Zuska is the kick-ass alter-ego of Suzanne E Franks. When not dispensing Zuska's wisdom, Suzanne can often be found gardening, reading, or having one of her thrice-weekly migraines.
Send me your suggestions for other nifty feminist-y womanist-y science and engineering blogs to add to this list!And check Let's All Have A Party! for a list of birthdays of notable women in science and engineering - new additions all the time from Penny! Thanks, Penny!
If you have not yet figured out why you shoud not be using terms like "hard science" and "soft skills", then you absolutely need to read Telling Stories About Engineering: Group Dynamics and Resistance to Diversity in NWSA Journal v. 16 No. 1, 2004 (Re)Gendering Science Fields.
You should also read They Blinded Me With Science: Misuse and Misunderstanding of Biological Theory, an excellent critique of Thornhill and Palmer's nonsense about rape as an evolutionary strategy. You can find it in Burack and Josephson's must-read tome, Fundamental Differences: Feminists Talk Back to Social Conservatives.
Support the Mautner Project for Lesbians With Cancer! "The Mautner Project improves the health of lesbians, bisexual, and transgender women who partner with women, and their families, through advocacy, education, research, and direct service. [The Mautner Project envisions] a healthcare system that is guided by social justice and responsive to the needs of all people."
Earlier this year I reviewed Douglas Tallamy's Bringing Nature Home, which inspired me to convert my garden to all or mostly native plants. I swore this year would be a much better gardening year than last. Visions of gardening glory danced in my head. Ah, early spring. Now we are baking in the heat of high summer and my garden sadly disappoints, even as passers-by comment on how much they enjoy looking at it. Yes, I think, if only you could see what it should look like! One-third of the natives I planted this spring, supposedly so well adapted to our climate and soil, have already given up the struggle and gone to that great compost pile in the sky. That includes the hyssop, which grew to a glorious, bushy three feet and then, in one week while I was away, shriveled completely - every single leaf - and died.
Gardening is not for the faint of heart. A gardener needs sources of encouragement and, dare I say, comic relief. That you will find in abundance in Des Kennedy's An Ecology of Enchantment: A Year in the Life of a Garden. Ecology is a series of weekly meditations disguised as a gardening book. First published in 1998, it's easy to see why it's been reissued. On the struggle for the perfect garden:
We've tried our mightiest to reflect a natural pattern of overstory trees, understory shrubs and herbaceous levels underneath. The idea, of course, is to achieve a harmonious composition by playing the vertical lines of trees against the rounded mounds of shrubs and spreading ground-level plants as nature herself would do. I have come to the conclusion that one completes this attempt, if at all, shortly before dying.
That makes me feel a little less bad about not having achieved nature's harmony in my garden this past year! Though I still mourn the hyssop.
Planning to be in/around/near New York City on August 9, 2008? There's a reader-Scienceblogger meet-up event in the works, being planned even as you read this, probably for around 3 pm. We'd like to know whether you think you'll be in the area and likely to attend. If so, please leave a comment here. Seed promises a fun afternoon event in an air-conditioned joint, with snacks and swag. I'll be there. So will a bunch of other fab bloggers. Whaddya say????
I've been sorting through books lately, in an effort to cull and control my ever-burgeoning collection, and of course I have to browse through each book to decide if I want to keep it. It's a slow, but rewarding process. This evening I was wandering through Migraine: The Complete Guide, when I happened across this delightful anecdote from a fellow migraineur:
Many migraine patients feel that emergency departments treat them with disrespect and with disregard for the seriousness of their condition. Emergency-room personnel, they say, do not consider severe migraine a true emergency. Instead, they bombard hapless migraineurs with demeaning questions and imply that they are drug abusers seeking a narcotic fix.
"I have a foolproof method for dealing with insensitive emergency-department doctors and nurses," said one woman who has had severe migraine for twenty years. "I throw up on their shoes."
This weekend is the 160th anniversary of the first (US) women's rights convention at Seneca Falls, July 19 and 20, 1848. At Seneca Falls, Elizabeth Cady Stanton rewrote the Declaration of Independence as the Declaration of Women's Rights, beginning, of course, with "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal..." And the Declaration included the shocking call for women's right to vote. It took 72 years till the right to vote was accomplished.
The final resolution in the Declaration called "for the overthrowing of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to woman equal participation with men in the various trades, professions and commerce." One hundred and sixty years later, and we're still working on that.
Of course, "all men and women" still really meant only "all (white) men and women", and the history of the fight for women's suffrage includes the sad fighting over whether priority ought to be given to "negro suffrage" or white women's suffrage, where "negro suffrage" meant the vote for black men. This was played out in what is known as the Kansas campaign of 1867, where the proposition to allow women to vote was actually put to ballot, but defeated. Abolitionists fighting for negro suffrage were at odds with women's suffrage workers who were willing to align themselves with those who supported their cause but opposed the vote for black men. From Alice Rossi's The Feminist Papers, quoting a woman in the middle of the Kansas campaign:
"So long as opposition to slavery is the only test for a free pass to your platform and membership of your association, and you do not shut out all persons opposed to woman suffrage, why should we not accept all in favor of woman suffrage to our platform and associations, even though they be rabid pro-slavery Democrats? Your test of unfaithfulness is the negro - ours is the woman; the broadest platform, to which no party has as yet risen, is humanity."
I can't help thinking of how this echoes down the years into the Democratic primary season just past. We've come so far, and have so far to go. We simply cannot allow our opponents - or ourselves - to fool us into thinking our hopes, dreams, and aspirations are at odds with one another, or must come at the cost of one another.
Hello, dear readers...if there are any of you left...I've been away for a week taking care of mom, plus the usual migraine breaks...back home now, and hoping to get back in the blogging groove asap.
Meanwhile, Physioprof is off guest-blogging at Feministe for two weeks and you absolutely have to read his deconstruction of a really atrocious piece of reporting in the New York Times about Title IX and science, Teh Ladeez Jus Don Liek Teh Scienz. Warning: the quotes from the NYT will make your teeth hurt.
Why would you celebrate Black Independence Day on July 3rd? It took the work of slaves to build America; the slaves came before the nation, so Black Independence Day would logically precede the traditional Independence Day, July 4th.
On July 3rd, I joined about 200 others in downtown Philadelphia, at 6th and Market Streets, to celebrate Black Independence Day and to honor in particular the 9 slaves transported to Philadelphia by George Washington (of the 316 slaves at his Mt. Vernon Plantation), and in general, all slaves whose labor helped build this nation. (See here for background information on the event.) The event was sponsored by ATAC, Avenging the Ancestors. ATAC has lobbied for years to obtain proper commemoration of the nine enslaved Africans, known as "the Divine Nine". Why these nine, and why this place?
Mr. Z and I are celebrating America's Fourth of July holiday with that great new American tradition, the STAYCATION!
Later I'll blog about how I began my staycation on July 3rd. Yesterday, Mr. Z and I staycated in style, cleaning out a large and extraordinarily untidy closet. Triumphant but exhausted, we elected to go out to dinner rather than grill something. We are hoping that Homeland Security does not get wind of us having Chinese food on the 4th as opposed to A-merrycan grilled slabs of meat. We did hie ourselves unto the local fireworks display after dinner and despite the rain it was quite lovely.
At my mother's assisted living home, the staff helped my mom and other residents put in a small garden in the spring. Onions, featured in the planting, are now being enjoyed by all. Mom says they are past that first delightful small green onion stage; the bulbs are getting bigger, and the tops thicker and stiffer. Which takes her back to childhood, and some creative onion engineering.
Image originally uploaded on 3/8/08 by Matter=Energy
The comics rawked last week! Gracie signed off as the engineer on plans for the bike ramp she constructed for her brother Baldo and his friend. Gracie, you are awesome! Read the strips for June 24 and 25, too. I want more Gracie with my Baldo!
The Chronicle News Blog reports that India will now have quotas for faculty positions at its prestigious engineering universities, for members of the so-called lower castes and classes. You can tell we really are living in a global society; the same whiny rhetoric about how the entry of those unmeritorious Others will destroy all we hold sacred you get in the U.S. pops right up in this context, too. Just read the comments.
Revised data tables are available now for the 2006 Survey of Earned Doctorates. You need to request them, NOW. Fairer Science explains why.
Alia Sabur is the overachiever of the year. No, the century! Millenium?? Take that, you wackaloons who whine about how women can't do math 'cause their brains are all full of estrogen. She's brilliant, has a thing for social justice and mentoring young girls, and she's pretty, not that that matters, as Jerry Seinfeld might say. Hat tip to Physioprof!
William Saletan explains why the search for a biological basis of homosexuality not only won't help convince evangelical wackaloons that it's normal - it might make things even worse. He ends with this chilling summary:
Liberals are slow to see what's coming. They're still fighting the culture war. The Toronto Star, like other papers, finds a neuroscientist who thinks the new study "should erode the moral judgments often made against homosexual preferences and rebut any argument that it is a mere a lifestyle choice." Well, yes. But then what? The reduction of homosexuality to neurobiology doesn't mean your sexual orientation can't be controlled. It just means the person controlling it won't be you.
Numerous studies evidence a gender-gap in faculty salaries, even when other variables, beyond bias, are controlled. Many explanatory theories look at events over a lifetime but a recent study suggests that women faculty begin their careers at a salary disadvantage. The study, "Pay Inequities for Recently Hired Faculty, 1988-2004," found men and women hired into four-year colleges started at comparable salaries. The exception to this trend: research universities, where women start out earning an unexplainable 9 percent less than men. For all full-time faculty as opposed to those just starting their careers, there is a 5 percent gap in favor of men. For both the early career and full faculty groups, controls were used to reflect disciplines, years since bachelor's degree, research productivity and a range of other factors, with the goal of focusing on "unexplained" wage gaps. The study also found some evidence of a salary gap in favor of new black and Latino professors. An unanswered question is where black and Latina women fall in this study.
The quote is from the Washington Wire synopsis of the article, not the article itself.
George Carlin and seven dirty words...dude, the world really needs more people like you, or at least fewer with easily offended tender sensibilities.
And that's all the links I feel like rounding up today.
"A voice in the crowd" - are you heard? How are you heard? Are you one of a team that works as a choir or does discordance rule the roost?...who really has control of the megaphone?
Heh. How am I heard? Depends greatly upon the listener, and how far they've come in examining their own types of unearned privilege.
I was browsing the Women's Policy Inc. site, which is awesome, and ran across an item in the June 16, 2008 issue of The Source that just left me with my mouth hanging open. I can't find a permalink for this item; follow this link and scroll down to the fifth item, "House Approves Paid Parental Leave for Federal Employees". What's under discussion is a bill that
would allow federal employees to be paid for four of the twelve weeks of parental leave to which they are entitled under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) (P.L. 103-3). The legislation also would permit federal employees to use up to eight weeks of accrued sick leave for parental leave.
Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA) is horrorstruck by the untold expense this is going to cost the government.
"I would...ask that federal workers take note of what we do here today. We are not talking about making sure that someone who has a child or adopts a child has the opportunity to take the time off for bonding. We already ensure 12 weeks of that and have for [more than a] decade." Rep. Issa continued, "[L]et's look at this from a practical standpoint. You are running a federal department. You have somebody who you need, and every single year, as often happens, they take on a new foster child that they keep for three to five years and they have, let's say, three foster children. That means that individual will be gone on paid leave over and above their vacation, over and above their 13 days of sick leave a year, they are going to be gone four weeks every year, conceivably for a full 20 years. So, by having not just the birth [of a child]...we can conceivably go so far beyond the $850 million [in Congressional Budget Office] scoring, we could easily end up in the tens of billions of dollars
I am struck dumb by this apocalyptic vision of federal employees with hordes of foster children bankrupting the U.S. government. Here you thought the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a costly enterprise that threatens our economic security, but it turns out it's the foster children of federal employees combined with the evils of paid parental leave. Who knew?
The latest issue of Smithsonian arrived today, in time for my dinner. There are few things more pleasing than reading and eating on a fine summer day, sitting on the back patio with a light breeze blowing and the perfect toasted cheese sandwich, not burned this time, sitting on my plate.
But even a perfect toasted cheese sandwich can have its charms diminished when you find your sex so blithely dismissed in the opening lines of an article that caught your eye:
After my last post, Magetoo asks why do I blog? Poor Alison does not understand why I blog at all, being as I am so very bitter and angry, which I suppose we can classify under #8 in my newly numbered list of reasons why I shouldn't blog, with a dollop of #7 and #9.
A number of my Sciblings have taken up the challenge of the last "Ask A ScienceBlogger" question, "Why do you blog, and how does blogging help you with your research?" (See for example Alice and Janet and PhysioProf and Grrl and DrugMonkey.)
I am not currently involved in research, nor am I even employed, so the second half of the question is not very relevant for me. I thought I'd turn the first part around, though, and share with you all the reasons why I shouldn't be blogging, at least not about gender and science. These are culled from comments over the past I-can't-believe-it's-been-almost-three-years. Some paraphrasing has been done but the essential message of each remains unchanged. Some of these I credit to the comment thread of this post over at Cosmic Variance. Enjoy!
I will admit that rap music has more than once caused me to mutter "These kids today! Their music is just noise! When I was young, our music had a melody!" Or something like that. You know, the stuff mom said when I was young. I won't even mention how the generous dose of misogyny that seems de rigeur in rap songs makes me feel.
And yet I confess to being delighted today when I was listening to NPR's Here and Now and heard this story about educational rap. (Scroll down for summary.) Rhythm Rhyme Results (their tag line is "the other three R's) brings together teachers, musicians, producers, and entrepreneurs to make some really good "noise". Math and science are two of the curriculum areas for which rap songs have been created. What's not to love about this?
The content-rich lyrics adhere to state and federal curriculum standards and flow to thumping, original music.
I heard a little of the photosynthesis rap on the Here and Now program. (You can listen to a sample of it and other tracks on the RRR website here.) It was awesome. If something like this can draw more young kids into math and science I am all for it.
All of this just yanks my chain big time, like when people say in talks and demos, "It's so easy, my MOM can do it." (And then everyone in the audience laughs knowingly.) Like moms are the dumbest people ever. My pet peeve at technical conferences. I am a mom!
Preach it, sister.
If you've been wanting a guide to help you parse Christian right anti-gay rhetoric and what it has to do with politics today, look no more. The definitive work is Sin, Sex, and Democracy: Antigay Rhetoric and the Christian Right by Cynthia Burack. This is not a dry scholarly tome, nor is it written in academese. Very readable and unexpectedly humorous in places, it is informative and timely.
I should have blogged this back in April, but Fairer Science has a new section on building web communities. It includes a section on using women in science blogs to encourage young girls in science.
How's your bias literacy? Ruta Sevo and Daryl Chubin have put together a primer of sorts. You can download it here.
The 2008 WEPAN conference proceedings can be found here.
That's all for now. I hope you'll find some or all of these interesting!
Some time ago I posted info about the Seed lab photo contest. The deadline is long since past, but in the comments on my post I offered to post lab photos that you submitted but that didn't get selected. Barn Owl took me up on my offer. Here's her lab photo followed by her comments. That photo really takes me back to my tissue culture days.
Mine is a standard workspace for microdissecting groups of neurons from mouse or chicken embryos, to establish cell cultures; I've got a Zeiss stereomicroscope, with fiber optics illumination from above or below the stage. Everything sits in a laminar flow hood, to greatly reduce chances for contamination. My opinion is that if you want to know how neurons work, work on neurons...not on weird tumor cell lines.
Do you have a spiffy photo of your workspace you'd like to share? Send it to me and I'll add it here. Maybe I'll even make it a post of its own if you write something fab to go with it. Email to me: bobtownsuz AT yahoo DOT com
The lesson I'm trying to learn this year and next is that when I try to 'play the game' using externally set values for the things I do and am, I will be off balance - the weights of the different parts of my life will be wrongly distributed. It is up to me to recognise the true weight of things, and to distribute them appropriately for efficient and enjoyable carrying.
Because we can't keep our mouths shut forever, nor can we always stay locked safely within our homes, it is inevitable that we must interact with and speak to other human beings. And because of this, it is (nearly) inevitable that we will, at one time or another, say or do something that someone else interprets as offensive.
You know what I mean. You're nattering blithely along, everything's good, we're all happy - except, suddenly, some of us aren't. And you don't understand why. You are a good person. You are not a sexist, you are not a racist, you are not a homophobe. You are an ally! Someone must just be overly sensitive!
Well, perhaps someone is. Or perhaps you ought to give a closer listen to what they are trying to say to you. What should one do in such a situation?
The lesson I'm trying to learn this year and next is that when I try to 'play the game' using externally set values for the things I do and am, I will be off balance - the weights of the different parts of my life will be wrongly distributed. It is up to me to recognise the true weight of things, and to distribute them appropriately for efficient and enjoyable carrying.
This is a really excellent entry, do go read it.
It was a pleasure reading all the contributions to this month's Scientiae - one of the perks of hosting, spending time contemplating a batch of fab writing by women in science. And judging by your contributions, you really are a very fab bunch. I cannot believe how much you all manage to do with only 24 hours in each day. Just knowing you are all out there, each doing your part to change the face of science (literally and figuratively), makes Zuska a happy lady.
But without further ado, let's get on to the carnival!
My hometown sits in the Southeastern Greene School district of Greene County, itself the very southwest corner of Pennsylvania. And therein, I believe, is born my perennial confusion of east and west. When I lived in Kansas, my hometown nevertheless often seemed to the west of me - because Greene County is in the west (of Pennsylvania), right? When I think of driving home from Philadelphia, I know I am going to southeastern Greene, hence I must be traveling east. It's always a fun time, that moment when you have to choose which direction on the turnpike.
These days, with distance driving being a migraine trigger, Mr. Zuska most often does the driving, and I am spared the difficulty of decision, if not the momentary internal confusion. Whatever direction, we headed to Mom's house for Memorial Day weekend. I stayed on past the weekend to take Mom to some doctor appointments. The weather was exquisite, and we participated in requisite Memorial Day traditions. There was, of course, the cookout, with various family members. My sister and I cleaned up the yard and she planted annuals and tended to the rosebush in Mom's front yard garden bed.
I am the host of the June carnival, and finally got my call for posts up at Scientiae. The call is reproduced here after the jump. Posts aren't due till June 6.
In a recent post, I referred readers to a comment that had been left on another post. In the ensuing comment thread, I received a complaint that this was "only anecdotal evidence" . I should have cited some relevant literature to go along with it. That I needed to have "some science" in my post.
One of the many reasons for the existence of this blog is to tell stories about what happens in real women's lives - naming experience. Telling stories and naming the experience are worthwhile endeavors in and of themselves. It drives me nuts the way some people use "anecdote" as if it were equivalent to "uninformative, unreliable, meaningless". An anecdote is "a short account of a particular incident or event of an interesting or amusing nature, often biographical." Anecdotes - the biographical kind - are illustrative and sometimes just as powerful as all the cited studies in the world.
A friend of mine recently accepted a job in academic administration. He is extremely excited about the job and eager to do good things in his position. He is also a dedicated father and truly shares equal parenting responsibilities with his spouse. His spouse is in a career that is less time-flexible than academia is - or could be.
At my friend's prior job, he generally started his workday a little later than the norm, in order to care for the kids until departure for school. He worked from home very early in the morning, was accessible by cell and email, and came into the workplace after seeing the kids off.
What do you think happened when he told his new boss in academia about this situation?
This is a bit of a late announcement, but I thought some of you might like to play. See full announcement here.
For the next issue, Seed editors want to see the typical or not-so-typical places where Scienceblogs readers do science.
For the chance to get your scientific work space featured in Seed, please send a photo of it to
art AT seedmediagroup DOT com
by Tuesday, May 13th at 5:00pm EST. Please write "Where I Do Science Photo Submission" in the subject line, and send as high a resolution image as you can. No people in the pictures, please. Please include with the photo:
I actually had to create a new category for this post. That says something about how infrequently I have something good to celebrate on the gender and science front.
Anyway, this year's Albany Medical Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research was awarded to two women! All previous recipients have been old white guys. But this year, Elizabeth Blackburn and Joan Steitz are the winners. Grrl has a nice post up here with background on the winners and some info on what they plan to do with the prize money. Peggy has a post up, too.
Next: I look forward to the day when the fact that it's a woman who won whatever prize is no longer "news". So get working on gender equity, folks, because my life is half over already.
Everybody ought to read this comment by Grimalkin. Especially those of you who are so enamoured of "just speculating" and/or "considering the possibility" that women's essential biology causes them to "not be interested in" math, science, and engineering. After you read it, please stop parroting unthinking, unreflective, misogynistic crap about why women just don't go into [name your favorite technical field here].
It's spring, and everything looks great in the garden right now. Well, except for those pervasive Star of Bethlehem invaders that have to be pulled out by the dozens. Star of Bethlehem is a non-native, very invasive plant that can take over your flower bed almost overnight. I spent about an hour or more yesterday pulling it out of my flowerbeds. Its flowers are white, but it's not one of the four white flowers of the post title.
The four white flowers would be: tree peony, woodland phlox, chokeberry tree blossoms, and foam flower. I am not what you would call a photographer - I take snapshots, not photos, I fear. Nevertheless, maybe you will enjoy these flower snapshots!
You're a smart woman, and a fabulous scientist or engineer. You know you can be a great researcher or professional engineer. But have you given thought to doing more than your job - to becoming a leader? F. Mary Williams and Carolyn J. Emerson hope you will, and to encourage you, they've put together Becoming Leaders: A Practical Handbook for Women in Engineering, Science, and Technology. The book is a joint project of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and the Society of Women Engineers.
As the authors note in the introduction, there is plenty of research out there that looks at women in the workplace, particularly STEM workplaces; that delineates the history of women in science; and that examines inequities and analyzes social and economic issues. Most of you don't have time to wade through all the research. What you want to know is, what are the "practical, manageable actions that [you] or [your] organizations can undertake" to promote your own career and improve the situation at large for women.
A new collection of essays, Gendered Innovations in Science and Engineering, explores how taking gender into account in the areas of science, medicine, and engineering can enhance human knowledge.
The discussion of gender and science can take place on many levels. Some focus on issues of bias in who gets to do science. Others use much broader definitions, looking at the impact of gender on scientific questions and findings, as well as on who leads the research enterprise.
What's annoying is the assumption that considerations of how gender affects the science we do is a "broader" sort of inquiry than the (narrowly focused, less important, lower level) issue of bias and access. I don't have any patience for this view. In fact, I can't even see the two issues as completely mutually exclusive. They are interdependent.
UPDATE: Apparently it was not clear to some people that the second "quote" below is a parody written by me, of the first quote written by someone else. I hope this clears it up.
You may want to advocate for gender equity in science and engineering. But you are just wasting your energy. Pat O'Hurley tells us so.
I'm simply saying that it is [foolish] to expect female engineering enrollment to be equal to men's enrollment, if engineering is a field which is, statistically speaking, more attractive to men than to women.
This would be an insight gained from the following sort of deeply objective and scientific analysis:
The National Academy of Sciences has announced its latest crop of members, and there are 16 - count 'em! 16! - women out of the 72 elected. The Chronicle of Higher Education spins this positively with the headline "16 Women Elected to National Academy of Science" and the following opening:
Yesterday I attended a talk on gender and science. It was a very frustrating experience, because I had been looking forward to the talk. But the speaker, a senior administrator who should know better, made it a difficult and trying experience. About a third of the slides in the talk were dense data tables scanned from publications. Projected on the screen, the type was so tiny you could not read a thing on them, at least from where I was sitting in the audience. The speaker kept saying, "Well, you can't read this, but it doesn't matter, because all you need to know is..." All I need to know is, why are you wasting my time showing me slides that can't be read? It is disrespectful to your audience to not care enough to take the time to create real, readable and informative slides that summarize your research. Also, I can read your slides as well as you can. Please don't read them to me. Potential speakers take note: do not do this to your audiences. Some good advice on giving a talk: I hope that's not behind a paywall.
At any rate, in the question and answer period, a young woman raised an issue one often hears - that of senior women who not only don't mentor junior women, but treat them harder than their male counterparts. I will admit to having encountered a few women like this in my past, but I'm also aware that the opposite exists: young women who absolutely insist that discrimination and bias are a thing of the past, who seem unwilling to think about the structural features of institutionalized sexism. They'll even go so far as to defend white male privilege when you raise the issue. Here's part of what I think is at play in this.
For a long time now, I have not been what you would call a believer in progress. That is, I do not think things are bound to improve in the gender equity arena. I think we are in the middle of a backlash (more on that later); women's enrollment in undergraduate engineering has stalled or declined; it isn't just a matter of waiting for the old fogies to die off and be replaced with young men who won't be sexist asshats. Since sexism is structural and institutionalized, it is perfectly capable of replicating itself unless it is actively fought and dismantled.
And if you don't believe me, read this post from Female Science Professor. (Hat tip to PhysioProf.)
My colleague sighed and said that now some of the younger generation do the same thing. He sits in hiring committees and hears young male faculty question whether female applicants are capable of having their own ideas and working independently, but these issues are not raised for male applicants. He has been fighting this attitude for so long, he was discouraged that it wasn't something that went away as younger faculty were hired.
We can't afford to just sit around and hope that someday all the sexists will be dead. They're busy reproducing themselves. When they prefer hiring "people just like me", it's not just because they're white and male. It's because they share - or will tolerate - egregious sexism.
Greetings, Gentle Readers. I just rescued a number of comments from hang-up in moderation. No idea why most of them got moderated - they didn't even have links in them. Some of them were made many days ago. I want to apologize to you all for not getting those comments out there sooner. I have been going through a bout of almost daily migraine and have not been on the computer much at all, let alone blogging, let alone tending to the blog. Until I get my next botox treatment and it kicks in, it may continue like this so please be patient.
UPDATE: After posting this entry, I found out that the paper I discussed here is not actually slated at this time to be published in a peer-reviewed journal; it is merely available as a preprint. Nevertheless, I hear that the folks at Nature have picked up on this and have interviewed the author; we may see something next week there about it.
Remember that famous line about how women need to be twice as good as men to be considered half as good? A new statistical study by Sherry Towers available on ArXiv.org shows just how true this is in the world of particle physics.
I would actually very much like to avoid this blog (and a few others), but the ScienceBlogs channels - which I prefer to having to subscribe to each and every blog individually - won't let me do so. I usually just skip over the posts, but if there is any way to stop the "content" here from cluttering up my feeds, I'd appreciate hearing about it.
Lazy, whiny, insulting misogyny asking for help in maintaining the lazy, whiny, misogynistic state - you gotta love it. That takes balls, I suppose - if by balls you mean arrogant whiny ignorance.
Liz Henry's delightful, insightful skewering of the sexism deployed in an article about Google VP Marissa Mayer provides a very recent example of a pattern noted by Ruth Oldenziel in Making Technology Masculine: Women who love technology require an explanation; men who love technology are just being masculine. Oldenziel notes:
Scientiae'sApril Carnival is now up - actually has been up for a few days while I've been off having migraines. Peggy has done an excellent job with many thought-provoking submissions. I particularly like Mrs. Whatsit's ponderings on what it what it means to "have the balls". And I positively swooned on reading Liz Henry's submission. That's some writing after Zuska's own heart! Here's a delicious excerpt:
You can see two assumptions set up here:
Women who like computers are ugly.
It fucking matters.
and
It's tokenizing; it's like suggesting women are only in tech because of Affirmative Action By Boyfriend.
Read it, read it, so much righteous anger combined with fantastic writing must be read!
Finally, here's the call for next month's Scientiae. Flicka Mawa wants to know how our views of ourselves and our careers have changed over time. Whoa, that will be a particularly difficult topic for me. Hopefully I'll be able to get something written inbetween migraines which are just plaguing me these days.
Some things have recently led me to think it might be a good time to post the following reminders on this blog:
1. The legitimacy of feminist theory as a field of intellectual endeavor or feminism as a useful guide to action and public policy is not something that is up for debate on this blog.
2. Similarly, talking about gender and science is also not up for negotiation. It's the whole point of this blog and if that distresses you, I suggest you just not read anymore.
We might debate the particulars of these topics and how they play out in real life situations. But we're not going to argue here about whether or not there's anything to talk about. If this discussion does not meet your needs, you can find plenty of places in the blogosphere to nurture your budding moronocity. This is not one of those places.
I'm watching "The Night JamesBrown Saved Boston" on VH1. It is an excellent program.
I was 5 years old on April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assasinated. I don't have personal memories of what he did for America, but I grew up revering him. JFK, RFK, and MLK were equal in sainthood in my house growing up. I think I gained most of this sensibility from my mother.
One of the commenters on this program - I think it was the Rev. Al Sharpton but I'm not sure - remarked that James Brown was not a crossover artist to white America, but the artist who brought white America over to African American culture. It's just stunning to watch how he defused the potential erruption of violence in the city. He didn't need the police to protect him. He took control of the situation in the concert hall - and the city - that night. It is/was a breathtaking documentary. Should be required viewing in all our schools. If you can watch this and not be moved to battle racial injustice, you have no nerve endings left in your body.
I have a friend who recently told me that she was concerned that African Americans would vote for Obama "merely" because of his race. That he would not be able to fulfill all their dreams, and rioting would be the result. IMHO, if we didn't have a "second Watts" in response to GWB, we needn't worry about one in consequence to Barack Obama becoming president.
What is it that the world really needs? What should we be devoting our time, energy, and talent to, in order to make this a better world? Climate research? No. Renewable energy? No. Sustainable living? No. Gardening with native plants? No.
We can thank Amit Kagian at Tel Aviv University for this great gift to humankind - I'm sorry, mankind. Because what we have really been needing is a new method of judging (heterosexual, I'm sure)) standards of female beauty.
As if we didn't already have 10 gazillion magazines, tv shows, and movies to tell us what the "accepted" standard of female beauty is.
Apparently,
The study only covered female faces because "there is a greater variety of positions regarding male beauty,"
Oh yeah. All of us - white women, black women, asian women, hispanic women, homosexual men - all agree on what counts as male beauty. I'm sure the Bear contingent of the male homosexual community will totally agree with what white women in New York City think counts as male beauty.
Take home message: women have beauty, which can be quantified, but men are all the same.
Sooooo glad to see that years of research time were spent on this important project.
And there's this -- not only does the movie [Horton Hears a Who] end with father and son embracing, while the 96 daughters are, I guess, playing in a well, somewhere, but the son earns his father's love by saving the world. Boys get to save the world, and girls get to stand there and say, I knew you could do it. How did they know he could do it? Maybe because they watched every other movie ever made?
Pseudonymous blogging - and commenting - is common. Some like it, some don't; some see the need for it, some don't. Whatever side you're on, you might be interested in these two recent columns from the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Fertilize! Break out the emergent herbicide! Fire up the sprinklers! Here comes the lawn mower and weed whacker! The relentless battle to maintain a time-, energy-, and resource-consuming monoculture that provides a perfect habitat for Japanese beetle grubs has begun!
Or maybe...just maybe...you could try something different this year. Douglas Tallamy, University of Delaware professor of entomology and wildlife ecology, hopes you will, and tells you why you should in his lavishly illustrated book Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens. This book is worth the price if only for the many beautiful photos of insects and native plants.
Writer's block sucks. So I did what I often do when I'm faced with a problem I need to solve: I bought a book. The book in this instance, Dorothea Brande's Becoming a Writer, was originally published in 1934 and was out of print for some time until a recent reissue. It is a charming read. I can't tell you yet if it's going to cure all my writing problems, but I did want to share this quote with you:
It is unfortunate, but the unimaginative citizen finds something exquisitely funny about the idea that one aspires to make a name and a living by any such process as "stringing words together". He finds it presumptuous when an acquaintance announces that he has elected to give the world his opinion in writing, and punishes the presumption by merciless teasing. If you feel called upon to correct this unimaginative attitude you will have opportunities enough to keep you busy for a lifetime, but you will not - unless you have an extraordinary amount of energy - have much strength left for writing.
I couldn't resist adapting this for women in science and engineering:
"More than half the women in the world live in countries that have made no progress in gender equity in recent years. " See the Gender Equity Index website for more information.
"Women in Europe earn about 43% of doctoral degrees in science, but hold only 15% of senior academic positions." More info in this report.
In fact I am so excited about food and my "F" that I am having a food fest for the next two weeks. I am not going to promise that I will only post about food*, but I am going to try to center my blog around food science, food, molecular gastronomy. If you want to join in my Fortnight-long Food Fest, post a link in the comments.
That's Lab Cat's comments, not mine, of course.
The Science Debate 2008 folks held a press conference in Philadelphia last Friday, at the Franklin Institute. (I wasn't able to attend, which was a bummer for me.) You can watch the press conference here. The press conference is about 30 minutes long. Are the candidates listening? I hope so. One of the more interesting reasons I heard given for why the candidates should debate is that preparation for the debate would take at least 40 hours. That's 40 hours more that the candidates would spend learning about science & technology issues facing the nation than they would otherwise.
Bill Gates testified to Congress last week. Bill says we must prioritize four fundamental goals:
Strengthening educational opportunities, so that America's students and workers have the skills they need to succeed in the technology- and information-driven economy of today and tomorrow;
Revamping immigration rules for highly skilled workers, so that U.S. companies can attract and retain the world's best scientific talent;
Increasing federal funding for basic scientific research, to train the next generation of innovators and provide the raw material for further innovation and development by industry; and
Providing incentives for private-sector R&D, so that American businesses remain at the forefront in developing new technologies and turning them into new products and services.
Dan Greenberg is annoyed because he thinks this is the same old scare-mongering about a shortage of scientists and engineers that never materializes, and is only designed to provide university research budget increases and relaxed immigration rules so that companies can hire cheap foreign labor. I don't think this is exactly what Bill Gates is saying but you can decide for yourself. Well, except maybe the "revamping immigration rules for highly skilled workers" bit.
Greenberg writes for the Chronicle'sBrainstorm blog, commenting on science and technology policy and politics. He usually has something interesting to say.
Alice recently told her ethnicstory over at Sciencewomen, and asked others to join in the attempt to "displace white from the default position". Of course lots of comments ensued; her follow-up is here, and well worth reading. In the follow up you can find links to others who took up Alice's challenge.
I've been lying around with headaches most of last week and this one, thinking about what kind of post I might write as part of Alice's challenge. I have to admit I find the task quite daunting, which gives me some new insight as to why some of my fellow Sciencebloggers were loathe to contribute to Scientiae the few times I asked. Afraid to say something Really Wrong that will offend everyone. It's the understatement of the year to observe that race is not easy to talk about. It's not just that white people (self included) are very blind to white privilege most of the time. We are also blind ourselves to what it actually means to be white, what is this condition we call white. Which is itself a form of white privilege, but one that I think actually hurts white people in some ways.
WHY: What with the kids these days being all media-saturated, a good image is often more effective for getting a point across than all the citations, repetition, or jumping up and down and saying "really I swear" can ever do. This blog is a space for us to share those really fantastic images.
OUR AUDIENCE: We assume that you, our audience, are sociologically-inclined folks. So we do not typically include a lengthy sociological interpretation of the images.
DIALOGUE: We are aware that images are polysemic and that people will use them in many different ways, so our commentary, when offered, is never meant to control how people use the images (as if we could anyway). We welcome comments that offer additional or alternative interpretations of images, in fact we'd love them, but let's not get into any fights about what an image does or doesn't mean.
Do spend some time on this blog. Warning: May increase blood pressure.
In particular reader MoonSinger wanted to draw my attention to this post titled " 'Your Body': Men Are People And Women Are Women". My sister went to see Bodies: The Exhibition when it was in Pittsburgh and I was wishing I could have gone with her. Not now, though. You can get exhibit-related merchandise here. Not surprisingly, the merchandise depicts images of 'people' , not women.
Let me reminds you, once again, that people do not "choose" to have kids. A lot of people choose *not* to have kids--birth control, wealth, and modernity certainly contribute to this decision, which is perfectly irreproachable, by the way--but reproducing is not a conscious decision. It is something that the bodies of living creatures simply DO. It is, in fact, part of the definition of "living."
If Bitch, PhD's post isn't enough to straighten out the knickers you got in a knot over the discus
Zuska is the kick-ass alter-ego of Suzanne E Franks. When not dispensing Zuska's wisdom, Suzanne can often be found gardening, reading, or having one of her thrice-weekly migraines.
