Naming Experience
thusspakezuska | October 14, 2008Janet at Adventures in Ethics and Science writes about prizes for women:
2008 is the tenth year of the L'Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science awards to remarkable female scientists from around the world. Indeed, our sister-site, ScienceBlogs.de, covered this year's award ceremony and is celebrating women in science more generally with a For Women in Science blog. (It, like the rest of ScienceBlogs.de, is in German. Just so you know.)
In addition to the global contest, three further scholarships are given to women scientists in Germany. But, the only women eligible for these awards are women with…
thusspakezuska | October 3, 2008When this first came up, I thought it was really outside the scope of my blog. But then I thought about all those stories you hear about women on tech campuses getting "glommed" by clueless nerd boys. I remembered dating catastrophes and tragicomedies from my own undergraduate days, a hundred years ago. And I thought, well, maybe there is a place for at least some brief commentary on this topic.
In the comments to this blog post, Anonymouse asked
Granted, a lot of the behaviors described elsewhere (tit-grazing, eg) are very much not appropriate, but how exactly DOES one go about the…
thusspakezuska | September 24, 2008The Chronicle has a nice piece on PhD engineers adjusting to corporate culture, and for once something they offer isn't behind a paywall, so you can actually read it! Here's the intro to whet your appetite:
You might expect to see few similarities between the career path of an engineering Ph.D. and that of a humanities Ph.D. as they transition out of academe. After all, engineers have it made, don't they? They can walk right into industry jobs that are exactly like the work they did in graduate school and never miss a step, right?
Not entirely. I interviewed an electrical-engineering Ph.D.…
thusspakezuska | September 24, 2008A warning: if you are a survivor of sexual assault you may just want to skip this post and the ensuing ugly comment thread it is sure to engender.
A week or so ago the redoubtable Dr. Isis wrote an open letter to me.
In part she wrote:
The pragmatic part of me wants to agree with you that there is no place for open ogling in the workplace. The other part of me fears that there may be a hint of truth in Greg's argument that we are inherently sexual beings...
I see no reason to fear the truth that we are inherently sexual beings. But the fact that we are sexual beings does not mean that…
thusspakezuska | August 14, 2008Via the AWIS Washington Wire, this news of interest to young black academics:
In The Black-American's Guide for Winning Tenure - Without Losing Your Soul, authors Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy provide dos, don'ts, advice and support. One of the tips in the Q&A with Rockquemore includes being proactive rather than reactive in creating a professional network of support. She emphasizes the importance of knowing the institution's exact promotion and tenure process, as well as unwritten rules from department-specific norms to whether race can be explicitly discussed. Once the…
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 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 6, 2008Why would you celebrate Black Independence Day on July 3rd? It took the work of slaves to build America; the slaves came before the nation, so Black Independence Day would logically precede the traditional Independence Day, July 4th.
On July 3rd, I joined about 200 others in downtown Philadelphia, at 6th and Market Streets, to celebrate Black Independence Day and to honor in particular the 9 slaves transported to Philadelphia by George Washington (of the 316 slaves at his Mt. Vernon Plantation), and in general, all slaves whose labor helped build this nation. (See here for background…
thusspakezuska | June 30, 2008Kylie at Podblack asks, for the next Scientiae,
"A voice in the crowd" - are you heard? How are you heard? Are you one of a team that works as a choir or does discordance rule the roost?...who really has control of the megaphone?
Heh. How am I heard? Depends greatly upon the listener, and how far they've come in examining their own types of unearned privilege.
Cranky, irritable misogynistic Rethuglicans hear me as a shrill, whiny, petulant, hairy-legged, man-hating, castrating feminazi. Yes, Gerard Harbison, you can think of that as an homage to you! You are a cranky irritable…
thusspakezuska | June 9, 2008Because we can't keep our mouths shut forever, nor can we always stay locked safely within our homes, it is inevitable that we must interact with and speak to other human beings. And because of this, it is (nearly) inevitable that we will, at one time or another, say or do something that someone else interprets as offensive.
You know what I mean. You're nattering blithely along, everything's good, we're all happy - except, suddenly, some of us aren't. And you don't understand why. You are a good person. You are not a sexist, you are not a racist, you are not a homophobe. You are an…
thusspakezuska | May 12, 2008In a recent post, I referred readers to a comment that had been left on another post. In the ensuing comment thread, I received a complaint that this was "only anecdotal evidence" . I should have cited some relevant literature to go along with it. That I needed to have "some science" in my post.
One of the many reasons for the existence of this blog is to tell stories about what happens in real women's lives - naming experience. Telling stories and naming the experience are worthwhile endeavors in and of themselves. It drives me nuts the way some people use "anecdote" as if it were…
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, 2008Yesterday 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 from publications. Projected on the screen, the type was so tiny you could not read a thing on them, at least from where I was sitting in the audience. The speaker kept saying, "Well, you can't read this, but it doesn't matter, because all you need to know is..." All I need to…
thusspakezuska | April 5, 2008I'm watching "The Night James Brown Saved Boston" on VH1. It is an excellent program.
I was 5 years old on April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assasinated. I don't have personal memories of what he did for America, but I grew up revering him. JFK, RFK, and MLK were equal in sainthood in my house growing up. I think I gained most of this sensibility from my mother.
One of the commenters on this program - I think it was the Rev. Al Sharpton but I'm not sure - remarked that James Brown was not a crossover artist to white America, but the artist who brought white America over…
thusspakezuska | March 13, 2008Alice recently told her ethnic story over at Sciencewomen, and asked others to join in the attempt to "displace white from the default position". Of course lots of comments ensued; her follow-up is here, and well worth reading. In the follow up you can find links to others who took up Alice's challenge.
I've been lying around with headaches most of last week and this one, thinking about what kind of post I might write as part of Alice's challenge. I have to admit I find the task quite daunting, which gives me some new insight as to why some of my fellow Sciencebloggers were loathe to…
thusspakezuska | March 7, 2008Last month I wrote about children, academic careers, and moms. Lively discussion ensued. Here's something you should read for a follow up, and hat tip to Sciencewoman for the link:
Let me reminds you, once again, that people do not "choose" to have kids. A lot of people choose *not* to have kids--birth control, wealth, and modernity certainly contribute to this decision, which is perfectly irreproachable, by the way--but reproducing is not a conscious decision. It is something that the bodies of living creatures simply DO. It is, in fact, part of the definition of "living."
If Bitch, PhD'…
thusspakezuska | March 5, 2008Maria told me about WOC PhD. A link in this post led me to the Feminist Studies Collections: Women of Color & Women Worldwide pages, from which I hopped to the Women of Color page from the Wisconsin Women's Studies Librarian, which in turn took me to Joan Korenman's Women of Color websites list. Joan's excellent list includes Black Women in Mathematics, Digital Sisters, summaries of a few studies, and Sister Mentors, among others.
Abel pointed me to Urban Science Adventures! - which, by the way, has a nice post on women's history month up. Also, Diary of a PhD Student, Education and…
thusspakezuska | February 29, 2008There's been some quite lively blogging recently over at Abel Pharmboy's pad. Of particular note was the live-blogged vasectomy:
Anyway, as a medical blogger, I will try to liveblog the process from my Palm Treo 700p at the Hospital-That-Tobacco-Built. While I hope it will distract me and relieve some of my anxiety, I'd like to post it on blog as a public service to other men who want to be selfish and make their wives have tubal ligation after the mother of their children suffered through birth(s). (I've blogged on PharmGirl's complicated C-section experience and having my scrotum hacked…
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…