Why There Are No Women in Science

Why should any woman get any degree in a STEM discipline? Especially if she has to wade through tons of bullshit courses to get there, and part of the learning, it appears, has to do with learning how to be someone you aren't? Some other gender, some other race - or some other social class? skeptifem challenges the female STEM universe thus: I am not working in some kind of grueling coursework, so I am not "most of us", I guess. What happened to me was that I never imagined I could be a college graduate or learn the sciences/maths (mostly because of being a woman in this culture), and I…

Every once in awhile I do manage to get out to a social sort of event. Recently I was at one such thing. And overhead the following: Female, mid-40s: When I was in high school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. And I had great SAT scores, high 1400's [out of a then total 1600]. But my high school guidance counselor strongly discouraged me, and told me "those are really more men's kind of jobs." So I gave up thinking about vet school, even though I had the ability. Male, same age: When I was in high school, I wanted to learn to type. Probably because I just wanted to take what I thought…

Female Science Professor has posted a checklist - "Kind of like Sexism Bingo, but in list form." - and asked for additions. I was going to offer a few additions, but I thought "all that crap happened a thousand years ago, when I was an undergrad/grad student. I'll just read this list of new stuff to see what teh wimminz are whining about these days." Because things are getting better all the time. Alyssa at 6/17/2010 10:03:00 AM said: Someone asks why you bothered getting a PhD if you're "just going to have children" and DRo at 6/17/2010 10:36:00 AM said: You are told that you won't…

First post in this series can be found here. Second post in this series can be found here. In my second post in this series, I gave the men a cookie, and commenter rpf accused me of...gasp!...being too nice! I believe this is the first time this has ever happened. rpf quoted me and commented thus: "If I were a married man with children, I might well be leery of blogging about how I negotiate the home balance with my spouse on my science blog, even if I weren't concerned about privacy or protecting a pseud, because I'd be afraid of pissing off my spouse, and pissing off the feminist…

First post in this series can be found here. The third and final post in this series can be found here. ScientistMother really wants DrugMonkey to step up to the plate already. She says that DM laid out his own responsibility to deal, on-blog, with work-life balance issues and to share the details of how it goes down at his own home. Find the full quote in the comments at her post or here in Doc Free-Ride's post. As is generally the case, I have a few things to say about this. For starters, I do not agree with ScientistMother's interpretation of that quote. I have no idea what…

Work-life balance: people have been talking about it. Wait, that's not right. Women have been talking about it. And have been talked at about it, by some people. Doc Free-Ride has a good round-up of a most recent skirmish of opinions on the topic in the sciencey blogosphere. If you have not been following this, please do give Doc Free-Ride's post a read. Where to begin? Science Careers says all you married ladies with kids should hire housekeepers. And get over it already, will you? Last year, when Carol Greider, a molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,…

A recent conversation with a friend reminded me of yet another of the "death by a thousand paper cuts**" craptastic things I used to hate dealing with in my days in the scientific workforce. You know what I'm talking about. Could be a retreat, a workshop, a seminar, a meeting, a program, maybe even just a discussion, but whatever it is, diversity is the subject, explicit or implicit. On one occasion it was a discussion about whether a tiny little space should be set aside for students of a certain group. On another it was a pizza party for women students. But ever and anon, at such…

I have an acquaintance who works in what some of you professorial types jokingly refer to as the dark side - administration. Ha ha ha. Yeah, I was an administrator in academia myself, you know, and let me tell you, you should be grateful to your administrators, if only for the fact that if they didn't spend their days attending all those meetings, you'd have to do it yourself. Somebody's gotta do that administrative crap while you're out there doing the whizbang gollygee fun stuff in the labs. My acquaintance knows both sides of the story, for she herself is a tenured full professor in…

You are a male physics professor, and you want to improve science education. What could possibly be a better idea than to team up with a bunch of professional cheerleaders and make a video of them shouting out science tidbits while they shake their pompoms? Science cheerleaders! I know, right? You wish you'd thought of it first, don't you? The only thing worse than this loathsome idea is the Chronicle of Higher Education reporting on it with the headline "Blonded By Science". Seriously. I am not sure whether James Trefil, of George Mason University, seriously thinks that women…

Via the WEPAN listserv, I just learned about a new book about African American women in science: Temple University is proud to announce the publication of Swimming Against the Tide: African American Girls and Science Education by Sandra L. Hanson. In her book, Hanson uses Department of Education data as well as a recent survey of young African American women to examine the experiences in families, communities, and peer-groups that help young African American women "swim against the tide" of the white, male science education system. Sandra L. Hanson is Professor of Sociology and Research…

Question: Did you know that there are National Historic Chemical Landmarks? Answer: Yes, there are. Question: What did the American Chemical Society declare to be its first National Historic Chemical Landmark, and where can you find it? Answer: "Old Faithful", a Bakelizer or steam pressure vessel, vintage 1909. Phenol and formaldehyde were hardened at 150 C and 100 psi and voila! commercial quantities of Bakelite were the product. You can find it at the museum at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia. I spent several delightful hours there yesterday afternoon and could…

Sooooo....it appears some of you take your comics quite seriously. At least, should one be so foolish as to point out painfully obvious, boringly everyday occurrences of sexism. Danimal asks of Comrade Physioprof: "So you are saying the comic reflects real life?" What Physioprof said is this: "Every single one of the Foxtrots themselves represents absolute conformity to patriarchal gender norms. And the characters who are not part of the family who appear to violate those norms serve the patriarchal narrative purely as foils." Inasmuch as patriarchal gender norms represent Real LifeTM,…

I love the comic pages in the newspaper. Some of them are just mildly amusing, but some are bitingly funny and offer real social satire (Pearls Before Swine comes to mind here, as does Non Sequitur). But I was definitely not amused this past weekend when I read the April 19 strip of Foxtrot. In case you aren't able to view the strip: the first panel shows a string of numbers, below which is a key. Each letter of the alphabet is represented by a semi-complex mathematical formulation, which must be solved to yield the number, which in turn allows one to substitute letters for numbers in the…

A few days ago I wrote about The Problem of the Problem of Motherhood in Science, a post inspired by Meg Urry's book review of Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory by Emily Monosson. A vigorous discussion ensued in the comments - thank you all for participating! It turns out the author of the book was paying attention, and she contacted me by email. Emily Monosson told me she feels her book was misrepresented in Meg Urry's review. I agreed to post here the contents of her email to me. Here's the email: I am writing, as editor of Motherhood the Elephant in the Laboratory, in…

Yeah, I should be asleep, restoring strength for spending another day with mom. But I'm catching up on email and blogs and preparing for the upcoming Diversity in Science Carnival WHICH YOU SHOULD TOTALLY BE WRITING SOMETHING FOR - GET BUSY, NOW! And in the course of all that I read this post by Stephanie Z which led me to Sheril Kirshenbaum's post (Goodbye, Sheril, we will totally miss you here at Scienceblogs) Where Are The Women With BIG Ideas? I'd like to point readers to a recent piece from The Guardian asking 'Where are the books by women with big ideas?' Books like Freakonomics,…

Over at Fairer Science, at the end of an excellent rant about the uselessness of one-shot workshops, Pat Campbell writes: One other thing, if I see one more article about why there aren't more women in science that concludes "it's the children" I am going to run amuck. This one says "Women don't choose careers in math-intensive fields, such as computer science, physics, technology, engineering, chemistry, and higher mathematics, because they want the flexibility to raise children..." Say what? Good to know that it's only the math intensive fields; so friends if you want a science career and a…

Though university administrators seem to be widely reviled among faculty members, one of the best jobs I ever had was in administration. Many wonderful opportunities came my way; possibly the most mind-stretching, exhilarating, and rewarding of these was the chance to spend four weeks attending the Summer Institute for Women in Higher Education Administration, held at Bryn Mawr College. Just imagine spending four weeks with several dozen intelligent, interesting women from colleges and universities all over the U.S., from a range of administrative areas (including faculty members looking to…

According to the Chronicle Newsblog Female professors at the University of Texas at Austin earned an average of $9,028 less than their male counterparts in 2007, and senior female faculty members there feel more isolated and less recognized for their work than do their male colleagues. You can find the full report here and a press release from the university here. The comments section at the Chronicle post is full of the usual dismissive commentary that arises whenever the issue of gender inequities in salary is broached. I liked this response from Meshiko: It amazes me that despite the…

Janet 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…

There was something that always bothered me about the Mac commercials purporting to show me how hip Mac computers are. It's that I never really felt included in the world of those ads. Mac computers are personified by a uber-cool geek-chic attractive young white man. PCs, of course take on the flesh of a somewhat portly, a bit older, less attractive white man whose geek is unredeemed by any hint of cool. Did I mention they are both white men? In ad after ad after ad, we see these two white men portray personal computers to the viewing audience. You can watch the collection of ads from…