I think it must be the slow accumulation of "I can't believe what I'm hearing."
I recently attended a conference where I had this same feeling. Three people were having a conversation (two female faculty and 1 male), but a second male faculty came up and joined the conversation. As soon as he joined the conversation, both males turned their bodies away from the two female scientists and proceeded to ignore the women. They made no eye contact. In fact, the conversation itself was subtly nuanced with language that was sexist. One might brush it off as just shooting the shit at a conference, but if you listened to how and what was being said, it became imminently clear that their words devalued the presence and contribution of the women standing near them. The surprising (or maybe not so surprising) part of this was that these two men were young faculty - probably in their 30s.
So yesterday, when I got back home, I sank into the couch, poured myself a glass of wine and came to the realization I just needed to accept it. It's not like I didn't intellectually understand this, but I don't think I emotionally understood the consequences to my long-term career. I guess naively, I still believed at some level things would change by the time I got there.
Intrinsic biases just aren't going away. They just aren't. And frankly they just aren't going to change fast enough to make a difference in my lifetime, my daughter's lifetime and perhaps even my granddaughter's lifetime.
I am, needless to say, quite depressed about this.
8 comments:
you dont think this happens in canadian society too? I wouldnt get too depressed about it. There could be prior relationships there
@Dave
Oh I'm well aware it occurs up there too. I just read this. Doesn't make it any less disheartening.
Don't give up! There's more people out there that want change than you think. Ecology at Colorado State seems to be moving away from the traditional sexist tradition. The environment is pretty non-hierarchical and a number of our top/most respected scientists are women. Of course I'm a guy that is leaving to start a farm after I get my masters... Academia has a lot of inertia and it may take a long time for most places to get moving in the right direction.
@Eric B That's good news. Colorado sounds great. Hmmm, are they looking for any Assistant Profs?
@Eric B.
sorry to hijack this thread, but i have some questions about csu. If you dont mind answering some quick q's, could you fire me an email?
Regardless of career hierarchy or age all the sexist scientists I know are male.
@gillt While blatant sexism is a concern, I think the reason that those two female faculty were dismissed by the male faculty has to do with intrinsic bias. What makes me so depressed is that both women and men make these judgements unconsciously. And it ain't going away.
Ugh. I've witnessed this as well. I always want to hope I am witnessing the exception, but when I read things like this it's hard to stay positive. On the plus side, the department head at my grad institution was a super old white dude, who upon starting my department, hired a majority of women faculty and until his retirement continued to be very supportive of women scientists.
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