Jekyll-Hyde Q&A

During the question-and-answer time associated with talks at conferences or in department seminars, have you noticed any difference in how questions are addressed to male vs. female speakers? By "how", I mean things like tone of voice and level of politeness/aggression.

This difference is one of those things that I keep expecting to go away with time as a result of the increase in numbers of women as speakers and audience members. It has definitely decreased in frequency but it has not gone away.

Something I noticed at a conference earlier this year was that audience members were commonly quite polite and encouraging of student presenters (of any gender). The fangs mostly seemed to appear when there was a non-student early-career female speaker: postdocs/research scientists, assistant professors, and even in one case an associate professor.

This is of course a completely unscientific anecdotal subjective observation. Nevertheless, over the years I have observed some mid-career and older male colleagues who consistently go through a sort of Jekyll-Hyde transformation when a younger woman gives a presentation. They are rude, aggressive, patronizing, and make it clear that the answers given to their questions are inadequate and probably wrong. They do not do this with male speakers. Ever.

I know that some male colleagues who also noticed this phenomenon and were uncomfortable about it tried to talk to at least one of these colleagues. I am curious to see if this criticism will somehow sink in and modify behavior.

A concern is that whatever subconscious impressions are triggering these negative reactions to female speakers also seep into reviews of papers and proposals, decisions on hiring and promotion, or any other circumstance involving evaluation of a less public sort. Or perhaps (total musing alert) it is the public nature of the rude questioning of a female speaker that is the (subconscious) goal, and private reviewing of a paper or proposal does not trigger such a reaction. I am just making this up; I have no insights into the psychology of this behavior. I have just seen it in action too many times.

I do not mean to imply that there is an epidemic of disrespect at conferences and seminars; in my academic world, there is not. In fact (silver lining alert) the examples I describe here are perhaps particularly evident today because they have become relatively rare. I am also encouraged by the existence of male allies who notice and speak up.

So: During the question-and-answer time associated with talks at conferences etc., have you noticed any difference in how questions are addressed to male vs. female speakers?

"In Science, It Matters That Women Come Last"

Emma Pierson has written a very interesting article titled In Science, It Matters That Women Come Last. The article is filled with data and analysis (and graphs!) about gender trends in publishing in some subfields of the physical sciences and math. She examined numbers of papers and authorship order for male and female authors using 23 years of papers from arXiv.

If you read the article, I recommend that you read it all the way through, including footnotes. As I read it I had some questions such as, "What about fields in which authorship is alphabetical?". These questions are answered. You may or may not agree with the methods but these issues were anticipated and the analysis considers the effects of different authorship-order practices in different fields.

There are many fascinating aspects of this dataset and Pierson's discussion of the data. One that particularly interested me is this:

.. I found evidence that women tend to work together. If a paper has one female author, the other authors on the paper are 35 percent more likely to be female given the share of female authors in the field overall.

It is possible that this is largely the result of female PIs tending to advise/hire more female students and postdocs (Pierson mentions a study that seems to show this). I wonder also about the tendency of women scientists to collaborate as peers and how data/trends related to such collaborations will change with time.

I see changes in my peer-collaborations with time in my own career. For the first 2+ decades, my female coauthors were my students and postdocs, with a few isolated exceptions of female-peer coauthors. More recently (the last few years in particular), I have had many female-peer coauthors. It has become routine. I thought this was because there were simply more women in my field now -- in fact, I am sure that is part of the explanation -- but now I wonder if there is more to it. I guess we'd need to know more about how the authorship dataset breaks down by advisee vs. peer coauthors to understand what it means.

What do you think this particular result (that 'women tend to work together') means, either for you or in your particular sub/field?

Now They Want To Talk?

Let's say there is a US University that has a long history of (1) not hiring many women faculty, particularly in some fields; (2) not tenuring many women; and (3) not retaining many women, even those who have or would have been awarded tenure. Owing to an environment that is so toxic for women in some departments, even some of those who might have been (or were) tenured will leave if they can. 

Now imagine that a female faculty member who is extremely accomplished gets another offer and decides to leave. This woman spent years at the famous place being bullied and disrespected, and is looking forward to moving to a department and university where she will be valued and respected.

Upon announcing her resignation, suddenly people at her (soon to be ex-) university want to talk to her -- senior faculty, administrators, others in positions of power. People who were not interested in helping her when she needed help. She doesn't yet know exactly what they want to talk to her about, so she is thinking a lot about what she might say. Presumably they want to know why she is leaving.

Should she be completely open and name names of those whose behavior is the reason she is leaving? If she has documentation of abuses, should she distribute this?

How likely is it that these administrators etc. will do anything constructive with any information she gives them?

Can one departing person do anything to change a persistent negative environment for other women?

These administrators must know there is a problem, so if they were going to do anything substantive, wouldn't they already be working for change? And if they aren't doing that already, why do they want to know more details about why one woman is leaving?

Or can it really be that one departing woman could be the 'tipping point', even if that should have occurred many years ago?

Does anyone have any advice for this woman, who is in fact a real person at a real place considering this very real situation? 

She Would Not Wish This On Her Nieces

From e-mail from a reader (text modified to remove possibly-identifying details):

I had traveled to a conference with some colleagues, including my husband. 

The first person who greeted us was a conference organizer. We introduced ourselves by our full names. It was a small conference and we assumed that, as an organizer, he would have looked at the list of attendees. I was greeted with a broad smile and "Oh, so you're just along for the 'ride'."

Over the next two days, my colleagues, husband, and I lost count of the number of intended and unintended gender-targeted put downs and innuendos.

My career in [this field] spans 25 years and I am often asked to become involved with groups encouraging young women in Science and Engineering. As I would not wish this environment for my own nieces, I am unable to promote STEM as a good choice for females.

Over the years, as I have attended some of the same conferences as my scientist-husband, the assumption that he is attending the conference and that I am his guest ('along for the ride') has occurred a few times, but not recently. This e-mail was a sad reminder that this still occurs. How is it that some people -- and most specifically conference organizers -- have not yet gotten the memo about how The Wife might be a scientist or engineer or mathematician?

Here is a short version of the memo, for handy reference: Don't assume.

Well this is a bit depressing

From an interview of Rita Colwell (former NSF Director) by National Geographic:

Are you still treated differently as a woman?

Certainly. I still have to tolerate it. It doesn't stop; it never stops. It's just that now it's more covert and not overt.

Can you give an example?

There are too many examples to even begin to enumerate.

I was somewhat surprised by this. Why was I surprised? I don't know.. I can't say I know anything about Rita Colwell's work as a molecular biologist, but it seems to me that she is a rather excellent example of a successful female science professor; that is, successful at a level that most of us will not achieve. It would have been nice if she could have reported to the rest of us that she had to put up with a lot of stupid stuff early in her career but that had faded away as her career progressed.

I suppose I am interpreting the mild question about being "treated differently" to refer to negative experiences. That is how Rita Colwell seems to interpret the question as well.

And I do wish she had given some examples, particularly of the covert situations she still experiences. I believe her 100% that she does experience these things and that it is not pleasant, and I would be interested to know what kinds of things she has to deal with even now, as a senior and very distinguished professor. 

Not long ago, a correspondent wrote to me that a female grad student had said to her that "it's even worse to have role models who are treated horribly than to not have role models".

We could argue about what it means to be treated "horribly", but I think it is too bad to discard some potential role models (whatever that term really means) because they had to struggle -- perhaps quite a lot -- in their careers. Would this grad student not consider Rita Colwell as a good role model because Colwell feels she has had (and continues to have) some (presumably negative) experiences she has to "tolerate" because she is female? Perhaps -- everyone has their own definition of what is a good role model for them) -- but I think that restriction would substantially thin the ranks of potential role models, and that's probably not a good thing.

Feminist in all but name

It never fails to take me aback when people say "I'm not a feminist but.." and then follow the "but" with an opinion that indicates that the person is quite likely to agree with the basic principles of feminism, in the sense of believing in political, economic, and social rights for women.
 
OK, so there are worse things than this; it is not difficult to think of many worse things than people who are feminists-in-all-but-name.

Even so, I was surprised the other day at an Administrative Meeting, when a female administrator whom I had not previously met came up to me and said:

 "The Vice-Person for Stuff told me that you are the first woman [position that I now hold in my university]. I'm not a feminist, but I think that's great. It's about time. We need more women [in that job] in the university."

She went on to say that the lack of women leaders in her unit of the university was a serious, longstanding problem. Most of the students and researchers are women, but few of the leaders are women. Every once in a while, a woman is allowed to be an interim head of something, but only until a man can be found to take over the job. She was frustrated by this, and more than a little cynical that it would change any time soon. She herself was an interim director and was certain that she would not be given the permanent position. She was sure they would replace her with a man, although she is highly qualified to keep doing this job.

Well, good thing she isn't a feminist because..

.. because why? I am having trouble finishing that sentence with anything that makes sense.

I don't even know why she chose to preface her sentence with "I'm not a feminist, but..". Why add that? If she had just said "I heard you're the first woman etc. and I think that's great", without the qualifier, what did she fear I would think? That she was a raving man-hating angry woman? That she is not automatically in favor of a woman being appointed to a position with some authority?

I did not ask her. I would very much like to help stamp out these twisted negative views of feminism/feminists, but after that strange little comment, our brief conversation focused on practical things that needed discussing in the short amount of time available.

Why Me?

This has been happening to me a lot lately:

I meet someone for the first time in my new capacity as an Administrator and one of the first questions they ask me is "Why (or how) were you selected?" I italicized you because in 87.3% of the cases, there is an emphasis on you, not necessarily in an impolite way, but to emphasize the you-and-not-someone-else focus of the question.

There are unambiguous 100% neutral examples of these questions -- that is, when I meet someone who has a similar position at another university and we compare notes about our jobs.

But then there are some situations in which the motivation is less clear.

Possible explanations for why someone would ask this question:

Some people (academics or not) may be curious about how things work in the intriguing world of academia in general and/or in particular at my institution.

Some people are surprised, at least at first, at finding someone like me in this position (the first woman ever to hold this particular position at my university). Which leads to these further possibilities:

- They think it is cool and wonder what excellent change has happened at this institution so that finally a woman was selected for this position.

- They wonder if I am qualified for the job, or at least, was I really the most qualified? Perhaps I was selected because I am a woman?

Do men get asked this question so frequently? I don't know, but in a recent poll of n=2 male peers, I realized that, although I had been asked this question nearly weekly for months, these guys had not yet been asked it once.

I don't actually spend a lot of time obsessing about the motivation of these questions. I think that these issues will fade with time.

I will mention, though, that a few days ago when I was asked this question, for the first time there was a witness to it, and it was a different experience altogether. I didn't realize until then that all the other conversations had been one-on-one. This time, a colleague (another administrator) was present and disagreed with the apparently disrespectful way in which the question was asked and did not stay silent. I can fight my own battles when I want, but sometimes it is very nice to have allies.

Off Topic

A reader writes about her frustration with the prevalence of Women In Science (WIS) events that turn out to be about how to get out of science or, at least, academic science (research), and frustration with the number of workshops and other WIS events that focus on babies babies babies (primarily anxiety about the possibility that babies lead to "career suicide").

"There are very few events about how to do good research at the top competitive levels, the psychological travails of an academic lifestyle" ... "even something about common sexist gaffes (e.g. asking about your husband's job at your job interview) would be helpful ... I went to one .. event early on in my position here, as I work on an area .. with very few women and I like the XX companionship, but it turned out to be a networking event for women looking to get out of research. I still haven't been back."

and

 

"Is this problem [having babies and a career as a scientist at a university] just so big that it eclipses the other ones we could be having?"

This reader provided a very long list of workshop titles to prove her point about the workshop obsession with work-life balance (= having a career and children) and leaving academia.

Has anyone else had this experience of being overwhelmed by an emphasis on opting-out or baby-anxiety topics?

I would hope that there could be workshop theme balance, such that topics included how to find non-academic careers in science as well as how to succeed in a research career in science. Women-in-science events at the university where I had my first tenure-track job were extremely important to me when I was getting started, and definitely included discussion of the topics the reader mentions as being of interest to someone pursuing a research career at a university. If there had been a major emphasis on getting out of research/academic, I would have felt even more isolated than I already did.
 
The topic of babies is clearly a critical one for many women, but it's too bad if this overshadows (or eclipses) everything else. I don't just mean that for women who don't have children (now), but for all women in science. The baby issue should be part of the discussion, but there are many important topics.

I don't mean to minimize the challenges of having children and a career as a professor at a research university, but I hope that in most fields it is easy to encounter -- in real life and in blogs -- examples of happy, successful professor-moms, so that early-career scientists can see that babies ≠ career suicide.

Another hope of mine, perhaps an even less realistic one, is that it wouldn't always be women talking about careers-and-babies, but that more men would be involved in these discussions. It is still common for FSPs who are invited speakers at other institutions to be asked to have a "pizza lunch" or whatever with female students and postdocs, typically to talk about work-life issues.* Are any of you in departments that routinely invite men to do the same?

For those who share the experience of my reader in not finding WIS workshops that focus on topics relevant to women who want to stay in (academic/research) science, blogs can help fill the gap to some extent, but there's no substitute for talking with others -- sharing stories and experiences, getting and giving advice and support, laughing and expressing anxiety. If you can't find that in workshops sponsored by a particular group, perhaps you can create your own mini-workshop or social-professional event, somehow getting the word out and seeing if there are others interested in discussion of similar topics. Alternatively (or in addition to this), see if you (and like-minded women) can get word to the relevant organizations for WIS and let them know what topics would be of interest to you.


* Not long ago, something rather cool came out of one of these women-lunch discussion things that I did years ago at another university. One of the women who attended my discussion later became a high school science teacher in the region where I live, so, when one of her students became interested in my general field of research, this teacher got in touch with me and we arranged that I would meet the student and introduce her to some undergraduates and professors involved in advising the undergrad program in my department and I thought this was a great, albeit unexpected, outcome of having what I remember as rather bad pizza while being quizzed about the usual work-life issues by anxious young women.

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new*

To: femalscienceprofessor@gmail.com

How come you are so fixated upon your gender.A female professor in science is nothing new.Should I state that I am a male professor and include that in every e-mail really?
Sent from my iPad

Yes, please do that.




* Samuel Beckett, male writer

I May Have Mail

Upon achieving semi-galactic status in a particular academic unit, my mailbox was moved from its traditional spot amidst the throngs of regular faculty and researcher mailboxes up to an exalted location at the very top of the mailbox warren.

My staff said to me "If you want, we can get your mail for you and bring it to your Awesome Office and put it in a special mail-place like we did for your Distinguished Predecessors".

I thought, "That's silly, I'll just pick up my mail on one of my 57 daily trips through the office with the mailboxes."

But. I soon realized the flaw in my plan: I am too short to see into my new majestically elevated mailbox. This was not a problem for my predecessors, all of whom are men, going back into the 19th century.

Would it somehow detract from my attempt to cultivate an aura of gravitas if I placed a little step-stool by the mailboxes?

Part of the Problem

For a large conference in my general field, I was asked to be the (sub)convener of one particular session within an overall larger theme session. Each (sub)convener was asked to invite two speakers. For the particular focus of my assigned session, there were some obvious possibilities, and I was pleased when the first two people I invited both accepted. My only thought for 'diversity' issues when making these invitations was to try to get at least one non-North American speaker (there were many excellent choices), and in this I succeeded.

Both of 'my' invited speakers are male. I was therefore dismayed when I saw the final list of all invited speakers for the theme session. All of them are male. All of them. Of the ~15 conveners, I am the only woman, so perhaps it was my responsibility to invite at least one woman? (<-- said in a sad, semi-sarcastic tone of voice)

When I was mulling over my possible invitees, there was one female scientist in the group I considered, but it turned out that she was unavailable. Maybe similar things happened with my male co-conveners.

I don't know, but it looks bad (to me) when I see a long men-only list of invited speakers. There are talented women in this general field. I suppose it is possible that all were busy or otherwise unavailable, but even so, it's dismaying when there are so many female students and postdocs, and yet we didn't come up with an invited speaker slate that includes even one woman.

So I ended up being part of the problem, perhaps in part because of the compartmentalization of the speaker-inviting process and/or my mistaken assumption that there would surely be some women invited for some of the sessions, without anyone making a particular effort. I should know better by now.

If we had first pooled our names of potential invited speakers, it would then have been obvious whether the list was extraordinarily imbalanced in some way. We could have discussed overlooked-but-excellent choices for particular topics, and helped each other with suggestions. In addition, some conveners could have realized that when deciding between two or more outstanding choices, perhaps a diversity issue should tip the choice one way or the other. I wish one of the high-level conveners had been keeping an eye on the list and been willing to make some comments to us lower level conveners. Or maybe, since I think it is important, I should just reflexively invite women whenever given the opportunity, on the assumption that no one else will?

CreePI

In Scientopia, I discuss a letter from an undergraduate researcher who is now anxious about her interactions with her lab's PI, and invite comments from readers who might be able to help her with her difficult situation.

Girls' Corner

Once upon a time, I was visiting another university and was given a temporary place to sit with my laptop and get a bit of work done. It was not a real office, just one of several desks in a little cluster in a corridor near an administrative office. It was a rather busy corridor, so it was not the greatest place to work, but it was good enough.

When you visit another institution, you never know what, if anything, you're going to get in terms of temporary workspace -- it might be an empty seminar room or classroom, a corner of your faculty host's office, some chairs at the end of a hallway, a cubicle in the library or in a student office, or nothing (in which case I go to the nearest cafe, and am quite happy with that). For longer visits, you are likely to get a real work space, but for a short visit, you take what you can get.

But to return to this particular work space.. It was set up for anyone who needed a temporary space: visitors, students who just needed a work space for a few minutes or an afternoon, adjuncts between classes, faculty whose offices were in other buildings but who needed to be in that building for a brief time, and so on. Sometimes when I was using a desk there, the other desks were empty. Sometimes there were other people temporarily using these desks. It changed constantly.

It did not take long to notice that there was a certain situation in which passersby felt the urge to comment about those of us sitting in that workspace. I am sure some of you can guess what that situation was. Hint: Do you have your gender lenses on?

If there were 2 females sitting there: no comments, even if we were the only ones working there. If there were at least 3 females and 0-1 males, some men walking by made comments: "What's going on here? A girl scout meeting?", "Can anyone join this club or do you have to talk like this (said in a high pitched voice)?", "Is this the girls' corner?", "Is this the departmental sewing circle?", and so on. If there was a lone male with us women, he got teased about his "harem" etc.

ha ha ha

Actually, I didn't think it was funny*. It was tiresome being interrupted with these inane "humorous" explanations for what a small group of women could possibly be doing in a Science Building. 

It's (another) little thing, but wouldn't it be nice if it were unremarkable for 3 (or more) female scientists to sit working near each other in a Science Building?


* I am a feminist and have no sense of humor.

The Local Mom Effect

We can look at the data for the % of science professors who are Female Science Professors and wonder to what extent the low numbers (relative to the % of women who acquire PhDs in some science fields) can be ascribed to the difficulties of being a mom and an FSP, and we can look at the data for how many FSPs have kids vs. those who don't (or pick any academic discipline in which women are underrepresented, not just Science). That's been done and those data could surely use more scrutiny and discussion, but that's not what I want to do here today.

Instead, I am intrigued by the possibilities of what might be learned from a rigor-challenged exploration of whether the % of FSPs (with/without children) in one's immediate professional surroundings has an influence on an individual's outlook, choices, opinions. That is, if you are in a department or some other sort of academic subunit in which there are many FSPs with kids, is your opinion (and possibly your life) profoundly different as a result, no matter what the statistics say about the overall low % of FSP-moms in your field? And if you are in a unit in which few/no FSPs have kids, are you less likely to have kids or even to pursue a career as an FSP?

At some universities in the US, there are departments in my field with no FSPs, and there are departments that have some FSPs but none of them have children. What are the effects of these places on the outlook of women students and postdocs re. careers and children? (Note that I am not critizicing anyone's choices to have/not have kids; that's a personal decision that no one else can judge.) And if someone has a pessimistic outlook based on their observations of people in their department (thinking: "These FSPs don't have kids, so it must be impossible/difficult to be an FSP and a mom"), can this be changed through other interactions beyond the department?

Alternatively, if you are in a department in which all or most female professors have kids, and these women seem to be doing just fine with life and careers, does this counteract some of the anxiety or pessimism that might result from seeing the grim statistics for that field as a whole?

I don't know, and that's why it seems like a good topic for a blog post, so that readers can send comments on how they think their experiences and opinions have been shaped by their immediate academic environment.

I remember sitting in a small meeting of women students, postdocs, and faculty once (many years ago), and the topic came up about the difficulty of being an FSP and a mom. One grad student said that she was concerned about this because there were "no role models". The other women faculty and I exchanged puzzled glances -- every single one of us in the room had one or more kids. Everyone in the room knew each other, so there was no way this student didn't know we all had kids. We were also representative of this unit of the university; there was one FSP absent, but she also had kids.

So I said "We all have kids, so I am confused about what you are looking for in a role model". The student said that because most FSPs don't have kids, there aren't enough role models. Yes, well, "not enough" is not quite the same as "no". Is there such thing as a critical mass of role models, and below that number, the exceptions are not significant? Maybe, but at the time, I thought that was an unnecessarily negative and cautious way to look at things.

And that certainly wasn't my approach. At about the time my daughter was born, I didn't know many FSPs in my field, but I did know a few, and some (2) of those at neighboring institutions had kids and were very happy. I didn't actually give it a lot of thought, and certainly never gazed at statistics to make any decisions. In that sense, I was not affected much, if at all, by my immediate academic environment or by the larger academic community (perhaps contradicting the central question of this post).

Even so, that is still a useful result to the general question of whether we are affected (or not) by our immediate (or larger) professional communities when making major life decisions.

Because I'm a Woman

A reader writes:

Dear Female Science Professor,

Maybe you had this topic before on your Blog but I was wondering if you do also frequently receive offers to occupy leading positions "because you are a woman". I am a female science professor at an institution with few female professors - in fact I think we are far less than 10%. This is a big political issue, because our institute may get a cut in the annual budget if the situation is not improving soon. I received already several offers to become a committee leader, a department head etc.. I was always asked by males and they were not hiding the fact that they asked me, because "we" need more women in leading positions. I really wished one day I would be asked, because someone thinks I am the best match for this job... I also wonder if it is sometimes a satisfaction for the males to let us women know that we were chosen just to balance the genders. Honestly, sometimes I start taking it as a discrimination to be asked for these jobs, because it means extra time that I have to spend with these duties and sometimes it is impossible to step out, because I would risk to imbalance the male-female ratio, which would fall back negatively on our institution. I am not at all a feminist - never was. I was always the girl who preferred to play with boys as a child and I always saw myself simply for what I am - free of gender thoughts. I was never feeling treated diffently, because I am a women. But this new situation is really starting to annoy me. Don't get me wrong, its better to get these jobs offered than to be left out, but I just wished I could think I "earned" them....



Answers/comments:

You very likely have earned these opportunities, but it is common to feel otherwise. I have discussed this topic before in the blog, but it's one of those topics that never goes away because many of us experience this situation throughout our careers* and have mixed feelings about it, as expressed well in the e-mail above. This is a situation that would presumably go away if there were more women in our fields.

One reason the 'we need a woman' situation makes some of us uncomfortable is that we want to be given opportunities based on our expertise and talents, but sometimes this isn't going to happen unless there is a concerted effort to try to include women in certain administrative positions, committees and so on. I have served on many committees that needed a woman (and there weren't many women to ask), resented those cases in which it was made clear to me that my token status made my participation less valuable than those of the men, and been convinced many a time that my presence was important, even if I had to put up with some unpleasant behavior on the part of my so-called peers. It bothers me less in cases in which I am aware that the committee (or whatever) 'needed' a woman, but once there, I am treated with respect, just like everyone else.

Our mixed-feelings can result in the unfair accusation that 'we don't know what we want'; that is, we think women should be represented but we don't want it to be overt that we are asked because we are women. We resent having to do more service than our male peers (and not get credit for it, or even get criticized for it), but we are disturbed when important committees (etc.) are composed entirely of men. What do we want? It's simple: We want to be treated with respect.

Note that being "free of gender thoughts" does not disqualify you from being a feminist. The fact that you think women should be treated in a fair way, based on our qualifications, does in fact make you a feminist. This is a compliment. A feminist is a person who thinks that women should have fair and equal rights and opportunities. If you think that your male peers should be paid more than you for the same job, then OK, you are not a feminist.

* In fact, just a few weeks ago, I received an invitation to serve on the board of the Zombie Research Society. The invitation explained "We are actively looking for qualified women to join the Board." Despite my intense fascination with all things zombie (= sarcasm/lie), I was struck by the 'we are only asking you because you are a woman' line. I was not offended at all, but I noted the up-front statement. Alas, only qualified women are being considered, and I am definitely not qualified for this role because I am more interested in dryer lint than I am in zombies.

S/he

Can you think of a (good) reason why a journal would need to know the gender of authors and reviewers?

A reader wrote to me with this question, as a result of being required to select a gender-revealing option when registering on a journal's website. This option was separate from one asking for the professional title (Prof., Dr., Prof. Dr. etc.). It was not possible for this person, even after communicating with journal staff, to register without checking this box. In fact, the journal staff insisted that this information was essential because otherwise communication was too difficult and would involve the awkward use of "he/she" in letters, or perhaps embarrassing mistakes if the gender of the person wasn't clear from their name.

I can think of reasons why a woman would not want reviewers and editors to know her gender, but I can't think of a good reason why reviewers and editors would need to know the gender of an author or reviewer. It occurred to me that a journal might want to keep track of how many papers are published by male vs. female authors (or lead authors, in fields that make this distinction), but that is not the reason the journal gave to the reader who wrote to me about this issue. In that case, the concern was making embarrassing mistakes in using pronouns in correspondence or that someone would be offended if referred to as he/she instead of by the correct pronoun.

If a journal did want to keep track of gender data, those data could be separated from individual papers, so that editors and reviewers did not see it for any particular individual or paper. 

If you are writing to someone whose gender you do not know, why would you even use he/she or his/her in direct correspondence with them? This is a real question. Am I overlooking something?

In my role as editor and reviewer, I do not need it; 'you' is nice and direct, or I use the person's name or title. In correspondence about someone, I can use their title, a term such as "Reviewer 1" (if they are anonymous, you shouldn't use a pronoun anyway), or I refer indirectly to "the author/s", depending on context. The journal with which I am most closely involved is based in Europe, with close ties to Asia, North America, and Australia. It is more formal than many North American-based journals in its correspondence traditions, but even so, we do not need to know the gender of authors or reviewers.

Yes, I know about Frau Professor, Herr Professor etc., but those can be options for those who prefer those titles. There should not a requirement to inform a journal of your gender before you submit a paper or review an article.

Should She Do It?

Today in Scientopia, I reluctantly sort of give some advice about intra-department relationships, in response to a reader's e-mail about her particular situation, but mostly I request comments from readers on this general topic and/or specific situation.

Gender-directed Weirdness

During a recent bout of air travel, I picked up some magazines to read during the times when e-readers must be turned off and in an upright and locked position because things might shift during the flight, or something.

I found this quote by Judith Herzfeld (a professor of biophysical chemistry) in the Aug 29 issue of The New Yorker of great interest, and even somewhat entertaining*:

".. I find it remarkable for the period [late 1950's] that a new and ambitious, even aggressive, science program was given to a female science teacher, Mrs. Esther Daly. I thought nothing of it at the time, but I suspect that having had a female science teacher in junior high school gave me some resilience for gender-directed weirdness in subsequent science venues."

Oh how I wish I had invented the term "gender-directed weirdness". Can I at least invent the acronym? GDW is, from time to time, kind of a theme of this blog. At the very least, I am going to add it as a label.

I never had a female science teacher in junior (or senior) high school, so I have no personal experience with such things, but I am curious about the use of the term "resilience", used here to indicate a positive effect of a female role model (FRM) at an early age. I was also intrigued by the part about thinking nothing of it (having a female science teacher) at the time. Mrs. Daly was therefore a retroactive female role model (RFRM).

When discussing role models in the past, I have wondered if role models (of any sort) have to do anything active to impart resilience (or whatever), or simply just be a person doing a job. We don't have enough information in the little piece from "The Talk of the Town" section of the magazine to determine what Mrs Daly did or did not do while teaching middle school science, but I like to think that her very existence as a science teacher was a powerful statement to the girls (and boys) that she taught, even if a subconscious one (at the time).

Or perhaps that is just me being lazy, hoping to do good without actually knowing how or what to do as a role model. Unlike flying on a plane and being given lots of instructions**, being a role model is a lot less well defined, and it can be hard to know what to do, other than just to be.


* Perhaps even more entertaining, though, was Elif Batuman's essay in Harper's Magazine.

** On one recent flight, we passengers were told to remove pens and pencils from our shirt front pockets, in case of an emergency. Does this still apply if one has a pocket protector for the pens and pencils, I wondered but did not ask?

Ms Degree

Something happened this week that hasn't happened to me in a long time:

I was asked if I am a Masters student.

The person who asked is about 10 years older than I am (rough guess), is not an academic, and asked this question in response to my having shown some knowledge of Science.

Was he visually impaired or was it pitch black at the time and he couldn't see that I am Old? No, it was daylight, but I was wearing sunglasses, so perhaps he couldn't see the wrinkles by my eyes, or maybe he thought I was a non-traditional student.

I thought it was strange that his imagination could only take him as far as envisioning me as a Masters student. Couldn't I at least be a PhD student, if not a professional scientist of some sort?

But, in fact, I wasn't annoyed; I saw it as an opportunity to introduce myself as a Science Professor. I like to think that now he will not make the equation woman + science = student, and instead there will be some part of his brain that remembers woman + science = professional.

According to this hypothesis, whatever equation this man might make for a scientifically inclined man, he will now make for women as well. His imagination will not be as limited as it was before he had met a real live FSP.

That is my hope, anyway. This is one (slow) way that stereotypes get busted -- one person at a time -- but there can be some personal satisfaction in it if the interaction ends up being a positive one.

Mrs Degree

In days of yore, when I was in graduate school, I was asked by a senior professor whether I was in graduate school because I couldn't find anyone to marry me.

According to a recent e-mail message from a reader, some professors are still asking young women questions about their education/career decisions in the context of their marriage plans (or lack thereof): in this case, an undergraduate was asked if she was going to graduate school to find a husband and get the so-called "MRS degree".

Go ahead and say it, commenters who like to give alternative, he's-not-a-sexist interpretations: These guys are joking! Women should lighten up and get a sense of humor about having their career goals viewed as subordinate to finding someone to marry. Men who pursue graduate education in female-dominated fields also have to endure jokes. There is a world economic crisis, so stop whining about sexism, which doesn't really exist anyway, except for when it does, but then it is actually the fault of the woman, who shouldn't complain. So get over it. Etc.

In fact, I disagree that these statements, even if meant as jokes, are harmless when made by a professor to a student.

It can be difficult for a student in that situation to explain why this comment is disrespectful, undermining, and insulting, but I would be interested to hear if anyone has gently or aggressively explained to the person making the "MRS degree" (or similar) comment why such statements are derogatory, or at the very least, not funny. And if anyone has done so, what was the response? An apology? A defensive remark? Another insult?

Let's put our heads together and come up with some suggested counter-remarks, for those who may want to have an arsenal of responses for such circumstances. A suggestion, just to get the ball rolling, in response to a statement along the lines of "can't find a husband?" or "looking for a husband?":

That didn't occur to me, but is that why you went to graduate school?