You know, when you stop to think about it, this strip really isn’t that funny — it’s cutting a little too close to the truth. Ladies of the readership, you may vent your frustration here.
That is an amazing coincidence
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I don’t think that stinky boys should get all the blame. It’s a cultural thing that we are all complicit in. (Except some Liberals, of course.)
Having said that, it seems to me quite likely that males are, on average, better suited to careers in science & engineering. And I have also worked with some very competent female engineers. You have to judge each person as you find them, without prejudice, either one way or the other.
Oh, come on! All that math and stuff is hard! Girls can’t do that, we all know that. Well, if they can fit it in between cooking, cleaning and diaper changing, sure, let ’em have their fun, so long as they don’t get any ideas about their place.
Martin
I asked my father shortly before he died if he’d finally give me his blessing to follow his trade as a mechanical engineer, since I felt so paralyzed and demoralized by his disapproval. He told me I could help my brother’s sons go to engineering school if I was worried about there not being an engineer in the family. Uh, whatever.
Richard Harris, I think you’ll find that the female engineering talent out there is mostly devoted to the overlooked branches of engineering… the chemical engineering performed in the kitchen, the structural engineering performed in the sewing room, the mechanical engineering performed in the art studio, and the social engineering performed every time a clueless man makes a bozo statement like “I think on the whole men are really better than women at engineering.”
I was the only girl in my AP Physics and AP Chemistry courses in high school and women were vastly outnumbered by men in the chemE department (and, in fact, the entire university) during college, but I was never discouraged by either my classmates or my instructors.
#1:
When I studied computer science, almost none of my fellow students were women. Now, Denmark, where I’m from, is a relatively progressive country, so there are no artificial barriers to each gender pursuing any line of study. The funny thing is, from the international students that we received, there was an almost even distribution of genders, and most of these students were from more conservatively minded countries. I’m not sure what to make of this. Perhaps it is that, given a free choice where a woman does not have to ‘do guy stuff’ to be successful, women just aren’t as interested in many of the traditionally male dominated fields. Or maybe this would-be free choice of paths to success makes social pressures more dominant. (Or maybe I shouldn’t be trying to conclude anything on such limited data. :-))
Martin
Have you seen the kinds of boys who are into math and science? Why would any woman voluntarily put herself in a room full of them?
Yay, stereotypes are fun!
Since there are more women in North American universities than men, it would seem that it’s more about choice (self-selection) than being forced out of engineering.
I didn’t notice much discrimination personally in my own field, but that is because of two reasons: 1)I got into a sub-field that is incredibly egalitarian and welcoming towards women, and 2)While growing up, I was fairly tone-deaf as to slights towards me and demanded attention at all costs.
That said, I have watched plenty of women friends in other scientific fields get harassed in all sorts of under-the-table ways.
Harold: They get forced out of engineering long before entering college. It’s the Barbie “math is hard” attitude that starts around age 2 that gets them.
Why assume that male and female brains are the same — that the only difference lies in the rest of the body? Is it wrong-headed to suggest that the male and female brain have different arenas of average proficiency that become reflected in university courses of study? Are more women in nursing programs because society has pigeon-holed them, or because females are more evolved innate care-givers?
There is probably an evolved reason, that becomes reflected in societies, to help explain University enrollment patterns.
“Why assume that male and female brains are the same — that the only difference lies in the rest of the body?”
True. Why assume that engineering can only be performed in the male-brain type of way? Engineering is a creative skill. So is sex. Can sex only be performed by men? It used to be thought that women didn’t really want to participate in that, either.
I know that when I finally become an engineer, I’m going to bring a unique set of aptitudes to it. Will I be a good engineer? Surely I will.
Lots of the engineers I work with say I should become an engineer, and then kind of catch themselves and think. Occasionally one will say right out, very innocently, that they still think I’m quite feminine.
The cartoon is a little out-dated.
Steve, I don’t think it’s fair to blame this on evolution, since we don’t exactly have controlled conditions yet — men and women are not raised the same way, so we cannot draw any conclusions on whether it is ‘nature or nurture’, since both vary.
Also, consider this. One in three astronomy grad students at my university are women. That’s nearly twice as large as the percentage of female physics grad students (to the point where the Graduate Women in Physics had to start accepting astronomy graduate students to keep membership up). However, both sets of students tend to be incoming with a bachelors of science in physics, and both share some coursework (especially in the first year). Astronomy doesn’t seem to be exceptionally female-oriented, but it does support more women in the upper divisions than physics.
(There’s also the matter that a difference between how men and women think could mean both approach complex problems in different ways, but both could be used to do, say, engineering.)
Well, Vox Day says gurlz are too stupid to understand science. So it must be true!
The cultural biases are strong and self-perpetuating — and it’s not just stinky boys doing it. A colleague had the experience of being handed a drop-slip by one of her better geometry students. When she expressed surprise and dismay that such a good student was dropping out of her math class, the student told her she was doing it on the advice of her counselor: Math is hard, you see, an A was not guaranteed, so it was better to drop than to risk the impact of a B on her GPA. Besides, said the counselor, girls didn’t need math classes. The counselor? A woman with a degree in physical education. (I guess she didn’t need math.)
Those women with aptitudes for math and science get pressure from both stinky boys and stupid girls, reinforcing the cultural norms that remain much too strong.
I teach scientific writing for graduate students in electrical engineering and computer engineering at a university in Korea that is dedicated to engineering. I have to admit that the proportion of females is abysmal … In two years, I’ve had less than 10 out of nearly 200 students. However, these have always been near the top of the class.
Now, Korea is still remarkably male-dominated… roughly equivalent to North America in the 1950s, so I’m pretty sure the low proportion is a cultural artifact, whereas the performance is a true indication of ability.
“Girls” not smart? Get bent!
There are many pure and applied science fields where the proportion of women has greatly increased from 20 or 30 years ago. Chemistry programs now have a substantial proportion of female students (about one third, I believe), and medicine, where women outnumber men in several Canadian medical schools, and are near parity in the others.
Interestingly, my own field, pathology, has always been a popular choice for women. The supposed reason was that pathologists have relatively predictable hours. The issue that pathology is analytical and not nurturing doesn’t seem to enter into it.
If women are succeeding in large numbers in analytic fields like chemistry and pathology, the argument that women think different from men is bogus.
There are a lot of studies that show that whatever differences there are between male and female cognition are not primarily responsible for the differences in the gender numbers in science and engineering. It is interesting that Pharyngula readers who castigate creationists who comment without knowing any biology feel free to comment about gender matters without knowing anything about the field.
Having done tech support since around 1990, I’ve always thought that there weren’t enough women in my field. I’ve always welcomed them with open arms. Hey, I wouldn’t mind if I was the only male in a crew of women. But then I’m sexist that way. :)
more women in nursing programs because society has pigeon-holed them, or because females are more evolved innate care-givers?
Women are pigeon-holed into the nurturing professions because they belong to the sex that becomes mothers. It’s assumed they have more invested, physically, mentally, and emotionally, in children and those who are, like children, helpless and need care.
The best nurse I ever had was an intensive care night nurse who was attentive, kind, competent, and cheerful, and did more to reassure me and help me come to terms with my slow recovery than any other person in those long weeks. He was a straight man (we talked about his wife and kids) in his mid-30s. He went to bat for me several times when he found that the (female) day nurses acted neglectfully, and he got results. His masculinity was never in doubt with those of my visitors who were uncomfortable with male nurses. I got asked a lot if I wasn’t uncomfortable around him, and I told them with great pleasure that I wished all my nurses were exactly like him.
I spent the weekend at the Missouri state Science Olympiad finals. Seemed like roughly equal numbers of girls and boys in most events. And I am proud to say my daughter took a silver medal.
I also noticed that when our team was relaxing in the hotel pool with a game of keep-away, the girls were playing as hard as the boys. When I was that age, girls had to behave like ladies (and where did that get us?). This next generation assumes they have the right to study science and engineering if they want-they won’t ask for our approval.
The first day of school of 8th grade biology we were given a lengthy, general science test to measure where we were in our basic understanding of science.
Not only did I score the top of my class, I scored the top of all the classes (650+ students) and, I was informed, the highest score in the all the years they had been giving the test.
Not bad for a mere girl.
Flashbacks to Larry Summers… ugh.
Or, more recently, the Washington Post:
I can’t help it, but reading about such episodes of screaming, gushing and swooning makes me wonder whether women — I should say, “we women,” of course — aren’t the weaker sex after all. Or even the stupid sex, our brains permanently occluded by random emotions, psychosomatic flailings and distraction by the superficial. Women “are only children of a larger growth,” wrote the 18th-century Earl of Chesterfield. Could he have been right?
[…]
So I don’t understand why more women don’t relax, enjoy the innate abilities most of us possess (as well as the ones fewer of us possess) and revel in the things most important to life at which nearly all of us excel: tenderness toward children and men and the weak and the ability to make a house a home. (Even I, who inherited my interior-decorating skills from my Bronx Irish paternal grandmother, whose idea of upgrading the living-room sofa was to throw a blanket over it, can make a house a home.) Then we could shriek and swoon and gossip and read chick lit to our hearts’ content and not mind the fact that way down deep, we are . . . kind of dim.
If you are not a feminist, you are part of the problem.
Not so far off as you think. Waaaay back, in the days of the mainframe, there were three girls in my HS computer science class. Within three weeks the other two had dropped out because of the behaviour of the boys towards them. It’s not that they were nerds, it was that they were bigots. In my experience, most younger males are, probably due to the fact that they are still sorting out their own sexual and social identity issues and need someone to pick on. I would also point out that not all of the boys behaved this way… it was probably 50-50, and it was often subtle, sabotage rather than name-calling.
I can’t speak about engineering (though I hear the majority of the cohort are male) but I did Chemistry, Biology and Statistics at A Level (these are chosen subjects) and just over half of each class were female.
The lab I’m working in now is 10 strong (including my female supervisor) and we have only 2 men (one postgrad, one lab assistant). I have friends in geology and pharmocology who tell me there is an even number of men and women on their courses too. A couple of weeks ago I attended Edinburgh Neuroscience Day and also saw an even mix of men and women (though the majority of speakers were male).
This, and the fact we are based at the campus which is primarily devoted to Veterinary Science (80% female), means I tend to think that women are quite able to make their own way in the sciences. I think that cartoon is quite out of date.
I don’t think that stinky boys should get all the blame.
Right. Even those who have learned to use deodorant are often to blame.
I am a biomedical researcher and there are generational divides as well as gender divides in my profession. I think the generational divide is due in part to the fact that the women of the older generation had to give up much more in order to have career success and the newer generation of women, of which there are much more, have it relatively easy.
In grad school, half my class was female. In the grad course I currently teach, four out of six are female.
The main problem here is applicable to average differences between any two groups you care to deliniate (age, sex, race, religion, etc.).
There are always real differences. Some people point to those differences – sometimes exaggerating real ones, sometimes inventing false ones – and use them to justify different standards of treatment. The same real or imagined difference can serve as the basis for various unequal standards of treatment. For example, “men are stronger than women”. One person may say this justifies preventing women from holding jobs involving physical labor. Another may say this means women are less likely to seek a job involving physical labor. Still others say this means men shouldn’t hit women.
So what do you do if you find the first difference in standards (job prohibition) unacceptable? Amazingly enough, many who do (most?) will say that men aren’t actually stronger than women on average, rather than taking a stance that differences in average strength do not justify restricting job opportunities. This tactic implicitly agrees with the stance that if there is a difference, it does justify the restriction. It also prevents possibly desirable differences in standards of treatment from being accepted (how many women actually dislike the “don’t hit women” rule common among men?).
The situation is the same with science and engineering. Men and women have, on average, different aptitudes for and attractions to science and engineering. It’s the same game here – if you pretend there are no differences, you are tacitly agreeing that the existence of differences would justify any altered standard of treatment that you don’t like, while preventing the application of any different standard that might be helpful (think providing extra academic help to those who need it, on the latter point).
For example, my personal experience is that men have a higher average aptitude for math than women (not much higher), as well as a higher attraction to it (more so than aptitude). Some research (by a number of female scientists) that I’ve heard about supports that. That does not mean all men are better at math than all women. Even if that were the case, it still wouldn’t justify restricting mathematical subjects from women in academia. All it really means is that we shouldn’t expect 50/50 representation between the sexes in such subjects. With all barriers down, there will still be less women than men, because of their own choices.
I’m sure plenty will misread even that, and assume I’m against encouraging young women to pursue such subjects. I’m in favor of encouraging all young people in all subjects, and letting them decide which ones they choose to pursue further. I also support greater encouragement of young women in particular in those subjects in which there are known social obstacles (that includes math, to at least some degree).
Why assume that male and female brains are the same — that the only difference lies in the rest of the body?
Sure, and let’s assume too that the biological differences between people with Type A- and Type AB+ blood goes as far as the brain, and that type A’s are unsuited for Math.
Or, let’s assume that, because people with ancestors from Sub-Saharan Africa are more likely to have Sickle Cell Anemia, that their brains are unsuited for leadership positions.
How about, since Prozac has been shown to work in some men and women of a variety of ethnic backgrounds, but not in some other men and women of a variety of ethnic backgrounds, let’s decide that if Prozac works with your personal chemistry then you’ll make a great economist.
And shall we invite Trans-men into the “good at science” camp, or Trans-women? One of them is technically male, according to your evaluation, and the other is not.
There’s far too much variation within each of the populations “Male” and “Female” for them to be fairly lumped into a single set of characteristics, before starting on a conversation about a spectrum of sex, rather than a binary condition. You would be laughed out of town for proposing that any other biological trait was linked to intelligence, so why should sex, or even gender be the exception?
Both my Ph.D. supervisor and my post-doc supervisor are women. My wife is a woman (yay!) and an excellent scientist. Good scientists, all.
I confess, though, institutionally, it’s harder for a woman to be a scientist than a man. Many of the successful woman scientists in my field don’t have children. After my son was born, my wife had to use her breast-pump in a storage closet, while sitting on the floor (4 times a day while at work). How hideous is that? She was given 6 weeks off for maternity leave. She still hadn’t properly recovered from her C-section when that ran out. Whereas I could return to a normal workday shortly after my son was born, with not a breastpump, nor a C-section scar causing me pain.
Here’s the interesting part. My supervisor, (a woman), complains there aren’t enough women in science. But when I point out the institutional problems with a female post-doc having children, she thinks it’s not a problem, and that no one should have to pay a female post-doc for maternity leave, or pay for facilities for child care near by and breast pumping areas that are clean and comfortable (just a small room with a table and chair is all we’re asking for here!). And then she wonders why *only* women like her (no children) are in senior positions in science.
It seems fairly obvious to me. If you made *me* choose between having children, and being in science, I’d choose having kids. But no one is making me choose. They’re trying to make my wife choose, though…
I
supposehope this fine piece of contradiction was satirical in nature, but I worry it isn’t. It’s pretty sad that there is so little progress from when I was fresh out of college and going into engineering to today when my daughter is fresh out of college and going into biology.It seems that in any lab, we’re still being asked to fetch coffee and donuts, and that it’s still difficult to break into the old boy’s network. I think many women in the sciences can share any number of experiences that shows just how true this all is. It isn’t just that young girls are discouraged from science, it’s that there is constant pressure to adhere to certain roles all the way throughout our academic and professional careers.
I only wish that the comic was outdated.
Could it be that the differences in the brain structures of men and women don’t lead to differences in proficiencies in certain fields, but maybe the differences do necessitate different strategies for developing proficiency? In other words, women are equally capable as men, but learn differently because of different brain structure.
Freki: Within three weeks the other two had dropped out because of the behaviour of the boys towards them. It’s not that they were nerds, it was that they were bigots…I would also point out that not all of the boys behaved this way… it was probably 50-50, and it was often subtle, sabotage rather than name-calling.
Boy, does that ever ring a bell.
My training, circa 1975, was in electrical. In my classes I was the only woman, and most of my classmates were good friends, courteous, helpful.
But the school had lots of trades classes, and many of those students were operating at the level of middle school. They made things uncomfortable for any woman who walked through “their territory”. Funny — they seemed to feel their judgement of the attractiveness of females meant something, but their own attractiveness? Not so much.
Amazing how effective the bullying of the oblivious can be. And only one or two bad actors can spoil the whole experience for women less ornery than I.
Noni
Anecdotes aren’t data, except about women in technical fields!
Men who will reject evo-psych just-so stories about anything else cling like hell to the idea there is some fundamental difference in girlbrains that means the paucity of women in technical fields is natural, and couldn’t possibly be due to any sort of systemic bias.
False dichotomy, I think. Yes, we are seeing more and more women getting into the sciences. That does not mean there are still problems like those reflected in the cartoon.
Then again, your comment about Veterinary Science is interesting. When my wife went to vet school, I spent a lot of time thinking about why the distribution is what it is. Looking back through the pictures of the graduating classes, you can see it was a pretty abrupt transition from 3/4 men to 3/4 women in the mid-80s.
Personally, I think it has to do with the pay level. Considering the level of education, veterinarians are not very well compensated (beginning vets make a little more than an NIH postdoc). So I speculate that as vet pay became less and less competitive, men started moving away from it (shoot, it’s easier to get into med school than vet school, and the pay is better) and women were the ones who were willing to do it.
There is also probably something to do with the lessoning of the demand for large animal vets (although there are plenty of female vets doing large animal/mixed tracks, but the percentage of the males doing large animals is larger (then again, when there are only 10 guys in a class of 65, statistics are hard to interpret)).
These are a few things that come to my mind. What is most fascinating is how fast the transition occured. It was literally like a 5 year process to go from 75/25 to 25/75. If anyone else has any thoughts, I’d like to hear them.
speedwell @ # 4, …the social engineering performed every time a clueless man makes a bozo statement like “I think on the whole men are really better than women at engineering.”
I used to perform a statutory duty that entailed assessing the work of engineers. I don’t think that I encountered anough women engineers to draw any general conclusions about how they stacked up as engineers against men. Those women who make it through the training process ought to be as good as the men, on average. However, I did know one who’d passed her academic exams, but not the professional ones. She was a bit of a disaster waiting to happen. But it hasn’t happened, to my knowledge. She seemed to lack a feel for how things worked that amazed me. I presumed that she’d passed her exams by memorizing things without having understood them at a deep level. One person is not statistically significant, of course, but she seemed to me be like a lot of women when it comes to mechanical things – too impatient or disinterested to want to know. I’m sure that there are also men who are similarly disposed, but almost certainly they’d be a smaller percentage of the population.
That said, it is well known that there are structural & neuropharmacological differences between male & female brains. We ascribe this to the effects of evolution by natural selection. I feel sure that I recognize admirable ‘feminine’ qualities in many women, & our culture recognizes these qualities too, but often perhaps without granting them sufficient reward.
On the basis of the available evidence, there are average differences in cognitive abilities between the sexes, but a great deal of overlap too.
On a lighter note, a woman took her elderly husband to see a neuro-surgeon for a consultation. “He has Alzheimer’s”, she said. “Can you do anything to help him”?
The neuro-surgeon checked the old boy over, then said, “The only thing I can suggest for him is a brain transplant”.
“Oh dear”, she said, “That sounds drastic; are there many brains available? And what would a new brain cost”?
The surgeon turned to his computer, and looked at a web-site. “Well, there are two brains currently available”, he said. “There’s a man’s brain, and that’s going for £10 000, and a woman’s brain, which is only £5 000”.
The wife was curious. “How come a man’s brain is worth twice as much as a woman’s”? she asked him, pointedly.
“Well”, said the neuro-surgeon, “The man’s brain is unused”.
The whole issue of gender differences and the sexual dimorphism of the brain is very murky. Its no surprise then that it serves as a Rorshach test–and that its use in trying to understand why there are fewer women in certain fields (say, Engineering) is about as profound (and likely as egregious) as saying ‘there are fewer women because they are different’.
No, the real question isn’t: why are there fewer women? Rather it is: why are there so few women in certain fields?
Based on my own experiences of having observed sexual discrimination in the scientific workplace–I’d tend to believe that a good part of it was due to chauvanistic nonsense.
This is still an issue today? Where in the US do you guys live? Get with the times, geez…
However, I did know one who’d passed her academic exams, but not the professional ones. She was a bit of a disaster waiting to happen. But it hasn’t happened, to my knowledge. She seemed to lack a feel for how things worked that amazed me. I presumed that she’d passed her exams by memorizing things without having understood them at a deep level. One person is not statistically significant, of course, but she seemed to me be like a lot of women when it comes to mechanical things – too impatient or disinterested to want to know. I’m sure that there are also men who are similarly disposed, but almost certainly they’d be a smaller percentage of the population.
Posted by: Richard Harris | March 17, 2008 10:28 AM
Jesus Haploid Christ, confirmation bias much?
You decide women in general aren’t suited to engineering. You whip up some anecdata to favoring this claim. Then you tack on some unsupported supposition about men at the end.
What nimrod first floated the idea that “aptitude at math” is a single, one-dimensional quantity? There are over three hundred ways of proving the Pythagorean Theorem; indeed, any fact worth knowing has multiple paths leading to and away from it, and the paths one prefers depend upon circumstances and personal inclination. Science and mathematics thrive on those differences: they mean that not everybody is trying to do the same thing.
factition raises some very important issues in his comment.
Carolyn (#34):
/me applauds
/me applauds
Posted by: Blake Stacey | March 17, 2008 10:40 AM
My womanly need for cleanliness, evolved in the early Pliocene when my ancestresses needed to keep the caves tidy, makes me good at spotting bullshit.
I have read that differences between individuals is greater than the difference between genders. I think the lack of women in my particular engineering discipline is a combination of self-selection *and* discrimination. Women make up 10-20% of the graduates in my field, yet most places where I have worked, women have numbered a scant few percent. My current company has 2 female engineers in the entire building. I have had managers welcoming to women, and prejudiced male managers who discouraged hiring of women because of the potential for them to get pregnant and leave the work force. Basically, this question is hotly contested because there are many, many variables at play – some with little evidence. How can we track illegal discrimination? I doubt those guilty would voluntarily report it so that we can understand how widespread it is.
“that means the paucity of women in technical fields is natural, and couldn’t possibly be due to any sort of systemic bias.”
Clinging like hell to privilege is a man’s privilege. If some gurl gets the job that means some poor! oppressed! white! male! didn’t get it. And THAT’S the real tragedy.
There is, of course, no irony in the fact that PZ opened up a comment thread for women to vent and most of the comments have been from men who need to tell us they’re not the problem. No irony at all, guys, and thank you for listening.
The problems in my high school physics club were so pervasive that I decided the boys needed a lesson in stereotypes. My essay on the care and feeding of the local physics male was widely contributed to by the girls (“Ooh. Don’t forget how they do this!”) and shredded–literally–by the boys. But it got its point across, at least for a while.
Whether or not there is any small difference in average aptitude for math/science/engineering between male and female populations is pretty much worthless when considering individuals from either population. Unless the difference is more than several standard deviations of the population’s distribution, it is simply “lying with statistics” to harp on the average difference to justify discrimination.
This is partly why I believe more and more that probability and statistics should be emphasized in high school math class even more so than algebra and calculus (of course algebra and calculus would be included as tools but the focus should be on probability and stats)
If anything depressed me, it’s that all those career advise tests gave like 80% of the girls social work / child care as advise. Now obviously those areas are in need of staff and there’s nothing “low” about them, but it annoyed me girls didn’t even consider anything beyond “soft” careers.
I worked in a machine shop most of last summer (doing controls and a bit of assembly and testing on a machine to help a family member – I’m reasonably good with tools and electronics, and I work cheap for family). There was a calendar with naked women on it on clear display. A nice older man kept trying to carry boxes for testing for me, and said women shouldn’t have to do work where they get their hands dirty.
Not really welcoming to a woman who likes to work with her hands. I wouldn’t have wanted to take a permanent job there. It reminds me of the unexpressed and expressed expectations that kept me out of the optional mechanics courses in high school.
These expectations are out there – maybe not universal, but they are.
If these gender-based conclusions were valid, they should hold irrespective of culture.
They don’t. Check out the distribution of Chinese or Indian grad students… plenty of women in the sciences over there.
(Even so, there is still some culture-backed discrimination going on… just less than is true locally.)
For that matter, using arguments of these kinds, one could argue that whitey should stay out of science and leave it to the Asian Ubermenchen.
Posted by: Carolyn | March 17, 2008 10:59 AM
Oops, there are two of us.
/nick Kadath
*** Carolyn is now known as Kadath
Any rational being would welcome competent adherents to a particular field of study.
I just finished reading through the applications and resumes (CVs) for a postdoc in my brain imaging lab. Of the 50 or so apps, roughly one fourth were from females. The shortlist of 4 is ALL female, and the runners-up are as well. While this is a small sample and I hesitate to draw any strong inferences, I do find it striking that as a group, the females have more diverse backgrounds than the males (e.g., combinations of degrees in linguistics and psychology, with experience in clinical imaging). The males, as a group, are academically accomplished but tend to be focused in one subject.
When I started university (Engineering, Physics and Maths), I would guess that fewer than 20% of my physics class was female, and fewer than 10% of my engineering cohort was female.
Four years later, to make a bit of cash whilist writing my thesis, I started tutoring a first year engineering course. To my (pleasant) surprise, the percentage of females enrolled in first year engineering was probably closer to 40%. Males were still the majority gender, but their numerical dominace was certainly reduced. I also noted that some of my best students were female… but this may be more a function of the very large group learning environment.
How many women would like to see more men actually following such a rule?
Now, Denmark, where I’m from, is a relatively progressive country, so there are no artificial barriers to each gender pursuing any line of study.
Yeah, right. If you really think that there is no gender bias in Denmark then please send me your bank account information because I’d like to deposit $3 million to it…
Don’t have anything to vent about. I’ve been interested in science since I can remember, and I never encountered any negative bias. Actually, there was a lot of encouragement from my (mostly male) biology teachers and professors. Maybe I’m just lucky, but I like to interpret it a bit more optimistic and say that it might be proof that attitudes are changing in Germany, at least in the biological sciences. And seeing how more than half of biology students and graduates are female, there isn’t much left in terms of arguements for chauvinist men to cling to, either. We’re in ur science, changing ur gender quota *g*.
I know Sweden isn’t Denmark, but some evidence that gender discrimination isn’t dead in Scandinavia despite claims made above. Note that I have no particular reason to believe that gender discrimination is any worse in Scandinavia than elsewhere, except insofar as it is considered a “solved problem” when it is not really solved.
“Not really welcoming to a woman who likes to work with her hands. I wouldn’t have wanted to take a permanent job there. It reminds me of the unexpressed and expressed expectations that kept me out of the optional mechanics courses in high school.”
My significant other experienced significant discrimination in grad school – including being hit on by male academics and being frozen out after rebuffing their advances, and though she was first in her class and did excellent research, she was passed over when the time came to dole out awards. She resents this treatment to this day.
I’m going to get flamed for this, but here goes.
Once you cut out the sexism among men in the older generation, which I agree is still a big problem; the thing I mostly see holding back women in science is… women. If anyone wants me to I’ll elaborate, but promise not to castrate me anyone…
What’s with all the cites of “personal experience”? All of you reading Pharyngula should know that anecdotes are not data. And most of you suggesting that there might be natural differences in math and science aptitude seem ignorant of just how strong the effect of culture is. Sure, it’s possible that there are natural differences, but to prove it you’re going to have to find some way to control for cultural influence. Maybe raise sets of boys and girls in Skinner boxes, completely isolated from human contact?
WTF? “Don’t hit women” is a rule? I thought the rule was “Don’t hit anyone!” You mean in these male-dominated engineering labs the guys are perfectly free to beat the living shit out of each other?
If anyone wants me to I’ll elaborate, but promise not to castrate me anyone…
Posted by: Martin | March 17, 2008 11:31 AM
I’m interested, but only if you can manage to avoid comparing strong disagreement to castration in the future.
(.)(.)
Ok, here’s my opinion on men, women, and science: It may be that men are, on average, better at math. Or women are, on average, better at communication (both of which, incidently, are needed to do science well). However, we have no way of knowing that. We treat men and women differently from birth on. That fact biases the data so badly that there is simply no way of knowing whether any true innate differences exist or not.
My anecdotal rants: I have never encountered “serious” gender prejudice, at least not that I’ve recognized. Maybe I wasn’t accepted into some med school or residency because of my gender, but I have no way of knowing that. However, I have encountered quite a lot of “soft” harassment and bias.
Little things, mostly. Like when I was in med school and the attending on one rotation called me “Dianne” and my male colleague (same level of training) “Dr X”. Or the attending during residency with whom I repeatedly had this sort of conversation:
Me: “Patient had suddenly loss of conciousness…after stabilization I sent him for a CT scan which showed…”
Attending Idiot (interrupting, to male resident): “What should you do in a case like this?”
Male resident (sucking up or maybe just clueless): “Get a CT.”
Second male resident nods wisely.
Me: “As I said, I got a CT and…”
Attending idiot (to male resident): “Go order a CT…”
Me: “It’s been done. It shows a stroke. The neurology consult suggests…”
And so on. The attending in question was a useless asshole and incompetent as well, but twice as bad if you were female (whether as colleague or patient) than if you were male. I think he eventually left due to too many malpractice claims, but I’m not sure.
Maybe raise sets of boys and girls in Skinner boxes, completely isolated from human contact?
It’s been tried. Sadly, I’m not joking. Children isolated from human contact die or fail to develop properly (i.e. don’t learn language.) There are worse things in the world than culture.
There should be a petition to have Vox Day change his name to Stockwell.
OK, don’t anyone get me wrong. I work with engineers. I support engineers. I support several thousand engineers, and I love all of them but four clueless morons who… well, anyway, they aren’t very quick or motivated.
In my userbase, I have at least one Tracy, Toni, Bety (spelled that way), Kim, and Kelly who are male engineers. (I also have an Ali, Glen, Andre, and Brett who are female engineers.) My point is you can’t tell one way or another in cases where you aren’t sure. It just doesn’t matter. Machines don’t care whether you have a sex or not.
I’ve heard everything from older women, and men of every age, but I gotta tell ya the MOST disheartening and crushing comment was from the men running the first grad program I was ever in. One said I “lacked focus”, and another that my “writing style was too literary”. That hurt a hell of a lot more than “boys don’t like smart girls”, or “girls can’t do math”, or “women need to take calculus to learn to think logically like men” because those could be dismissed out of hand as patently absurd or beside the point. Whereas, these other comments make no sense at all, and a part of me has spent almost ten years trying to make sense of them. Perhaps the women have more diverse backgrounds because they’ve been forced out of their chosen fields, as I was, by the males in power, and forced to start over. That’s what I did.
I think we can all agree that there remain considerable social and cultural factors that impede the progress of women in the sciences. I have observed it in a number of cases. I do not believe that it is malicious in intent; I suspect that it is a side effect of some of the cultural mores in the sciences. But surely cultural factors play a large role — in my opinion, the primary role — in impeding the utilization of female talents.
That said, I have zero sympathy for those who deny the role of intrinsic psychological factors. In particular, I have never — NEVER — encountered a critic of evolutionary psychology who can offer criticisms of specific academic publications. Indeed, I cannot recall meeting a critic of evolutionary psychology who has even read Cosmides & Tooby. Criticizing evolutionary psychology without having read Cosmides & Tooby is not far distant from criticizing natural selection without having read Darwin.
The fact that evolutionary psychology has been used to justify some silly claims does nothing more to discredit that field than the fact that natural selection has been used to justify eugenics.
Look, ignoring the complex and thorny issues of why there are so few women in engineering, and instead dealing with the prejudice and stupidity of the cartoon, the fact is that the girl (not a boy) is the one who said that “engineering is boy stuff,” then she turned around and said that it’s “mostly stinky boys” who say that.
How hypocritical can you get?
It’s projection, standard stereotypical scapegoating which is condemned whenever it’s going the “wrong way.” Female society has quite strong pressures to conform to a collective female ideal, and anyone who doesn’t know that ought to shut up about such matters.
But the cartoon is “righteous” in a narrow kind of way. So it passes, no matter that it turned a complex issue into a simple matter of stereotyped blame.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
I work for a HyperMegaCorp in IT. I see undercover hostility towards women in my male dominated field everyday. By the numbers, in my Department of ~150 – there are 3 women technicians/admins, and 2 managers.
The widest problem is in how stupid workers are handled. Women are cut off from key information and then summarily dismissed. Idiot men are trained/covered for and even promoted.
*sigh*
What’s with all the cites of “personal experience”?
We were invited to “vent.” “Venting” means you have a head of steam built up that you are getting rid of. If you feel an overwhelming compulsion to “vent” on someone else’s behalf, you have too little in your own life to worry about.
Martin, I’m sure your data is very pretty, but if you’re afraid of a little castration, I’m not sure you have what it takes to succeed in this discussion. Gender and science is a very taxing field. Perhaps your talents would be put to better use elsewhere?
Or maybe this just isn’t about your data. The fact that some women may be opting out of science for other reasons does not negate stinky boys stories. Tell us if you want to, but don’t expect the same reaction you’d get on a thread devoted to that topic.
Kadath said “I’m interested, but only if you can manage to avoid comparing strong disagreement to castration in the future.”
Firstly, peer-pressure by women on women telling them that science is nerdy, uncool and for the social inept.
Secondly, maternity leave used as an excuse to leave science. Susan Greenfield wrote an article in the Guardian a while back rightly pointing out how many women’s careers stall when they take maternity leave. She suggested the system needs changing – I used to agree, but my experience lately has changed my mind. I’m approaching thirty, and so I’m at an age where a lot of female colleagues and friends are having babies. Some of them had a passion for science, they worked up until the birth, and while they took maternity leave they continued to maintain an active interest in their fields during the first year after birth. They had no trouble at all getting new contracts. The second group just disappeared off the face of the planet for anything up to 2 years, and unsurprisingly found it hard to get back in. I don’t see this as a systemic problem, I see it as women voluntarily changing their priorities away from science. Losing interest, effectively.
Thirdly, there seems to be this chronic lack of confidence, which I just don’t understand. This is something I’ve seen all my life, through school, college, university, my post-grad days and now into the work place. Even when they’re doing well on paper, more women than men seem to have an absolute crisis when it comes to being confident in their performance. In a number of cases, it affects their happiness and their capability to do their jobs.
I’m almost scared to bring this points up for being accused of being patriarchal or sexist, but I’m not, I’m just trying to report what I see in an unbiased manner. I want to see more women in science, and I worked very hard on outreach projects trying to achieve just that, but I think the onus now is on women to start following the example of their pioneering peers and start breaking through, if they actually want to.
More than half the students we sent to medical school from our undergrad. biology program last year were female. At least half the top students in our program are female. Sixy-five percent of the top grades on my last zoology lab practical were female.
When the oil industry collapsed out here in the early 80s, my human anatomy labs overnight were sprinkled with out-of-work roughnecks looking for well-paid and secure careers in nursing.
I’m sure there must be gender-based discrimination in science and engineering, but from my position – surprisingly in conservative West Texas – I’m seeing lots of acceptance of both genders in the science-based fields we teach.
toucantoad
I seem to recall a study where they found that research papers were significantly more likely to be rejected by journals when the lead name was feminine. However, papers where the lead was female, but were submitted using just initials or gender neutral names, had a slightly higher than average success rate. The conclusion was that women did good science, but were treated more harshly by reviewers.
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find the study yet. If anyone knows what I’m talking about and can point me in the right direction I’d appreciate it. However, while looking for it I did come across this interesting 3 part series from Cognitive Daily, examining the women in science question.
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/09/why_arent_more_women_in_scienc.php
Check it out.
Martin:
http://xkcd.com/385/
’nuff said.
Getting more women into science, and ensuring that there isn’t any gender-bias against women either entering science, or remaining there, is obviously a positive goal. There is however another side to this that is much less positive, and it is something that we see more and more frequently in the UK.
As inequalities within the education system have been slowly eliminated over the years, the results gap between boys and girls in secondary education narrowed, and more recently, has seen girls start to outperform boys across the board. Yet when you look at the way the media/society reacts to news of this nature, when girls under-perform it is often viewed as being some fault with the system, whereas when boys under-perform, well, that’s their own fault. With so much emphasis on ensuring that girls are not being disadvantaged within the system, we seem to have forgotten about the boys (or we’re content to just blame them for their failings).
Now, the UK is set to pass an ‘equality’ law that gives priority for jobs to women (we already have other ‘positive discrimination’ laws). It is amazing that we live in a society where a person can propose an ‘equal opportunity’ law that discriminates against men, label it progress, and keep a straight face.
Equality is great… but it has to be equality.
Would someone please explain to me why “nursing” is considered to be an “easier major” when compared to “engineering?” Has anyone ever experienced modern academics required of nursing majors? Nursing has evolved to be ever more complex, especially in the last 10 years. What some BSRN’s and NP’s are doing on a daily basis today is something that only physicians were allowed to do 10-15 years ago. It does not help in anyone’s argument for any side of this type of an issue to use modern day nursing education as something less than what is required for a modern day engineering education. It belittles both sexes, whether pointedly or insidiously.
1) Making the assumption that more females are nurses because of their “nurturing” capability, is insinuating that men have no nurturing capability.
2) Making the assumption that females “cannot handle math/science because of their genetic make up” (wtf?); therefore, more females are nurses because this course of study is “easier” (wtf?) than engineering.
but don’t forget….
(Not on this thread but elsewhere.) The assumption is/was that more men do/did not go into nursing because the pay allegedly being so much less than another field of study. Perhaps a generation ago this may have been somewhat true. But not today, in this day and age. Specialized BSRN’s NP’s, FNP’s, CRNA’s, etc., can all make pretty good money.
Re: Abby
I’ve seen similar studies on C.V.s with “ethnic” names on them. It would be interesting to see whether there’s a breakdown by subject. For example, Polly Matzinger’s theories have dominated immunology, but I’m struggling to think of many prominent female physicists.
Martin.
Re: n3rdchik
I have never, ever seen a boy say that “girls suck at math”, in my entire education. Maybe it’s an older generation thing.
Martin.
Pablo @35. That’s an interesting take on the situation, and one I hadn’t previously have thought of. It male:female ration has also switched here (Edinburgh) within a generation and I had put it down to bigger class sizes. Every year the vet school accepts more students, in the 70s the class sizes were around 20-30, final year 2008 consists of 90 students. I believe next year’s intake will be 120. The amount of males applying remains the same (20-30) and women fill up the increased spaces.
It would make a lot of sense for men to go into careers that have higher earning power (such as medicine and computer sciences) rather than a very difficult degree that won’t pay off their debt when they graduate.
Martin @60, I think I see where you may be coming from. And I would be interested in reading your thoughts on the subject. I promise to keep my flamethrower unlit.
And I agree that a lot of anecdotes isn’t evidence. But then we have that study which showed that papers were mor elikely to get published if the reviewers could not tell the sex of the authors, or more specifically, if they could not tell if the authors were female…
“There is, of course, no irony in the fact that PZ opened up a comment thread for women to vent and most of the comments have been from men who need to tell us they’re not the problem. No irony at all, guys, and thank you for listening.”
Or to tell us that there really is no problem, or it’s just biology, or it’s women’s fault or its absolutely anything other than what it is – sexism.
Non Sequitor is never funny.
If anyone is interested, this topic came up on my friends geoblog (Dynamic Earth) recently. I have attached the URL.
There was an article in Nature Geoscience, not on the exact same topic but very much related.
http://dynamic-earth.blogspot.com/2008/02/gender-parity-in-geosciences.html
I’d like to second Martin’s observations about lack of confidence among women, but to offer a different take on them. I believe that the problem is that women are more often “rationally unconfident” where men are “irrationally confident”. We see this especially in young males: daredevil stunts that occasionally have fatal results, boasting, accepting challenges that they are not properly qualified to handle. In many such cases, the overconfident male fails. But in those cases in which he succeeds, he is esteemed as a wonder-worker. For males, the risk/benefit trade-off is positive, so they do it.
I recently observed a talented young female MIT undergrad set up an experiment, only to be told by the PhD that she had done it improperly. I knew for a fact that she had already attempted the arrangement her advisor was insisting upon, and had discovered it to be impractical. Despite the fact that she was absolutely certain that she was right and that he was wrong, she made no protest; she disassembled her setup and re-assembled it as required by the PhD — even though it was a patently inferior arrangement. I have no doubt that a male undergrad would have argued his case. There were two contradictory lines of thinking here: a social one and a scientific one. Using social reasoning, she was correct to obey the PhD. Using scientific reasoning, she was wrong to obey him. So, do we conclude that she erred in her decision? Had she confronted him, what are the odds that he would have backed down and acknowledged that he, a male PhD, had been corrected by her, a female undergrad?
Betsy wrote:
“Perhaps the women have more diverse backgrounds because they’ve been forced out of their chosen fields, as I was, by the males in power, and forced to start over. ”
I don’t know why the females appear to have more diverse backgrounds than the males in the sample I observed. But I do view that diversity in background and experience as a definite advantage in actually doing science (and in being interesting, engaging colleagues that I’d rather have populating my lab).
That said, it is well known that there are structural & neuropharmacological differences between male & female brains. We ascribe this to the effects of evolution by natural selection.
You might. The rest of us ascribe it to differential socialisation that starts more or less before the baby’s eyes open. Or hadn’t you heard that people will treat (and describe) infants differently depending on what sex they’re told the infants are, whether or not they’re actually that sex at all? You think people’s brains might develop differently along gender lines if they’re trained differently from birth? Apparently the differences in skills and abilities are already visible by age two.
I’m not really in the sciences; I’m in IT, but I personally had a lot of people trying to occupationally steer me into a non-technical field, to the point where it took me several years just to break into a job with the job title I wanted. I’m still seething over going to a high school “career counselling” session that consisted of me and two guys, with the guidance counsellor (who had our transcripts in front of him), where the counsellor looked at the two guys and said, “Maybe you’d like to look at programmes in engineering,” to the guys, and “Maybe you’d like to look at nursing or Early Childhood Education,” to me. I, who hasn’t got a nurturing bone in her body and who hates little kids, came up halfway out of my seat and said, “I’d rather take auto mechanics!!” (At the Meet the Teacher night later, the guidance mook asked my folks, “Do you really think she was serious? She doesn’t have any technical courses on her transcript…”
Sexism. It’s not just for breakfast anymore.
Re: Endor
I don’t need to tell anyone anything. I’m passionate about opening up science, I spent most of my Ph.D. years going out and trying to make a difference – far too much for the good of my own thesis. I’m simply relating to you the facts as I see them. You can choose to accuse me of being sexist, or you can accept that I do at least have a bit of a point.
prejudiced male managers who discouraged hiring of women because of the potential for them to get pregnant and leave the work force.
I’m 42. By the time I get my degree, I’m likely to be menopausal (based on Mom’s age when she got hers). I’m sure these managers would find some other way to shut me out. Luckily, I work in an industry where there are lots of other places to work. Or I could become a mad inventor, MUAHAHAHAHAHA…..
In high school, I was the only girl on the Academic Decathlon Team. On the state level, I got silver medals in Economics and Art, a bronze in Microbiology (our theme for the year) and the bronze medal our team got for placing third in state. The ENTIRE time, the guys (who were nice, but clueless nerds) enthused about how unlike the other girls in our high school I was. I was declared “practically not a girl at all.” At the time, I was vaguely flattered, but also uneasy with it. (You have to understand too that I was growing up in Utah, land of the Mormon patriarchy, and we were encouraged to go to college, so we’d have skills in case our husbands died.) The boys never seemed to understand that we weren’t valued for our knowledge, and furthermore, given the patriarchal values of the culture around us, most of the guys actually acted affronted when a girl beat them in anything. To paraphrase Lois Bujold’s Cordelia Vorkosigan, “Oh, you can never tell what a Barrayaran woman is really thinking. Honesty isn’t rewarded.” Replace Barrayaran with Mormon and you’d have a pretty good idea about growing up female in Utah County.
As for why SOME women may seem to lack confidence, re: Martin’s comment at 75: Some people get more stubborn when you tell them they can’t do something. But many people, swimming in a sea of doubt, being constantly second-guessed, lose their confidence. I think guys really really underestimate the amount of pressure women have been given as they grow up. For example, I had a driver’s ed teacher who ragged on his wife’s driving in class, and turned every girl into a joke, while treating the guys as if they had some god-given talent to drive. Under my parents’ tutelage or under the guidance of my friend James, I could drive just fine, but put me in a car with this joker, and I turned into a nervous wreck–he EXPECTED me to drive poorly and harangued before I even got behind the wheel. My parents re-enrolled me with a new instructor later, one who didn’t seem to share the first guy’s biases, and I was once again perfectly fine.
I’m an undergrad in chemical engineering, and while *mostly* my professors haven been encouraging and don’t treat us girls any different from the boys, I’ve found one this semester who has. The whole time. Something as simple as him asking us to check the blackboard work, and if it’s me that corrects him then “oh, well, that’s obvious.” If it’s the stupíd boy at the back “Oh, you’re right charles” as he corrects it.
Ugh.
“I’m almost scared to bring this points up for being accused of being patriarchal or sexist, but I’m not, I’m just trying to report what I see in an unbiased manner. I want to see more women in science, and I worked very hard on outreach projects trying to achieve just that, but I think the onus now is on women to start following the example of their pioneering peers and start breaking through, if they actually want to.”
I have a question -why is it when men talk about this stuff they consistently fail to question why it happening unless it’s to blame women for it happening and/or not fixing it? Why do you always hide behind “don’t call me sexist” and “don’t castrate me!”, instead of putting the focus where it actually belongs – on the people who perpetrate sexism?
Why are men so completely free of obligation, even when they are both those that created the system and those that benefit the most from it?
The onus is not on women to change you. It’s not our job to fix your bigotry issues. That’s your job. Big boys clean their own dirty laundry.
I am a mechanical engineering graduate. There was a grand total of zero female mechanical engineering students in my graduating class. This is not to say there were no women in the college of engineering, there definitely were, and a good number. But for some reason not one of them chose the mechanical emphasis. They were mostly chemical, civil and environmental. Mechanical was an option and none of them chose it. I think that this discussion is not addressing a more fundamental topic and that is that it seems that there are many engineering jobs that women simply don’t want. This is a generalized statement, but because this is a generalized topic I think it applies. Why are women less interested in the “grease monkey” side of the coin? That is an important question to consider and I believe it also may be the key to women gaining more respect as engineers and scientists in the future.
I think guys really really underestimate the amount of pressure women have been given as they grow up.
The problem is, I don’t see how your experiences are any different to those of boys. I mean, the way you’re talking it’s as if, during a football match, if a boy dropped the ball the rest of the males would just stand around and go “tough luck kid, never mind, there’s always next time”. That doesn’t happen – boys are brutal to other boys. That extends into ripping the piss out of each other in adulthood too.
Ultimately it’s all good – if you’re going to submit papers to peer review – male or female – then they’re going to be ripped apart. Best to get the practise in young.
So I wonder if it’s something more fundamental either earlier in the upbringing, or coming back to this different need for social outcomes between genders that needs to be addressed?
Posted by: Martin | March 17, 2008 11:56 AM
I’m almost scared to bring this points up for being accused of being patriarchal or sexist, but I’m not, I’m just trying to report what I see in an unbiased manner.
Well, first, get rid of the idea that anyone can report on events in an unbiased manner. The best you can do is reflect on and lay out your biases to your audience.
I want to see more women in science, and I worked very hard on outreach projects trying to achieve just that, but I think the onus now is on women to start following the example of their pioneering peers and start breaking through, if they actually want to.
While I think your heart is in the right place–what makes you think we don’t and aren’t? Changing a culture doesn’t happen in 50 years. More like 500.
Gender role indoctrination starts young, and it goes both ways. For every little girl with a knack for math who gets steered into being a kindergarten teacher, there’s an empathetic and nurturing boy who gets steered into being an engineer. Both are worthy and necessary professions, but why is one so overwhelmingly female, the other so overwhelmingly male?
I’m a woman, and if I’d ended up a kindergarten teacher because I’d let myself be guided out of engineering, I’d be on the 6:00 news for having throttled a classroom full of the little bastards. Am I really some kind of brain-structure outlier, or is there some explanation less pat and neatly supportive of the status quo at work?
“Fish don’t notice the water.” Once you’re sensitized to the systemic bias, it pops out like light-colored moths on a sooty trunk. Three-year-old girls are “sweet,” whereas three-year-old boys are “big and strong.” Girl Scouts do craft projects. Boy Scouts go camping. And so forth.
Like I said above, there’s nothing wrong with being either sweet or big and strong, but when each is exclusively the province of one gender, that is a problem. Women have pushed their way into traditionally male territory (and met with pushback), but there’s no correspondingly strong push of men into female territory. But we don’t see much talk of the scarcity of men in, say, nursing–though, once you’re free of gender-pigeonholing habits of thought, their absence is just as suspicious there as women’s absence in technical fields.
Why? I Blame the Patriarchy, of course. Female-coded attributes and careers are seen as lesser–whenever women get a foothold in an area, salaries drop and men disappear. Look at the historical trends in the teaching profession for a very clear-cut example.
I don’t think the problem is “Women in Science.” I think the problem is “Gender Roles Everywhere.”
And I have wandered far afield, and will now go back and muse upon your other points in a separate comment.
“You can choose to accuse me of being sexist, or you can accept that I do at least have a bit of a point.”
I called you nothing, so stop trying so hard to play the victim and silence criticism.
Endor stated: “I have a question -why is it when men talk about this stuff they consistently fail to question why it happening unless it’s to blame women for it happening and/or not fixing it?”
I – SAID – THAT – MEN – WERE – TO – BLAME – IN – MY – FIRST – POST.
Sheesh.
All I’ve said, all I’ve argued, is that there is a responsibility on BOTH sides to address this issue. Male sexist behaviour at senior level particularly needs to be stopped. On the other hand, many female attitudes are just as damaging.
Why is it a crime against gender equality to point this out??
“The problem is, I don’t see how your experiences are any different to those of boys. ”
No, the problem is you can’t see the forest through your privilege. What *you* don’t see is different is perfectly clear to thos who actually experience it. So, perhaps it might benefit you to listen, instead of what you are doing – talking over us.
I would suggest that we bring some perspective to the tales of “that male jerk who treated the gal badly”. We ALL have tales of jerks, male and female, who treat people in a belittling fashion. Indeed, the anecdote I previously related was not meant to indicate that males are jerks (the fellow in question was an equal-opportunity jerk), but that some females are sometimes more sensitive to asinine behavior.
I recently terminated a friendship with a lady who was a true-blue jerk. This lady was a real piece of work, a sorry fragment of humanity doomed to a miserable life of making other people miserable. I do not draw any generalizations from this one woman about women in general. She is a jerk. I have known men who are jerks, too. Let’s not apply our experiences with these people to all members of their gender.
I will agree, however, that there might well be more male jerks than female jerks; there are sound reasons to believe that male social skills are less well developed than female social skills. I will also agree that females might be more sensitive to jerks than men are. Ergo, while the problem might be confined to a tiny number of people, this small group could well be having big effects upon society as a whole.
Endor, you know precisely zero about me, so don’t start making ad hominem attacks about my “privilege”. I stated that I don’t see where the difference is. If you gave a shit about making your case, instead of just wanting to rant away at me, then maybe you’d try and explain it to me, like Kadath just did (very eloquently). I don’t see what you hope to achieve with this adversarial approach.
Jobs that men simply don’t want:
Thinking about sexism.
Taking responsibility for sexism.
Doing something to end sexism.
“All I’ve said, all I’ve argued, is that there is a responsibility on BOTH sides to address this issue. Male sexist behaviour at senior level particularly needs to be stopped. On the other hand, many female attitudes are just as damaging.
Why is it a crime against gender equality to point this out??”
Seriously, dude, stop with the victim language. No one is going to castrate you, no one is calling you a criminal. I’m attempting to get you to notice the real world outside your privilege box.
As an example: What makes you think women aren’t addressing it? What makes you think that sexist men would listen? A woman’s voice is easily discounted – as several posts on this thread have shown.
Kadath said: “I don’t think the problem is “Women in Science.” I think the problem is “Gender Roles Everywhere.”
I think that’s hit the nail bang on the head. It’s something that stems from the attitude of all society, both men and women.
You have a point, Martin. Sometimes boys are so cruel to other boys they’ll accuse them of being girls.
@gary: Jesus Christ, I’m over her eating my fucking heart out to become a mechanical engineer. If women don’t want it, they’re nuts.
or maybe I am. I can believe that. Not for wanting to be a mechanical engineer, but for allowing my dad to make me act like a rat in a cage about it, and for allowing my stupid shiftless family to take all my money (I am the only sane, sober, bill-paying person in the lot) so I don’t have any left for school. Goddammit.
Martin, the crime here is hijacking a comment thread that was specifically set up for venting–not analysis, not discussions of theory–in order to talk about yourself and your opinions on another topic. If you want to chat on that topic, why don’t you post on your own blog? I’m done with you here. I’d much rather hear from people who have something to say on the topic at hand.
Endor, you talk about victimization – as soon as I suggested that sexism might not be 100% about male attitudes, you launched into a stream of abuse calling me sexist, “privileged”, etcetera. I’m not feeling victimized, I’m just pointing out the stupidity of your approach. Let’s compare and contrast my dialogue with Kadath, which has been pleasant, and constructive.
I think that this whole post is probably doing a lot more bad than good. It’s a holiday for a witch hunt. It seems that it is getting people heated and bickering about an issue that will only be solved with time not temperment. I think that I’ll end here and get back to work. (Seriously, how much time have some of you devoted to this?)
Yes, in the cartoon the girl says that “engineering is boys stuff” but the cartoon is about her realizing that she has been duped into thinking that. The process is common for many rational but non-mainstream beliefs where a series of events makes you finally say to yourself, “Wait a minute. Why the hell do I believe that?”
…I think the onus now is on women to start following the example of their pioneering peers and start breaking through, if they actually want to.
I’m not a scientist, I’m a CAD operator working for an engineering firm. I started as a board drafter before CAD existed, switching over to the computer back in the early-mid eighties. It was, and is, a male-dominated field, though there are more women in it now. I know a little something about being one of those pioneering peers.
The first company I worked for had about 40 employees. There was a female secretary, a female bookkeeper, me, and three dozen male engineers and drafters. The women didn’t know what to make of me; they were always nice, but they clearly regarded me as exotic. The men, with the sole exception of my boss, knew exactly what to make of me – I was an interloping bitch, probably a lesbian, who had no business working on a drafting board. They made my life a living hell. Do you have any idea what it’s like to go to an office where almost no one will talk to you? Where you can go literally days and no one says “hello” or “what are you working on?” or “can I borrow your calculator?”? Where everyone stops talking when you come in, looks at you, and smirks? Where at noon, everyone gets up and goes off to eat together, and when you have the temerity to join them, they look at you once and then shift around so their backs are to you? How long do you think you’d last? I’m a stubborn bitch – I lasted over six years. And let me tell you, I’ve still got the scars.
Yes, things are better now. The company I currently work for is almost a third female. None of them are in charge, of course. But I do have people to eat lunch with now.
“so don’t start making ad hominem attacks about my “privilege”. I stated that I don’t see where the difference is. If you gave a shit about making your case, instead of just wanting to rant away at me, then maybe you’d try and explain it to me, like Kadath just did (very eloquently). I don’t see what you hope to achieve with this adversarial approach.”
*sigh* Stating that as a male you have male privilege is not an ad hom. It’s the simple truth. (google male privilege checklist and learn) Stating that you don’t see where the difference is, is a statement of privilege. Implicit in that statement is “therefore, it doesn’t exist”. Implict in that statement is a rejection of the realities of other people – on this very thread – who have shown the difference.
no too surprising though that you, someone protraying himself as an ally working towards equality, still felt the need to inject sexist stereotypes of the “emotional, irrational” female in your post. I’m stating my opinion – you categorized it as “ranting”. I’ve requested that you stop using victim language when no one has attacked you – you accuse me of being adversarial. I’ve stated that you should listen to the people talking about what they have first hand knowledge of – you ask me why I don’t explain it to you.
__
CalGeorge – especially when they themselves exhibit signs of the disease.
Endor, I’d like to jump all over this comment:
The onus is not on women to change you. It’s not our job to fix your bigotry issues. That’s your job. Big boys clean their own dirty laundry.
This is a gross generalization. The problem is most certainly not that all men are bigots. The problem is that some men are bigots. My own experience suggests that the number of male bigots is quite small, but that these few have an enormous negative impact. And if you carefully examine the negative experiences reported in this discussion, you’ll see that many of the anecdotes related happened years in the past, not last week — which suggests the rarity of such events.
I’m not suggesting that the rarity of these events justifies dismissing or minimizing them. One lynching had a big effect on many thousands of blacks. But let’s try to zero in on the real problem here. Not every white is a member of the Ku Klux Klan and blaming all whites for racism distracts us from the real problem — which is a small group of despicable people. In the same way (although not to the same degree), we need to zero in on those male jerks who continue to propagate sexist values.
I believe that the solution will come, not from assigning general blame to a huge group, but assigning specific blame to a small group. We as a culture need to actively counteract sexist behavior. There are two tactics to use. The first is to confront the sexist — a difficult step, because in most cases, the sexist commits his sins in a social context in which he feels secure (teaching a class, among a group of boys, etc). It’s much easier to use the positive tactic of supporting the victim in such cases. How often do people of either gender approach the victim of a sexist slander afterwards and reassure them that they were treated unfairly? That’s what I did in the case I cited earlier of the older male PhD wrongly correcting the young female undergrad. I pulled her aside a few hours later and gave her a pep talk, reassuring her that she was right in the first place, advising her that she would meet more men like him in her career, and that she should not let them undermine her confidence.
And lastly, we should honestly acknowledge that there are genuine behavioral and psychological differences between the sexes. These provide no justification for discriminatory obstacles, but should be given due consideration in treating people as people.
Speedwell, congratulations on doing something to get out. It can take so much just to understand that there is an out.
Someone@93, I had a math teacher like that in high school. I made it a goal to correct something every day, while doing the next day’s homework. It pissed him off to the point where he did something I could report him for. I don’t necessarily endorse the approach, but I thought you might appreciate the story.
I was never much for Science, but I did end up in a very male dominated field. When I was growing up I wanted to be a mechanic like my dad, but he discouraged it entirely (even though I love cars) Thankfully I was really good at illustration and eventually went into animation and then, even though I dont’ have a technical bone in my body, 3D character modelling for games. Extremely male dominated field. The most women I worked with was 8, with 3 being admin staff. Most of the guys I worked with were awsome and I’d work with any of them again, but it only took one to make my work experience there a living hell. When I was in college learning the programs, a quarter of my classmates were girls, 5 of them artists, one a designer, and no programmers. The programmers were the most sexist people there. When it came time to split into groups to make a game demo, a whole bunch of programmers got together and had no artists, one group had more designers with 2 each of artists and programmers, and one group with all the leftover artists and a couple of designers. The most well rounded game was the one my group did; artistic and fun :) it doesn’t matter which gender is good at what, what matters is that you have good people who realize that they need others to counterbalance their weaknesses. If it’s a girl programmer and guy artist, great!
“as soon as I suggested that sexism might not be 100% about male attitudes, you launched into a stream of abuse calling me sexist, “privileged”, etcetera.”
I did NOT call you a sexist and you are privileged. Prety much all people have some form of privilege, to varying degrees and with varying benefits.
“I’m not feeling victimized, I’m just pointing out the stupidity of your approach.”
This is simply not true. Before I even entered the thread you were pleading for others to not castrate you or cll you sexist.
“Let’s compare and contrast my dialogue with Kadath, which has been pleasant, and constructive. ”
It’s pretty clear that Kadath didn’t get through to you with the pleasent approach.
Firstly, peer-pressure by women on women telling them that science is nerdy, uncool and for the social inept.
Posted by: Martin | March 17, 2008 11:56 AM
Women being the enforcers of the status quo on each other is nothing new. It’s sad as hell, but to be expected. To borrow from Marxism (which is a sound deconstruction of industrial capitalism and provides valuable analytical tools, so don’t get all huffy with me, you bourgeois pig-dogs), the members of an oppressed class stand to gain on an individual basis by currying favor with the oppressor class.
This is generally where men start getting defensive about being implied to be/outright called oppressors, which is an understandable reaction. (My reaction to that reaction tends to be “Ha! Welcome to not being judged as an individual. Sucks, don’t it?” but then my more charitable impulses kick in. Usually.)
The point is, if one acknowledges the existence of a patriarchial system (which, if you don’t, we can’t actually have a constructive conversation and I’ll switch to making rude ASCII smilies at you), men need to come to the uncomfortable realization that being embedded in that system means they have privilege. The key in switching from defensiveness to becoming a feminist ally is realizing: In itself, privilege does not make one a bad person.
What one does with one’s privilege is the important part.
Feminists don’t hate men for having privilege. (Well, some do, but you can’t please all the people all the time.) Feminists get annoyed with men for not realizing their privilege and working to counteract it. Again, it’s an understandable reaction on the part of men–surrendering privilege can suck, and is scary. But doing the right thing can suck, and is often scary.
I think the saddest thing the patriarchal system does, on a spiritual level anyway, is sell the idea that life is a zero-sum game, that there’s only so much respect and goodness to go around, and if women are allowed into the clubhouse, or, conversely, if men leave the clubhouse to go see what’s outside, it will diminish them.
“*sigh* Stating that as a male you have male privilege is not an ad hom. It’s the simple truth. ”
What the does that *mean*? Equally, I’m sure women have “female privilege”. I don’t see it as being irrelevant. If you want to say that I’m not a woman therefore I have a flawed perspective, then fine, but calling me privileged is just being deliberately confrontational. It suggests to me that you’re more interested in starting a fight than you are in sensibly discussing any of the points I’ve set down. That’s why I take issue with it – it’s implying that all men are somehow more privileged that all women. Again, you know nothing about me, or how I got to where I am today.
“still felt the need to inject sexist stereotypes of the “emotional, irrational” female ”
Point out ONE example where I refer to a stereotypically emotional, irrational female? The fact that I suggested that Endor’s post was irrational has nothing to do with gender, I would have made the same comment about anyone who said the same thing.
“I’ve requested that you stop using victim language when no one has attacked you”
I’ve been called “sexist”, told that I’m privileged, and told that I shouldn’t be allowed to comment in this thread. You can’t claim that this isn’t adversarial.
All I have stated is that I feel men aren’t entirely to blame for the current situation, and that it seems to be – as Kadath put it and I agreed – a much wider, cross-gender issue about gender roles. I then commented that from my perspective, I hadn’t seen examples of women being particularly put down, but obviously I accept this could well be due to living in the U.K. and being of a certain age.
I really don’t have the time to carry on with this. Kadath, I had an interesting chat with you – by all means stop by my blog and send me and e-mail or comment if you want to discuss further.
Oh lordy, I’m falling behind.
Martin, kindly don’t use me as a club to beat Endor with.
“The problem is most certainly not that all men are bigots. The problem is that some men are bigots.”
100% agreed. However, I didn’t say all men were bigots. I was responding specifically to martin’s statement that women have an equal obligation to change the situation.
As if we haven’t been going at exactly that for upwards of 50 years already.
“own experience suggests that the number of male bigots is quite small, but that these few have an enormous negative impact.”
All people carry with them bigoted ideas. People internalize the bigotry in the societies they grow up in. One can consider themself an egalitarian but still believe things bigoted things. It can be an unconscious position that one takes. Upthread someone related the story of an instructor who would dismiss women who corrected him, but would support men who did. That could easily be an involuntary behavior stemming from years of patriarchical indoctrination, or it could have been active bigotry.
“And if you carefully examine the negative experiences reported in this discussion, you’ll see that many of the anecdotes related happened years in the past, not last week — which suggests the rarity of such events. ”
A small sampling of anecdotes on a single internet forum is hardly a sufficient sample to base this statement off of.
Kadath
Just saw your last post, and I agree with it entirely. There is a patriarchal system in place, as I alluded to before. I do think it’s much stronger in the generations above mine – among my peers I just don’t see the same attitude that those 50+ seem to have, and so I hope it dies a fairly natural death with time.
I’ve really enjoyed your comments, it’s given me plenty to think about. As I said before, feel free to stop by LayScience if you want to continue. I’m tempted to blog on the issue tonight or tomorrow, so book mark it ;)
Cheers,
Martin.
PS: Sorry Kadath, didn’t mean to stick-ify you, just got really frustrated at the general level of debate.
Endor said: “As if we haven’t been going at exactly that for upwards of 50 years already.”
You have, and it’s working, it really is, but it’ll take time. In the meantime, regardless of how right or wrong you think my specific views are, we are on the same side, and have the same ambitions.
Googling this site alone will turn up a half-dozen comment threads with furious arguments about evolutionary psychology and sociobiology, the most verbose participants in which certainly give every indication that they’ve read the books.
I’ve really enjoyed your comments, it’s given me plenty to think about. As I said before, feel free to stop by LayScience if you want to continue. I’m tempted to blog on the issue tonight or tomorrow, so book mark it ;)
Posted by: Martin Robbins | March 17, 2008 1:07 PM
I’m going to discuss your other points also, whether or not you’re here, because I think the subject is important to air generally. I’d be willing to email my responses to you if you intend to bow out of this thread entirely.
…Which if you’ve already done, you’ll not see this comment. Hmm. A conundrum.
“If you want to say that I’m not a woman therefore I have a flawed perspective, then fine, but calling me privileged is just being deliberately confrontational.”
Another riff on the “emotional woman” stereotype. I didn’t point out your speaking from privilege to be confrontational. I pointed it out in an attempt to get you to see beyond it.
“That’s why I take issue with it – it’s implying that all men are somehow more privileged that all women. Again, you know nothing about me, or how I got to where I am today. ”
Once again, google male privilege checklist (and, for good measure white privilege checklist) to learn about the concept further. It’s clear you’re not familiar with the concept, and to explain it in sufficient detail would be too much of a derail.
“Point out ONE example where I refer to a stereotypically emotional, irrational female?”
I’ve pointed out three instances (well four, counting the one in this post). You’re reducing my argument to emotional ranting, instead of dealing with it honestly. That’s sexist evasion.
“I’ve been called “sexist”, told that I’m privileged, and told that I shouldn’t be allowed to comment in this thread. You can’t claim that this isn’t adversarial.”
Repeating an non-truth doesn’t make it true. I did NOT call you sexist neither did I say you can’t comment on this thread. Stop. Playing. The. Victim.
“All I have stated is that I feel men aren’t entirely to blame for the current situation”
Men are not entirely to blame. Patriarchy is entirely to blame.
I’ve been working tech support jobs the past several years and have noticed that gender divide has been generally very equal, across departments and even into management. So I’d like to believe that there is an equal set of aptitude and desire to do this sort of work, at least. Hasn’t been as true on the developer’s side of the building, unfortunately.
Barrayar is an interesting place.
Kadath, did see your comment, I sneakily checked again before leaving work, an e-mail would be nice.
Endor – never mind.
Any man that cannot confront his privilege has a long ways to go.
I know a man who thinks he can’t possibly be sexist because he treats women the same way as he treats men. Therefore, no sexism.
And yet from a woman’s perspective, if she gets civilised polite respectful behaviour when interacting with women, but when interacting with a man, she gets less than civilized behaviour (or just different behaviour), then SURPRISE it comes over as sexism, because she’s getting one treatment from one gender and different treatment from the other!
That’s maybe too general to make my point, so let’s try a real example.
Male students, bragging to each other about their geekery. They brag in front of each other; when a female student is part of their conversation, they brag in just the same sort of way, they aren’t treating her any differently to male students. But female student isn’t used to how the males like to interact about geek topics and the bragging makes her feel intimidated, like they are doing really well with the work and she isn’t. She questions how well she herself is doing. Fortunately, this particular female student is near the top of the class and can recall objective evidence to suggest she is doing at least at the “ok level”. So she disregards the bragging. But what would that have done to a female student whose grades were more average?
Another example: students coming up to a deadline, male students are bragging about how much work they’ve done so much in advance of the deadline, female student listening feels intimidated and thinks she must be very behind, starts to panic. Panicking would not be a good thing for this student, because it would produce a rabbit-in-headlights effect that would precipitate the catastrophe she’s trying to avoid. Fortunately, she asks her adviser whether she is behind or not, and her adviser (also female) tells her in no uncertain terms that they were bragging, and probably exaggerating, because she’s not behind at all, she’s doing well and is probably ahead of about 90% of the rest of the students with regards to getting things done in time. Student feels much better now, and gets back to work. Phew. Disaster averted.
Two examples of how potentially disastrous just a few comments by men-behaving-as-men can be…
Endor, you seem to be standing firmly behind your assertion,
The onus is not on women to change you. It’s not our job to fix your bigotry issues. That’s your job. Big boys clean their own dirty laundry.
I continue to claim that this assertion is way off the mark. Firstly, it misses the real target, which is not men as a group but rather those individuals (both male and female) who continue to propagate social values that we both find injurious. Blaming men in general is every bit as sexist as the contentions of the sexists who obstruct the careers of women. Let’s keep our eye on the ball and attack the real problem, OK?
As to the universality of bigotry, I’m willing to accept that as part of the general acknowledgement of human frailties. We’re all bigoted, but we’re also all stupid, selfish, and dishonest. So what? The generalized bigotry, stupidity, selfishness, and dishonesty of the human race is not something that we can constructively address. Again, let’s keep our eye on the ball and attack a problem that we can do something about: the egregious bigotry of that small group of people who are injuring the careers of women.
Besides, as a matter of tactics, it’s always better to make allies of as many people as possible. If you frame the problem as “women versus men” (note that this is a subjunctive clause!), then you have defined the conflict in terms that make success that much more unlikely. But if you define the problem as “all of us against a few sexist jerks”, then you’ve set up a situation that guarantees ultimate success. Martin is not your enemy — he is your natural ally. Don’t push him away because he’s not virtuous enough for you; bring him into the coalition against the problem that’s hurting so many people.
I have to admit it’s the older (50+) guys who had the priveledge. The younger guys get to hear the stories about how good the old days were (when your woman would do everything for you) but don’t get any of the benefits. I have about as much interest in looking after a man as I do in looking after kids (as in not) but when I mention that I get looked at as if I suddenly turned into an alien with 8 heads. I like having a good income. I like what I do. I work my ass off to get what I want. And I can tell you I get real fucking pissed when someone gives me the raw deal because I’m a woman. How can we follow our pioneering examples when there are still assholes who tear us down for it? And my example happened last year. This is not happening in the past, it’s still happening!
Endor, I’d also like to address this comment of yours:
Patriarchy is entirely to blame.
I can sympathize with the general idea you’re driving at, although I don’t accept the specific statement; the real world is a very complicated place. But the primary point I’d like to make is that, although patriarchy is the major cultural factor at work here, your observation does not justify a conclusion that patriarchy is necessary evil. I will remind you that auto-immune diseases kill thousands of people, and the human immune system is entirely to blame for these auto-immune diseases, but we wouldn’t want to do away with the human immune system if we could. We surely do want to correct its failures, but before we start talking major structural alterations, we’d better be certain that we understand the implications of such alterations. In all of human history, there has never been a single documented case of a matriarchal society. Matrilineal, yes, matriarchal, no. There have been a few cultures in which patriarchy was not apparent, but these cultures had some remarkable features that make it difficult to draw conclusions about the adaptive benefits of patriarchy to a culture. So let’s be careful about blanket condemnations of patriarchy.
The patriarchal system isn’t maintained by men alone, some women can play insidious roles in keeping sexism alive and well.
In contrast with the cartoon, it’s been my FEMALE relatives who promoted the stereotype that “science and engineering is boy stuff” and my FATHER who always encouraged me that sex inherently has nothing to do with who does well in science, and if I wanted to be a scientist then there’s no reason why I can’t be a good one so long as I do my best and work hard.
I defended my PhD this summer. My father (a physician who’s not at all in my area of research) read his copy of my thesis cover to cover the first day he received it. My mother (a housewife) has no plans to read her copy. She complained that it wasn’t bound in leather, and argues that for a woman to have achieved a doctorate should entitle that woman to be earning at least six figures and frequently buy new business-like clothes, and attend lots of parties.
A former male coworker’s girlfriend complained to me both that (i) she felt she didn’t get enough credit in her own “traditionally under-appreciated” job as a research assistant, and also because (ii) in her opinion it was fine if her boyfriend presented my findings without crediting me for my work in a talk (because it was “lab data”).
None of these stories are fair to either sex. Let’s just pledge to do better to get sexism as far removed from our labs, classrooms (and homes) as possible, in whatever way we can influence future generations.
Endor: The onus is not on women to change you. It’s not our job to fix your bigotry issues. That’s your job. Big boys clean their own dirty laundry.
Chris: I continue to claim that this assertion is way off the mark. Firstly, it misses the real target, which is not men as a group but rather those individuals (both male and female) who continue to propagate social values that we both find injurious. Blaming men in general is every bit as sexist as the contentions of the sexists who obstruct the careers of women. Let’s keep our eye on the ball and attack the real problem, OK?
Posted by: Chris Crawford | March 17, 2008 1:28 PM
Chris, I’m going to lean on my apparent Good Cop status (I must be mellowing in my old age) to chide you a bit, here.
The “every bit as sexist” thing is, frankly, BS. Yes, it’s unfair to the men so maligned–but it does nothing worse than hurt their feelings a bit.
It annoys the ever-living hell out of me that people who are so-called “natural allies” (not just in struggles against sexism; it happens in anti-racism and anti-capitalism and anti-beans-in-chili-ism as well) are willing to walk away from a struggle that is morally right because someone was mean to them.
What clearer example of privilege does one need to see? You and Martin may not intend for it to sound like “be nice, or I won’t help you,” but after you’ve heard it a few dozen times, “well, fuck you and the lukewarm support you rode in on” becomes an understandable response.
If a cause is just, it is just regardless of how individual proponents of that cause interact with you. Period. If you don’t like Endor’s style of argumentation, fine. Don’t talk to her. But don’t scold her for scaring away allies–allies are allies because the cause is just, not because they were cajoled into it.
“Blaming men in general is every bit as sexist as the contentions of the sexists who obstruct the careers of women. Let’s keep our eye on the ball and attack the real problem, OK?”
Ok, I’ll repeat mysef. I did not blame men in general. I was responding to Martin’s statement that women must take an equal role in combating it, which effectviely denied that we are already doing that.
“the egregious bigotry of that small group of people ”
It is your privilege to assume it’s a small group of people. It’s not. My point in stating that all people have bigoted ideas or beliefs is to point out that one can be acting out same without realizing it.
It’s also your privilege to imply that it’s only egregious bigotry that is the problem when there have been several posts about subtle bigotry causing problems on this very thread.
I point out privilege, not in an attempt to shame or insult, but to point out that if you are not part of the group then you can’t know what it’s like.
For example, I am white. Therefore, I cannot possibly know the affects of racism on someone of a different race. So, I listen to those that do experience it directly and learn from them. I try not to pass judgment and I try not to let my privilege as a white person to cloud my judgment. And so, I don’t claim knowledge I can’t possibly have, like, for instance “the egregious bigotry of that small group of people”.
You don’t know that it’s a small group of people. You only know that you have decided it’s a small group of people. That is speaking from privilege – the privilege of not being the target.
“Martin is not your enemy — he is your natural ally. Don’t push him away because he’s not virtuous enough for you; bring him into the coalition against the problem that’s hurting so many people.”
I should have foreseen that his inability to address my posts honestly would be my fault. He is not my natural ally if he both denies and refuses to address privilege. He is not my natural ally if he needs to rely on subtle sexist stereotyping to paint me as the ranting, insulting, irrational female when I have done nothing of the kind. And he is certainly not my natural ally if he insists on being dishonest about what I’ve said to him.
It’s not my job to make him an ally. It’s his choice. And he apparently choses, right now, to ignore what I’ve said to play the victim.
One of my examples was last week – YES IT IS STILL HAPPENING!!!!
There are so many things involved in being a good scientist or a good mathematician or engineer that I don’t think innate psychological differences, even if real and measurable, could make a difference to an assessment of the inequality of sex ratios found in science, mathematics or engineering.
I don’t think biological differences should form a basis for discrimination anyway (actually I thought this was rather the point of the whole notion of equality). For example, women have a tendency to be the ones to give birth, and since this is a function that society absolutely necessitates rather than a frivolous choice, women should not be penalized for this. IMO, until women can give birth without incurring any penalties to their career, we have inequality. This means adequate maternity leave, facilities, and measures in place so that they don’t just “disappeared off the face of the planet.” This shouldn’t be seen as a burden to the employer; employers have a vested interest in babies just like the rest of society.
In high school the top science/math courses (with the exception of AP Bio) were often skewed towards the guys, but working in my lab in college I’m surrounded by female grad students. Of course, most of the professors are male, but there are many labs on this floor with only one or two guy grad students. If I was in chemistry or physics, of course, it would be a different story.
Interrobang @ # 89, you say,“The rest of us ascribe it to differential socialisation that starts more or less before the baby’s eyes open. Or hadn’t you heard that people will treat (and describe) infants differently depending on what sex they’re told the infants are, whether or not they’re actually that sex at all? You think people’s brains might develop differently along gender lines if they’re trained differently from birth? Apparently the differences in skills and abilities are already visible by age two.”
My experience as father & grandfather is that baby girls are different to baby boys from the very beginning. These differences probably affect how we treat them such that the cultural factors reinforces the biological ones, & we instinctively do this, as a result of evolution by natural selection. I’m sure that any ethologist will confirm that male & female mammals of virtually all species behave quite differently. (Are there any ethologists here to confirm this?)
@ Martin #81
“For example, Polly Matzinger’s theories have dominated immunology, but I’m struggling to think of many prominent female physicists.”
How about Lisa Randall? She wrote “Warped Passages Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions.” Check out her resume.
Also with all the great comments above why is no one disputing the stinkiness of boys?
“So let’s be careful about blanket condemnations of patriarchy.”
I ask that you clarify your statements, if you would, because the implications therein are not in any way bridge-building, if that is your goal. It came off as very condescending and sexist.
FWIW, patriarchy isn’t all benefits and positives for men, either. Perhaps knowing how it also hurts men will make clear that it is not good for anyone?
And btw, the opposite of patriarchy is not matriarchy – if you sincerely think that is what anyone here is advocating for. Why would anyone argue for trading one oppressor for another?
**
SBM – you are completely right. Some women don’t know they wear chains and some have grown to like them.
I rather dislike the implication that I’m some kind of failure for having decided in college that I was more interested in history than in science. I know plenty of men (adorably hopelessly geeky ones, mind you) who made the same decision, but no one ever wrang their hands and despaired that they declined to pursue a career in science.
Make up your mind.
Kadath, I stand corrected: it is not every bit as sexist to blame men for the sexism of a few of their number as it is to dismiss women. There are differences in the degree of injury inflicted even if the cognitive error is the same.
I think it best for me to retire from this discussion; I sense that we have reached the irreducible bedrock of anger that underlies the thinking of some of our correspondents. I will urge upon Endor that anger is ultimately self-defeating. I’m sure that it feels good to rage against the evils of the world, but I’ve been around the block so many times that I no longer have patience for feckless self-indulgence. Please, let’s attack the problems rather than rage about them. The people who voted for Mr. Nader in 2000 may have had noble ideals, but they cannot elude moral responsibility for the consequences of their actions: the election of Mr. Bush, the invasion of Iraq, and the deaths of at least 100,000 Iraqis. The perfect is truly the enemy of the good. We can’t make the world a perfect place, but we can seek to make it a little better. Let’s work together to reduce the damage being done each and every day by sexism. Social progress is not achieved by absolute uniformity of beliefs: it is hammered out by tough compromises among a group of heterogeneous people of good will.
My experience as father & grandfather is that baby girls are different to baby boys from the very beginning.
Or is it just your bias that makes you think that? Observational studies demonstrate that babies and toddlers act and play almost identically until they are 2-3 years old, when they begin to develop “gender roles”. No particular hormonal changes occur at that age, but it is the age at which children begin noticing the outside world more, i.e. when they are developmentally ready to mimic “expected” behavior (reference: Largo, “Babyjahre”–a popular work but he cites the original references in the text.) This strongly suggests that whatever behavioral differences people believe they observe between baby boys and baby girls are in the minds of the observers, not the babies.
These differences probably affect how we treat them
When people are given male babies dressed in dresses and told that they are female babies, they suddenly start treating them differently and describing them differently–calling them “cute” or “cuddly” more, encouraging them to crawl and be active less. The converse occurs when people are given a baby girl dressed in blue overalls and called “he”. AFAIK, no one has ever demonstrated a difference between how baby girls or boys are perceived when the observer doesn’t know the observed’s gender. If you have more than anecdotal evidence otherwise, I’d be interested to see it.
Louise, we’re venting about the stinkiness of stinky boys. Non-stinky boys are another topic altogether. Like Tolstoy said, “Stinky boys are all alike, but each non-stinky boy is non-stinky in his own special way.” Or something like that. My Russian is rusty.
Before I go, I suppose that the onus is upon me to answer Endor’s question regarding patriarchy:
I ask that you clarify your statements, if you would, because the implications therein are not in any way bridge-building, if that is your goal. It came off as very condescending and sexist.
I cannot accept responsibility for your cognitive processes or your interpretation of my remarks. I have no bias for or against patriarchy; I regard it only as an organizational structure that is well-nigh universal among cultures. Because it is almost universal, I believe it prudent to consider carefully its role in cultures before condemning it. It may well be like the adaptation that leads to sickle-cell anemia: a trait whose benefits exceed its costs. It may well be that patriarchy no longer confers any benefits upon modern civilizations; I don’t really know. But I am not prepared to condemn it before carefully examining the ramifications of so profound a change in social structure.
Having been on the other end of the stick – I tried for a position as a resident assistant at my college. I had ample qualification, had been to leadership seminars repeatedly, and was involved in and a resident of the dorms for three years. The “weeding” seminar was run by women who asked if I would feel guilty if a female student was raped. I asked if I could have prevented it – no. Was I complicit – no. Did I know the perpetrator or the victim – no. Was I in the area at the time – no. I responded I’d feel empathy, but why would I be guilty? “Because you’re a man” they responded, exasperated. I guffawed that if an accident of birth made me guilty, what kind of thinking was that anyway.
So I never got a job as an RA, presumably because I wasn’t guilty for being male.
Still bothers me years later, as it bothers me when it’s presumed that males are the only ones who can discriminate based on sex.
People’s brains are different, but aptitude and brains do not have a sex component. I wish it were universally understood.
Secondly, maternity leave used as an excuse to leave science. Susan Greenfield wrote an article in the Guardian a while back rightly pointing out how many women’s careers stall when they take maternity leave. She suggested the system needs changing – I used to agree, but my experience lately has changed my mind. I’m approaching thirty, and so I’m at an age where a lot of female colleagues and friends are having babies. Some of them had a passion for science, they worked up until the birth, and while they took maternity leave they continued to maintain an active interest in their fields during the first year after birth. They had no trouble at all getting new contracts. The second group just disappeared off the face of the planet for anything up to 2 years, and unsurprisingly found it hard to get back in. I don’t see this as a systemic problem, I see it as women voluntarily changing their priorities away from science. Losing interest, effectively.
Posted by: Martin | March 17, 2008 11:56 AM
I can’t speak to the motivations of mothers, since I desire children about as much as I desire a nice salmon filet for lunch–ie, not in the slightest. In fact, the thought turns my stomach a bit. But the majority of people like salmon. Good for them!
Anyway. Why don’t we see an equal proportion of men with careers that falter after they become fathers? Because men are assumed to have a support system in the person of their wives. Men don’t get stern advice about how they shouldn’t want to “have it all.” Men don’t get the stinkeye for going back to work before the kid is in grade school.
On the flip side, men who decide they want to be stay-at-home dads get a damn near schizophrenic reaction. A man out in public alone with a stroller is fawned over for taking care of his own child, as though this were some heroic endeavor instead of, y’know, part of being a parent–until it comes out that he’s a stay-at-home father. Then, something is clearly wrong with him. Men don’t nurture! Men “babysit” their own kids a few hours a week (and probably screw that up, too, and feed ’em ketchup sandwiches and send them out in a blizzard in shorts.)
Given this social climate, I am not for one second going to blame a female scientist for taking the path of least resistance, especially after a career spent fighting uphill battles to get recognition in her field.
Women who do manage the Mommy Comeback Tour? Awesome. But, like I said above–don’t use them as a stick to beat other women.
I should just copy+paste “I Blame the Patriarchy” about a thousand times.
To pull back to the wider picture, American culture (the only one on which I’m qualified to speak) is deeply hostile to young families in general. In the last two decades or so, the economy has become a Red Queen’s race, with the cost of necessities going up faster than wages, red herrings about Poor People with Color TVs notwithstanding. Couples with young children are more and more faced with a choice of either being a two-income family (the historical norm; stay-at-home moms are a post-WWII middle class phenomenon) or having one spouse work crushing hours to make ends meet, and fate forfend there’s a ever a gap in employment, because there goes health insurance.
Tying healthcare to employment is perhaps the best of many reasons to burn Nixon in effigy.
“I cannot accept responsibility for your cognitive processes or your interpretation of my remarks.”
Neither did I expect you too, hence the request for clarification.
It’s a wonder to me though why some men, chris and martin on this thread so far, are incapable of discussing the topic without accusations of emotionalism or anger. Is it fear of being proven to be wrong by some lowly girls or something? ;)
Just thought I let you know that at Chalmers in Sweden, The females studying chemical engineering have outnumbered the males to such a degree, that they deparment are/have been considering a project to get more males to apply.
Some of them had a passion for science, they worked up until the birth, and while they took maternity leave they continued to maintain an active interest in their fields during the first year after birth.
Maybe they were more passionate about science. Or maybe they had a better support network which allowed them to go back to work. I went back to work within 2 weeks after my child’s birth*. Yes, I went back quickly because I wanted to–as it happened, I left at a point just before I got conclusive data and the suspense (was the hypothesis true or not) was killing me. But I could go back because my partner was willing–and able–to take care of the baby during what is normally “working hours” (about 3-6), my mother-out-of-law was willing to babysit from 8-3, and my mother was willing to play relief whenever she was needed. And because our combined income is enough that we could get the kid into a good preschool when she was 2. And because she is healthy and adaptable. If any of those things hadn’t been true, I wouldn’t be back in science now, no matter how “passionate” I was.
Incidently, no one ever questioned my partner’s committment to science, despite the fact that he took nearly as long off in “paternity leave” as I took off in “maternity leave”, disappeared every afternoon for two years in a row, and still sometimes goes home early when the grandmothers aren’t around to pick the kid up. Wonder why that might be?
*Which was, BTW, a c-section. How many men out there returned to work 2 weeks after they had major abdominal surgery? Anyone who took longer than that must be less passionate and committed than I am.
“My experience as father & grandfather is that baby girls are different to baby boys from the very beginning.”
At least you do concede that how we treat them is at least a factor in how they turn out. I was constantly asked to do things that I considered ‘girly’ while I was growing up. I hated dresses, dolls. . . dressing up dolls. Nothing that girls did was any fun. If you wanted me I was up the nearest tree. Obviously I was able to ignore the strictures that society tried to place on me, but oh boy did I know they were there. Looking back I think I picked up on the girls = not good dichotomy early on and determined to not be a girl as much as possible.
Full disclosure: I wouldn’t learn to sew until I realized that you could make costumes and I didn’t learn how to type until I realized you could write stories a lot faster. Cooking and cleaning were something that both my brother and I were required to do.
@Kadath I agree with you about the economy, young families etc, the same is happening in Britain – it’s a competitive world, as Depeche Mode used to say. In Europe though, paternity leave is wider spread, and much more in fashion now. It’s accepted that both men and women should be able to take time off together after the birth to look after the child, which I think is a Good Thing.
You’ve not really addressed my point though, which is that quite simply a lot of the drop-out doesn’t seem to have anything to do with “the system”, but just personal choice. How much that choice is influenced by gender stereotypes since birth I don’t know. Until you or I get pregnant, I suppose we won’t know.
Regarding the patriarchal system, it’s this sort of labeling that I take issue with. I don’t see how it helps anybody move forward any more than talking about “privileged whites” does. All it does is offend and alienate other people. Using terms like “patriarchal” implies that somehow men are to blame and are responsible for fixing it, or changing in some way. The reality is, it’s just the way society is. You can choose to spend your time labeling people, or you can try and figure out how to bring everyone together to fix it. When we’re all trying to work towards a more equal world, labels are a step backwards.
As for privilege, again it’s an unhelpful term in my opinion. There are many woman far more privileged than I am, with a far greater say in society. What you’re actually talking about is personal bias, which *everybody* has, male, female, black, white, whoever. Again, lumping a group of people together and calling them “privileged” (or any label) is an example of exactly the sort of thing we should surely all be trying to move on from?
Thirdly, there seems to be this chronic lack of confidence, which I just don’t understand. This is something I’ve seen all my life, through school, college, university, my post-grad days and now into the work place. Even when they’re doing well on paper, more women than men seem to have an absolute crisis when it comes to being confident in their performance. In a number of cases, it affects their happiness and their capability to do their jobs.
Posted by: Martin | March 17, 2008 11:56 AM
Chris Crawford in #87 makes a good point:
I’d like to second Martin’s observations about lack of confidence among women, but to offer a different take on them. I believe that the problem is that women are more often “rationally unconfident” where men are “irrationally confident”.
Bullish confidence is not generally rewarded in girls, and thus we end up with a bluster gap by high school and college. Girls are not praised for standing up for themselves (though this is, thank a better god than the one most people pray to, changing), and boys are not praised for admitting they were wrong.
I don’t have much to add on this topic that I haven’t said above. While there may well be a difference in the means between sexes for things less tangible than height and muscle mass, no one has come close to demonstrating that this is not the result of the biggest confounding factor of all: society.
“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man,” said St. Francis. We, as adults, are acting as we were taught as children. We can change this, but only if we admit it.
Differential treatment is pervasive and largely unconscious.
The Swedish study found that women had to publish FIVE TIMES as much to be considered as good.
Martin: Well, I guess I’ll scrap the email log I was keeping, then. You said you were leaving, ya big liar. :P
@Kadath
In reply to your reply to my third point, yes, completely agree with all of that, that’s the sort of thing I was alluding to. The question is, how do parents change it?
Martin.
Speaking as a woman research assistant/physicist, I managed to complete my degree despite myself, and managed to find employment despite talking myself out of pursuing any internships or extracurricular research opportunities during my physics undergrad days. I kept thinking that applying for the internships would be silly, as those were probably meant to go to those more intelligent and skilled than myself.
It’s hard, it’s really hard, to try to be in that field when you yourself feel sort of shaky and insecure about your right to be there. That story about the young woman who changed her setup to the one insisted upon by her superior rang a bell with me. “Why didn’t she stand up to him?” She might’ve felt it was simply easier to switch the setup, because she didn’t want to fight about it. That’s why I would have done it.
Sorry Kadath, I couldn’t stay away!
The Swedish study found that women had to publish FIVE TIMES as much to be considered as good.
Do you have the reference to this study? I remember seeing it or a similar one but unfortunately didn’t keep it.
Actually Kadath, do still pop me a line if you like. I’ve been looking for the study mentioned earlier, and I also dug out a similar one on ethnic names on C.V.s that you might find interesting, so I can e-mail them to you if you like.
“It’s a wonder to me though why some men, chris and martin on this thread so far, are incapable of discussing the topic without accusations of emotionalism or anger. ”
Yeah, about that. You are the one reading sexism into those comments. I can tell you from experience on this forum that when someone makes comments in any kind of defensive manner, then the other person always thinks that defensive person is angry. No matter what the subject, no matter what the gender of either participant. It’s the nature of internet arguments: one or more of the parties is always assumed to be angry. It has nothing to do with any supposed “emotional” nature of women.
I was wondering which SciBloggers would blog about this as soon as I saw the cartoon in today’s IHT. What I like about the cartoon is the female stops to think and realises she’s been brainwashed to think that way.
My own anecdote is similar to many of those I’ve read in this thread, namely, trying to recall the best people I’ve worked with, or for, over the years, they are mostly female. Significantly so (2:1?). I’ve noticed this for some years now, and have always assumed it’s because the bias et al. means they have to work harder, or simply be better to be begin with, something like Jackie Robinson had to much more than simply a bloody good baseball player.
The flip side, of course, is there are so many more males the probability of the jerk-you-remember being male is quite high. And again, of course, this isn’t data, but anecdote.
“Regarding the patriarchal system, it’s this sort of labeling that I take issue with. I don’t see how it helps anybody move forward any more than talking about “privileged whites” does. All it does is offend and alienate other people. Using terms like “patriarchal” implies that somehow men are to blame and are responsible for fixing it, or changing in some way. The reality is, it’s just the way society is. You can choose to spend your time labeling people, or you can try and figure out how to bring everyone together to fix it. When we’re all trying to work towards a more equal world, labels are a step backwards.”
You are mistaken on several points. Complaining about “labels” is just another way to avoid dealing with sexism, or racism, etc. Patriarchy is a system, not a gender. Men suffer it as well. They also benefit from it above everyone else – no, not all men and not all the time. For the third time, google the privilege checklists and learn. Continuing to ignore this suggests bad faith on your part.
“Just the way society is” is about the worst excuse for bigotry I’ve ever seen. Thank goodness the abolitionists and suffragettes didn’t agree.
“As for privilege, again it’s an unhelpful term in my opinion. ”
Yours is an uninformed opinion. Google the checklists and learn. Continuing to ignore this suggests bad faith on your part.
“There are many woman far more privileged than I am, with a far greater say in society.”
True, but this does not mean you have no privilege. Or that men don’t have privilege. Learn about the concept first.
I also dug out a similar one on ethnic names on C.V.s that you might find interesting,
Drat. That’s another one I’ve been looking for. Is it the one from Britain, published in the late-1990s, looking at med school admissions?
The Swedish study:
Wennerås D och Wold A. Nepotism and sexism in peer-review. Nature 387, 341-343, 1997
(I think the women had to be “only” 2.6 times, not five times as good)
Posted by: Martin | March 17, 2008 2:43 PM
As for privilege, again it’s an unhelpful term in my opinion. There are many woman far more privileged than I am, with a far greater say in society. What you’re actually talking about is personal bias, which *everybody* has, male, female, black, white, whoever. Again, lumping a group of people together and calling them “privileged” (or any label) is an example of exactly the sort of thing we should surely all be trying to move on from?
There’s more than one form of privilege. You have more absolute privilege than a woman of your economic class and race, but, assuming you’re white and middle class, Oprah Winfrey, say, has more economic privilege than you do–but, on the other hand, no one will call you a “nigger bitch.” That sort of insult doesn’t really do anything to hurt Oprah, but it is an attempt to conversationally leverage a form of privilege the speaker has over her, even if he’ll never get to use it in the real world. Privilege isn’t one-dimensional.
As a big ol’ commie, I tend to focus more on hammering at economic class, but oppressions are tied together.
Regarding the patriarchal system, it’s this sort of labeling that I take issue with. I don’t see how it helps anybody move forward any more than talking about “privileged whites” does. All it does is offend and alienate other people. Using terms like “patriarchal” implies that somehow men are to blame and are responsible for fixing it, or changing in some way. The reality is, it’s just the way society is. You can choose to spend your time labeling people, or you can try and figure out how to bring everyone together to fix it. When we’re all trying to work towards a more equal world, labels are a step backwards.
Ha, you’re a closet utopian! :P
“With great power comes great responsibility.” Men do have a responsibility to fix it. As a not-so-hypothetical, a guy standing up to his friends about sexism does more for the cause than a woman doing the same. Even if it’s a simple, “Dude, not cool.”
There’s a really nasty meme floating around that holds the victims of oppression are just being whiny when they complain about it. “Why can’t women take a joke?”* and whatever. As a guy upon whom the light of reason has dawned, it is your responsibility to stomp on that sort of thing when it shows up.
To use a martial metaphor, women are fighting a frontal assault against the patriarchy, whereas what men join the fight have the chance to use guerrilla tactics. (Hmm, I might expand on this one…boys like guns, right? :P)
I think “the Patriarchy” is a good framing (don’t ban me, PZ!), because, in the end, the system is set up to benefit the patriarchs, who are not the vast majority of men. Guys in general get some trickle-down privilege, but you only need to look at things like the fundie Mormon splinter sects hiding out in the desert to see that once you remove Enlightenment controls from a patriarchal society, the old feudal nature will out.
*Why aren’t men funny? :P
I think the women had to be “only” 2.6 times, not five times as good
Huh. So the old stereotype that women have to be twice as good as men to be thought 1/2 as good isn’t true: They really only have to be 1.3X as good! Glad to know that progress is occurring. Thanks for the reference.
“You are the one reading sexism into those comments”
So you can read the minds of those that posted those things and you know exactly their motivations? That’s quite a handy superpower you’ve got. ;) (kidding, just kidding)
I totally agree with your assessment of forum behaviors. However, I was never defensive or angry. I didn’t insult. But, I was almost immediately accused of such. Martin thrice accused me of calling him names I never called him, and this was well after he was preemptively begging not to be labeled sexist or to be castrated before I even got to the thread. The subtle sexism is obvious. Martin was worried that his statements would be construed as sexist and he would be attacked. In assuming he would be attacked he was assuming that women can’t discuss the topic without insults and anger – possibly due to prior experience. Hence, the emotional female stereotype affected his approach to the subject. He fails to acknowledge privilege and so he fails to acknowledge how and why his statements might be sexist or considered such.
Pointing out the sexist undertones in what they were saying was an attempt to get them to understand my overall point – that bigoted beliefs and ideas are in everyone and are acted out unconsciously. I do not think that either intended to behave in a sexist way on purpose – I think they did it, complete with the use of sexist dogwhistles, because its an unconscious reaction to sexism learned from a patriachical culture. Which is also why I brought up white privilege – I suffer from it, I benefit from it. I lurk on blogs of POC, especially WOC, and read. Sometimes some of the things said offend me, but I seek to understand both why it offends and why others said it. I can’t know what it’s like to be them, and so I have no authority on the subject – which is marked difference from some of what I’ve seen here who seek to speak for everyone as if they do personally know. That’s privilege.
“It has nothing to do with any supposed “emotional” nature of women. ”
Some have the privilege to assume that others are arguing in good faith, i.e. are not arguing from a privilege, or bigotted, position. As a feminist and an atheist, I lack that privilege. I know, first hand, that most people do not want to confront bigotry, they just don’t want to be considered bigots. As this is a forum for atheists, I expected the bar for evidence to be set a bit higher than “I see girls play with dolls and boys play with trucks therefore that’s what biology designed them to do”, or “I don’t like the word privilege, therefore it’s not a useful term”. Some have been downright creationisty in their adherence to sexism.
Coming into this late, but the discussion reminded me of a time when I was discouraged from pursuing a male dominated career – drafting. This was before CAD, all students at my school had to take at least one “shop” class (called Industrial Arts). I took several – woodworking (I kind of stunk at it), electrical (I totally stunk at it) and drafting – and I was fantastic at drafting. Apparently, even though I was a girl, I had an aptitude for rotating 3D shapes in my brain.
I finished the entire semester of classwork in about a month, and my teacher started giving me more work to do. I had the top marks in the class, and on the last day, my teacher took me aside to say “You have a lot of ability to do this…too bad it’s not a job that women can do.”
To speedwell, I wanted to say: props to you for pursuing something you were discouraged from doing. I will share that I was slightly disappointed when my daughter, who attends an engineering school, changed her major from environmental engineering to Biology – although I’ve expressed nothing but support for her.
Dianne, @ # 147, “When people are given male babies dressed in dresses and told that they are female babies, they suddenly start treating them differently and describing them differently–calling them “cute” or “cuddly” more, encouraging them to crawl and be active less. The converse occurs when people are given a baby girl dressed in blue overalls and called “he”. AFAIK, no one has ever demonstrated a difference between how baby girls or boys are perceived when the observer doesn’t know the observed’s gender. If you have more than anecdotal evidence otherwise, I’d be interested to see it.”
No, only anecdotal things, such as my own experiences, which do seem to conform with what I hear from others with kids. For instance, it does seem to me to be the case that baby girls cry more than baby boys. But this could be due to gender bias: maybe boys’ crying is, post event, seen to be demand for feeding, whereas this curtesy isn’t extended to girls?
But as for people treating babies differently according to gender, yes, of course we do, & I think it’s likely to be (at least in part) instinctive, i.e. an evolved behaviour. If such behaviour is common to all cultures, that would suggest that it is evolved, & therefore serves a useful function.
Azkyroth @ # 145, Having said that, it seems to me quite likely that males are, on average, better suited to careers in science & engineering. And I have also worked with some very competent female engineers. You have to judge each person as you find them, without prejudice, either one way or the other.
“Make up your mind.”
Your’s is one of several posts accusing me of inconsistency or similar crimes against logic. Well, some people read text & put their own biased interpretations upon it. Why do I have to make up my mind about this? Are you supposing that I’m prejudiced against individuals on account of their gender? I am not.
“That’s quite a handy superpower you’ve got. ;) ”
I try to only use it for good. ;)
I saw Martin’s opening comment as being more of an anticipation of angry comments by virtue of the subject being discussed rather than the gender of who might disagree with him. Now that I look back at it though, the “castrated” remark is perhaps a tad revealing. :P
If such behaviour is common to all cultures, that would suggest that it is evolved, & therefore serves a useful function.
If IF such behavior is common to all cultures (and I have no idea whether it is or is not), then you might have a case for saying that it is innate or evolved and therefore once served some useful function in some environment. Whether it still serves that function or has converted over into being a dysfunctional adaptation a la the sickle cell gene in 21st century North America, is not clear. If we assume that it is best if all people have the opportunity to use their minds as much as they can, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnic group, country of origin, etc, then it is clearly now a dysfunctional trait, whether genetic or envirnomental. If you want to make the case that we have too many scientists and keeping women out of it is better for society, then you might be able to make the case that the putitive genetic trait is still adaptive.
This thread is a microcosm of societal privilege. Endor correctly pointed out where privilege was observed and then she was immediately attacked. Many tactics were used to “shout” over her posts including accusations of being emotional and irrational. Martin even made a transparent attempt to “divide and conquer” by moving the conversation elsewhere.
Privilege is not a personal insult. Privilege is a part of our society and history. Recognizing it just requires taking the blinders off. Eliminating privileges takes courage because some of them may be personally beneficial.
The more privileges you have, the riskier equality is.
@Richard #174
“If such behaviour is common to all cultures, that would suggest that it is evolved, & therefore serves a useful function.”
Umm… religion is common to all cultures. Are you sure you want to assert that just because a trait or behavior was arrived at through a process that it therefore is useful… now and forever??
AndyC said:
When I was younger I would have agreed with this. However, I am now quite sure that it was due to my own ignorance of these matters (that is not to say that I accuse you of the same, of course).
I honestly believe that positive discrimination is a useful tool that can create positive change in a much shorter time span than many of the other methods that we employ. Though I am still not as knowledgeable as others concerning this issue I have noticed that, in Britain at least, people forget how change is brought about after a decade or so (even after much early wrangle) and accept that the current situation is preferable, and more importantly, fair.
While it may seem counter-intuitive to support what is a form of discrimination to combat another form, it has a powerful effect in changing a societies attitude, often by simple experience, over time. The real thing to look at is whether change brought about by this kind of solution has any lasting consequences. With most situations in life I tend to find that very few people complain about something when they understand that the right thing has been done.
Dianne & Vitis01, I haven’t made a case for the trait being currently adaptive or useful. I haven’t said that I would want it to be so. You are, apparently, reading things into my comments. That goes on a lot here.
The fright of a baby perceived as the wrong sex is so pervasive here in tex-mex culture that baby girls (infants – tiny, tiny infants) are subjected to ear piercings to differentiate them from boys. I think it goes towards the old “evil eye” myths and some idea that if you think a boy is a girl it will turn them teh gay, and vice-versa for little girls thought to be little boys.
Sorry RH.
Are you saying just that it may have served a useful function in the past? I would tend to agree with that. It served the function of oppressing one gender and giving privilege to the other.
Loved the ancient post on “boys hitting girls”. Yep, nothing like watching a little blonde wench pounding the crap out of her much larger ‘boyfriend’ and nobody saying a word. The obverse, of course, will land him in jail for years with a record that follows.
Funny, a lot of women crying “male privilege” are white and at least upper middle-class. The proles that I have the honor of working beside would much rather, by their own admission, have equality throughout the society. But, I guess when you are Jenna or Not-Jenna the world looks different.
Male privilege= Draftable, working at jobs that kill you before 50, shorter lifespan, considered expendable (wimmens and chillen first), yeah, soooo prime it hurts.
It is our society. Being a WATB doesn’t change the situation and leaves you where you got on.
Encourage youth to follow their dreams. They take their cues from you, the adults. Set up great expectations and be gloriously rewarded when they achieve.
*sigh*
we’re doomed
Male privilege= Draftable, working at jobs that kill you before 50, shorter lifespan, considered expendable (wimmens and chillen first), yeah, soooo prime it hurts.
It is our society. Being a WATB doesn’t change the situation and leaves you where you got on.
Posted by: Mold | March 17, 2008 5:08 PM
Enjoying your banning from Feministe, Mold? Have Pandagon and Shakesville banned you yet?
Now, if you were a more subtle thinker, it would become apparent to you that the examples you enumerate all have in common the assumption of male strength, self-sufficiency, and agency–as has been repeatedly explained to you under the mistaken assumption that you were arguing in good faith.
(And “waaaah the draft!” has to be the reddest red herring ever to swim the blogospheric seas. All the feminists I know are campaigning to have women be allowed in combat, against the old guard who are dug in like hell against it, because monthly bleeding will attract bears or some similar bullshit.)
Male privilege= Draftable, working at jobs that kill you before 50, shorter lifespan, considered expendable (wimmens and chillen first), yeah, soooo prime it hurts.
What? Where the fuck do you work? The engine room on the Titanic?
Sorry boys and girls, but I’m a university-educated white male. Even working for the government those are advantages. As a white male, you know what this is (holds up thumb and forefinger of left hand)? It’s the world’s smallest violin, playing just for the underprivileged white men.
It’s not clear to me how this sort of overgeneralization and Chris-Hedges-Esque “things aren’t perfect, this means nothing has EVER gotten any better” attitude helps either to solve the problem of sexism or increase the number of people who take it seriously and work to solve it.
Indisputable Troll sign #24: Using, as a non-proper noun, an abbreviation that no one on the forum would have any reason to know what it stands for.
No, don’t tell me what it stands for either, I’m sure I don’t want to know.
Do you guys all know the really stupid thing?
Everyone here (with the possibly exception of Mort) thinks that sexism is wrong, equality is desirable, and we want more women in science.
And yet this thread has basically become a 200-post argument (for which I take my share of the blame).
No wonder the world is the way it is.
Vitis01, “Are you saying just that it may have served a useful function in the past? I would tend to agree with that. It served the function of oppressing one gender and giving privilege to the other.”
I don’t think this is appropriate terminology. They behaved the way that they did because it worked, in terms of survival & reproduction. If their behaviour didn’t work, their group died out.
The men must’ve had it pretty rough too. Hunting large animals with primitive weapons, tracking & chasing them over long distances, in bad weather, probably meant that many men would get injured, with a short life expectancy.
I would’ve thought that both sexes were oppressed, by the alpha male, his wife, & their lieutenants
Every time I read something suggesting (or implying) that women would be taken more seriously in the workplace and would achieve more, professionally, if they were just more dedicated to work instead of childcare, I think of a conversation I overheard last year. “So and so’s wife is pregnant; it’s his first kid.” “Oh, that’s wonderful. Is he taking any time off?” “Yeah… he’s actually taking a full [six weeks or something] paternity leave.” “Really? WOW…Good for him.” General nod of assent that this was good and brave and noble. Discussion that, yes, this is gutsy, since he is on partnership track and the partners in his section sure won’t like that; etc., etc.
I’m sure that it is very difficult, especially in my profession, for men to feel that they can take childcare time off without being penalized, even when, in theory, that time is available to them. But I don’t understand why women are blamed for not working harder to push boundaries, for giving up too easily in their professions when the childcare gets too overwhelming, for knuckling too readily to sexism (being too sensitive?), when a man simply insisting on the relatively small amount of childcare time that is entitled to him is a brave and noble act. But no – we can’t really expect that kind of commitment or bravery from all men because, you know, it’s so hard for them. No, no, it’s good when men help out, and you know they should, but really, whatcha gonna do?
On the other hand? When my old boss’s wife had her second child, I had conference calls with him all through the c-section. He took off two days from work while she recovered from her c-section, and worked half-time for the following two weeks to help a bit with their first child’s childcare. Then, back to normal. I have no idea how much time she had to, or chose to, take off work. I think he got a few rolled eyes behind his back about the whole thing, but otherwise, “oh, that’s just how he is.”
It just… doesn’t seem quite fair.
Where does the obsession with equality come from?
Nothing about life, or the uncaring vast universe is fair. People are born into situations of privilege, or disadvantage, smart, strong, weak, or stupid – and it’s all random. Equality and fairness are meaningless concepts, when you consider that nothing is ever fair or equal; it’s nature and nurture.
I’m not saying that people shouldn’t strive to be fair; simply that it’s pointless because life never will be. That people obsess over it, though, is fascinating. There has never been equality and there never will be. The quest for fairness and equality is as stupid as religion, and is based on objective reality to a comparable degree. Shit happens. The quest for equality tries to fly in the face of the obvious truth that shit happens more or less at random.
Hm. You know, that’s strange, because I thought the whole point about prejudice is that the shit doesn’t happen at random.
Shit happens. The quest for equality tries to fly in the face of the obvious truth that shit happens more or less at random.
Posted by: Marcus Ranum | March 17, 2008 5:58 PM
Woo-hoo! Nihilism! Let’s everybody get drunk!
kmarissa writes:
I thought the whole point about prejudice is that the shit doesn’t happen at random.
Unless I’m missing something, pre-natal choice of gender or race isn’t an option…
So, yes, we’re dealing with this gigantic set of randomized, chaotic conditions and it’s our mission to make them right?? Does that seem a bit unlikely? We have inherently tilted playing fields and we’re responsible for levelling them? All of them?
I’m not saying people shouldn’t try. It’s their option. But from the macro perspective it’s utterly futile.
Not everybody has the privilege to work in safe, clean environments. If you would deign to peek into OSHA or ATSDR data, you could discover that many jobs have openings because the workers die. One you might recall is mining.
Gee, all my male kinfolk have to register for the draft. How about changing the laws? I’ve tried and will continue to do so. Until then, it is quite sexist.
Brownian, not all white men have privilege. It is like saying all black men have rhythm. Surely your education included logic? If not, there are some nice sites that detail fallacies far better than I ever could. Anywho, GWBush is a privileged white male. That much, I believe, is not disputed. Then, I’ll offer up my co-worker as not being privileged. He has no trust fund, no college education, no investments, a felony arrest record, junker cars, child support, and a crappy job in retail. If any of the posters wish to trade with this “privilege”, be my guest. He’ll certainly accept.
Blaming white men for sexism is just as pertinent as blaming all blacks for the recent spate of shootings of white college students.
Yes, our society is sexist and racist. Let us work to change it. As our current Dear Leader implies, “work is hard”.
After having long discussions with the women in my life about the differences in how men and women communicate, I have to suspect that its us men who are the stupider sex, we’re almost always the more oblivious sex.
I suspect that as religion becomes less and less of a factor in society that more and more of the gender stereotypes and biases will fade away.
I’ve never come across sexism defined as babies insisting on being born the “wrong” gender.
Sorry Richard, but this statement is so far out of whack with the anthropological understanding of such societies (dating back at least to the 60s) that it makes my eyes bleed.
Non-agricultural or industrial societies display a wide range of tendencies from near complete egalitarianism between the genders to hierarchical chiefdoms with alpha males, etc. There is not and no reason to suspect there was ever, a ‘standard’ mode of human behaviour.
Here’s a quick start for further reading: http://foragers.wikidot.com/hunter-gatherers
This kind of hand-waving about pre-agricultural societies is a pet peeve of mine. If I could go back in time, I’d smack Hobbes upside the head with an obsidian adze to prevent him from writing his ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ line in the Leviathan and completely entrenching a stereotype.
KMarissa, you note that it “just doesn’t seem fair” that expectations on men for child-rearing are so much lower than for women. I agree that it isn’t fair, but there’s a fascinating evolutionary history to this. I urge you to read “Mother Nature” by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. You may find it depressing in a few places, but it’s not supposed to talk about how we should be, but how we are.
Bet you five to ten any number of black, Asian, Mexican, Amerindian men and/or white women in the same situation (felony arrest, junker cars, child support, and a crappy job in retail) would jump at the chance to have all of that and no racial or sexual discrimination to boot.
Best of luck to your friend, but do let us know the moment he starts to worry about choosing between his integrity or his paycheck because his boss touched his ass.
Oh, and Mold?
Don’t go spouting off about generalisations and logic when you opened the can of worms with a one sided generalisation (I noticed you never mentioned ‘no glass ceiling’ as a perk of male privilege, when it most certainly is the rule, not the exception.) It makes you look like an ass.
Posted by: Brownian, OM | March 17, 2008 6:32 PM
Brownian, don’t argue with Mold. Just needle him. He’ll eventually reveal his actual agenda by saying something stomach-churningly sexist or racist.
@Kmarissa #191
Yeah, you’re right. It isn’t fair. I am a postdoctoral fellow in a developmental genetics lab, and have unflinchingly decided not to pursue the academic track career that is assumed to follow from such a postdoc stint. This decision is based on a number of factors, not least of which is the intractability of undertaking such a relatively intense commitment (research startup, grants, teaching) while raising two small children. Yes, I have a partner–he’s a great, involved dad, but the day to day childcare issues, the various drop offs/pick ups, schedule management, classroom volunteer stints, sick day coverage and so forth are on me 90% of the time.
I don’t personally know of any woman who has been successful on the academic track (in the sciences) without either a stay-at-home partner (or other live-in caregiver-type person) or a partner also in academia, or something that affords similar or greater schedule flexibility to share the workload, etc. Probably such women do exist–I’m not citing my anecdote as data, by any means, but I think the circumstances under which woman-as-primary-caregiver-and-tenure-track-scientist can work are pretty rare.
I had both children while in graduate school, returned to the lab the minute they were old enough for childcare at 7 weeks, rushed back and forth from lab to nursery to breastfeed them and got my PhD in a respectable (for my field) 5 years, despite consuming heaping rations of shit from both sides of the argument: The childless and/or male scientists who interpreted my decision to have a family as a sign of flakiness or ‘lack of passion’, and the stay-at-home proponents who thought it was the most scandalous, callous thing in the world to leave my poor babies in the care of others for 9 hours a day. Needless to say, my husband, who took exactly one day off from work for each of the births, has heard no such criticisms.
That said, despite the low-grade nagging guilt that I’m not spending enough time at work OR at home, I don’t feel cheated out of the road not taken, and I’m confident that I have made the decisions that have and will work best for me and for my family. The naysayers on both sides can go fuck themselves.
Oh, and if you’re looking to rip into ‘stomach-churningly sexist’ remarks, there’s no need to wait for Mold to self-destruct:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/03/vox_days_misogyny.php#comment-787870
Someone is wrong on the internet! To arms, people!
@#190
So what, in your terminology, is the purpose(I realize we are both speculating) behind the behavior of treating boys and girls differently. Your response doesn’t seem to be connected to what you said in #174. Saying that both sexes where oppressed and that men had it hard too sounds kind of like Mold. I was originally operating under the assumption that you acknowledged sexism and would consider it to be something to work against. I may be totally out of line though.
Brownian,
He does get sexually harassed, by customers. His boss prefers doesn’t harass.
The offer wasn’t for working-class proles to switch but any of the posters. If his privilege is so wonderful, take his place.
As for glass ceilings, there is quite a bit on how the ceilings apply equally to men. The cynic in me thinks that women are hired as “minorities” when all they are is the boss’s (relative here). Both NYT and WaPo have stories on the lack of socioeconmic movement over the past few years. Yes, it was men only, but it did provide for opportunity. Now it seems more of aristocracy. You may assume it is merit, but I am less inclined to do so.
If you wonder, I want people to follow their bliss.
Danio, I would blame the unfairness of your predicament on something completely different: the elimination of allomothering from our culture. For most of human history, new mothers were surrounded by other women who shared in the labor of raising the child. This, I believe, is one possible evolutionary explanation for the fact that women don’t die after menopause; grandmothers continue to have great value as allomothers. But in most cultures, a number of other women were available to assist the new mother. When I consider the modern arrangement, in which the new mother has essentially nobody to assist her other than the father, I wonder how children get raised at all.
RH,
That last bit concerning my assumption sounded nasty. I just meant to say that I didn’t want to read anything into what you have written that isn’t there.
Here’s an article about gender bias in academia, listing some more recent findings in the U.S. It also mentions some methodological difficulties with the Swedish study, Wenneras and Wold 1997. There should be lots about it in the popular press.
This is a link to a presentation by co-author Wold (PDF), not the original paper. My recollection of the bias is that women had to publish more papers and they had to be in more prestigious journals, which of course is harder to accomplish.
This page, Findings on Inadvertent Gender Bias in the Evaluation of Candidates, mentions several research findings including Wenneras & Wold: “A study investigating the peer review process for awarding postdoctoral fellowships from the Swedish Medical Research Council found that to be awarded the same competence score as a male colleague, a female scientist needed to publish approximately 3 extra papers in Science or Nature, or 20 extra papers in excellent specialist journals.”
It adds, “It is important to note that most participants in these studies were unaware of their tendencies towards gender bias. Good intentions do not necessarily yield unbiased decisions.”
Here’s a largeish bibliography of papers on gender bias.
And here’s a meta-analysis of gender differences in grant peer review concluding that men have about 7% advantage, which of course translates into thousands of grants.
This paper refers to a number of other papers on gender bias, including bias in medical treatment. It’s a sad fact that for many conditions, women are treated less urgently and with lesser-powered treatments. Now that’s scary.
Speaking of bias, when things get a little heated I like to remind myself that, for the same essay, typing raises it one grade over handwriting, and computer printing raises it one grade over typing.
I’ve posted a small bale of references to studies of gender bias, which is delayed in moderation.
Chris, I’m sure the book is very interesting. I may have to add it to my list. The focus of my comment was less on wondering why women have historically undertaken the bulk of the childraising burden. Rather it focused on how we can even have a discussion about increasing women’s professional opportunities (such as the opportunity to simply stay at work) when we’re still shocked and impressed by a man taking a relatively small professional risk in order to equally share the childcare responsibility for a short period of time.
In grad school, I attended a “balancing work and family” brown-bag lunch. Attending were about 80 women and 4 men, two of whom were spouses to the women speakers. It’s possible that more men didn’t attend because they didn’t feel they were “welcome” or that the seminar wasn’t “talking to them.” Or it’s possible that the work/family balance issue just doesn’t register as an important enough issue anywhere on their radars. On the other hand, the female students that I knew would have lengthy and anxious discussions about the best time to get pregnant in order to time the birth at a most professionally advantageous time (i.e., if you get pregnant the year before you graduate, you can have the baby your last year, when you have the most time, and it’ll be one year old when you start work so you can leave it alone longer… and etc).
Now that I’m working, the two items of advice I’ve received on balancing work and life are “you can’t have children and do what I do for a living; you’d be a terrible mother,” and “you’ll need a full-time au pair to manage at all.” The latter of these advisors is not a single mother.
Sexism is only true when it’s against males, of course.
Subnormality (the source of the atheist apocolypse comic) addresses the double standard nicely in Opposite World.
Aargh, I missed a link. For anyone who’s impatient, I’ve posted the same links over on my blog: “Gender bias,” including the one for the PDF that I left out of the comment here.
All this time and no one has mentioned Ben Barres yet? If anyone’s qualified to note discrimination against women in science, it’s him. And he does.
From the article:
“As a young woman–Barbara–he said he was discouraged from setting his sights on MIT, where he ended up receiving his bachelor’s degree. Once there, he was told that a boyfriend must have solved a hard math problem that he had answered and that had stumped most men in the class. After he began living as a man in 1997, Barres overheard another scientist say, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but his work is much better than his sister’s work.”
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/that_is_an_amazing_coincidence.php
@ Dianne, #154
I agree — it is all about the support network and those networks are so fragile and contingent; unless you want to choose between children and career. One of my friends decided to ‘solve’ the problem by not having children.
We had a child with a birth defect. She is fine now, but it meant ten years of surgeries + recovery times. One simply cannot take months off every year from an academic scientific career track to care for a family member. My husband’s career also involves long hours, and he made more money. So, I became a stay-at-home mother.
I really don’t know what the answer is. Clearly, my daughter needed care — perhaps if I had had family in town, we might have cobbled something together (my sister has a family member caring for her children during the day), but of course science jobs aren’t often located where one’s extended family ties are.
I do think we lose a huge amount of talent because women leaving the field due to family issues is so common. Sciencewomen’s post on this really resonated with me:
http://scienceblogs.com/sciencewoman/2008/03/why_opting_out_isnt_really_an.php
All men who think they have not been infected with the patriarchal memes they have been soaking in since birth, please go take the Implicit Association Test. Proceed to the test and choose the gender/science test. You might be surprised at the results.
And I know I’m coming in at the end of the party here, but I just want to chime in my agreement at how disappointing it is that a post that ended “Ladies of the readership, you may vent your frustration here.” turned into blaming women for not being smart enough in the very first post, went straight into ‘women are too emotional/not rational/too overly sensitive’ territory and right on into ‘women are wrong and don’t know what they’re talking about because there is no discrimination’ land.
One month ago, Scienceblogs member Zuska wrote, “How to get published in Nature: try not to be female.” She pointed out that one journal, MBehavioral Ecology, noted an 8% increase in papers with a female first author by using a blind review process.
Carlie:
While I have no doubt that I have “been infected with the patriarchal memes that have been soaking in since birth“, I took the test anyway.
My result came out as a “moderate association of Male with Science and Female with Liberal Arts compared to Female with Science and Male with Liberal Arts.”
I am slightly confused by what that means, however, as it is likely that I was simply reflecting my own interests. Also, I wish that they hadn’t placed science with female, first of all, as I was much quicker the second time round because I knew what I was doing and they kept reminding me to be as quick as possible.
Having said that, it was an interesting test, even if I am not exactly sure what it means.
The basic underpinning, as I understand it, is that it’s testing how you do when confronted with concepts that are counter to your biases. If you get used to tagging all words associated with “male” with your left hand, then get the word “engineer”, are you faster on the draw with your left hand because it ‘fits’ with a bias towards engineer=male even if you’ve been told that engineer goes with the right hand? If it’s a strong bias, you’ll be subconsciously tempted to tag with the left hand, and even if you know to use the right, you’ll be slower to hit with the right because you’re overcoming the urge to hit the left.
I think they do switch it up to try and avoid the learning curve mucking up the results, but in the demo version I’m not sure how rigorous it is.
Given your stated conviction that women are not as good as men at science/math/engineering/etc, do you actually expect anyone to believe that your evaluations of their performance are objective and unbiased?
Travel is a great eye-opener for privilege. I am a middle-aged, white male. In India and Thailand, I could feel prices rise in shops as I entered through the door. I was no longer one-of-the-crowd, but a stand-out target that was not of-the-crowd.
It gave me new perspective on those I live with in California who aren’t adult white males. The links above for white privilege and male privilege are right on. It makes me realize more strongly how good I have it here, and how others suffer for that, and how much that needs to change.
Some years ago, I read of a U.S. military helicopter pilot with combat experience. He underwent a sex change to female, and all of a sudden found that his competence was thrown into doubt and people didn’t want to work with him any more because he might crash or something. I think she was dumped from his former job.
And then there was SF author ‘James Tiptree Jr,’ who reported true details of her autobiography (big game hunter, U.S. intelligence work, etc.) that had Robert Silverberg convinced she was the second coming of Ernest Hemingway. When she ‘came out’ as female, he immediately changed feet by saying how good she was at imitating a concern for courage and justice. Gotta love it!
Somewhere up near the top, someone commented on why women would tend to go into nursing over engineering. A while ago I heard on a Nursing Professor commenting on the Nurse shortage in Alberta and on the lower qaulity of students of entering the nursing program. She said the Nursing used to the only carreer chioce for girls who were interested to science, but now many of the gilrs whowould have previously gone into nursing are going into pre-med and ENIGINEERING.
Seems the propensity to choose nursing over engineering is not as bilogically determined as it used be :).
Damian,
> I honestly believe that positive discrimination is a useful
> tool… people forget how change is brought about…
> and accept that the current situation …fair.
I have to say, I completely disagree. What this situation allows, is for equally qualified male and female applicants to apply for a job, and for the male applicant to be rejected, simply because he is a man. How is this fair?
When women finally got full voting rights in the UK in 1928, equality was achieved by giving them the same rights as men. They did not then adjust the male vote so that it was worth 1% less than a female vote.
Take a hypothetical example; in the US, it is well known that being openly atheistic would prevent you from becoming President. Obviously, this reflects poorly on the US, and it needs to change. So, here’s a positive discrimination policy for you; double count atheist votes. Does anybody think that, that is acceptable?
Your argument would carry some weight if experience hadn’t taught us that in the absence of affirmative action, in most positions an equally or even MORE qualified female applicant will be rejected simply because she is a woman. (It just occurred to me that this sort of insistence on arguing on the basis of abstract principles and ignoring how the Really Real World actually operates is half of what makes Libertarian apologists so irritating).
He has no trust fund, no college education, no investments, a felony arrest record, junker cars, child support, and a crappy job in retail. If any of the posters wish to trade with this “privilege”, be my guest.
Mold, your “co-worker” is a loser and nobody would want to trade places with him. It sounds more like he is (or you are) whining over the fact that he doesn’t enjoy his goddamn white male birthright privilege than over the injustice of there being or having been such a thing at all.
Dude, to get a felony record, you need to commit at least one felony. Are you suggesting we should commit felonies simply to empathize with your whiner “friend?” Child support? Oh, boohoo, he needs to help support his offspring, like all parents do. His inability to sustain a relationship with his ex is a personal problem that has nothing to do with his race or sex (but may have something to do with the felony record).
No college education? He can get a bogus business degree by going to class two evenings a week if all he wants is to say he’s college educated. Junker cars? Is this a problem? Many frugal people I know drive old beat-up cars to avoid depreciation and high insurance costs. If the issue is that his car is unreliable, he should go to the library and check out the service manuals and (gasp) read them. Then he can learn how to change his oil and other basic maintenance so his car doesn’t break down so much. Crappy retail job? Who told him to go work in retail? Tell him to clean up, use deodorant, put on a cheap suit, learn to use a computer, and work through a temp agency to find office jobs. He can learn skills on the job to make yourself… I mean himself… an indispensable troubleshooter. That’s what I did. Investments? Quit smoking, drinking, eating out, and doing stupid crap, put your pocket change and cig and cocktail money into a jar every night, and buy a silver coin whenever you have twenty dollars in the jar. They add up.
I used to be a loser like your “co-worker.” I was once homeless, NO car, had to quit school and get a job because my parents were breaking up and didn’t give me the time of day, used to work crappy part-time retail jobs with no benefits, and in trouble with the law for some crap my abusive boyfriend made me do on threat of a beating. I was never a substance abuser and I never went on public assistance. I got my case reconsidered, moved to a better area, bought a decent car recommended to me by a good mechanic (ugly but reliable), went to a temp agency and got a job as a receptionist, worked my way up to office manager within five years, into a midlevel IT position in two more, and the rest is (recent) history. I did most of this while supporting a shiftless art student partner and regularly helping out my worthless family. All without “privileges” or handouts or even anyone taking much of an interest in me.
Tell your idiot co-worker to quit concentrating on his psychological aches and pains and concentrate on making his life better. If he has no “privileges,” so much the better for his character.
It just occurred to me that this sort of insistence on arguing on the basis of abstract principles and ignoring how the Really Real World actually operates is half of what makes Libertarian apologists so irritating
I;m not in the mood to put up with your ragging on Libertarians today, Azkyroth. Read the above post and tell me if I’m in the habit of ignoring the real world.
Azkyroth,
> Your argument would carry some weight if experience
> hadn’t taught us that in the absence of affirmative
> action, in most positions an equally or even MORE
> qualified female applicant will be rejected simply
> because she is a woman.
So, your argument then is that to eliminate inequality, we should legislate inequality? Do you think that passing laws that give women more legal rights than men will actually cause those men that continue to hold onto indefensible views about gender to treat women as equals? If you do, then I’m afraid you are the one who doesn’t understand how the Really Real World works. It will cause resentment, and the subtle, under the radar sexism will continue.
> (It just occurred to me that this… is half of what makes
> Libertarian apologists so irritating).
Has the irony of that last comment occurred to you yet?
to get a felony record, you need to commit at least one felony.
Technically, you only need to have been convicted of a felony to get a felony record. Given the number of people on death row later found to be innocent, I suspect that there might be quite a number of people with felony records who never comitted a felony. Although I agree with the rest of your post.
Dianne, you’re right. Thanks for getting my back on that one. :)
I want you to think, deep and hard, on what the inequality we’re talking about here means, and why what you just wrote makes no sense whatsoever.
Hi all,
Speedwell, why all this hatin’? He’s a pretty nice guy and, well, he’s not me. You assumed much from the little info I provided. I have to say you didn’t get any assumptions correct. I also believe you have discounted the goodness of many people in your journey. It’s a structural thing. Ayn Rand wrote fiction.
I wanted to point out the fantasy of male, white privilege when applied to someone without it. Bush and Cheney, Foley and Vitter…you bet they have the gold card. My co-worker, not so much. That’s why I mentioned him. He has been pulled over far more than my neighbor (Black Economist) whos has been stopped exactly twice. Once was DWB, maybe. The other was doing 90mph.
I am old enough to have been there when the choices offered to girls were teachermommy, secretarymommy, and nursemommy. Those were the Bad Old Days. I don’t wish to relive them. I also delight in Title IX.
Tweaking your orthodoxy in an atheist blog is to point out that white male privilege is more class-based than pretty much anything else. The cries of “heretic” seemed out of place.
This is worth re-reading:
And now the thread is even moving towards libertarian woo-woo and doomsaying about women getting more legal rights than men (!). And no, I don’t care who’s not “in the mood” to hear mean things about libertarians or men’s right’s activists. There are plenty of places to discuss such things. This thread is not one of them.
There are some stories from women here that belonged in the thread, but they are largely drowned out. It would be great if we could actually have the originally proposed thread and have its topic respected. What about it, PZ? How about a do-over?
Hm… thing is, he still has it, compared to a woman in his same circumstances.
I think it’s a bit bizarre to claim that no white male privilege exists because some white males are in less fortunate circumstances than some non-whites or females.
> doomsaying about women getting more legal rights than men (!)
SKM, I assume that is a reference to my earlier comment… it isn’t doomsaying, this is ACTUALLY happening in the UK. If you bothered to read my first post, that ultimately led to that statement, you would know that I was referring to an actual law that is due to be passed giving priority to women over men in the job market. Furthermore, my earlier post was talking about a wider issue, that whilst ensuring equality for women is entirely correct, doing it by proposing bad laws is not the way to do it, nor is it right to completely neglect men (more specifically school children).
Yes, Andy C, I “bothered to read” the whole thread, and figured you were referring to this proposed legislation. My objection to the derailment of the thread (which happened straight out of the gate, long before you entered) still stands.
SKM, then why did you choose to refer to it as ‘doomsaying’? That implies that I’m extrapolating beyond what is reasonable (which obviously I’m not – and yes, that is the legislation I was referring to). It’s not reasonable to specifically refer to my accurate post, in a derogatory manner, if your only intention is to object to the fact that the comments didn’t simply conform to PZ’s ‘offer’ to vent.
So, your argument then is that to eliminate inequality, we should legislate inequality?
so your argument then is that to eliminate slavery, we shouldn’t have attempted to legislate against it?
to help end monopolization, we shouldn’t have attempted to legislate against it?
to end large-scale environmental pollution, we shouldn’t have attempted to legislate against it?
It’s damn stupid to think that attitudes change overnight, but you have to start somewhere. eventually, the impact of such legislation DOES have an affect on attitudes and thinking, as new generations can see the effect. Hence, racism in this country (US) is not nearly as egregious in effect as it was say, 60 years ago even. People now are much more aware of environmental pollution and the damage it can cause to them directly, and are happy to see polluters punished by the legal system, whereas 80 years ago, most wouldn’t have given it a second thought.
Observing the ramblings of libertarians is like watching someone with their head in a guillotine in the public square, argue against laws prohibiting public execution.
Andy C said:
It isn’t, but it helps to redress the balance and to change a societies attitudes, after hundreds of years of institutionalized discrimination, almost exclusively by males.
As others have shown, this isn’t simply about the odd male here and there who have negative or stereotyped views of women. Even if it was, how would we know who they are? I wouldn’t go as far as some have – partially because I haven’t looked in to this as much as others have – but the whole structure and mentality of our societies are “infected” (for want of a better word) with biases.
Clearly this can not be applied to all situations, and you have given examples where it couldn’t work. But, think about what has happened with ethnic minorities in Britain. Many companies/public services used positive discrimination to encourage minorities to join. The problem wasn’t just that discrimination was rampant, it was that minorities didn’t think that it was even worth trying to join what had been shown to be biased.
It is probably less than a decade since this happened, after several decades of discrimination. I don’t hear anybody complaining about that now. Most people are just proud to see minorities serving in the police force, fire service, etc. It has slowly become a norm, and those ethnic minorities that have performed terrifically well at their jobs have convinced all but the most vile of individuals that all people should be judged on their merits. And as I have said, many more ethnic minorities now want to join these areas and play a full and equal role in society.
Clearly this is not a root and branch solution, and I agree that it is counterintuitive, somewhat, but I am more concerned with the fact that we still haven’t ended institutionalized prejudice, than I am about a few males who, as it has already been said, enjoy more privilege in the first place.
Ichthyic,
You’ve completely missed my point. I 100% oppose discrimination, in any form, and I 100% support legislation that requires people to be treated EQUALLY.
What I do not support, is legislation that discriminates against one group, masquerading as ‘equal opportunity’ legislation, however well intentioned.
I am well aware that attitudes do not change overnight, and I am not so deluded as to think that women do not still suffer sexism in the work place, but actively discriminating against men is just as wrong as discriminating against women.
I am well aware that attitudes do not change overnight, and I am not so deluded as to think that women do not still suffer sexism in the work place, but actively discriminating against men is just as wrong as discriminating against women.
fair enough, I just got done arguing against a bunch of self-proclaimed libertarians on another site, and the argument appeared very similar.
What I do not support, is legislation that discriminates against one group, masquerading as ‘equal opportunity’ legislation, however well intentioned.
be careful you don’t mislabel the legislation by effect (for better or worse) instead of intention.
If you could write a better set of laws attempting to curtail discrimination, you should become a legislator yourself.
the anti-discrimination laws we have had in the US did indeed have a positive effect that is entirely undeniable if one bothers to actually look at the overall impact.
Damian,
First of all, after some of the comments I’ve had, thanks for coming back with a reasoned response, after all, I only intended to present what I think is a reasonable argument opposite to the one you put forward.
> …it helps to redress the balance and to change a
> societies attitudes, after hundreds of years of
> institutionalized discrimination, almost exclusively
> by males.
I think this is the point I have a problem with (that it redresses the balance). To me, changing attitudes is a matter of education, not legislation (with the exception of strict equality legislation), which is why it can take generations to weed out discriminatory views. During my upbringing (I’m 25), I was exposed to an environment where we were taught from the outset that discrimination is completely unacceptable, and it is this kind of environment that leads to changes in societal attitudes.
To me, legislation of the form I am against can manipulate numbers (and actually, if recent (anecdotal) stats I heard about from the police force are anything to go by, it actually hasn’t succeeded in that regard either), but can do little to impact attitudes. Perhaps I’m wrong about this, and positive discrimination of this form has in fact been responsible for improving attitudes, and let’s assume for a moment, that I really am completely wrong, and equality really is becoming the norm… when will these policies be dropped as being unnecessary? (Appreciating that, that is effectively a rhetorical question)
I understand your argument, but for me, for now, these laws are quite simply wrong.
I’m still utterly bemused as to what this “white male privilege” I’m supposed to have actually is. As far as I can tell, it’s a stick that certain people with anger issues want to use to beat me with.
What I *can* agree with is that certain people in society are discriminated against. Talking about sexism or racism to me is missing to point completely. Note that I’m not saying they don’t exist – I’m saying they’re part of a much broader problem.
The fact is, plenty of white males *are* discriminated against because of their race and gender. That’s why talking about “white male privilege” is both ignorant, and really achieves nothing other than to piss of white males.
What we should all be talking about with regard to science is the existence, in every field, of unhealthy “cliques” that are resistant to any new blood coming in.
The stupid thing about this debate about sexism and racism is that it totally fails to tackle the real problem. When a feminist says that she thinks white males are privileged she is basically attacking a lot of people that are on her side of the glass ceiling. When someone talks about a “patriarchal” society that “benefits males”, they are ignoring the fact that men feel no happier, or freer in society than women do.
What we should be doing is trying to create a society where everyone, irrespective of race or gender or whatever, can reach the best of their potential. Arguing among ourselves about who is more privileged than who is fucking stupid, it’s like ants arguing who has the biggest cocks.
Andy C said:
No worries. We are here for a conversation, after all. Sometimes it can get a bit heated when a subject such as this comes up. Most people agree that creationism is a pretty strange idea, but we disagree on much else.
Your argument is perfectly valid, as well, and I can be persuaded either way. I have changed my mind over the years, though even then, there are certainly limits to my position.
Andy C said:
Education is certainly the key to a great many things. I happen to think that it is what Dan Dennett calls universal acid, but I am not so sure that it is possible to reach all people in a satisfactory time frame (i.e. most people are obviously too old to reach through state education, and many people don’t pay much attention to what is in the media), and it won’t necessarily solve the problem of the pervasiveness/institutionalization of discrimination.
I guess that, for me, the strongest aspect of my argument would be that it really does provide the personal experience that I believe to be absolutely vital to change something that is systematic – almost like subconscious education, if you will. People don’t even realize that their attitudes are changing, where as – and hard to believe as it surely is – there are a great many people who don’t react very well to what they would probably describe as being dictated to.
I certainly don’t disagree with your argument, I just think that in specific cases it may be necessary to use both education and a limited amount of positive discrimination. It is important to point out that it is probably far more palatable when the male and female are of equal ability, as you suggested earlier.
There is also a question of time frame, as well. It could take anything up to a couple of generations using only education, and even then, it is entirely dependent on the quality of the educators, both in schools and in the media. As I said in my last post, I have been persuaded by how normal so many things seem today, that didn’t seem normal just 10-20 years ago.
In the end it comes down to a value judgment: are you prepared to treat a limited number of males, in a limited time frame, in a way that can only be described as unfairly, to hopefully redress the balance and create a fairer society? It is about balancing the harm that would certainly continue be done to the lives of females, as a whole, against the harm to a limited number of males, I guess. I must confess that I certainly don’t know the answer to this, but we do often make value judgments based on balancing harm.
This conversation may have motivated me to perhaps dig a little deeper on this subject to see if there are any studies that provide evidence, either way. As with most areas of public policy, I am ready to change my mind in an instant when evidence is presented. One of my greatest concerns is that too few people even bother to consider evidence – crime and punishment (and the thirst for revenge, rather than looking at how we can prevent crime, etc) being one of the areas that I get really annoyed about. Let’s not go there!
Martin, it would take too long to go into here, and I wouldn’t want you to take my word for it since I’m not a sociologist or have any other claim to expertise. Please use the power of google-fu to look up “white male privilege”. Read for awhile. Read a lot of different people, from a lot of different areas.
Try and consider that a lot of the privilege that you have is completely unseen by you; the fact that you don’t notice it is, in fact, part of that privilege. As an example: Have you ever worried that your boss will hit on you and you’ll get fired if you offend him/her in refusing? Has it ever even crossed your mind that it would be a possible situation? It happens to women. Not as much as 30 years ago, but it still happens. A lot. That’s just one of hundreds of little issues you never even notice that you don’t have to deal with. Do you spend much time worrying that your accent is a little too ‘inner city’ during an interview, and that perhaps you lost a job offer because you didn’t sound quite elite enough regardless of your vocabulary? No? There’s another one.
It’s not fucking stupid to discuss white male privilege in the context of what anyone who isn’t white and male has to deal with in the workplace. And the reason it’s important to bring it out in the open is that as long as the cadre of classic ‘white males’ don’t understand how much the deck is stacked in their favor to start with, there is no way to ever even the playing field.
And once again, the fact that men are spending voluminous time and space declaring that there is no such thing as unfair gender discrimination against women on a post that invited women to share stories of discrimination in the first place is just another example of the same. It is absolute privilege to think that you are entitled to dismiss as untrue every woman’s personal data about being discriminated against simply because you didn’t see it happen.
For those who haven’t read this, I thought that it was a terrific consciousness raiser. Remember, it doesn’t matter whether you have actually benefited from these privileges. They are still privileges that you can enjoy, above and beyond a great many other people. That is the point.
The Male Privilege Checklist:
1. My odds of being hired for a job, when competing against female applicants, are probably skewed in my favor. The more prestigious the job, the larger the odds are skewed.
2. I can be confident that my co-workers won’t think I got my job because of my sex – even though that might be true.
3. If I am never promoted, it’s not because of my sex.
4. If I fail in my job or career, I can feel sure this won’t be seen as a black mark against my entire sex’s capabilities.
5. The odds of my encountering sexual harassment on the job are so low as to be negligible.
6. If I do the same task as a woman, and if the measurement is at all subjective, chances are people will think I did a better job.
7. If I’m a teen or adult, and if I can stay out of prison, my odds of being raped are so low as to be negligible.
8. I am not taught to fear walking alone after dark in average public spaces.
9. If I choose not to have children, my masculinity will not be called into question.
10. If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity will not be called into question.
11. If I have children and provide primary care for them, I’ll be praised for extraordinary parenting if I’m even marginally competent.
12. If I have children and pursue a career, no one will think I’m selfish for not staying at home.
13. If I seek political office, my relationship with my children, or who I hire to take care of them, will probably not be scrutinized by the press.
14. Chances are my elected representatives are mostly people of my own sex. The more prestigious and powerful the elected position, the more likely this is to be true.
15. I can be somewhat sure that if I ask to see “the person in charge,” I will face a person of my own sex. The higher-up in the organization the person is, the surer I can be.
16. As a child, chances are I was encouraged to be more active and outgoing than my sisters.
17. As a child, I could choose from an almost infinite variety of children’s media featuring positive, active, non-stereotyped heroes of my own sex. I never had to look for it; male heroes were the default.
18. As a child, chances are I got more teacher attention than girls who raised their hands just as often.
19. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether or not it has sexist overtones.
20. I can turn on the television or glance at the front page of the newspaper and see people of my own sex widely represented, every day, without exception.
21. If I’m careless with my financial affairs it won’t be attributed to my sex.
22. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex.
23. I can speak in public to a large group without putting my sex on trial.
24. If I have sex with a lot of people, it won’t make me an object of contempt or derision.
25. There are value-neutral clothing choices available to me; it is possible for me to choose clothing that doesn’t send any particular message to the world.
26. My wardrobe and grooming are relatively cheap and consume little time.
27. If I buy a new car, chances are I’ll be offered a better price than a woman buying the same car.
28. If I’m not conventionally attractive, the disadvantages are relatively small and easy to ignore.
29. I can be loud with no fear of being called a shrew. I can be aggressive with no fear of being called a bitch.
30. I can ask for legal protection from violence that happens mostly to men without being seen as a selfish special interest, since that kind of violence is called “crime” and is a general social concern. (Violence that happens mostly to women is usually called “domestic violence” or “acquaintance rape,” and is seen as a special interest issue.)
31. I can be confident that the ordinary language of day-to-day existence will always include my sex. “All men are created equal…,” mailman, chairman, freshman, he.
32. My ability to make important decisions and my capability in general will never be questioned depending on what time of the month it is.
33. I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if i don’t change my name.
34. The decision to hire me will never be based on assumptions about whether or not I might choose to have a family sometime soon.
35. Every major religion in the world is led primarily by people of my own sex. Even God, in most major religions, is usually pictured as being male.
36. Most major religions argue that I should be the head of my household, while my wife and children should be subservient to me.
37. If I have a wife or girlfriend, chances are we’ll divide up household chores so that she does most of the labor, and in particular the most repetitive and unrewarding tasks.
38. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, chances are she’ll do most of the childrearing, and in particular the most dirty, repetitive and unrewarding parts of childrearing.
39. If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, and it turns out that one of us needs to make career sacrifices to raise the kids, chances are we’ll both assume the career sacrificed should be hers.
40. Magazines, billboards, television, movies, pornography, and virtually all of media is filled with images of scantily-clad women intended to appeal to me sexually. Such images of men exist, but are much rarer.
41. I am not expected to spend my entire life 20-40 pounds underweight.
42. If I am heterosexual, it’s incredibly unlikely that I’ll ever be beaten up by a spouse or lover.
43. I have the privilege of being unaware of my male privilege.
To follow up, I know several female graduate students in a particular engineering discipline who have been accepted to a certain prestigious technological institution *way* east of Seattle, but who turned it down for another choice, because of the particular department of said institution’s well-known reputation for low-level (=below actionable threshold) sexual harassment and misogyny.
No doubt the hard-core libertarians would say it’s the female students’ free choice to turn down the department; I’m really not interested in hearing any more apologia for why female students should face more obstacles than males in getting a prestigious technical education.
What I’m interested in is how many males, students or not, know female students or workers who have made similar choices for similar reasons. If you think you know none, I would ask how you would be sure of that fact. In other words, how would you tell the difference between 1) actually not knowing any female who’s experienced gender discrimination and 2) your being perceived as a person who it’s not safe to reveal such a thing to?
For example, as Carlie points out, in a thread where women were explicitly invited to “vent [their] frustration”, there were already a bunch of guys in the first few comments denying those frustrations even exist. If that’s how you behave to women who are explicitly invited to express their concerns, do you think any woman in her right mind would open up to you unsolicited about having faced such discrimination in her own life? Given that confound, how would you tell the difference between not knowing anyone who that’s happened to versus people who it’s happened to not feeling safe to tell you about it?
The ability to be shielded from difficult realities like this is, as Carlie also points out, an important element of privilege. It’s certainly invisible, as long as you don’t examine it too closely.
….where the hell did that come from?
Azkyroth,
This will be my last post in this thread, because I just want to make one point.
You said “….where the hell did that come from?” to speedwell’s comment on something you said to me.
I feel it necessary to point out that in that single post to me, you stated that positive discrimination was necessary to combat, if I may put words into your mouth, a more problematic form of discrimination, and then you went on to use my single, isolated statement that this kind of legislation is the wrong way to combat the problem, to brand me an “irritating Libertarian apologist” for it. In short, you chose to insult me on the basis of a political affiliation (one that you don’t even know I have) – I believe we call that discrimination.
A story, if you will:
I worked with my former graduate advisor for 4 years. During this time, he engaged in practices specifically engineered over his 35-year career to rattle and intimidate students. 2 years in and heading for my oral comprehensive exams, I was so terrified of failing them and of performing poorly in research where he changed my topic twice already, that I was on my way to one of the only solely stress-induced ulcers my gastrologist had seen in *his* career (I was/am H. pylori negative).
I passed that hurdle, but continued to struggle through a variety of stressful family situations (including my partner’s bout with cancer), the development of chronic severe sinus inflammation, dead-end projects with minimal advisor input and later gloating that my experiments had failed as he suspected, writing a grant application wherein he made several spelling corrections (top half of the stack: go me!), gloating over the proposal’s rejection, and being reprimanded for heath- and family-related absences. I was stuck on teaching assistantships, penalized for having any teaching hours in the M-F 9-5 range (when most classes are), and penalized further for not making “adequate” research progress (with no definition of adequate to work toward) while working 20 hours a week teaching and regularly having projects pulled out from under me (7 projects in under 4 years; 1 publishable). My confidence was shot from this treatment and a lack of support at home.
Then he had the gall to comment on “my lifestyle” and how I should change my proposed career path because policies are better in industry for “people in [my] situation”. I was clear about my professional goals from Day 1: I wanted an academic job. I had come to his office to ask about getting practice presenting a poster at a department event. Any whiff of graduation was still 2 years off. It hit me: I was not the problem. Any success I had would not be enough for this man. My perspective changed: I was less yielding, more angry. I fought the urge to “solve” my problem by punching this elderly gentleman in his presumed balls. I was not failure in spite of working 70-hour weeks; I had accomplished bits of novel basic science research despite discouragement when progress was slow. I made substantial contributions to the future of the courses I was a teaching assistant for. I found a sense of professional worthiness. And I started making plans to get the hell out of there into a healthier lab environment. Happily, I found it — minimal thanks to my department head and to my college, who were aware of my troubles, for practically no effort to even clarify requirements or procedures when asked.
Here are the strikes for this guy:
[x] woman
[x] career goal: not industry
[x] career goal: post-secondary education (the horror!)
[x] avowed/suspected homosexual
[x] not present during some part of 9a-noon, 1p-5p, for any reason. Even with notice and/or a doctor’s note. Especially more than once in one week.
[x] own/partner’/family’s health situations requiring regular maintenance
[ ] person of color (Black or Latino; Asians seemed OK. Mostly.)
Of course I filed a complaint, once I was out of his lab and the bastard couldn’t terrorize me anymore. He’s done it before, and has also refused to handle behavioral problems among lab members before I arrived and since my departure. He has not been fined. It has made no difference in the number or nature of the students he is permitted to take. The department and the research group don’t talk about it with prospective students, as if it never happened. I don’t expect that they should go into the gory details, but perhaps when a student mentions an interest in the research that the host mention that there have been problems in the group with women and gays not being treated fairly. Or say, “You might want to talk to [name] as well as the people who are still in that group.” We gossip enough about everything else in my department, we may as well make it useful!
In the end, I got singled out for mistreatment by this advisor, made a radical change in subfield, and found a place which isn’t perfect but is much better and where my advisors are supportive of my efforts. I’ve made it work for me, examining areas relevant to where I see my independent research going in the future. My ex-advisor, though, gets to keep smiling in the halls and has yet to answer for any of the terrible bias-related management mistakes he’s made with a number of students that would be swiftly and strongly penalized in a company environment.
Re: Damian
I’m not saying there aren’t perks to being a guy, I’m saying that the term “white male privilege” is irrelevant and deliberatelt, divisive, since only purpose for invoking it is to attack the opinions of white males.
I mean, for example, there are obviously white-female privileges. There are heterosexual black-female privileges, there are age-priveleges, there are single-people-privileges, there are married-people-with-kids privileges. I could very easily come up with a list of 50 privileges for any group.
For example, since I am male
#1 I cannot cry or express emotions in public because people will call me a pussy.
#2 I cannot bounce a young child I don’t know on my knee because I’ll be called a paedophile.
#3 If I try to have a career as a nurse, shopworker or carer my masculinity will be in question.
#4 If I go bald I will be subjected to continual jokes about it. If I beat a women to a promotion I have to feel guilty that it may be because of my gender.
#5 I won’t live as long as women do.
#6 Male illnesses like prostate cancer are liable to get less attention than cervical or breast cancer.
#7 Health screening programs are biased towards women.
#8 I am more likely to be a victim of assault.
#9 My masculinity will be called into question if I choose to be a stay-at-home Dad.
#10 My sexual orientation will be called into question if I choose not to get married and have kids.
#11 I am liable to be drafted in times of war.
#12 There are no “male-only” times at swimming pools.
#13 I will struggle more in an education system in which girls excel.
#14 I will not be allowed to fulfil my natural urge to play-fight in school, since the ruling school “matriarchy” deems it unacceptably violent.
#15 If I were gay, it would be more frowned upon than if I were a lesbian.
#16 I am more likely to end up in prison.
#17 I am more likely to commit suicide in my 20s due to depression.
#18 If I am raped or sexually harassed, it will not be taken seriously, period.
#19 If I am assaulted by my wife, it will not be taken seriously, period.
#20 I can’t hug a non-relative without it being seen as a) gay or b) pervy.
I could go on and on and on, but you get the general idea. I’m not saying that we have equality, I’m not saying that sexism and racism aren’t real, of course we don’t, and of course we are. What I’m saying is that talking about any broad group of society being “privileged” is short-sighted, inaccurate, and needlessly divisive.
I mean, WTF, are we supposed to come up with some sort of ranking system now? Should we make a big grid with gender, orientation, race, religious beliefs and wealth bracket on it and fill in some kind of “p-value” to represent the relative privilege of each minute section of society?
Or should we just all accept that discrimination of any kind is equally bad, and work to find sensible ways of removing it from society that don’t require blanket labeling of demographics; or try to pin the blame or responsibility onto any particular group?
Most 20-something scientists in the West today, female or male, black or white, are finding the current system unfair, forced to flit between short-term contracts facing financial and intellectual instability while often trying to start and raise families. Ploughing our efforts into trying to find ways to help, for example, young science couples would do more to alleviate everbody’s problems than this ridiculous effort to find some kind of mathematical privilege formula.
Re Martin Robbins:
I’m quite sure that there are hundreds of difficulties with being a male. That really wasn’t the point of this thread, though, and yet you continually seem to want to talk about yourself (or males in general), rather than listen to another perspective. Has it occurred to you that maybe this isn’t about people such as yourself? If you are all for equality, good for you.
I provided that list as a consciousness raiser, that’s all. It doesn’t really matter how many disadvantages that you can come with of being a male – you still live in a society that is dominated by your own sex. The list isn’t meant to be an invitation to a pissing contest. It is meant to convey the idea that (white) males, by and large, still enjoy a great many advantages over pretty much everyone else. If you can show that to be wrong, knock yourself out, by all means. Not here. Not now.
The complaint right throughout this thread has been that, instead of simply listening to what the females have to say, the males have decided to turn it in to an argument. I’m not prepared to do that. I am here to listen to another perspective. One that, no matter how hard I try, I can never fully understand. All that I can do is listen, and offer my support. That’s it.
Everything else can wait for another thread, on another day. It really is that simple.
“Has it occurred to you that maybe this isn’t about people such as yourself?”
So, you’re discriminating against me?
“The complaint right throughout this thread has been that, instead of simply listening to what the females have to say, the males have decided to turn it in to an argument.”
This is an open comments thread on which people are invited to express their opinions. At no point has it been stated that debate isn’t allowed in this thread or on Pharyngula, in fact the opposite is actively encouraged. If you’re seriously about making progress tackling sexism – which we need to do – then you need to be prepared to look at the range of opinions.
“you continually seem to want to talk about yourself (or males in general), rather than listen to another perspective.”
Just to clarify, if you actually bother to read back (and I don’t blame you if you don’t) the only point at which I started talking about the white male experience was when people began throwing around terms like “white male privilege”.
Can you not at least understand why terms like “white male privilege” are both unscientific, and a step backwards for feminism because they promote divisiveness and an us-and-them atmosphere? Do you understant that my complaint isn’t that I feel prejudiced against, it’s that the obsession with who-is-more-privileged-than-who undermines feminism itself, and distracts our attention away from tackling the problem?
Do you understant that my complaint isn’t that I feel prejudiced against, it’s that the obsession with who-is-more-privileged-than-who undermines feminism itself, and distracts our attention away from tackling the problem?
Are you serious? Do you understand what feminism is? Feminism is the push to change society so that men and women are treated equally. It only exists because currently, they aren’t. There is no obsession with “who-is-more-privileged-than-who”, it is a fact that is the basis of feminism itself. How the hell can understanding that men are generally more privileged than women in our society undermine feminism and detract attention from tackling the problem? There is no way to discuss that there is a problem at all or what and how to tackle it if you don’t acknowledge that there is a difference in privilege to start with.
And, in fact, that is why through your eyes there is an “obsession” by feminists with that basic starting point, because when you personally try to talk about it it’s obvious that you don’t get that yet. The discussion that you see is all about privilege because you, Martin, can’t get past that to tackling the problem. You have shown absolutely no indications that you have read anything that’s been written here beyond the equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and going “la-la-la no privilege can’t hear you”. It’s exactly like a student who is bad in math saying that all teachers are obsessed with algebra, and don’t get to the diversity of topics such as calculus and differential equations. No, everyone isn’t obsessed with algebra, they’re just not willing or able to go any further with that particular student until they demonstrate that they understand algebra, because if they don’t there is no point in going further.
Martin @ #255
Male illnesses like prostate cancer are liable to get less attention than cervical or breast cancer.
Are you kidding me? Prostate cancer is easy to detect (if you go in for the manual exam. Do it guys — it doesn’t make you gay!), slow-growing, slow to metastasize, responsive to traditional chemotherapy treatments, responds to estrogen and declining testosterone levels by slowing growth and shrinking; as such this cancer is rarely life-threatening. In fact, even if surgical intervention is called for you will not have to face losing an organ or function which is used to define your validity as a member of your sex. Men with prostate cancer and those without prostates can still procreate. Most men with prostate cancer die with it after a decade or few from other causes such as heart attack or overall aging; it is rare for men to die of prostate cancer itself. The majority of the research has already been done.
You didn’t mention testicular cancer, but it’s the most common cancer in men under 40. Testicular cancer, while fast spreading, forms in an exterior organ aiding early detection and has a detailed treatment protocol with 98% non-recurrence rate for early stage and a relatively high recovery/survival rate for even those with advanced disease. Though I am loathe to bring him up, see also: Lance Armstrong, who came back from Stage IV (most advanced) metastatic cancer to win Tour de France. Most guys just go back to their normal life once treatment is over. Again, the majority of the research has already been done.
Compare to cervical and breast cancers which are fast-growing, fast to metastasize, and in advanced stages are life-threatening. Bonus: breast cancer in particular is less responsive to traditional chemotherapy agents, thus the buzz surrounding Taxol. Breast and lung cancers are the primary causes of cancer deaths in women. Cervical cancer can warrant removal of extensive surrounding tissue, prohibiting the patient from ever bearing her own children. As for the (mostly-male) researchers pursuing treatments for these diseases, they are motivated by losing their mothers and wives to the diseases, and by losing their capacity to have children with their wives bearing both their genetic material (barring a surrogate situation). Some of them even consider HPV a public health issue, since so many people (about 40% of the population) is infected.
If you need to feel your body type is included despite these solid reasons for more intensive research into breast and cervical cancers, note the following: While breast cancer overwhelmingly affects women’s bodies, men can get it too. HPV, the virus that causes the vast majority of cervical cancers, also causes genital warts and oral and anal cancers in both men and women.
As for the rest of your list: patriarchy hurts men too. That’s what they’ve been saying to you all thread. Does it feel more true now that a man (you) has said it? Can we get back to the stated topic of women not being listened to or respected professionally?
“I’m still utterly bemused as to what this “white male privilege” I’m supposed to have actually is.”
Have you ever had to seriously think about going to a party you wanted to go to because it would end late and you would have to be outside alone after dark? Have you ever had to be very careful about your drink at a bar, making sure to keep the opening of the cup covered by your hand at all times? Have you ever had your heart leap with fear because you’re on a subway car alone and some guy comes on?
Probably not. Because as a male, the very real possibility of being raped simply isn’t a part of your day-to-day life. That’s privilege.
Anyways, I’m really glad to see this post. I’ve seen a couple of the blogs I read recently complaining about how sex descrimination in science fields is a thing of the past and it’s now just whining from “silly girls” and “angry feminists” who are looking for excuses to cover up lack of talent or somesuch.
As a child, I moved a lot and that meant that I missed a lot of bits and pieces of math. Unlike many other subjects, math builds on itself. Missing pieces can hurt a great deal (for example, I have never been taught in a classroom how to do long division). When I didn’t understand something, I would raise my hand and frequently be ignored completely. If I was called on, explanations were brief. I started to notice that it was the same for all the girls and that more time was being spent answering questions from male students. Being a curious kid, I asked one of my math teachers why he couldn’t spend more time answering my question, he answered that it would be a “waste of the class’s time because boys and girls are just naturally different and you won’t be using this when you grow up anyway. It’s just more important to make sure all the boys understand the material.”
I gave up on math.
White male privilege, Martin, is that you were probably never beaten down until you completely gave up an entire field just because of your gender.
Martin, I had to comment on a few things on your list:
#1 I cannot cry or express emotions in public because people will call me a pussy.
Because that would make you like a WOMAN, which is something to be ashamed of. This is sexism towards women affecting you, not sexism towards men. Yes, that’s right, sexism towards women hurts everyone – that’s why we should try to end it, not whine about how women should stop whining because men have it so hard.
#2 I cannot bounce a young child I don’t know on my knee because I’ll be called a paedophile.
When has this happened to you?
Yes, it does happen. Because most sexual crimes are committed by men, some parents will assume that all men are going to hurt their children. But this isn’t all that frequent. Not to mention that this is a yet another biproduct of sexism towards women. It is because so many sexual crimes are still being committed towards women (and others who are seen as “weak” – such as children) by men that those who are considered weak are forced to be afraid of men.
#3 If I try to have a career as a nurse, shopworker or carer my masculinity will be in question.
As with number 1, this is because of sexism towards WOMEN. Women have been forced into certain careers, making those careers off-limits to men (lest they be seen to take on the roles of women). End sexism towards women and this issues will go away too.
#4 If I go bald I will be subjected to continual jokes about it. If I beat a women to a promotion I have to feel guilty that it may be because of my gender.
This is actually two different points.
As to the first – I am subjected to continual jokes about being a woman. Not “if X happens,” but rather based on my entire gender. You aren’t laughed at for being a man. I can’t even begin to count the number of times people have asked me if I’m “on the rag” just because I’ve had a bad day or didn’t get enough sleep the night before. This isn’t something you’ve had to deal with. I am ridiculed if I forget to shave my legs for a day, or tweeze my eyebrows. Until fairly recently, simply not wearing makeup was taboo. These are all little things that cut into my time (not to mention my self-esteem) and make it all the more unlikely that I will succeed in my career. I am quite literally judged by my body first. My mind and my personality come second, if at all. Unless you fall into the ranks of “truly hideous,” this is not something that you, as a man, need deal with.
As to the second part, this is again not sexism towards men but rather sexism towards women. The fact that you can look at a situation where you are more likely to be promoted than a female co-worker who works just as hard as you do as something that is hurting YOU is a shining example of what we mean by “white male privilege.”
#5 I won’t live as long as women do.
A matter of biology, not society. I’m not sure what to say about this except maybe that at least you have more opportunities to succeed and make yourself happy in the time you have since you have so many more options available to you and don’t need to work twice as hard as your co-workers just to get half the credit.
#6 Male illnesses like prostate cancer are liable to get less attention than cervical or breast cancer.
This was really well covered by someone else.
#7 Health screening programs are biased towards women.
I haven’t heard about this and therefore cannot comment.
#8 I am more likely to be a victim of assault.
I am more likely to be a victim of rape. Sorry, what’s your point?
#9 My masculinity will be called into question if I choose to be a stay-at-home Dad.
By some. Most will think that you are awesome and brave and wonderful, even if you do half the work half as well as a female counterpart. When a man chooses to stay at home, he is seen as a hero for sacrificing his career to care for his family. When a woman chooses to stay at home, she is seen as little more than a commodity – a wage-less maid for the family. Not to mention the intense pressure she gets for not choosing to work (and, if she chooses to pursue a career instead of staying home, she will be told again and again and again that she is being selfish for working and that she is a bad mother and that her children will grow up “all wrong” because she’s “abandoning” them – something a man never has to deal with).
#10 My sexual orientation will be called into question if I choose not to get married and have kids.
By some. By most, it will be seen as a perfectly legitimate choice. All of those who would question your sexual orientation would quickly disappear if you pursued any heterosexual relationships. A woman who chooses not to marry and have kids receives very constant pressure telling her that she is being “unnatural” and “wrong” and that she will always regret it.
#11 I am liable to be drafted in times of war.
Yes, because women are “weak” and “need to be protected.” Again, this is just another downside of sexism towards WOMEN that you are feeling.
#12 There are no “male-only” times at swimming pools.
Why would you need them? Women need them because we are taught to be ashamed of our bodies, to hide them from the world. We are harem-ized to the point that many women cannot feel comfortable in the company of men – especially if they are wearing something as skimpy as a bathing suit. Not to mention the fear of assault, the fear that if we go out in public (especially if dressed in nothing but a bathing suit), we will attract the “wrong kind of attention.” And, let’s not forget, that many women just want to be able to exercise without having to deal with being hit on – something many women find embarrassing or even frightening. So please, before you complain about not having something, think about why you would need it in the first place. “But Susie down the street has one!” wasn’t a good reason when you were a child and it isn’t a good reason now.
#13 I will struggle more in an education system in which girls excel.
An education system that was changed (in some places / recently) because its heavy bias towards boys was leaving girls in the dust. Most school districts are actively trying to find a classroom style that caters to all (or at least most) learning styles. But please, let’s not forget all the other hurdles girls face in the classroom. We are less likely to receive attention, even if we raise our hands just as much. We are tend to receive less praise when we perform well. We tend to receive less out-of-class help if we struggle. Teachers tend to spend less time answering our questions.
#14 I will not be allowed to fulfil my natural urge to play-fight in school, since the ruling school “matriarchy” deems it unacceptably violent.
I’m sure the kid you’re beating up deems it “unacceptably violent” too. In my High School, a child hung himself because of bullies. I want you to think long and hard about the fact that your statement defends the bully’s position.
#15 If I were gay, it would be more frowned upon than if I were a lesbian.
As a woman, I am constantly made into a sexual object. It is frequently expected of me to act like a lesbian to fulfill men’s desires. If I were a lesbian, my sexuality would not be respected. It would be seen as nothing more some sort of sorority peep show for male pleasure – my own sexuality, my own pleasure, will never be acknowledged. And if I commit the heinous crime of being a lesbian and not drop-dead gorgeous, I would get all the same “frowning” as you would as a man.
#16 I am more likely to end up in prison.
I am more likely to end up the victim of the crime that got you there.
#17 I am more likely to commit suicide in my 20s due to depression.
I am less likely to have my depression taken seriously. I am far more likely to be asked if I am “on the rag.”
#18 If I am raped or sexually harassed, it will not be taken seriously, period.
If I am raped or sexually harassed, my “character” will be placed on the stand just as much, if not more so, than my attacker. If I am deemed “slutty,” I have very little hope of getting justice. This is made even worse if I am a prostitute.
#19 If I am assaulted by my wife, it will not be taken seriously, period.
This simply isn’t true. Domestic abuse cases against women aren’t rare. They are lower than those towards men, but they aren’t rare.
#20 I can’t hug a non-relative without it being seen as a) gay or b) pervy.
I can’t be hugged by a male without having to worry about his attentions and wondering if I will be attacked when I go out to my car after. But besides that, this is an exaggeration. Most male friends I know are comfortable hugging friends, male and female. They are not seen as either gay or pervy and have certainly never experienced discrimination for it.
:D
I laughed and laughed. What a vivid analogy!
Great work, Grimalkin and Alchemist, I never would have had the energy to address each of his so-called points like that. Hopefully some little bit of it will get through.
Great points, Grimalkin. On this:
I wanted to add that even if we do accept the shorter male life expectancy as a matter of society, it is still attributable to sexism, as you mentioned re many of martin’s listed male problems. Stressors that may shorten life–not being able to express emotion, feeling pressure to work insane hours, pressure to prove masculinity through violence, etc. are a problem for men because of the “femininity bad, masculinity good–prove you are not feminine!” mentality.
While I’m on this OT subject, here are some more sources for sorting out that “what-is this-male-privilege-but-don’t-females-have-privilege-too” thing, in case anyone who is confused is still reading:
What is male privilege?
FAQ: female privilege
“Privilege” is a technical term, just as “nucleus reticularis tegmenti pontis” is a technical term. Best to learn what it means before discussing it.
Grimalkin writes,
Yeah, my mother (who is now 68), was not allowed to take math beyond algebra in high school. None of the girls were, because they would “distract the boys”. Instead, she took two extra years of sewing. I think all of the mental rotation/3D object manipulation involved in dressmaking is the reason that my mother’s IQ is ridiculously high (so high they re-tested her). Meanwhile, my dad is a very successful physicist who has to think twice to tell left from right (hint: you don’t need brilliant mental-rotation scores to be a good scientist).
I took all the math my high school offered and then some (ran out of AP calc and took a course at Berkeley my senior year). Still, when I got to college my advisor said at our first meeting, “What are you going to do with a degree in neuroscience–teach high school biology?”. At the end of the meeting he asked me if I was a ballet dancer, adding that I “looked like one”. It was our last appointment. Out of curiosity I asked one of my male classmates with the same advisor what he had been asked. “Where do you see yourself in five years? Ten? etc.”. Ah.
Funny stories aside, I think it’s the subtler, unconscious form of attitudes like my ex-advisor’s that provide a very real drag on women in the lab. Both male and female supervisors expect and accept different behaviors from men and women. So, I have been chided for being “aggressive” when I’ve taken initiative and succeeded, while a male colleague who’s taken initiative and screwed up was praised for “being a go-getter”. Who is the manager going to promote–the gung-ho, learn-on-the-job guy who everyone likes, or the woman, however competent, who is “aggressive”, and therefore makes people wary?
And you can’t really walk a fine line between doormat and bitch because one doesn’t exist. People (male and female) feel more comfortable imposing on women’s time to ask for favors, additional work, etc. If a woman complies, she’s swamped with extra work for which others take the credit, and can rightly be criticized for not drawing boundaries. If she does not comply, however, she can be seen as a poor team player, or worse.
So, when a scientist from another lab who was hanging around chatting with my colleagues told me that I “needed a spanking” after I asked him repeatedly to please stop interrupting my work to ask personal questions, I did make him leave. I had work to do, and I did not want to get a reputation as someone who giggles and laughs off comments like that–bad, pad precedent. Guess who was told she had a bad attitude? This is not a mere annoyance. Is the PI going to promote someone to lab manager, or recommend her strongly for a grad program or fellowship when there’s a vague feeling among everyone that she’s “difficult”? I dunno; I’ll let you know.
Alchemist:
I totally agree. Also, that student or prospective employee should ask about the culture of the lab. Even if the members don’t want to “squeal”, vibes can be telling. We should not be so grateful that we’ve been “allowed to play” that we take whatever’s offered at face value.
And finally this:
Wow. This is huge. It is my chronic illness that has slowed down my career more than anything else. Anyone who faces health issues with self or family is up against barriers at work. But these barriers are worse for women for two reasons: 1) women are expected to be the primary caregivers of children, elders, etc. If a man does these things, he may at least be lauded for the effort these days (though it would have killed my father’s career). 2) women are thought to be weak and to lack passion for the work anyway, so any appearance of weakness or request for (legal!) accommodation reinforces those low expectations, both for her and for other women too.
Here’s an article I like on the subject of illness and an academic career, for those out there who are trying to manage both:
Hidden disability and an academic career
This may be an anecdote but i hope that for some people it is a reassuring thought.
Out of the 30 or so students in my yr12 physics class 6 years ago, 18 were girls
This sort of ratio was repeated in every advanced sciencemaths class at the school (granted i don’t believe that the local private schools followed the ratio(at least not for the 6 months i spent there)
More girls from those classes have gone to uni than the boys in them and last time i looked more have completed their courses.
Then again the stigmata associated with being intelligent would probably drive quite a number of people away from the classes
These ratios were the complete opposite for my older sister going through yr12 2 years before me (went to the private school i mentioned above)
When my younger sister graduated yr 12 more than 2/3rds of the advanced sciencemaths classes were female.