You may already have seen this at Absinthe or Zuska’s — if so, consider this post a friendly nudge to move beyond your good intentions toward action.
Kay Weber, who is pursuing a lawsuit against Fermilab for (the details of which sound pretty horrific), has come to a point where the expense of moving the lawsuit forward is personally insurmountable. With a little help from others who support her fight for fair treatment, however, it can be done:
Category Archives: Women and science
The women who taught me science.
Since March is Women’s History Month, I thought it might be appropriate to recognize some women who were a part of my history — namely, the women who taught me chemistry and physics. (This shouldn’t be interpreted as a slight against the women who taught me biology — I simply don’t remember them as well — nor against the men who taught me science. They made an impact on me, but this post isn’t about them.)
Recommended reads on women in math, science, engineering.
They’re both by men, but sometimes it happens that way.
- Mark Chu-Carroll ridicules Vox Day’s ridiculous claim that women are too dumb to do long division, let alone program computers. While Day’s claim was silly from the get-go, Mark’s take-down in really nice.
- A friend from the three-dimensional world (specifically math camp), Jonathan Kulick, who cannot hide from the blogosphere even in Tbilisi, examines claims that women are underrepresented in science for reasons other than bias. Will it surprise you to hear that Christina Hoff Sommers may be dismissing research she doesn’t like out of hand?
If you want to share links to other things we ought to be reading on this subject or others, leave them in the comments.
Should I be ABD before I have a baby? (and other questions about academic motherhood)
I recently received an email, prompted by my series about having a family and an academic career, asking for some input:
I am a mere first year in a Ph.D. program and am a bit older than the other students. I am wholeheartedly committed to the program I am also considering the seemingly traitorous act of having a baby.
Do you think it’s essential to wait until ABD status?
Are certain forms of address ill-suited to academe?
A comment on ScienceWoman’s post (concerning, among other things, how her students tend to call her Mrs. ScienceWoman and her male colleagues Dr. MaleColleague), got me thinking about the norms around addressing faculty that prevailed at my undergraduate institution and whether, if they still prevail, they’re worth abolishing.
The commenter wrote:
Pushing the juggling metaphor a little further.
An old friend turned up to comment on my post about juggling, and as a woman in academia she has some familiarity with the metaphor and with the reality it’s supposed to capture. She writes:
The department chair when I was hired … suggested that although we’re juggling lots of balls, the ball representing our families and home life is made of glass. I COULD take that as a message that taking care of my family is my most important job (and my work is not? grrr.) but I think he meant it more as that part of our lives outside of work supports our lives IN work, and if that one cracks, it’s all going to break down.
Balance is a nice idea, but my reality is closer to juggling.
Friday, my better half was preparing to cross the international dateline for a week-long business trip and my parents were getting ready to board a plane for a week-long visit at Casa Free-Ride. As I contemplated the prospect of digging out our guest room (known in these parts as “the place clean clothes go to wrinkle”) it became clear to me that the chances of my finishing writing (and preparing overheads for) the two presentations I will be giving at the conference that starts the day after my parents depart before my parents’ arrival were nil. Of course, this means that I will not be kicking back for a relaxing week with my parents and my children, but will instead be trying to cram Scholarly Work into the interstices.
So, when Zuska said, “Hey, you should write a post about balance for the upcoming Scientiae Carnival!” how could I refuse?
Stuff worth reading.
I want to share some of the items I’ve been reading elsewhere. Some of them strike me as having a very “summertime” feel to them, while others are just about the non-seasonal issues that are part of life.
The death of an administrator.
Zuska reminded me that today is the one-year anniversary of the suicide of Denice Denton, an accomplished electrical engineer, tireless advocate for the inclusion and advancement of women in science and, at the time of her death, the chancellor of UC-Santa Cruz.
I never met Denton, and a year ago my feelings about her were complicated. On one side was her clear public voice against unexamined acceptance of longstanding assumptions about gender difference; from an article dated 26 June, 2006 in Inside Higher Ed:
She was in the audience when Lawrence H. Summers made the controversial comments about women and science last year and she was among the first to speak out against them, telling The Boston Globe of Summers: “Here was this economist lecturing pompously to this room full of the country’s most accomplished scholars on women’s issues in science and engineering, and he kept saying things we had refuted in the first half of the day.”
Any gathering of such scholars would indeed have included Denton, who was then dean of engineering (one of her many “first woman” accomplishments) at the University of Washington and was about to become chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz. Throughout her career in research (as an electrical engineer) and administration, she was known for being a mentor to women — in the public schools, in graduate school, at faculty levels. Last month, she was named this year’s winner of the Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award — named for the first female astronomer in the United States and given to a person or organization who does the most to advance women in science.
On the other side, shortly before her death, Denton had been the subject of a San Francisco Chronicle story about the amount of money the UC system spent on administrator salaries and perquisites.
A few words on names and expectations.
You’ve probably seen the posts (here, here, here, here, here, and here.) responding to the University of Florida study claiming that women’s names affect the social support or discouragement they’ll get for pursuing technical subjects. (Those with the more “feminine” names will tend to be discouraged from “manly” activities like math, although apparently a frilly name won’t hurt their performance in those activities.) Since the above-linked posts give the reasonable critiques of the research, I’m going to veer immediately to personal anecdata: