The cabbages are beautiful in the garden this morning, a cool morning - but the birds are everywhere and the heron is in the tidal creek (keeping one eye on the dogs and one eye on the water).
I checked in at A Blog Around the Clock this morning (it's always a wealth of information on the science blogosphere), and was thrilled to see that Olduvai George was posting again - I ran across his site randomly last spring, probably one of the first blogs that I ever visited, and there was a post about his dog, who had recently died. It was both heartbreaking and heartwarming - made me think about my first dog, an amazing german shorthair pointer (whose ashes I evacuate each time there's a serious hurricane threat) - and made me think of the Ancient Wonder Beagle (who's sleeping on my right foot as I type this). Anyway, here I am a microbiologist, studying organisms that you have to go to some trouble to see, and I find this large organism site really compelling - so go and look - Olduvai George's illustrations draw you into a different world. I'm sure that I'm not alone when I say I'm glad that he is back.
Another post I came across at A Blog Around the Clock was less thrilling, more frustrating - but worth paying attention to. I haven't been checking alot of the blogs that I usually like to visit lately (work, work, work) but evidently there was an article (scroll to the end to find the article) written by a freshman female at Cornell (who wrote for the Cornell American) that caused a bit of a stir. She was writing in response to the report out of The National Academies Press "Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering." A typical passage from her text went like this (quoted):
The report often likes to present data that entirely goes against the point they are trying to make. Take for example, figure 3-2 on page 91. Women do receive fewer honors than men overall, and that can be attributed to the fact that there are less women in the field. In terms of proportions, however, figure 3-2 shows that women actually receive more than their fair share of awards by a significant amount. While women make up 9% of the pool of eligible recipients for the “CAREER” and “PECASE” awards, they are the recipients of 26% of the CAREER awards and 28% of the PECASE awards. I tried to find out what these awards were by following their external link to a National Science Foundation webpage, but the link was not functional (Maybe if there were more men on the committee the incorporated technology would actually work).
Geez. I read through the entire article, but by the end, I felt that it was just a waste of my time. I'm glad the blogosphere has responded though - at Zuska's you'll find a thorough response, and another one at archy. It was chilling though - to read such an article - to have it written down by a young woman pursuing a career in engineering, to read words so at odds with the challenges facing many of my female colleagues today. Her words (and her judgements) might come easily now - but lets talk to her in 10 or 20 years. I was thinking this morning: how did I feel about the whole gender thing when I was in my early to mid-20s? I don't think I spent much time thinking about it - I was forging ahead, taking classes, having a good time - but I'm pretty sure I didn't display such arrogance and cluelessness as this young Cornell undergraduate. At least I hope I didn't. My awareness came slowly - from being the only female in my first doctoral course (Soil Chemistry) and feeling awkward on day one of class, when the professor stated that his office hours were from 5-7 pm and that his door was always open during that time, unless, of course, you were a female, and then he wanted you to come accompanied by a male student. It crept in when my PhD mentor would come into the lab and talk sports with all of the male graduate students and postdocs, conversations about sports that drifted into science discussions - conversations about science that were never initiated with the two females in the lab, since we didn't fit into his daily ritual. Later, as a postdoctoral fellow, I became actively aware of what the 'good old boy' network really meant, and then as a fledgling faculty member - these stories are too numerous (and lengthy) to write about here. Some I can't even legally talk about. Now, I'm surviving - but when I glance up the ladder at my University, I see only a few women up there - and none in the type of positions where I could go and talk with them about challenges that surround me. It's lonely. One day, if she's lucky, perhaps this young freshman will even be in a position to talk intelligently about the issues she wrote about so quickly - I hope so, we'll need her - and I also hope that her challenges are less difficult than what my friends have had to face. A few paragraphs snagged from Thus Spake Zuska:
The more things change...Rachel, I still have a copy of a freshman composition essay I wrote in response to an article in the student newspaper on sexual harassment on campus. That couldn't possibly be happening in 1980! I exclaimed. Discrimination is over! We burned our bras in the 1970s and all that. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Indeed, it's depressing as hell to think that over 20 years later, things have not changed more than they have. I would not have imagined back then that progress would be so staggeringly slow. But I think I am in a better position than you are to evaluate the difference between then and now.
It is frightening to admit that there might be something to all this. To admit that there might be something that is going to affect your career that is completely outside of your control and that has nothing whatsoever to do with how talented and accomplished you are, that does not respect how hard or how long you work. It sucks. It is much more comforting to pretend that such things do not exist. In that sense, your near-hysterical sense of denial is completely understandable.
What is really sad, however, is the hatred of women and consequent self-loathing it implies that comes across so strongly in your article. You say that the women who wrote the report must hate young women like you, but you are the one who makes remarks like "it was reported that the lone man on the committee stumbled out of each meeting covered with whip marks and had to sprint to an emergency estrogen removal station to keep his testosterone level in check". It would take a week to explain to you all the woman-hating packed into that one sentence: that women are a threat to men, that too-many women will emasculate a man, that women want to keep men pussy-whipped, that women want to control men, that women are, in general, evil. Or how about "Maybe if there were more men on the committee the incorporated technology would actually work". Is that what you are going to tell your interviewers come job search time? That, in general, you can't trust technology designed by women to function properly? Do you really believe such nonsense? Do you really hate yourself and other women so much?
As for me, I've got a grant to write on this beautiful Sunday in the lowcountry, and although I'd rather roam the garden, walk the beach, or curl up on the couch with a book - for now, the grant it will be.
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