Hope Jahren explains that Science Has a Sexual Assault Problem — fieldwork exposes women to terrible risks.
I was careful to do everything right. I started out modestly and cautiously, in the summer of 1996, with simple reconnaissance. I booked a spot within a chaperoned group tour and stayed in prearranged hotel rooms and ate bland meals with the 10 or so elderly Australian tourists who were my travel companions. We rode in an air-conditioned bus for days while I stared out the window and scribbled notes about the roads and cataloged photos of the landscape. I covered my head with a scarf and averted my eyes toward the sidewalk.
And then, one day in the Mediterranean resort town of Antalya, instead of going to the marketplace with the group, I sat in a cafe to study some maps. It was broad daylight when I began walking back to the hotel, and a stranger pulled me into a stairwell — and then did some other things. Perhaps an hour later I staggered out with his blood under my fingernails. I cannot describe what happened in a way you will understand, because I still do not understand it myself. I have been trying to understand it for almost 20 years.
My story is not unique. In July, Kathryn B. H. Clancy and her co-authors Robin G. Nelson, Julienne N. Rutherford and Katie Hinde published a survey of 666 field-based scientists in the journal PLoS One and reported that 26 percent of the female scientists surveyed had been sexually assaulted during fieldwork. Most of these women encountered this abuse very early in their careers, as trainees. The travel inherent to scientific fieldwork increases vulnerability as one struggles to work within unfamiliar and unpredictable conditions, but male respondents reported significantly less assault (6 percent).
That’s a horrifying frequency — and it’s not just because they’re traveling in strange foreign uncivilized lands, because the greatest risk is coming from their colleagues in the field. I hope no one is going to use this statistic to argue that women shouldn’t be scientists, or shouldn’t do field work, because I don’t think I’m capable of yelling “FUCK YOU” loud enough to approximate my opinion of that sentiment.
It’s not just women scientists, either, or a peculiarity of science fieldwork. Read Christine Tesoro’s A Personal History of Misogyny — this seems to be the loud background noise of every woman’s life.
What can we do? Here’s a summary of the conclusion of the Clancy paper that tells us what to do: the problem is on our shoulders, not that of the victims, and cultural and institutional change is what is required.
Radical feminism, in other words.
Oiy. Science doesn’t have a sexual assault problem, the NFL doesn’t have a partner-abuse problem, etc. The primary problem is MEN. The terrible risks aren’t natural phenomena–they’re MEN choosing to assault and harass women. The only way most of this kind of violence is going to stop is if men knock it the fuck off.
And for those who don’t engage in such activities to stop making excuses for those who do.
I keep having horrible thoughts. Of course the predatory men don’t want women equally represented in their departments, labs, and projects. It’d make it that much harder to get the targeted ones alone.
You know, every time some dumb yob says they think women shouldn’t vote, I’m tempted half the time to tell them ‘By your logic, men shouldn’t vote. They’re violent, uncivilized, and antisocial.’
loopyj @ 1:
No, it isn’t. Primary problems are endemic, systemic sexism, which flowers from a very long history of misogyny*, and the ever changing concept of masculinity**, with the current morph into toxic masculinity,*** and rape culture.
*Read Misogyny: The World’s Oldest Prejudice, by Jack Holland
**Read Manhood in America: A cultural history, by Michael Kimmel
***Read Toxic Masculinity, Part One and Toxic Masculinity, Part Two
Anthony K:
Yes, this is crucial, along with getting men to speak up, and refuse to give everyday sexist behaviour a pass. This, more than anything else, will lead to a great deal of change in the culture.
“‘By your logic, men shouldn’t vote. They’re violent, uncivilized, and antisocial.’” Not to mention irrational enough to believe that which team scores the most points matters in real life, and emotional enough to inflict violence and humiliation on strangers who don’t support their team. (I live in Philadelphia.)
jennyjfwlucy @ 7:
To quote someone, use <blockquote>Paste Text Here</blockquote>, which will yield:
Sports culture is a problem, not just in the States, either. Sports culture is not made of up of 100% men, either. That said, in the U.S., sports culture sprang out of a sense of lost masculinity, and was nurtured and encouraged as a way to recover masculinity. Again, recommending Manhood in America: a cultural history by Michael Kimmel.
This is an important point that directly relates to the idiocy of putting the onus on women to protect themselves: Predators don’t just randomly pick a victim and, if rebuffed, give up and go home. Predators very calmly and deliberately select their victims and they always go for those with the least ability to fight back; the trainee over the tenured professor.
As a result, asking women to protect themselves won’t stop the problem, it just shifts the victimization to the weakest link. Whoever is unable to protect themselves now not only face greater predation, but also the accusation that it’s their own fault.
The response has to be institutional and supported by the most powerful. Anyone who asks the victims to deal with the issue is really just telling the predators “Go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.”
It’s very likely many of those in power committed sexual assault themselves, given the statistics. They’re protecting their own.
Indeed. That’s why we’re still struggling with this problem and why it’s important to keep making noise about this. There are plenty of people who would love for us to shut up, so they can sweep it under the rug again.
LykeX:
Which is why the constant focus on prevention is worthless. Yes, prevention might prevent me being raped, but it won’t prevent another woman being raped.
I concur. (Hive mind!!11!!!!!1 You know, like with our agreements about evolution or the importance of vaccination. Why won’t the Firebrand Thought-policing Bullies leave poor Jenny McCarthy alone?)
From the article
From the study:
This is very troubling. This means that of the 18 percent AWARE of ways to report the assaults, a smaller percent still actually REPORTED the assaults, and an even small percentage of those reports probably led to any significant punishment for the assaulter.
The end result of this is that predators can re-victimize again and again.
Where the fuck are the HR departments of these workplaces?
Shameful.
It’s a terrifying thing for someone to have to report a sexual assault. Employers have a responsibility to make sure that any victim of an assault feels able to make a report and feels protected during the whole process.
#10, I agree, rape defenders wouldn’t be half so passionate if they didn’t have some skin in the game.
The field of engineering my father worked in was particularly closed to women, partly because work in foreign countries was an important aspect of it. It was clear to me that it would be impossible for a woman to function effectively in that environment, having to work with and gain the respect of men in cultures considerably more patriarchal than ours, with only the ‘support’ of a few male colleagues from her own culture. To make matters worse, systems of local female prostitution* were an important aspect of the entertainment, I would almost say the infrastructure, provided to male foreign workers, who were often away from home for months at a time. The prostitution is clearly ‘coerced’ by the economic circumstances of the local women for whom a site becomes something of an economic bonanza, but at the price of doing sex work, whether you want to or not. It is actually a truly horrific situation, and for many of us, it is probably very hard to imagine that such a bizarre social system as these male international workers lead overlaps with our own.
*My father, of course, swears he had nothing to do with this prostitution and I believe him, but he is an elderly man, raised in a patriarchal society, and he tolerated the situation with distant but benevolent amusement – think Randi on the subject of rape…
Well, when you’re doing fieldwork for weeks or even months at a time, you’re often out of contact with the normal workplace structure. There’s a small field crew, and that’s it. You share vehicles, you share common spaces. Maybe you have your own tent or bedroom.
And yes, people should be able to report problems once they get back from the field, and there really should be options while in the field, too. But I understand why people don’t necessarily know where to turn while doing field work: who do you report things to when the person in charge of your field crew assaults you? You’re stuck in the wilderness with that person, and can’t very well just leave the situation, which makes it all that much worse.
#2 and #6 (Anthony K and Iyeska):
You may be gratified to know that the DoD Sexual Harassment and Rape Prevention training (SHARP) for FY14 required all DoD personnel to spend 3 hours in live training, and 3 hours in on-line training, and that it focused mainly on bystander behaviour: As DoD employees, we are now as responsible for what we see and allow to happen as we are for what we do.
This has been part of the curricula for a few years, but the stress on bystander responsibility is huge now, extending to being a rating element. And for other Federal agencies, the training was even more extensive.
Well, damn. I scanned this article earlier this afternoon, and spent the whole afternoon hoping that I had misread and the primary problem was not rape by fellow field-workers but was somehow strangers met while in the field, so to speak. (Not that that would make things better, exactly, but there’s a tiny cold comfort from knowing that at least Your Side isn’t making things worse, and I am appalled to see that this is not in fact the case.)
Of course, my inner cynic is laughing bitterly at me and saying “the statistics have shown male bias in the sciences for years, and you’re surprised that it’s a haven for rape culture? You fool you!”
Glad to hear, re: 18, that the DoD is doing some better-designed training. Of course, it would be nice if that was being done by a group whose purpose isn’t to kill people and defend the status quo, but… baby steps.
Phein39 @ 18:
That is good to know, thank you.
Yep. I’ve seen enough creepy shit with scientists studying trees in the middle of nowhere. All you need is colleagues.