“Women trying to make it as scientists face bias, hostility and a lack of respect that all combine to hold them back, a team of researchers has found. These barriers both frighten women away from scientific careers and block the women who try to succeed, the researchers report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science,” reports Al Jazeera. (I’m anxious to hear what Cabin Girl and others have to say about this study.)
…and, and look at who published this article!!!! Just blows my mind!!!!!!!!! Just ask me how juggling family and a job and college is all about!!!!!!! Anything I can do to lighten the load of said women trying to enter this force of getting there, has it from me!!!!!
Very cool of Al Jazeera to do that. I haven’t searched for the original article in Science mag.
Susan, there have been several great articles from that news outlet as of late. Strange, isn’t it. NO wonder the MSM do not like them….:o)
I get their e-mail bulletins, and their reporting sure seems solid and reputable to me! Not inflammatory at all, ever!
It’s a UPI wire service story that’s posted all over the Internet. For instance, here at Science Daily.
This study is a good kick in the pants to science managers who probably believe they’ve solved the problem. Because this is an old story in science. One of the subtexts in Simon Singh’s otherwise unremarkable historical account of science leading up to the Big Bang theory (titled “The Big Bang”) is the unheralded contributions of several women, particularly in astronomy, whose steadfast and difficult work advanced the science.
It should also be kept handy and matched up with similar studies in other fields and in general (if such exist), and the whole issue revisited for the Roberts hearing. This is a strong issue, because 1. men are likely to believe the equal pay problem has been solved and 2. even women who would not describe themselves as feminist draw the line at getting paid less, or other discrimination in the workplace.
There are relatively few women in science, which means they probably don’t concentrate demographically, either. But to overcome the distance between them, some blog. Below are some women scientist links:
A blog
Young Female Scientist
A WaPo article by Meg Urry, astrophysicist, on her experiences with discrimination.
Meg Urry
I’m not surprised about the bias, although I haven’t read the full report in Science yet (too tired to finish tracking it down right now!)
In my own experience in a very acadmically oriented subspecialty of the scientific world (medical director/writer in medical communications and education)…I’ve been blessed with being in a very female-dominated (sorry, but it’s true) business, where most of the big players are women, and we tend to play well together.
However, the women I see on the other side (in big pharma co.) definitely do not have it so well. From what I see, the men get the top positions and kudos, generally; the women get a workload that no one live up to. I haven’t really looked at the academic side in pharmacy schools; there are too many other issues (like ethnicity) that play a role there.
In the med-ed world, there are subtle put-downs as well. I have had more than one pharma MD/PhD say to me on meeeting (usually we have lots of phone and email contact before I ever meet with clients), “Oh, I had this idea in my head that you would be a small blonde,” What is that supposed to mean?
Anybody else have any thoughts or experiencecs with this? I think Sandlblaster might have something to say…
I’m definitely not a scientist. I was steered away from that when I was young. But I work in another field where women confront bias and its perfectly legal.
Women actors over the age of about 40 have few opportunities to work in the profession. Auditions almost completely dried up when I hit 50. It is all perfectly legit because producers can always fall back on “artistic vision” to justify casting choices. Of course film makers and advertisers also keep other groups such as Asian actors and disabled ones pretty invisible, too.
I’m not trying to “outvictim” anybody here. It is just that the long way, baby, that we have come is still far from the end of the road in a lot of areas.
Im sorry, Kahli… and it’s also troubling to see the extremes that actresses go to in order to make themselves look younger.
isn’t this also a problem for both women and men screenwriters?
Yeah. Makes no sense. Writers from great shows like “Mash” couldn’t get hired as they got older. Strange culture we live in.
Yes, indeed, bias is a significant problem for women in science. I am a scientist at a research university. Although I have been fortunate in many ways – I completed my doctorate, I got a faculty position, and tenure, it has not been easy. And I cannot say that it has gotten easier with time.
My field was once strongly dominated by men. Now, a majority of our doctoral students are women, and I hear my male colleagues regularly lamenting this, and suggesting that we need an affirmative action program for men.
During my career, there have been at least three interesting “inside” studies of women’s life in areas of science. The first I saw was done about 1984, when I was a graduate student. It was about women in computer science at MIT. It documented overt and subtle discrimination on the part of male faculty and students. The overt stuff was pretty awful, and awfully funny, too. But it was the subtle stuff that was (and still is) more insidious.
A brief example from my own experience indicates that this subtle stuff has a strong effect on women’s progress. This past week I was at a search committee meeting. We had decided to reject our last candidate, a women, and extend the search next year. I thought her interests didn’t fit our needs very well. The other committee members (all men) agreed, but they wanted to tell this candidate that she was too aggressive, too demanding,too concerned about tenure even if she had been a better fit. However, they didn’t want to say those things. They wanted me to say those things to her because “being a woman, I would know what was appropriate for her behavior”. And yet they were worried because she was such a good role model for our students: wife, mother, scholar, “a perfect example”, our chair said. I noted that she had had nine years of post-docs in a row, hardly the kind of career our female or male students saw as a success. I was told that this was to be expected for lowering expectations by having children. I was charmed by their viewpoints, I can assure you!
There’s more to say, but the hour is late. . .