What’s So Great About Your STEMmy Lifestyle Anyway? Inquiring Minds Want To Know!

Why should any woman get any degree in a STEM discipline? Especially if she has to wade through tons of bullshit courses to get there, and part of the learning, it appears, has to do with learning how to be someone you aren’t? Some other gender, some other race – or some other social class?
skeptifem challenges the female STEM universe thus:

The Differential Impacts of Sexist Gender Role Expectations

Every once in awhile I do manage to get out to a social sort of event. Recently I was at one such thing. And overhead the following:
Female, mid-40s: When I was in high school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. And I had great SAT scores, high 1400′s [out of a then total 1600]. But my high school guidance counselor strongly discouraged me, and told me “those are really more men’s kind of jobs.” So I gave up thinking about vet school, even though I had the ability.
Male, same age: When I was in high school, I wanted to learn to type. Probably because I just wanted to take what I thought was an easy class, but I kept asking over and over to be allowed to take a typing class. My guidance counselor wouldn’t let me register for typing. He told me “you’re going to college, you don’t need typing. You’ll have a secretary to do your typing for you.” And then all through college I had to pay people to type my term papers for me, and spend hundreds of dollars on that. My first job out of college, I walk into the office and my boss sits me in front of a computer and says “you’ll have to type [complex documents in his industry] on this.” Just last week, my current boss saw me pecking away with two fingers and said “I can’t believe you can’t type.”
Sexist gender role expectations are not innocent, and not without effect, even if everybody grows up to have lives that they are more or less happy with. Both of these people have what you would call a nice life. But one of them had her whole life course dramatically changed because of a guidance counselor’s sexist beliefs about what jobs belonged to which gender, and another had to spend cash he didn’t really have to spare in college, and spends time he doesn’t have to spare now on the job, because of another guidance counselor’s sexist beliefs about who should learn to type and who would have the typing done for them.
The differential effects of sexism often mean that men are less predisposed to be aware of them – having someone tell you “you don’t need to worry about typing” is not quite as dramatic and life-altering as having them tell you “vet school is for the men, little lady”. Men do have a lot of privilege to lose in moving to a more equitable system of gender relations, but they also have some things to gain. One of my commenters – I think it was SKM – posted a link on another thread to Men’s Lives by Michael Kimmel. It’s an interesting looking collection of essays on the intersection of race, class, and gender, focusing on men’s lives, of course, as the title indicates. It would be something useful for all the d00dly Zuskateers (is that an oxymoron?) to read and ponder.

Things Are Getting Better All The Time…

Female Science Professor has posted a checklist – “Kind of like Sexism Bingo, but in list form.” – and asked for additions.
I was going to offer a few additions, but I thought “all that crap happened a thousand years ago, when I was an undergrad/grad student. I’ll just read this list of new stuff to see what teh wimminz are whining about these days.” Because things are getting better all the time.
Alyssa at 6/17/2010 10:03:00 AM said:

Someone asks why you bothered getting a PhD if you’re “just going to have children”

and DRo at 6/17/2010 10:36:00 AM said:

You are told that you won’t be interested in a TT position once you have children.

Time machine, take us to…..1984! Hello, classmate! Hello, undergrad thesis advisor!
Anonymous at 6/17/2010 12:16:00 PM said:

Someone tells you not to talk about women or minority in science issues because it makes people think you are not committed to science.

Time machine, take us to…1988! Hello, thesis committee member! (And major thanks to all of you for that 4.5 hour prelim, in complete violation of university policy, while I’m back here visiting!)
Anonymous at 6/17/2010 12:40:00 PM said:

** When you are in YOUR OWN office, visitors assume you are an administrative assistant **
and then, when you point out that you are not the admin, are told “Oh, you must be the student worker, then!”

Time machine, take us to…1999! Hello, various random d00dches!
Anonymous at 6/17/2010 03:12:00 PM said:

One of my personal favorites from my graduate school was a comment by a faculty member meant as a compliment, at a reception, “Surely, you’re not a physicist”. “Surely, I am” I said.

Time machine, take us to…the entire decade of the 1980′s! Hello, every pickup artist and sad sack conference fuckwit who thought “you’re too pretty to be an engineer!” was a great come-on line.
Rachael Shadoan at 6/18/2010 06:58:00 AM said:

I feel that the more we focus on this kind of thing, the more discouraging it is for young women trying to join the field.

and at 6/18/2010 10:02:00 AM

Instead of long lists of how we’re under-appreciated and gender-stereotyped and in general discriminated against, I would like to see lists of creative, professional, appropriate ways to handle some of these situations.
Then, it’s less depressing because it provides the tools to handle this sort of thing. Over time (presumably), if we all use the tools to address these issues, they will decrease in number and severity.

Time machine, take us to…1989! Hello, contentious discussion at AWIS meeting where I was invited to speak about gender and science!
On second thought, time machine, never mind.

Work-Life Balance 3: Less Navel-Gazing, More Scholarly And Institutional Structure Analysis!

First post in this series can be found here.
Second post in this series can be found here.
In my second post in this series, I gave the men a cookie, and commenter rpf accused me of…gasp!…being too nice!
I believe this is the first time this has ever happened.

Work-Life Balance 2: On Stepping Up To The Plate

First post in this series can be found here.
The third and final post in this series can be found here.
ScientistMother really wants DrugMonkey to step up to the plate already. She says that DM laid out his own responsibility to deal, on-blog, with work-life balance issues and to share the details of how it goes down at his own home. Find the full quote in the comments at her post or here in Doc Free-Ride’s post.
As is generally the case, I have a few things to say about this.

Work-Life Balance 1: Women, The Media Totally Support You!

Work-life balance: people have been talking about it.
Wait, that’s not right. Women have been talking about it. And have been talked at about it, by some people. Doc Free-Ride has a good round-up of a most recent skirmish of opinions on the topic in the sciencey blogosphere. If you have not been following this, please do give Doc Free-Ride’s post a read.
Where to begin?

Wah Wah, Where Is The Stuff For White Men?

A recent conversation with a friend reminded me of yet another of the “death by a thousand paper cuts**” craptastic things I used to hate dealing with in my days in the scientific workforce. You know what I’m talking about. Could be a retreat, a workshop, a seminar, a meeting, a program, maybe even just a discussion, but whatever it is, diversity is the subject, explicit or implicit. On one occasion it was a discussion about whether a tiny little space should be set aside for students of a certain group. On another it was a pizza party for women students. But ever and anon, at such occasions, you will hear the plaintive wail:
“Where is the [meeting/retreat/study room/pizza party/program] for white men?”
At K-State, where I was for a time director of the Women in Engineering and Science Program, I was asked not once but several times “Where is the program for men in engineering?” I had various answers. Sometimes, when I felt pissy, I would say, “That would be the whole College of Engineering.” Sometimes when I felt polemical, I would say, “You know, that’s a good question. It’s good for us to think about why we need a program for women in engineering. Women can do engineering work, but engineering is not as successful in attracting and keeping them as it is with men. So in a sense, the program is more for the college of engineering than it is for the women.” Sometimes, when I felt Socratic, I would say, “That’s a good question. What do you think men need that they aren’t getting, that a men in engineering program would provide?”
But all times, this is what I really wanted to say:
Jesus H. Christ! Every time I hear that “where is the whateverthefuck for white men” I want to say “seriously? Seriously? you think you are the first motherfucking white d00d in the whole motherfucking world to come up with that acid riposte in a diversity-related seminar/meeting/retreat/discussion? SERIOUSLY? Go away and come up with an ORIGINAL white d00d whine and we will think about giving you a diversity cookie. Until then, open up your motherfucking white d00d eyes and take a look around at how the whole entire world is plastered with signs that say ‘White D00ds ‘Specially Welcome Here!’ ‘K? Thx.”
**(The) Knight Higher Education Collaborative (September 2001). Gender Intelligence. Policy Perspectives, 10(2), 1-9.

Conversations With Female Science Administrator

I have an acquaintance who works in what some of you professorial types jokingly refer to as the dark side – administration. Ha ha ha. Yeah, I was an administrator in academia myself, you know, and let me tell you, you should be grateful to your administrators, if only for the fact that if they didn’t spend their days attending all those meetings, you’d have to do it yourself. Somebody’s gotta do that administrative crap while you’re out there doing the whizbang gollygee fun stuff in the labs.
My acquaintance knows both sides of the story, for she herself is a tenured full professor in the field of -ology. The type of administrative position she has now is a standard issue administrative position, and she’s got to deal with all the usual administrative stuff. She’s also, in the normal run of her daily business, got to deal with managing diversity.
Recently she reported to me the following:

I just spent half an hour talking to a male department head about one of his untenured women faculty members, who had been in to talk to me about what she perceives as unequal treatment by the head. I talked about how perceptions are important even though he feels as though he is being fair. I talked about accumulation of disadvantage. I talked about how if
they ever want to diversify their department it is important to have not just successful but
happy female and minority faculty members.
And at the end of the half hour, I think that he walked out convinced that he was right and everything was fair and hunky dory and he need only apologize for one kerfuffle that involved [one particular incident].
My work here is obviously not done, but I am not hopeful that it can be done. Worst of all, this…department head [is] a younger guy with (I think) a professional wife…the kind we hope that get it and are our allies.

FSA is not new to the business of dealing with diversity issues and trying to educate her colleagues. She is quite an expert in this area. So it’s not that she doesn’t know how to talk to people about this stuff.
It’s just that she is tired, oh so very tired, of banging her head against the giant wall built of Nice Guys Who Just Don’t Get It. The guys who listen, and then say “Okay, I’m sorry you got so upset over that.” The people who are all for including women and minorities, as long as nothing substantive about longstanding departmental culture really has to change. The folks who think that if women are not being accosted in the hallways and hit up for sexual favors in the lab, then everything must be, well, hunky dory. The scientists who think that there is absolutely nothing that social science can teach them about how to create a better, more equitable scientific culture. The Nice Guy Knuckleheads who believe with all the faith that a creationist believes in an Intelligent Designer that Science is a Meritocracy.
FSA, I feel your pain, and if I could I would go right now and puke on your Nice Guy Department Head’s shoes. But I have the feeling he’d just look up in bewilderment and say, “Now why in the world would you do that? I’m such a nice guy!”

What’s With The Makeovers?

You are a male physics professor, and you want to improve science education. What could possibly be a better idea than to team up with a bunch of professional cheerleaders and make a video of them shouting out science tidbits while they shake their pompoms? Science cheerleaders!
I know, right? You wish you’d thought of it first, don’t you?

New Book on African American Women in Science

Via the WEPAN listserv, I just learned about a new book about African American women in science:

Temple University is proud to announce the publication of Swimming Against the Tide: African American Girls and Science Education by Sandra L. Hanson. In her book, Hanson uses Department of Education data as well as a recent survey of young African American women to examine the experiences in families, communities, and peer-groups that help young African American women “swim against the tide” of the white, male science education system. Sandra L. Hanson is Professor of Sociology and Research Associate at Life Cycle Institute, Catholic University . To learn more about the book, please visit its website.

From the book’s website:

“They looked at us like we were not supposed to be scientists,” says one young African American girl, describing one openly hostile reaction she encountered in the classroom. In this significant study, Sandra Hanson explains that although many young minority girls are interested in science, the racism and sexism in the field discourage them from pursuing it after high school. Those girls that remain highly motivated to continue studying science must “swim against the tide.”

Indeed. I will never forget the young African American woman at Kansas State who told me how, every semester, in at least one of her science and engineering classes, a professor would invariably come up to her on the first day of class and solicitously suggest to her that she must be in the wrong classroom. After all, what in the world would an African American woman be doing in a science or engineering class, right? Right.
I really, really want to get my hands on this book but it costs $64.50. The website suggests a paperback version is due out in September; I may just have to wait for that.