Thus Spake Zuska
Archives for April, 2008
It’s Just No Use, Girls: A Profound Analysis of Gender and Engineering
Posted by Zuska on April 30, 2008 UPDATE: 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…
It’s That Time Of Year Again
Posted by Zuska on April 30, 2008 The 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:
Queen Bees, Old and Young
Posted by Zuska on April 30, 2008 Yesterday I attended a talk on gender and science. It was a very frustrating experience, because I had been looking forward to the talk. But the speaker, a senior administrator who should know better, made it a difficult and trying experience. About a third of the slides in the talk were dense data tables scanned…
The Reproduction of Sexism
Posted by Zuska on April 30, 2008 For 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…
Comment Problems
Posted by Zuska on April 25, 2008 Greetings, Gentle Readers. I just rescued a number of comments from hang-up in moderation. No idea why most of them got moderated – they didn’t even have links in them. Some of them were made many days ago. I want to apologize to you all for not getting those comments out there sooner. I have…
Gender Bias in Particle Physics: A Statistical Analysis
Posted by Zuska on April 17, 2008 UPDATE: 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…
A Mournful Complaint
Posted by Zuska on April 8, 2008 I just had to share this very recent comment with you all: I would actually very much like to avoid this blog (and a few others), but the ScienceBlogs channels – which I prefer to having to subscribe to each and every blog individually – won’t let me do so. I usually just skip over…
Explaining (Away) Women Geeks
Posted by Zuska on April 8, 2008 Liz 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:
AWIS Coaching Program
Posted by Zuska on April 8, 2008 From my email inbox: information about AWIS coaching seminars. Two dates, four times, 45 minutes in length, details after the jump.
April Scientiae Is Here!
Posted by Zuska on April 7, 2008 Scientiae’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…