I am not a scientist.
I used to be, but I’m not any more.
You see, it’s very hard to be a female scientist. It starts during
education – I was educated in the sheltered environment of an
all-girls’ school and believed the propaganda we were told – that
females were just as good intellectually as males, if not better, and
we were entitled to choose whatever career we wanted – even in
traditionally-male areas. We were told about “sexism” but because
we had never encountered it, we thought it was a thing of the past.
I then went to university, and had to
rapidly rethink my worldview. Chemistry tutorials with the
Ambisinistrous Professor (he wrote equally illegibly with both hands)
were a constant source of frustration as the professor would address
all his comments to the males in the group, and change the hand he
wrote with so as to screen his writing from the women. At first I
thought it was a coincidence, but then I experimented with moving my
seat (sometimes even mid-tutorial) and found that he would move as
well, to continue to block my view.
Fine. He was obviously one of these “sexists” I had heard about,
but he was obviously a relic from an older era, and his kind were on
the verge of extinction.
Wrong. In a recent study,
researchers sent CVs to employers, asking if the applicant would be
considered for employment and mentoring. The CVs were identical apart
from the genders. Far more of the female CVs were rejected than the
male CVs, but the employers would not admit (probably even to
themselves) that they had rejected the female for her gender; no,
they would explain that the female was a less-good candidate, see all
her flaws here! So not only are women being denied opportunities to
advance, but they are also being told that they are more crap than
their male equivalents! In order to get anywhere in science, a woman
would have to be better than the men, and not believe people
who tell her she is crap.
Another major,
major hurdle for
women trying to make a career out of science is the whole “uterus”
thing. I’ve ranted about this
before so I
won’t go into it in depth, but the upshot is that very few
employers are willing to hire someone on a three-year research
contract if there’s a chance that they will spend a year of that on
maternity leave. Personally, I think equal parental-leave rights
would be a great solution, where either parent can take the time off
to look after the baby. It might also help break the self-fulfilling
cycle of “women are lower paid because they take maternity leave
and aren’t as useful to a company” and “women are usually the
ones who take maternity leave because they are lower paid than their
partners”.
And now
the BBC have an article on the
fact that more women are needed in technology – together with a
lovely mockery of the “Pink it, shrink it” approach taken by some
(male) designers when trying to make a female-oriented product (is
anyone else remembering the
“Bic for her” fun?). The
LittleMiss Geek
certainly looks like a better campaign than the “Science: It’s a
girl thing” one, where people attempted to explain that girls can
do science too, because they can wear
pink
lab coats and investigate the chemistry of lipstick…
Anyway, I am not a scientist. I used to
be, but I’m not any more. I was a good scientist (I think), but not
an outstandingly brilliant one. I found it incredibly hard to
get a job. I don’t know whether this was because I just wasn’t
good enough, or because the entire system was inherently stacked
against me. All I know is that it would have been nice if the playing
field had been level enough for me to find out.
