Why There Are No Women in Science
thusspakezuska | September 19, 2007The Scientist wants you to vote for your favorite life science blogs. To get the party started, they asked seven prominent science bloggers to recommend their favorite science blogs. I mean, they asked seven prominent male science bloggers for their recommendations. This is science, after all, and we need to be precise.
So, they didn't ask any women - big deal, whine whine. Right?
Yeah, well, in the grand scheme of things, who gives a rat's ass? It's just some dumb article in one magazine.
But in the grand scheme of things, this is just one more example of how women get overlooked…
thusspakezuska | September 12, 2007So I'm skimming along in Google Reader, thinking it's the year 2007, when whoa! I happen upon this post by Female Science Professor. Did he actually call her "science lady"? WTF? What millennium are we living in?
And this is the kind of response you get from the authorities when you are calling about a long-standing, well-documented problem of stalking/harassment. But hey, she wasn't actually physically assaulted by the stalker, so what's the big deal, right? Plus, she was asking for it.
What if she was physically assaulted and was actually unable to ask for it at the time - i.e…
thusspakezuska | August 19, 2007Have you read the Nature editorial? Have you read my earlier post about it? Maybe what you are wanting is a deeper textual analysis of the editorial itself. You've come to the right place.
Men [sick]
Our 1869 mission statement is out of date.
That's what the bitchy, complaining women are making us say.
It was 1833 when the English polymath William Whewell first coined the word 'scientist'. Over subsequent decades, the word gradually replaced such commonly used terms as 'natural philosophers' and 'men of science.
Scientist, you see , actually means "men of science". So even if we changed…
thusspakezuska | August 16, 2007Nothing gets by Absinthe's diligence.
Inspired by my recent post regarding women's washrooms, Absinthe writes to tell me:
Not having enough washrooms for women violates Title IX. who knew??? Check this out.
Absinthe suggests we study the ratio of womens' to mens' rooms in the top 50 physics, engineering, chemistry, and other science departments. It would certainly be interesting to see the results of such a survey.
thusspakezuska | August 15, 2007Female Science Professor has been posting a set of tales based on her recent, annual trip to spend quality time with the extended family. Those of you with families should be able to sympathize.
In Men Are So Special, she reminisces about last year's bang-up good times:
It might be easier to endure these family visits if I could get away once in a while and take a break from making sandwiches for my uncles, but our family get-togethers occur on an island, in a house surrounded on 3 sides by tall trees and on the fourth side by a cliff. I think it would be easier to escape from Alcatraz.…
thusspakezuska | August 11, 2007The other day I wrote, half in jest (but only half), about the threat of women taking over the nation's technical universities and thus filling up campus wastecans with used menstrual pads and tampons.
This inspired Absinthe to comment:
Your comment about the trash cans hits a nerve with me... don't even get me started on the issue of female bathrooms in physics departments I have worked/studied at. At UPenn (for instance) for two years I had to hike down three flights of stairs and over to an annex of the physics building to get to a women's bathroom that had a total of two stalls and was…
thusspakezuska | August 8, 2007By way of the LA Times, we learn that women are flocking in droves to Caltech this year:
According to preliminary figures, 87 women are entering a freshman class of [235] students in September. That 37% share is Caltech's highest since it began admitting undergraduate women in 1970, when pioneering females comprised 14% of the entering class.
Has Caltech gone soft and squishy? Though they protest that standards were not lowered, the LA Times does not seem convinced.
Although Caltech insists that it did not lower its notoriously tough admission standards or practice affirmative action for…
thusspakezuska | July 31, 2007Absinthe has an announcement on her blog about a new online support group for junior female particle physicists.
There is a new online discussion group aimed at junior female particle physicists (up to and including the postdoctoral level). The group allows junior females to talk openly and anonymously with other junior female particle physicists from around the world about career issues that are important to them. Most particle physicists at the junior level are based at large laboratories in Europe and the US. The unique work environment at these labs can lead to workplace issues and…
thusspakezuska | July 25, 2007From the Chronicle of Higher Education today:
A California state senator grilled Charles B. Reed, chancellor of the California State University system, and John D. Welty, president of its Fresno campus, on their commitment to gender equity in athletics at a special hearing here on Tuesday.
The senator is somewhat peeved about two recent settlements - one for $5.85 million to former women's volleyball coach Linda Vivas, and another for $3.5-million with a former women's swimming coach and assistant athletics director. After awhile, the millions start to add up, and people notice. You know,…
thusspakezuska | July 24, 2007That fabulous group of women, the X-Gals, is back with the last of their installments in the Chronicle of Higher Education and it is truly Must Read C (of Higher) E.
This last installment is titled On the Origin of Academic Species and it is a cataloging of the various types of folks who've responded to their columns over the past year. Included, as might be expected, are The Generally Disgruntled, The Me-Too, The Condemning Wo/man, and The Dismissive Male. Of the latter, X-Gal Tess Isaac writes:
...when Jana described an adviser who told her to choose between work and family while her…
thusspakezuska | July 17, 2007The Chronicle of Higher Education reports
California legislators plan to look into whether there is widespread gender bias in the California State University system
following a lawsuit that resulted in a multi-million dollar award to Cal State-Fresno's former women's volleyball coach.
State Sen. Don Perata, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, said lawmakers were alarmed by the cost of the case to taxpayers, and also want to find out whether Cal State had turned a blind eye to gender discrimination elsewhere in the system, the AP reported...Fresno State said it would…
thusspakezuska | July 9, 2007One of the perks of being a Scienceblogger is getting a free subscription to Seed Magazine. Last week, issue 11 August 2007 arrived, and I happily began sampling its good stuff. There's a new feature this month called "Incubator" that tries to "capture the multifacted nature of science itself - from the minutia of the bench, to the personalities behind them, to the oversized ideas that propel us forward." One item included in the new feature is Workbench, a photo of a "scientist's natural hangout". The inaugural, and annotated, full-page photo is of the desk of 3rd-year grad student…
thusspakezuska | June 29, 2007I've been doing some reading over at Twisty's place this afternoon, and, you know, it's the usual patriarchy-blaming that helps raise your blood pressure. I do admire Twisty's way with a phrase.
Then I came across this post. And it was more than the blood pressure; I wanted to scream in frustration and anger. A precocious 9-year-old girl who's taking classes at a high school, and who has been "singing over her chemistry equations". But then, in an ill-considered move, she turned 10, which apparently was equivalent to posting a sign on her back that read "All males may feel free to…
thusspakezuska | June 19, 2007When I lived in North Carolina, I got to know a woman who worked in one of the Research Triangle labs. She had a baby girl, and I occasionally baby-sat for her. She had named her daughter Melina, which I thought was an incredibly beautiful name for a little girl. I remarked upon this one time, and she said to me "yeah, I like it, and I figure when she's a little older she'll be nicknamed Mel, which isn't too girly."
Melina's mother did not fit any "girly" stereotypes. She had rennovated her house pretty much on her own; she didn't dress in typical feminine garb, and she was, of course,…
thusspakezuska | June 19, 2007For those who may be interested, I have written an addendum to the infamous "I Support Gender Equity in Principle..." post. The very ugly comments thread on that post is now closed. You'll notice you can't post comments here either.
I'm doing this for my mental health. It's either this, or all gardening and no blogging.
thusspakezuska | June 11, 2007UPDATE: I have appended some text to this post at the end. I have closed the comments on this post because they have become so unpleasant all around and I don't think further dialogue here is serving any positive purpose. If you disagree with me, I'm sorry. I'm also sorry I didn't do this a lot sooner.
I was browsing around Absinthe's blog looking for something in an old post when I happened across an entry I had missed. It seems Absinthe has taken down an older post discussing the differential treatment of two physicists - husband and wife - at Fermilab.
The post commented on an…
thusspakezuska | June 6, 2007N.B.: Nature Physics (3, 363; 2007) has an editorial on a recent American Physical Society workshop, Gender Equity: Strengthening the Physics Enterprise in Universities and National Laboratories. This post is based** on that editorial, which is behind a paywall; you can read part of it here.
So, the American Physical Society had a gender equity workshop, and all the bigwigs came - chairs of 50 major physics departments, 14 division directors of national labs, leaders from NSF and DOE. "After all, if there is to be change, it has to come from the top." Sounds good on paper. There was…
thusspakezuska | May 31, 2007The next Scientiae Carnival topic is How We Are Hungry. scientiae-carnival
We spent the Memorial Day holiday weekend at Mom's house, so hunger and food are topics much on my mind. Sunday we had a cookout at my brother's house; the weather was perfect, and Brother Zuska was in his element at the grill/smoker, delivering up enough grilled meat to feed at least three times as many people as we had there. Food - feeding each other, sharing meals - has always been a big deal in my family. Are you familiar with the Wedding Song? One time my sisters and I made up parody lyrics to it,…
thusspakezuska | May 31, 2007From the Chronicle of Higher Education daily update, I learned about a forthcoming book, Mothers on the Fast Track: How a New Generation Can Balance Family and Careers:
In the new book, Ms. Mason and Ms. Ekman say it is common for women who start off in fast-track jobs in law, medicine, academe, and business to slip into the "second tier" once they have children.
Those jobs, they write, have fewer and more flexible hours, but do not pay as well and offer less responsibility. It is often difficult for women who slip into the second tier to make it back into the upper echelons of an…
thusspakezuska | May 22, 2007I would not have believed this would be possible in 2007, and yet, here it is.
CBS is bringing to your television, this fall, a series so full of stereotypes, so dazzingly stupid, so ridiculously puerile, that it must surely offend the sensibilities of everyone in science.
I am talking about "The Big Bang Theory".
Dubious thanks to alert reader Maggie W. for letting me know about this. My life would have been happier had I been in blissful ignorance, but alas, it is my mournful duty to skewer the moronocity of things of this ilk.
Here is a quote from the show's web site:
"The Big Bang…