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Twitter user @astrokatey (Katey Alatalo) just posted this in 22 parts, which I will present in bullet form here. I have heard these sorts of stories from fellow students (as a student) and from professional scientists (as a radio inteviewer). Science (and STEM in general) is supposed to be a meritocracy, and it does best when it is, but it is also a human endeavour and wrought with all the failings and successes of all human activities. As soon as privileged thinking enters the picture, the quality of the science goes down because those with privilege know they don't have to try as hard to get the same recognition of their work or careers. It just so happens that most of those with privilege are white and male (and often in the latter part of their careers). It is hard to make space for others not exactly like ourselves, but that is (imho) one of the defining aspects of civilization and civil society.
It is the two lines "the stress of merely surviving saps you of the creative energy you needed to write and advance academically" and "you work your butt off to catch up to peers and build the networks your advisor usually helps you build and manage to get good science done" that, to me, highlight why action needs to be taken to address sexism (and racism, and classism, and ableism, and...) in the sciences. Societies have huge problems with discrimination and building those walls doesn't protect it, it makes it weaker and has a huge opportunity cost (imagine if all of those people that are interested and good at things were the ones given the opportunities instead of those who are meh about the whole thing but do it because it's easy because they are privileged... that is lost opportunity for all of us). This is also why professional organizations need to up their game when it comes to taking active measures to reverse the historic inequities that exist in their respective fields: the way the system work is that no matter how well someone does in their formative years, if they are part of a marginalized group they were not permitted to do as much as their privileged peers (I am, at the moment, quite frustrated with the Canadian Association of Physicists... they are doing a poor job at addressing the institutionalized discrimination in the field of physics in Canada). Again, we are all poorer for it. If we can't get this to work in the sciences (remember? supposed meritocracy?), then what chance do we have of sorting this out in society as a whole?
- This article (NYT "Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone Too Far") has made me super angry. Do you want to know what it is like trying to be a woman in a scientific space? Let me tell you.
- Your teachers will start telling you when you are young that you are “not ready” for advanced math.
- I was just lucky my mother stood up for me with that teacher. Otherwise I would not have been in calculus in high school.
- In college, you will be in classes where your male classmates will tell you how easy the homework was. You’ll doubt yourself a lot.
- Only to find out they were scoring Cs while you were getting As. Be ready for them to also say things like “women aren’t naturally scientists”.
- Those same men will look at you like a possible person to date, when you just want to do your work. You learn to close yourself off.
- Then, if you’re lucky, the president of Harvard will give a speech about women being biologically inferior in science.
- And you’ll get to listen to your peers repeating that all around you. You get into top grad schools, are told it’s because you’re a woman.
- You go. Then your advisor makes you uncomfortable by staring at your chest [she linked to this article: "How Sexual Harassment Halts Science"].
- You make it clear they made you uncomfortable. So they isolate you, insult you, and try to drive out of science.
- When it is too much, you report it to the chair. Who tells you that you are overreacting, or lying. And threatens to throw you out.
- You put your head down and try hard as you can not to “rock the boat” after the chair did you the “favor” of letting you switch advisors.
- The stress of merely surviving saps you of the creative energy you needed to write and advance academically.
- AND that ex-advisor is using his platform to denigrate you and your science.
- MIRACULOUSLY you make it out. You graduate, you get your Ph.D. and you get a postdoc.
- You work your BUTT off to catch up to peers. Build the networks your advisor usually helps you build and manage to get good science done.
- YOU DID IT! You got a fellowship!! You talk about your struggles. Many don’t believe you.
- Every day, articles like the one in the New York Times come out to remind you your voice matters less than a spoiled white boy’s.
- And those classmates and those harassers come back to your mind. And you wonder…
- Was the cost of having the audacity to want to be an astronomer while also being a woman worth it?
- Most women in science I know share some of my narrative. Do most men? No. They were assumed from kids to be sciencey.
- When the day comes that vast majority of science women DO NOT have a tale like mine, then, New York Times, we can talk “biology”.
It is the two lines "the stress of merely surviving saps you of the creative energy you needed to write and advance academically" and "you work your butt off to catch up to peers and build the networks your advisor usually helps you build and manage to get good science done" that, to me, highlight why action needs to be taken to address sexism (and racism, and classism, and ableism, and...) in the sciences. Societies have huge problems with discrimination and building those walls doesn't protect it, it makes it weaker and has a huge opportunity cost (imagine if all of those people that are interested and good at things were the ones given the opportunities instead of those who are meh about the whole thing but do it because it's easy because they are privileged... that is lost opportunity for all of us). This is also why professional organizations need to up their game when it comes to taking active measures to reverse the historic inequities that exist in their respective fields: the way the system work is that no matter how well someone does in their formative years, if they are part of a marginalized group they were not permitted to do as much as their privileged peers (I am, at the moment, quite frustrated with the Canadian Association of Physicists... they are doing a poor job at addressing the institutionalized discrimination in the field of physics in Canada). Again, we are all poorer for it. If we can't get this to work in the sciences (remember? supposed meritocracy?), then what chance do we have of sorting this out in society as a whole?
