Women and Science
jstemwedel | April 7, 2008You may already have seen this at Absinthe or Zuska's -- if so, consider this post a friendly nudge to move beyond your good intentions toward action.
Kay Weber, who is pursuing a lawsuit against Fermilab for (the details of which sound pretty horrific), has come to a point where the expense of moving the lawsuit forward is personally insurmountable. With a little help from others who support her fight for fair treatment, however, it can be done:
As women we have a network of other women that we share our friendship with. We send emails about good news, good luck, greetings of friendship…
jstemwedel | March 20, 2008Since March is Women's History Month, I thought it might be appropriate to recognize some women who were a part of my history -- namely, the women who taught me chemistry and physics. (This shouldn't be interpreted as a slight against the women who taught me biology -- I simply don't remember them as well -- nor against the men who taught me science. They made an impact on me, but this post isn't about them.)
I didn't realize it until just now, but none of my science teachers in junior high or high school were women. That strikes me as kind of weird. In contrast, during my undergraduate…
jstemwedel | March 13, 2008They're both by men, but sometimes it happens that way.
Mark Chu-Carroll ridicules Vox Day's ridiculous claim that women are too dumb to do long division, let alone program computers. While Day's claim was silly from the get-go, Mark's take-down in really nice.
A friend from the three-dimensional world (specifically math camp), Jonathan Kulick, who cannot hide from the blogosphere even in Tbilisi, examines claims that women are underrepresented in science for reasons other than bias. Will it surprise you to hear that Christina Hoff Sommers may be dismissing research she doesn't like out of…
tsmith | March 13, 2008Via Ed, if you puked on VoxDay's shoes after his column earlier this week in WorldNetDaily:
But this is not to say there is not a genuine threat to all three aspects of science today. Unsurprisingly, it comes from the same force that is the primary threat to the survival of Western civilization: female equalitarianism. Flush with their success in decimating the collegiate sports programs of America, the equalitarians have now set their sights on applying the infamous Title IX quotas to science education, despite the fact that women already earn 57 percent of bachelor's degrees, 59 percent of…
jstemwedel | February 29, 2008I recently received an email, prompted by my series about having a family and an academic career, asking for some input:
I am a mere first year in a Ph.D. program and am a bit older than the other students. I am wholeheartedly committed to the program I am also considering the seemingly traitorous act of having a baby.
Do you think it's essential to wait until ABD status?
From the point of view of getting things done, it is certainly possible to take classes (and TA classes) while pregnant. A lot depends on your work-style. I'm the kind of person who's better off doing something…
jstemwedel | November 20, 2007A comment on ScienceWoman's post (concerning, among other things, how her students tend to call her Mrs. ScienceWoman and her male colleagues Dr. MaleColleague), got me thinking about the norms around addressing faculty that prevailed at my undergraduate institution and whether, if they still prevail, they're worth abolishing.
The commenter wrote:
No one I know (just graduated college) would ever dare address a professor by Mr. or Mrs.... As far as I'm concerned, those titles are related to marital status--which has nothing to do with education or as a sign of respect... Addressing a female…
jstemwedel | July 31, 2007An old friend turned up to comment on my post about juggling, and as a woman in academia she has some familiarity with the metaphor and with the reality it's supposed to capture. She writes:
The department chair when I was hired ... suggested that although we're juggling lots of balls, the ball representing our families and home life is made of glass. I COULD take that as a message that taking care of my family is my most important job (and my work is not? grrr.) but I think he meant it more as that part of our lives outside of work supports our lives IN work, and if that one cracks, it's…
tsmith | July 30, 2007The Danica McKellar posts (review; interview) have sparked some discussion that I want to address here. It largely centers on the issue of McKellar's approach: is it a good one? Or is it trying to replace one Bad Thing (girls' dislike of math) with another Bad Thing (encouraging them to be, as one commenter put it, "consumerist tools of the patriarchy"?) More below...
Here at Aetiology, for example, Katie commented:
One of the reasons I liked science classes was because they were an oasis from the prevailing shopping/shoes/makeup ethic at my school.
Not every girl likes the same things. I…
jstemwedel | July 29, 2007Friday, my better half was preparing to cross the international dateline for a week-long business trip and my parents were getting ready to board a plane for a week-long visit at Casa Free-Ride. As I contemplated the prospect of digging out our guest room (known in these parts as "the place clean clothes go to wrinkle") it became clear to me that the chances of my finishing writing (and preparing overheads for) the two presentations I will be giving at the conference that starts the day after my parents depart before my parents' arrival were nil. Of course, this means that I will not be…
tsmith | July 26, 2007 In terms of physical size, microbiologist Rita Colwell is a petitie woman. However, her distinguished research and service career has made her a giant in her field. Her research revolves around many aspects of water ecology, including the intersection of the environment and infectious disease (as I wrote about here following a talk she gave this past spring).
Much of her research has focused on Vibrio cholerae, including devising simple (and inexpensive) methods to remove the bacterium from contaminated water using cloth filtration. For these achievements and more, Dr. Colwell will be…
tsmith | July 25, 2007 Yesterday I reviewed Danica McKellar's forthcoming book, Math Doesn't Suck. When I contacted the book's publicist about receiving a review copy, I also inquired about an interview with Danica, and she graciously agreed. Perhaps this will cover some topics brought up in the comments section of my book review as well, as she discusses her motivation for writing the book, and what she hopes girls get out of it (in addition to a number of other topics!) Enjoy, and thanks again to Danica for taking the time to address my questions.
Q: First, I'm curious about your goals in writing the…
tsmith | July 24, 2007 It's not a rosy picture for girls in math. As Barbie infamously framed it, girls should think that "math is hard." While Mattel (rightly) received a lot of flack for that comment, the sad fact is that Barbie was reflecting the attitude many girls tend to take toward mathematics education: it's difficult, it's boring, and who needs it anyway? Surveys have shown that, while girls and boys in elementary school show similar attitudes toward mathematics, by junior high girls tend to have a negative attitude toward math, along with lower confidence in their ability to handle math problems. Of…
jstemwedel | June 26, 2007I want to share some of the items I've been reading elsewhere. Some of them strike me as having a very "summertime" feel to them, while others are just about the non-seasonal issues that are part of life.
At Cocktail Party Physics, there's a truly excellent post on rollercoasters, including some history behind the coolest way to make your stomach drop. (Last time I took the sprogs to The Tech, they had a station where you could design your own rollercoaster ride, putting together loops, corkscrews, and straight rises and falls, then experience it on a simulator. It frustrated the sprogs,…
jstemwedel | June 23, 2007Zuska reminded me that today is the one-year anniversary of the suicide of Denice Denton, an accomplished electrical engineer, tireless advocate for the inclusion and advancement of women in science and, at the time of her death, the chancellor of UC-Santa Cruz.
I never met Denton, and a year ago my feelings about her were complicated. On one side was her clear public voice against unexamined acceptance of longstanding assumptions about gender difference; from an article dated 26 June, 2006 in Inside Higher Ed:
She was in the audience when Lawrence H. Summers made the controversial comments…
tsmith | June 21, 2007 Sally Mason Named University Of Iowa's 20th President.
Interesting. A female biologist, currently Provost at Purdue:
During her tenure at Purdue, Mason invested both professionally and personally in diversity and innovative research and education.
She raised funds for and implemented a number of major diversity initiatives at Purdue, including creation of a Native American education and cultural center and a Latino Cultural Center, joining a black cultural center already on campus. She started two programs funded by the National Science Foundation that work to increase retention and…
jstemwedel | June 20, 2007You've probably seen the posts (here, here, here, here, here, and here.) responding to the University of Florida study claiming that women's names affect the social support or discouragement they'll get for pursuing technical subjects. (Those with the more "feminine" names will tend to be discouraged from "manly" activities like math, although apparently a frilly name won't hurt their performance in those activities.) Since the above-linked posts give the reasonable critiques of the research, I'm going to veer immediately to personal anecdata:
Is "Janet" a feminine name? It's not one of…
jstemwedel | June 12, 2007I haven't abandoned you, dear readers, I've just been attending to some tasks in the three-dimensional world. In the meantime, I want to recommend some great posts on other blogs. While some may leave you feeling reasonably good about doings in the world of science, I'm afraid others may break your heart. That doesn't mean you shouldn't read them.
At ChemBark, Paul Bracher muses on the ethics of doing science on someone else's dime. He notes that when the context in which you're doing the science is academic, your obligations extend to students as well as the entity funding your research…
jstemwedel | June 1, 2007I'm recycling another post from the ancestor of this blog, but I'm adding value by adding some newish links to good stuff on other blogs.
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How much does it matter that certain groups (like women) are under-represented in the tribe of science?
I'm not, at the moment, taking up the causes (nor am I looking for any piss-poor "Barry Winters"-style theories as to the causes). At present, the bee in my bonnet is the effects.
And this is not a hypothetical situation. This post at Thanks for Not Being a Zombie links to an article from the New York Times with some sobering statistics:
Even…
jstemwedel | May 12, 2007In part I of the interview, my mother described what it was like to be propelled by her dream of being an astronomer from being at home with four children to being in an undergraduate physics classroom and finding a serious mentor.
Part II: Out of the comfort zone and into the graduate program:
Were you encouraged by the folks at Rutgers-Newark with whom you were taking physics coursework to move on to graduate work?
As I was nearing the point of exhausting the undergraduate physics curriculum, and with no graduate physics program offered on that campus, my professors all encouraged me to…
jstemwedel | May 12, 2007In honor of Mother's Day, I want to celebrate the ways that mothers have blazed trails, knocked down barriers, and challenged expectations of what their daughters' lives can be.
When we're young, we don't always appreciate how important our parents (or other adults in our circle) can be as role models. Part of this, I think, is that a kid's world is smaller in some important ways. What you know of the world you know through school, through friends, through cartoons, and through your family. Lots of aspects of the wider world don't really pop up in your consciousness until you have to…