'm simply saying that it is [foolish] to expect female engineering enrollment to be equal to men's enrollment, if engineering is a field which is, statistically speaking, more attractive to men than to women.
This would be an insight gained from the following sort of deeply…
thusspakezuska | April 30, 2008The National Academy of Sciences has announced its latest crop of members, and there are 16 - count 'em! 16! - women out of the 72 elected. The Chronicle of Higher Education spins this positively with the headline "16 Women Elected to National Academy of Science" and the following opening:
The National Academy of Sciences announced today the election of 72 new members, including 16 women. That's a significant reversal from just one year ago, when only nine women were inducted, the fewest since 2001.
The record year remains 2005, when 19 women were elected.
The academy, most of whose members…
thusspakezuska | April 30, 2008For a long time now, I have not been what you would call a believer in progress. That is, I do not think things are bound to improve in the gender equity arena. I think we are in the middle of a backlash (more on that later); women's enrollment in undergraduate engineering has stalled or declined; it isn't just a matter of waiting for the old fogies to die off and be replaced with young men who won't be sexist asshats. Since sexism is structural and institutionalized, it is perfectly capable of replicating itself unless it is actively fought and dismantled.
And if you don't believe me,…
thusspakezuska | April 17, 2008UPDATE: After posting this entry, I found out that the paper I discussed here is not actually slated at this time to be published in a peer-reviewed journal; it is merely available as a preprint. Nevertheless, I hear that the folks at Nature have picked up on this and have interviewed the author; we may see something next week there about it.
Remember that famous line about how women need to be twice as good as men to be considered half as good? A new statistical study by Sherry Towers available on ArXiv.org shows just how true this is in the world of particle physics.
Here's the scoop…
thusspakezuska | April 8, 2008Liz Henry's delightful, insightful skewering of the sexism deployed in an article about Google VP Marissa Mayer provides a very recent example of a pattern noted by Ruth Oldenziel in Making Technology Masculine: Women who love technology require an explanation; men who love technology are just being masculine. Oldenziel notes:
Whenever women enter computer rooms and construction sites as designers, hackers, and engineers...they need to be accounted for and explained. For decades scores of newspapers have reported, commented, and elaborated on the many "first" women who trespassed the…
thusspakezuska | April 7, 2008Scientiae's April Carnival is now up - actually has been up for a few days while I've been off having migraines. Peggy has done an excellent job with many thought-provoking submissions. I particularly like Mrs. Whatsit's ponderings on what it what it means to "have the balls". And I positively swooned on reading Liz Henry's submission. That's some writing after Zuska's own heart! Here's a delicious excerpt:
You can see two assumptions set up here:
Women who like computers are ugly.
It fucking matters.
and
It's tokenizing; it's like suggesting women are only in tech because of…
thusspakezuska | April 3, 2008I've mentioned Kay Weber and her lawsuit against Fermilab on this blog before. Sherry Towers forwarded an email to me that gives an update on Kay's situation:
Those of you getting the first wave of this email probably know Kay Weber personally, but may not know the story that has been a main focus of her life for the past 4 years. Here is her story:
Kay worked at Fermilab (a Department of Energy Laboratory) for more than 18 years. She has a degree in Mechanical Engineering, is a Licensed Professional Engineer, has Master's Degrees in Computer Science and Psychology. When Kay was hired she…
thusspakezuska | April 3, 2008Physioprof weighs in on the issue of pseudonymous blogging and "blogging while female" phenomenon. It's a good read.
Peter Sagal, who hosts NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!" has a piece on gender inequity in Whoville. It's awesome. An excerpt:
And there's this -- not only does the movie [Horton Hears a Who] end with father and son embracing, while the 96 daughters are, I guess, playing in a well, somewhere, but the son earns his father's love by saving the world. Boys get to save the world, and girls get to stand there and say, I knew you could do it. How did they know he could do it?…
thusspakezuska | March 27, 2008Writer's block sucks. So I did what I often do when I'm faced with a problem I need to solve: I bought a book. The book in this instance, Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer, was originally published in 1934 and was out of print for some time until a recent reissue. It is a charming read. I can't tell you yet if it's going to cure all my writing problems, but I did want to share this quote with you:
It is unfortunate, but the unimaginative citizen finds something exquisitely funny about the idea that one aspires to make a name and a living by any such process as "stringing words together…
thusspakezuska | March 17, 2008Good stuff from the AWIS Washington Wire:
A new website on reducing stereotype threat.
The engineering of ice cream, from Yale's first female dean of engineering.
"More than half the women in the world live in countries that have made no progress in gender equity in recent years. " See the Gender Equity Index website for more information.
"Women in Europe earn about 43% of doctoral degrees in science, but hold only 15% of senior academic positions." More info in this report.