I haven’t abandoned you, dear readers, I’ve just been attending to some tasks in the three-dimensional world. In the meantime, I want to recommend some great posts on other blogs. While some may leave you feeling reasonably good about doings in the world of science, I’m afraid others may break your heart. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t read them.
Category Archives: Women and science
Who’s in the club? Why does it matter?
I’m recycling another post from the ancestor of this blog, but I’m adding value by adding some newish links to good stuff on other blogs.
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How much does it matter that certain groups (like women) are under-represented in the tribe of science?
I’m not, at the moment, taking up the causes (nor am I looking for any piss-poor “Barry Winters”-style theories as to the causes). At present, the bee in my bonnet is the effects.
Mother’s Day appreciation (part II): Mom goes to grad school.
In part I of the interview, my mother described what it was like to be propelled by her dream of being an astronomer from being at home with four children to being in an undergraduate physics classroom and finding a serious mentor.
Part II: Out of the comfort zone and into the graduate program:
Mother’s Day appreciation (part I): Why Mom went back to school.
In honor of Mother’s Day, I want to celebrate the ways that mothers have blazed trails, knocked down barriers, and challenged expectations of what their daughters’ lives can be.
When we’re young, we don’t always appreciate how important our parents (or other adults in our circle) can be as role models. Part of this, I think, is that a kid’s world is smaller in some important ways. What you know of the world you know through school, through friends, through cartoons, and through your family. Lots of aspects of the wider world don’t really pop up in your consciousness until you have to confront them as an adult yourself.
I would not be who I am or where I am today without my mom, Sally Stemwedel. Although I probably couldn’t (or wouldn’t) fully grasp it when I was a kid, when she went back to school in her mid-30s my mother opened up my understanding of the world of higher education and of science, and offered me a vision of a woman’s work that the society at large did not. Given all the ways that her journey helped me to navigate – and even to imagine – my own educational and career path, I asked her if I could interview her for a set of posts here. I’m very grateful that she agreed.
Part I: What drives a suburban mother of four back to school?
Do I blog like a girl?
This tool uses an algorithm to guess whether the chunk of text you enter into the text box was written by a male or a female. What do you suppose it thought about my writing?
Two blog carnivals and a frog.
The inaugural edition of Scientiae, the new women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics blog carnival, has been posted at Rants of a Feminist Engineer. Skookumchick has assembled an impressive array of posts dealing with joys as well as frustrations — go check it out!
Also, the 55th Skeptics’ Circle is up at The Second Sight, and the skeptics think they have your number. (You don’t believe me? Click on the link and find out for yourself!)
Bonus after the jump: See what kind of frog I am.
New blog carnival on women in science, technology, engineering, and math.
Skookumchick has declared a new blog carnival, Scientiae, organized around the broad topic of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (or STEM, for those who like acronyms). She’s soliciting posts that fall under one or more of the following:
- stories about being a woman in STEM
- exploring gender and STEM academia
- living the scientific academic life as well as the rest of life
- discussing how race, sexuality, age, nationality and other social categories intersect with the experience of being a woman in STEM
- sharing feminist perspectives on science and technology
- exploring feminist science and technology studies
Both men and women (and anyone in-between) are welcome to contribute to the carnival as long as the topics are relevant and respectful.
Full details on how to submit one of your posts (or nominate a deserving post on someone else’s blog) can be found here, but submissions are due February 27, so don’t dilly-dally! The first edition of the carnival will be published March 1.
Gender profiling at the wine bar.
Razib tossed off a post expressing amazement that a very attractive wine bar hostess was making science fiction recommendations. The noteworthy feature, apparently, was “the intersection of science fiction & female physical hotitude.”
Predictably, others have commented on this post, worrying about the casual profiling of hot chicks as not into S/F, or perhaps of women who are into S/F as closeted ugly chicks (or closeted boys).
Should I pile on? Maybe just a little.
Graduate school with kids: views from around the blogosphere.
It started when someone asked Dr. B. for advice about starting a Ph.D. program with three kids in tow. Since then, the question has been bouncing around the academic blogosphere, with posts you should read at Academom and Geeky Mom. Although this is absolutely the worst time in the semester for me to fire on all cyliders with this one, regular readers know that I’ve shared my own experiences in this area, so I can’t stay completely out of it.
A brief recap of the current conversation:
College freshman proclaims: “Bias a myth!” Zuska calls shenanigans.
There are some days I run into a piece of writing that just floors me. For instance this piece from The Cornell American, whose author, a freshman, proclaims:
I’ve got it made. As an attractive, professional female chemical engineer attempting to graduate a year early from Cornell, I find it hard to believe I couldn’t get a job or professor status before a good majority of males.
The point of her piece was to dismiss a report on the bias faced by female academics. Because, you know, a college freshman is much more in touch with the data than some panel charged with actually studying the data.
Since she hasn’t noticed discrimination, it must not exist.
But I am saved the trouble of formulating a methodical, point by point response to her article — or, worse, of muttering darkly about the youth of today — since Zuska has posted an apt reply to it.
It really does take a village.