Dr. Medusa

It’s that time of year again: the time when our ambivalence about Black History Month comes into full view. Yes, we agree that black Americans need more of their histories to be told. But we worry that this special month gives Americans another excuse to ignore black people for the rest of the year. And why is it the shortest month of the year?

But what better way to celebrate the month that to look at some encouraging data on science PhDs received by minorities in the US. A recent article at Science Careers summarizes information from the recent Science and Engineering Indicators report by the National Science Board.

The bit that jumped out at us is this: among the 16,000 science PhDs awarded to American citizens in 2005, 3,300 were awarded to minority scientists. This number more than doubled in 20 years since 1985. This means that minorities received 20.6% of American citizen science PhDs in 2005!

That’s some good news, and we’re glad to hear it. Let’s hope we can find numbers like this to celebrate during every month of the year.

We’ve been interested to read the discussion about women and science blogging that started after The Scientist asked readers to suggest their favorite life science blogs last September - and none of the blogs reviewed were written by women. Last week, Ivan Oransky followed up on this in a blog post at The Scientist. He writes that several women bloggers were contacted for the article, but none responded.

Oranksy then writes about the gender gap in science blogging. He refers to Karen Venti’s survey of the blogs at scienceblogs.com. She found that of those bloggers who listed their gender, 22% are women. According to Oransky, the percentage of women on The Scientist’s advisory board is similar. Oransky goes on to highlight some blogs by women that he particularly likes.

We think it’s nice to see The Scientist directly address this issue. But we found most interesting the comment by Patricia Campbell of Fairer Science:

I really liked your post but wanted to remind you that when a group hasn’t been at the table, sometimes it takes more than an invitation to get them there.

Isn’t this an important point? It’s time to move beyond just saying, “Oh, we tried to get women but it didn’t work.”

This is a story about Subfield A, Subfield B, and the differences between them. It’s a story about how slightly different subfields of science can have surprisingly different work climates. The background is this: we here at Dr. Medusa have scientific roots in two subfields that are quite different for women.

Subfield A is my main research area. It is mostly considered friendly and characterized by professional behavior. It is also relatively high in women - at least compared to the rest of my primarily male field of science. My colleagues in subfield A definitely fit this mold. They are great to work with, and have never done anything I would consider unprofessional.

Subfield B is my secondary area, the one my work is loosely connected to. This subfield is larger and much more male than subfield A. It also seems much more sexist.

At my university, Subfield B is well represented; many of my professor colleagues are in subfield B. All of them are men. Since I’m about to describe some of their behavior which I consider sexist, I should emphasize that these colleagues are friendly and welcoming to me personally. In my opinion, they support me personally and professionally: they give me good advice, include me in conversations, and fill me in on department politics. They vocally support having more women in the department. One of them recently brought in an editorial that discussed the sexism in news coverage of Hillary Clinton’s presidential run. I like my subfield B colleagues. They’re good guys.

So what’s the problem? Some small things. First I noticed that my subfield B colleagues like to tease each other with classic sexist humor: they refer to each other as “girls”, or accuse each other of liking to dress up in “ladies’ clothes”. Pretty typical straight male humor, you could argue. More recently I found out that there is a longstanding tradition of my subfield B colleagues emailing dirty jokes to each other. (Naturally, I haven’t been included in this fun tradition…although when this came up in conversation, one of them said that he would add me to the email list if I wanted that. I declined.)

Honestly, I don’t know how to think about this. On the one hand, I think that my subfield B colleagues are supportive and cool, and I appreciate that. I’ve worked in openly hostile environments - this is very different. And it doesn’t bother me so much that they trade dirty jokes with each other. So maybe it doesn’t matter, if it doesn’t bother me.

On the other hand, do I really have to count my blessings because they aren’t actively hostile to me? What about the effect this has on the work environment in general? Not only are all my subfield B colleagues male, their postdocs and graduate students are almost exclusively male. Even by the male-dominated standards of my scientific field, the representation of women in subfield B in my department is quite bad. My colleagues don’t seem to realize that their dirty-joke email ring contributes to a climate that is not great for women.

So far, I haven’t discussed this with anyone in my department. It’s not a fight I want to take on right now. But it’s in the back of my mind.

scientiae-carnival

So, we haven’t posted in over a month. That transition between the end of last semester and the start of this one has been hellish. So sorry.