14 years ago
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Men Submitting Abstracts
There are a several international conferences I would like to attend next year, and I am wondering how many of them I will actually be able to go to, considering issues of $$ and time and so on. I was just looking at the abstract submission instructions for one of them, and noticed that the template for typing in author names uses examples of "Man A", "Man B", "Man C". This will have no effect whatsoever on whether I decide to go to this conference, but couldn't the guys who came up with the template have used "Person A" or something like that? Yes, I know it's a little thing, but there are lots of little things like this.
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I agree - I see stuff like that all the time and it is annoying. It just makes you feel invisible after awhile... But of course if you say something then you're "making a big deal out of nothing". sigh
Wow. That would drive me crazy.
In my field the standard is to say "Author 1" in that case.
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It's an international conference? Which country is hosting? It would be interesting to know which ones still use gendered language for this sort of thing.
anonymous, your being a bit unfair here: In some languages, it's easy to be neutral, in others with a stronger grammatical gender it requires a deliberate effort. Now I think they should make that effort, but English speaking people get quite some gender neutrality for free without having to think about it.
I don't think that is a small thing at all! I find it appalling and annoying! I am currently writing a paper on gender inclusivity in academia.. this will be a great example - thanks!
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That is completely sad.
"Couldn't the guys who came up with the template have used "Person A" or something like that?
To nitpick for just a minute, you repeated the assumption here by presuming that it was men who designed the template and not women. Or is "guys" gender neutral? It seems unlikely that there were no women involved, but of course it's possible.
Having gotten that out of the way, I agree about that being an utterly deplorable template. There is no excuse.
I hate stuff like that. It would take so little effort to make something gender neutral. Just because lots of English already is doesn't mean it's okay to overlook the rest. As Monty Python said in the Crunchy Frog sketch, describing the ingredients of chocolates, "it's only a little rat."
goodness gracious...
how about "author 1"? I've seen this lots before.
...or to be cutsy and creative "A. Person", "I.M. Author" I once saw an abstract form with such psudonyms, which gave me a good chuckle... especially since I didn't quite notice at first!
The reference to "the guys" was a joke, but I neglected to use the *attempt at humor* font. I knew when I wrote it that someone wouldn't get it. Alas.
After reading this post, I had to check if my favorite sample poster has gender diversity. It does:
http://www.sfn.org/am2005/skins/main/images/Aardvark.pdf
Link didn't seem to wrap correctly on my computer. Just remove the line break:
http://www.sfn.org/am2005/skins/
main/images/Aardvark.pdf
Everyone knows science is done for the benefit of mankind. That's what they say in moview anyways. In fact, I need you scientist to come up with a better hair-regrowth pill so that I can take it only weekly. Gotta look good for my tenure-track job interview. They pay way more to those with full heads of hair than to women. As opposed to just a bit more than women. Or so I've heard.
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