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Women in Physics : why do people do nothing?
I am going to oversimply and say that the answer falls into one of three categories. (1) Because they believe it’s not a worthy cause. I’m still naive enough to think that there are few people in this category, but there certainly are people who think that women “aren’t as good at Physics,” and thus any efforts to do anything are negative efforts. (2) Because they’re clueless. I think this applies to the vast majority of men. They don’t recognize the climate problems, and they think that they’re doing anything that can be done. (3) Because it hurts. Or, knowing that it will hurt, because of fear. This may apply to many of the women who don’t do more, and it probably applies to some men too.
I want to talk about (3) a little bit more, because I’m hurting at the moment…. And what does somebody with chronic blogorehhea do when something’s bugging him? Blather on a blog.
We have an issue in our department right now which has (tangentially) brought up the issue of the climate for women in physics. We have a serious problem with the climate for women students and post-docs (at least). I don’t really know if it’s worse here than physics departments elsewhere; I know the climate is globally bad everywhere, and maybe it’s worse on average, or maybe it’s better on average. But I do know it’s bad here, and unless we think about it, it will stay bad.
In a short presentation to the department today, I included a slide with this statement on it:
The biggest problem among the faculty is that we all allow things to slide. None of us speak out when we see and hear things that we should be questioning. We are all, constantly, guilty of this; I can name a few instances for myself, and doubtless have forgotten many more.
In retrospect, using the absolute term “none of us” was probably a mistake, but certainly it’s rare when people speak out. This statement was close to a direct quote from a female graduate student I’ve talked to; I asked her what she thought the biggest climate problem was, and it was this: the fact that behaviors are accepted, not questioned, evidently by all.
Well, unsurprisingly, this statement garnered hostility from some of those present. “I always speak up!” one says. “Speak for yourself!” I was told. Yeah, “none of us” was a mistake, but it’s a closer approximation to reality than saying that as a rule people speak up. I put the last clause (indicting myself) up to indicate that this isn’t me telling everybody else to behave, but in an attempt to indicate that this is a systemic problem and that I don’t view myself as exempt. But, as is often the case, people sat there and thought, “other people are doing bad things, but not me,” or even, “Rob is trying to spread his guilt on the rest of us.”
The point is that most of us don’t realize how much we’re part of the problem by letting things slide. And the fact that when told about it, we bristle and think, “hey, I’m good, I do everything right, it’s other people,” is indeed part of being part of the problem.
After I had argued that there is a climate problem for women in our department — and after that argument had been agreed with by at least one of the (two) women present — another faculty member said that I was very wrong. He said that in his observation, we’re a very caring and thoughtful department when dealing with women and minorities. Sure, he said, nobody’s perfect, and things can be made better, but it’s a misrepresentation of me to say that there is such a problem.
CLUE
LESS
This individual left right after saying that, so I didn’t get the opportunity to ask him how often he talks to female graduate students and post-docs about the climate for women in the department. The one on our faculty who does talk to female students the most is the director of the Graduate Program Committee– a woman– and she said, yeah, the female students are all saying that there is a very general problem, so broad-based that they want to address it that way rather than by bringing specific complaints about the worst offender(s).
Many of the former chairs and directors of the graduate program committee spoke up and said that they hadn’t heard anything about one individual under discussion, or about the general level of the problem. Unspoken but obviously implied is that, hey, Rob is bitching at nothing, and blowing what may be a small issue all out of proportion. Of course, the fact is that female graduate students and post-docs are afraid enough to come forward to a female faculty member;they simply aren’t going to come forward to a male faculty member, because that’s just too scary! I know it sounds similar to some specious arguments for Intelligent Design, but the fact that none of these guys have heard about the problems is just more of the problem! Indeed, I suspect I wouldn’t be nearly as aware of the problem as I am right now if it weren’t for one student who (a) is very bold and doesn’t hesitate to call foul when she sees it, (b) is one a lot of other students talk to, and (c) has been a TA for me many times, so that I talk to her quite a bit.
Anyway, here I am, untenured assistant professor, making a big deal about this because I didn’t think anybody else was going to– certainly none of the men were going to! But I knew that it had (for reasons of what’s going on) suddenly become particularly urgent that a big deal be made. Everybody there is more senior than me. It’s REALLY STUPID for an assistant professor to do something like that, but, damn, if I hadn’t done this, it’s entirely possible that the whole thing would have been addressed in a perfunctory way (complete with chuckles at repeated dirty jokes told by a professor in class as examples of what goes on), so that we could say “we addressed it,” and move on without really doing anything.
At the end of my little presentation, I was shaking. I was nervous. Hearing a lot of hostile feedback, I wanted more than anything else to get out of there.
It has also seriously re-energized my desire to find a job somewhere else…. After sticking my neck out like that and seeing the looks I got back– the more hostile responses coming, of course, from the more senior and more powerful professors– I want to be somewhere else, anywhere else. I’m afraid of this place, not only personally, but because of the hostility engenered by the suggestion that we have a problem and should do something about it.
I feel worn down. I’m still shaking a little, an hour after the end of the meeting. I want to hide my head and not have to interact with everybody. I’m afraid to look anybody else in my department in the eye. I want to cry.
And, even with my experience today, I’m sure I still can’t fully understand the magnitude of what it feels like to be a woman in Physics who tries to address these problems. I understand enough to know that were I a woman, but with only the level of courage I have as my current self, I would not go in day after day and try to be a physicist. I’d have fled long ago.
Everybody should have to try this sometimes.
(And, by the way, please do not post comments like “good job” or such; I’m not posting this blog entry as a way of fishing for affirmation from people who share a concern about this issue, or as a way of trying to show off how much I’m doing. I’m posting this mainly as a way of blog-venting, but also as a way of, hopefully, pointing out how entrenched the “not a problem” view (often unconsciously) is, and of pointing out to men in Physics in general that it is, indeed, painful to address.)
October 23rd, 2006 at 4:53 pm
Thanks very much for standing up for us. Hopefully your efforts will do some good. We’ll keep trying on our side of things as well.
October 23rd, 2006 at 5:42 pm
[…] Rob Knop has an excellent post up about a presentation he just gave to his department at Vanderbilt (where I’ll be visiting Thursday). He was emphasizing that the department — much like the vast majority of physics departments — doesn’t always present a hospitable environment to female students and postdocs. We have an issue in our department right now which has (tangentially) brought up the issue of the climate for women in physics. We have a serious problem with the climate for women students and post-docs (at least). I don’t really know if it’s worse here than physics departments elsewhere; I know the climate is globally bad everywhere, and maybe it’s worse on average, or maybe it’s better on average. But I do know it’s bad here, and unless we think about it, it will stay bad. […]
October 23rd, 2006 at 6:42 pm
What exactly are the negative aspects of the environment for women in the department? I know I’m clueless on this issue and would like to understand it better.
October 23rd, 2006 at 7:11 pm
Hi, I’m here via your comments on the related topic at Cosmic Variance.
The looks you got are powerful, as you have experienced for yourself. It’s a form of denial for people to behave that way then claim the climate is friendly to anyone. Because the truth is, the physics climate isn’t friendly to women or men. Men may find more acceptance because they are male, but they are often treated poorly in one-on-one situations, and nothing makes this kind of behavior acceptable from anyone to anyone.
And it isn’t just physics, though perhaps it is most extreme there, for some reason. See Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management for an interesting discussion of these problems in industry.
October 23rd, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Michael — I don’t know if I can summarize it well, but I can give some examples.
* Sexist/off-color jokes made in class. Especially in a class that is mostly male, with just a few women, this can be very uncomfortable for the women.
* Direct verbal sexual harassment. Talking about female body parts, making off color jokes with male students with women nearby; there are faculty and research faculty in my department who’ve done all of this.
* Excessive attention as potential romantic/whatever partners, rather than as thinking scientists. This can be a trickly line to walk, ’cause people often do legitimately meet spouses in their line of work, but there have been many cases here were the line has been unambiguously crossed.
* Differential treatment of women and men: Women who don’t receive their grades for months and months after they’ve completed the course work, when men are never treated the same way; women being assumed in class by the professors not to be able to do things as well as the male students; holding up women who are asking for help.
* Assertions about women being in general less able to do physics, when anybody honest and thoughtful will realize that the systematic cultural effects will completely wipe out any “intrnisic ability” signal that might be there. Faculty have made these assertions, even when female students are present.
* Among the students : students working together defer to male students, never to female students. Female students (and I’ve heard this from several) who are afraid to speak out even when they think they’re right, because of a male student (who’s wrong) speaking with great confidence. Male students working on problems, and only asking other male students for help, systematically ignoring the women (whether they know it or not).
That’s some of it.
October 24th, 2006 at 7:38 am
Wow, Dr. Knop. You make me feel thankful I left when I did! Did things take a turn for the worse!?
As a former female grad student in physics at Vandy, I feel I must comment on this post. After doing some thinking, I don’t feel I was unfairly treated. Call me naive, but any slack I received throughout my time at Vandy I took as a reflection of my ability to do physics, not of my gender. I don’t recall any professor telling me I couldn’t do physics because I was a girl!? I wasn’t the smartest person in all my classes (by a longshot), but it never occured to me to think of myself as “female” and therefore not as good as the guys…and I don’t remember anyone else making me feel that way? In fact, I distinctly recall being halfway through the semester before I even realized I was the only female in a class of yours that was 16 large! This goes to show you that “being female” was not even on my mind, and no one was pointing it out to me.
Now I’m not saying my experience at Vandy will match all female student’s experience…we are all different and have very distinct sensitivities in our own rights. Something that is not even remotely offensive to me will send someone else right off the deep end.
I also think I have the ability to find humor in the off-color remarks…no matter who makes them. Does that mean I’m attributing to the opressiveness of women in physics…eh? Maybe it just means I have the ability to laugh at myself and I don’t take it too seriously?
Bottom line, there probably is an issue here. Did I feel the brunt of it? No. Do I feel compelled to “fight the good fight” for women physicists everywhere? No. I don’t think our gender should even be a cause for concern. But playing a bit of devil’s advocate, some women will use their gender as a crutch for being repressed when things don’t go their way. “That teacher hates me because I am a woman. I know so because one time, 2 years ago, I overheard him telling a joke about women drivers.” When in reality, the girl didn’t do her best, and the professor has told 100 jokes about dumb men for every 1 he’s told about a woman. I find this offensive and sad when women feel the need to make their gender an issue when it shouldn’t be.
Dr. Knop, you may know something I don’t…maybe I was repressed/degraded and just didn’t see it? Maybe you heard professors talking about me in a way you didn’t see fit? I just didn’t feel it.
Now, I have strapped on my helmet and donned body armor in preparation for the backlash I am about to recieve.
October 24th, 2006 at 8:29 am
Tangentially, I don’t think this issue is just “women in physics”, though I believe (agree with you?) that it affects women in the sciences (hard and soft) much more than women in other ‘fields’ (I’ve got a rant building on the definition of some things in academia and after there, anyway). But your examples reminded me of some of my experiences in college as an undergrad, in the flippin’ English department, where I suspect such women are supposed to go — and yet, I remember that in my Senior Seminar, which was taught by a man, one of the two men in the department who were slated to teach it at all, and where over half the class of about ten was women, not only was there the usual sucking up to the professor and ganging up on the outre students, but there were off-colour jokes, and the professor clearly favoured several of the male students over the women, to the extend, imho, of passing or ignoring some blatantly shoddy writing. Whereas he (all the hes, in fact) would come down like a sack of bricks on similar things in a woman’s writing — often things that were pretty female-centred, language, theme, and mood-wise.
I’m boring, never mind. This is not relevant.
October 24th, 2006 at 9:37 am
Rene — I don’t know of any cases where you specifically were targeted because of your gender, so no revelations here. And, if you didn’t feel any pressure because of gender, that’s fine. I think there are some women here now who don’t think there’s a big problem. And, among those who do, there are different levels of how egregious they think it is. However, there are more who do than who don’t, and it’s pretty clear that a problem exists.
I wasn’t aware of any gender problems at all several years ago. I don’t know if they have just gotten worse in time, or if I’ve just become more aware. I know that I’ve become more aware, for various reasons. But I can’t really judge how different things are now from how they were a few years ago, because of knowing that I was less aware a few years ago.
Re: humor and off-color jokes, some are offended, others aren’t. However, if you are going to be telling potentially offensive jokes, you’d better make sure that the people you’re telling them to are people who are on the same page as you. It’s a fact that many women find repeated sexist jokes as degrading, especially given a context where they already feel like there’s a bad climate for women. As such, that is the sort of thing that should be approached with caution in classroom and professional situations.
-Rob
October 24th, 2006 at 9:39 am
I suspect you’ve just fucked your chances at tenure anywhere. Oh, and prepare to be told you’re only aping your convictions, playing politically correct to score points with the ladies, and so on. If you haven’t already heard that, you will. You’ve rocked the boat, and those who are comfy in it won’t forgive you.
But you don’t have to avoid your own eyes in the mirror. So there’s that. (It was well done.)
October 24th, 2006 at 11:21 am
Gender isn’t the only reason for discrimination. Sometimes it is race. Yes, even in the US. I came here confident that I would never face the racism that I had had to in academia in my home country.
The first two years in grad school convinced me otherwise. So much so that I am sure it doesn’t make any difference where the heck I am - I know I will always face this problem.
I don’t know what the solution is.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:47 am
Savyasachi — yeah, that happens too, and also is probably not recognized as widely by the white guys as it should be, for many of the same reasons.
One thing you can be sure of, both re: women and racial minorities : things are a lot better now than they were (say) 50 years ago. That doesn’t mean that they’re acceptable, but it does suggest that time will help.
Of course, time isn’t doing things fast enough. There is no simple “sound byte” solution.
Are you in Physics? There are committess in both physics and astronomy on the status of minorities; I know that Astronomy has a CSMA, as the chair of it has his office right next to mine…. Looking at the resources of those outfits may give you some ideas. For instance, I’ve heard anecdotally that the meetings of the Society of Black Physicists can be helpful– because people talk to each other about just science without there being any spoken or unspoken racial issues.
-Rob