This is a great short film that discusses the history of women in chemistry in Scotland, but it’s applicable to all of the sciences everywhere.
A telling quote: one chemist talks about how women were doing well but not getting promoted internally, so the well-meaning senior administrators tried to improve the situation by offering the women a course in how to get promoted.
To this day I still don’t understand how they didn’t realize it was them that needed the course.
(via Janet Stemwedel, who has a transcript.)
My mother, decades ago, took a year-long chem course, which had a total of one exam, the final. At the end of the first semester, though, grades had to be assigned for that semester. All men got As, all women got Bs. When my mother asked, she was told that the men were there for degrees, and the women were there for husbands, so it was only rational to give these grades.
After the final, when my mom had the highest grade in the class, it was too late to change the B that kept her from graduating with honors. To this day it angers her.
I’m not surprised, Cuttlefish! The bit I liked best was the headline – a quote from the film – of Dr Stemweddel’s post, “There comes a time when you have to fun out of patience.”
I’d be pissed too, Cuttlefish. Hell, I *am* pissed, because in high school, I was a science and math star. In my final year, I had an average in my math and science courses (six of eight) of 92%. My two other courses (Social Issues and English), I barely passed and failed respectively, through boredom.
But when I went to university, after a few years in the military, I realized I was going to have to transition and soon, and further, that I simply didn’t – don’t – have the tremendous mental strength and fortitude to take up a life in academe in a STEM field I might be well-suited for, if I had to face transphobia AND misogyny while I was doing it.
Even though I was the one who made the choice (to enjoy life instead of facing constant rejection and abuse from colleagues, as I well knew from my trans sisters’ experiences), it still pisses me off that I lost my chance to do something I truly loved and was good at, because of my gender.
It worked out, in a way, in that I discovered my facility with languages was real, and became a hexalingual and translator (not a hexalingual translator, though; I only translate three languages). And I love that avocation and vocation just as much as I used to love physics and calculus. But 26 years later, it still annoys me that I didn’t get a chance to try.
Actually, there are two possibilities here – it could be that reasonable criteria have been set up for promotion, and women aren’t working toward them. It isn’t necessarily the man who’s at fault, unless you want to be prejudiced. I’ll probably get a lot of flak for this, but consider the case of a woman who told me that, ‘…men put math into science to keep women out!’ I guess she meant that women are just not any good at math?
I saw an interview with a scientist who is now at Stanford who recalled being given a zero on a problem set in an upper-level math class. Because “your boyfriend probably did it for you.”
Anyone surprised?
Or it could be that women are passed over for opportunities because it’s perceived that we are (or will be) busy with “other things” and so can’t take advantage of those opportunities anyway. For instance, I’m a lecturer in physics and I’ve have opportunities given to other colleagues/less senior colleagues/even grad students for things like departmental/college funding for conferences or not asked to serve on important committees (which I didn’t find out about until too late to volunteer) because “it isn’t like I would have time to do it anyway anyway, because I have kids.” Those kinds of things count when it comes to evaluations for things like promotions or tenure, and I am at a disadvantage because the old boys’ club I work in doesn’t even think of me when it comes time to do them. It isn’t out of malice, necessarily, just thoughtlessness.
And as far as the math thing, yeah, some women are bad at math. And some men are bad at math. And some women can buy into cultural misogyny just the same as men can.
wcorvi @4,
It’s quite a short film (13 minutes) and it anticipates your objection. Maybe put the time in to find out, from something other than your starting hunches and sense of the logical possibilities, what’s actually going on?
Or is it that you have no interest in approaching this as an actual, practical problem in need of a viable solution?
Yes, women can believe cultural stereotypes, many do. There is a study that shows that school aged females who are told that girls aren’t good at math do worse on a math test than those who are either not told that girls aren’t good at math, or that are told that there is a such a stereotype but it isn’t true. Cultural biases have tangible consequences.
Also, going from your post it seems that you believe that an anecdote should be compelling evidence, so here is my own. My mother graduated from college with honors with a MATH degree. My sister, who graduated with a science degree, took Calculus 3 as an elective because she thought it was fun. In my own schooling there were at least as many females in the higher level math courses as males, except at the University that I went to that had over a 2-1 male/female ratio.
Why exactly should we consider an irrelevant anecdote about a single individual as anything other than evidence of your prejudices?
wcorvi:
Appears you can’t even be bothered to rationalize your biases. What reason would a woman and not a man not want to improve their lot by being promoted? From the way you worded your half-baked comment one can only assume you think women don’t work as hard as men.
You mean, in the case examined, something aside from that which was addressed in the text by
There are only a few lines of text there, not sure how you missed that.
Consider also that no matter how well one might do in the actual job, the criteria for promotion may wrongly include non-essential behaviors which men are taught but women are not, generally, or the criterion that one be a man (also wrong).
And really, I’m unclear as to why the default assumption towards such a disparity is not “because women suffer discrimination”. It certainly should not be historical news to anyone, nor should it be news that it happens now.
It could be that black people aren’t studying as hard.
It could be that poor people are just lazy.
It could be that the disabled aren’t making the effort to get to point A to point B.
Fuck you.
It could be, actually. They may be self-fulfilling prophesies. It would be worthwhile looking to see if that is so and what can be done about it.
Are senior administrators, however well-meaning, likely to think that there may be something seriously wrong with the system that made them senior administrators and with the way they run things?
I would like to come to wcorvi’s defense since I felt some comments were being a little harsh.
My, admittedly male, impression was that the men thought the women were missing out on what they thought were (obvious?) ways to get promoted, hence the offered course. This is similar to what happens in other fields and areas. When I was in teacher’s college, we had instructions on how to prepare for job interviews, just as we do mock interviews for high school students to prepare them. I have seen cases with adults in similar training sessions where they are told exactly how to dress, how to behave, etc. for the mock interviews the next day, yet some of the adults show up having completely ignored the instructions and then argue that they are being picked on when their mistake is pointed out (much like wcorvi’s anecdote about how SOME people will blame the system, flawed or not, rather than following its rules to get ahead).
So at that time, while it might not be fair or relevant to the position, getting promoted might involve golfing with the boss, putting the department head’s name as a contributor on published papers, or even being more verbal about your desire to be promoted rather than assuming your boss knows it. I’m not arguing that the disparity and glass ceiling aren’t the men in power’s fault, but that there might have been some unspoken rules that the women were not aware of.
Okay, while common sense isn’t common, enough devil’s advocate. Before I’m attacked, I agree with the movie, and am hopeful that things improve. Certainly in my own field, teaching high school science and math in Canada, we seem to have a handle on the problem (eg. the math department head at my school is female, as was the science d.h. at my old school, and approximately equal numbers of each sex as teachers). As my anecdote, a female colleague and I were also the only two vying for a desirable job the other year, and while she was successful I bear no grudges, and freely admit she was the better candidate.
I hope that the film, North Country, a well-acted film about what despicable things men did when they thought their jobs were threatened, wasn’t accurate. I highly recommend the film, and if it was accurate, then you have my apologies for my parents generation, and guarantee that I will teach my kids to be better.
P.S. I’m still amazed that people can’t solve that old puzzle about the injured boy going to the hospital, and two different doctors say “I’m sorry, I can’t operate on this person, he is my son.”, but they do.
I know it’s an anecdote, but since this relates to my field I know 3 of the women in the video personally. Anyone who suggests these women are not incredibly talented and hard working has their head up their arse. I’ve rarely met any scientists as dedicated and professional as these women. And I know a LOT of scientists.
Louis
All fairness, I like those courses, the “how to get promoted” ones. Little seminars, often with a free lunch.
The reason I like them is because I can’t drink. Ethanol gives me a bad reaction. But even now, going for drinks is a major role in getting ahead in organizations, not only to chum with your boss and speak about promotion opportunities off the clock, but also to network with people who may have promotion opportunities in parallel fields. It makes the path that much harder, so the little bits of other things I can do that I can glean from them (most of the courses ARE “go drinking with your boss”, from experience) I do appreciate. [It would also be rough for recovering alcoholics, though that is not my situation, just another ableism in a more mental rather than physical subtle discrimination]
I’ve heard horror stories from my grandparents generation of all the barroom networking instead happening at strip clubs, and am glad that has never been encountered in my experiences. Sometimes I can stay until 10pm at a bar nursing a cola while listening to drunk old men while looking forward to an hour and a half commute, after all its money, but the former would just be awful… And pretty much all promotions came from these after-work things, not in-work things, its a busy workplace, so you don’t call up the director and say “gimme a raise”, you waited until Thursday and ask once the drinks hit the table, but before the second round. It was the workplace culture, luckily someone explained the rules to me while I worked there… But that would hardly be a training thing, a seminar, that is just something that should be covered really early on by word of mouth from the boss “these are the rules of the company, and these are the rules that are not on any formal documentation”.