Why There Are No Women in Science
thusspakezuska | March 6, 2008I don't think this is what Dave Munger had in mind when he recommended using graphics in your blog posts, at the NC Science Blogging Conference.
For the last two weeks, this post has been one of the top 3 posts on Scienceblogs - the number one post last week.
This is the kind of post I would expect to find on an adolescent male's science blog. But hey, why not use objectification of women to boost your science blog? Apparently it works.
Afarensis, I puke upon your pseudonymous shoes.
For whose benefit, we might ask, has Afarensis posted this bit of cheesecake? Why, for the benefit of…
thusspakezuska | March 4, 2008Janet Stemwedel has a lengthy, informative, interesting post on that eternally troublesome question: When in my graduate career should I have a baby? After reading it, I am put in mind of that New Yorker cartoon with the guy on the phone, looking at a datebook on his desk, saying "How about never? Is never good for you?"
The Chronicle news blog reports on a former professor at U. of Georgia with a "long record of sexual harassment." What's a university to do when one of its professors is found to be in violation of the sexual harassment policy? Why, pass him along to another university…
thusspakezuska | February 27, 2008Maybe you've been wondering just exactly how few women scientists and engineers there are in academia in the U.S. Or, to put it another way, maybe you've wondered just exactly how much men scientists and engineers are overrepresented in academia.
There's a new website that gathers and presents comprehensive data you can use to answer those questions. The National Women's Law Center presents The Women's Prerogative. You can find out how many women are teaching in science and engineering at your school - there are data for 150 research universities. There are fact sheets that delineate…
thusspakezuska | February 21, 2008What happens when you speak up about gender inequity in Japan's science culture? Why, you can expect to be accused of "tarnishing the reputation" of the university, that's what. That's what happened to biophysicist Mitiko Go when she spoke out about an instance of egregious sex discrimination. One Woman Is Not Enough, an editorial just published in Nature, recounts the tale. It's no wonder Go had to be essentially at retirement before she felt she could risk speaking up. Instead of retiring, however, she's now president of a university and a member of the Council for Science and…
thusspakezuska | February 14, 2008If you find yourself in the condition of being unavoidably female, and you aren't willing to undergo a sex change operation, then your best publication strategy may be to hide the XX affiliation.
The title of a recent publication on this issue is self-explanatory: "Double-blind review favours increased representation of female authors" by Budden, Tregenza, Aarssen, Koricheva, Leimu, and Lortie. Sadly, as the authors note, double-blind review is "rarely practised". If your name screams out "woman", you may be better off with an initial.
Of course, this is nothing terribly new; just a…
thusspakezuska | February 13, 2008Sciencewoman ponders seen and unseen parenting responsibilities. In a discussion about parceling out responsibilities for a large project, the department chair expressed his desire not to unduly belabor a Department Dad because of his Very Special Parenting Responsibilities; Sciencewoman, however, he had no problem assigning the task to her. Until reminded by her colleague that Sciencewoman, too, is a parent. Why was Daddy's time more worth protecting than Mommy's? Well, one hopes the department chair has learned a lesson.
What really burns my shorts even more, however, are the…
thusspakezuska | January 31, 2008Raise your hand if you've been to diversity camp!
You know - sometime during the academic year, your department head or dean announces there's going to be a diversity meeting/seminar/retreat. People grudgingly attend, they do some exercises to maybe show them just how prejudiced they actually are, they're told Diversity is Good!, and there's a little talk about how they can be more supportive of diversity. Everybody goes home feeling like they wasted an hour or day or weekend of their lives, and nothing substantially changes. No one has addressed why resistance to diversity is so…
thusspakezuska | January 28, 2008Mrs. Whatsit pointed out that Propter Doc has recently written on the topic of blogging under a pseudonym. It's a very thoughtful post and touches on many of the issues we discussed at the NC Science Blogging Conference. In the middle of the post, Propter Doc says the following:
If you blog about being a scientist then you are probably in a position where you need to take steps to conceal your identity. The world doesn't need to know what flavor of scientist you are, or even your gender.
Is this really the case? That is, does your gender not matter in science blogging, even (or especially…
thusspakezuska | January 28, 2008Here's the paradox: there are differences between men and women that manifest themselves in engineering practice, so diversity is good, except there aren't really any differences between men and women that matter in engineering practice, so diversity doesn't matter to the profession. Huh? Who's making these contradictory arguments, and why?
There's a research report on gender in technology by Wendy Faulkner (you can download it from here) which examines this remark:
Women into engineering campaigners often claim that women bring a different approach to engineering.
Do women have better…
thusspakezuska | January 22, 2008Coffee, good food, and the world's best popsicles - these were just a few of the perks associated with attending the 2008 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference! Not to mention mingling with 200 other bloggers, journalists, educators, and students. I've been so out of touch with the blogging world for so long recently; it was delightful to feel the energy and ideas sparking off each other. Plus, I got to meet Sciencewoman and Minnow!
Karen Ventii and I had planned to webcast our session on Gender and Race in Science Blogging, and we did, in a manner of speaking...unfortunately, it…
thusspakezuska | January 16, 2008Some interesting things came across my listservs this week; one from WEPAN, another from the WMST-L listserv: a new book on recruiting women in IT, and a very interesting call for papers. Details after the jump.
Reconfiguring the Firewall
A comprehensive volume authored by three Virginia Tech professors, (published by AK Peters, Ltd.), "Reconfiguring the Firewall" addresses the global challenge of recruiting girls and women into majors and careers in information technology. Written and researched by Carol J. Burger, Elizabeth G. Creamer, and Peggy S. Meszaros, all faculty members in the…
thusspakezuska | December 7, 2007I have no time for a real entry, but if you haven't yet had your daily quota of sexist nonsense, check out these two links.
Melissa McEwan parses the gender segregation at the Discovery Channel Store. (Thanks to Bora for tipping me off to that post.) In case you were wondering where to get your scientific nail polish kit, you now know. And just in time for the holidays!
And the Chronicle news blog reports on the continued sorry state of tenure for women at MIT. The comments will annoy the piss out of you. I swear someday my head will explode when I have to listen yet again to some…
thusspakezuska | November 1, 2007David Perlmutter, professor and associate dean for graduate studies and research in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, has a column in the November 2 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education on knowing when to keep a secret. Perlmutter offers up some good advice about managing one's career by knowing when to hold one's tongue, or even by avoiding hearing the secret someone else is dying to share. He suggests you fend off the would-be gossipers by saying, "I think I know what you are going to tell me, and it's really none of…
thusspakezuska | October 27, 2007Some great posts on other blogs you may have missed reading:
Language Log has a great critique of the new PBS show WordGirl, which I found via Fairer Science. If that's not enough to make you grind your teeth, then read Pat's roundup on the Bionic Woman, Ubisoft's Imagine video games, and Barbie Girls. Bleah.
Female Science Professor ran into Dr. Troll this week upon coming out of a committee meeting. Dr. Troll asked her if she was taking a class from the other committee members. I am not making this up. You can read about it here. I mean, really. You have to work at being that much…
thusspakezuska | October 19, 2007This week's Friday Bookshelf is actually a repeat of a blog post from the old blog site. It begins with a question:
Who was Annie Montague Alexander?
She lived from 1867 to 1950. Naturalist and philanthropist, she was the founder of two natural history museums at the University of California, Berkeley. Over her lifetime, she ranged widely throughout western North America and beyond, collecting specimens of plants and animals as well as fossils, many of which formed the basis of the museum collections. Early on she realized that increasing population growth in California was threatening…
thusspakezuska | October 17, 2007Spitting on Rosalind Franklin's grave is apparently not satisfying enough for Jim Watson. When you are a largemouth ass, you have to do much, much more. So now he's maligned all of Africa and everyone of African descent. Here's a quote:
he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".
Also,
His views are also reflected in a book published next week, in which he writes: "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities…
thusspakezuska | October 16, 2007Really. I am not making this up. As quoted in The Guardian:
He smiles. "Rosalind is my cross," he says slowly. "I'll bear it. I think she was partially autistic." He pauses for a while, before repeating the suggestion, as if to make it clear that this is no off-the-cuff insult, but a considered diagnosis. "I'd never really thought of scientists as autistic until this whole business of high-intelligence autism came up. There is probably no other explanation for Rosalind's behaviour.
Oh, yes, a considered diagnosis, I'm sure. He's been considering since 1953 what he'd like to preemptively…
thusspakezuska | October 10, 2007From the Chronicle of Higher Education, Home-Schooled Students Rise in Supply and Demand:
"Home schooling often really allows students to develop a passion," says Sabena Moretz, associate director of admissions at Richmond. "With a traditional high school, most of the time you don't see a kid who's gotten so excited with the history of Monticello or got themselves onto an archaeology dig."
Recognizing that sense of passion is what led Virginia Commonwealth University to create two engineering scholarships this year for home-schoolers, says Russell Jamison, dean of the engineering school. "We…
thusspakezuska | October 8, 2007One of my readers recently wrote to me to talk about the frustrations of trying to manage a career in science while needing to work part-time for a period of time, due to health concerns.
Part-time employment is something that many of us might want to consider for a variety of reasons, at various stages in life. Maybe, like my correspondent, we're temporarily ill and can't keep to a full-time (read: 80 hours per week) schedule in an academic lab (or even a more "normal" sort of schedule in a corporate setting). Maybe there's a new child that needs our attention, and working part-time for…
thusspakezuska | September 27, 2007Saw this over at The Chem Blog. Couldn't help offering my own spin on it. Chem Blog needs some serious shoe-puking.
I recommend you read the original, then my version. It will be more fun that way.
Oh god that is so freaking depressing isn't it? Reminds me of a sad story from when I was in grad school. Seems there was a boy with good looking transcripts but about equivalent to those of a girl in the program so they gave a hearty fellowship to the boy because, as you may have guessed, he's got a Y chromosome and this advantage must be exacerbated with fellowships, grants and pats on…