Women and physics

There’s a good leader in the latest New Scientist which I’ve only just looked at. Hopefully this link works

www.newscientist.com/article/2181377-it-has-been-a-goodbad-week-for-women-in-physics/

Tenure per se doesn’t exist in the UK but it is still widely used as a term for a permanent post, so I see why it’s used.

I agree with interviewee that the discrimination is structural and occurs from earlier. I left academia for both push and pull reasons. The pull was more money and a post in a country I wanted to live in at the time, plus a permanent (as permanent as any job is, but not fixed short term) contract.
The push was the lack of permanence in academia - it’s not compatible with family life to be moving every two or three years for a new job plus having very little security at the end of it. Of course people do move and have families but the insecurity of academia is definitely a factor. It’s also v hard to take maternity leave and many labs actively don’t recruit women of childbearing age - in a three year postdoc, a year of May leave is a big deal - it could mean the research gets scooped.

So men don’t see it - they think that because they’re nice to women and not actively slapping arses mad men style there’s no sexism. When you point out that it’s structural they don’t get it.

This thread is amazing. It’s aboit work in general but most of it applies to academe as well.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3082251-Men-whose-lives-are-facilitated-by-women-how-did-this-happen

This and the follow on should be archived somewhere - it’s a depressing but incisive read.

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Whilst they make all the right noises about women in science at an institutional level, the reality is that through the ranks, there are plenty of men who hold such opinions. As I found out when I got pregnant.

Yep, am UK. You’re right, “tenure” as such doesn’t exist here but it’s often used as a short hand in my specialism at least, to refer to “first non-short term contract” post esp junior lectureship etc even here. Creeping Americanisation of language I guess.

Hurray! Women can do chemistry too!

www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06753-y

I see a woman is one of the three winners of the Nobel Prize for physics this year. Which is nice:

www.theguardian.com/science/live/2018/oct/02/nobel-prize-in-physics-2018-live

Are you in the UK interviewee 1001? Most of your rather awful experience sounds more like the US system than the UK, no tenured positions here and other differences.

Sorry - forgot to say that the cern scientist is speaking over the phone on VD.
I have a baby on my lap distracting me!
Would be worth a watch on catch up.

He is also telling her to 'don't worry, don't worry.' It is disgusting the way he is talking down to her.

This is on Victoria Derbyshire now. It is very upsetting how the woman on there has been trolled over this and is frightened that her career will be impacted by this in the future.

Oh God i read the title as psychics, as in fortune tellers.

Sorry - carry on.....

There's also the problem of being the only girl or woman on anything residential. BTDT as a physics-loving schoolgirl, an industry undergrad scholar, a grad student... If you get invited along with the blokes in the evening, you have to do the tedious self-checking for 'wrong signals' all bloody night. If you don't, you can go and sit glumly in your room and miss the discussions that might actually be relevant to the course, presentation, project, whatever, the next day.

Did anyone else see the BBC news section on this? Can't find a clip, but the footage they used to illustrate the "women can do physics too" was a few seconds of a girl in school using a pink calculator with perfectly manicured fingernails.

I went on a "women in physics" residential course as a teenager which was brilliant. I had no such opportunities at any point during degree, PhD or postdoc - I then gave up on being a physicist.

There are massive structural inequalities right from the start. Mentoring plays a huge role in getting people started, and each person tends to choose a mentee who reminds them of their younger self, and so bias and inequality are perpetuated.

Covered in the Times today

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cern-physicist-angers-women-with-gender-comments-m3d6r5t8k?shareToken=9243d529f1ccbe05bb1bde6a0e65d62a

The slides are here.

Ok, you said let it all out...my research area’s pretty niche, even within physical chem. There’s an annual international symposium, always held somewhere warm, that the ‘big names’ in the field all attend and up and coming PIs are invited together with phd students and junior post docs. Some good science gets done yada yada, but come the evenings it’s like the bloody Presidents club. If you looked at pictures of the invited attendees you’d get a completely skewed idea of the average beauty of junior physical chemists... because a couple of the really big names are complete arseholes who are known in the community to just use the annual symposium to select their next shag. If you’re ‘lucky’ enough to be selected and you manage to be ‘cool-girl’ enough about it, your next post-doc and probably future career is sorted. If you’re a PI (or more accurately, pimp) and your student is selected etc etc your next collaboration (and future career etc etc) is sorted.

Massive complaints were made a few years ago to the symposium’s funding body (a charitable foundation). Their solution? They no longer fund alcohol at evening events....the symposium continues.

And I haven’t even started on the rants about aggressive ‘willy-waving’ (inc literally) behaviour I’ve seen at academic conferences... which is laughed along with, encouraged, participated in (apart from the literal willy waving) by many senior women because you succeed by being one of the boys.

Jeez. This is cathartic 😀

The problem is much much earlier than the tenured positions I’m talking about.

So having finished a phd, the next stage (usually) in my field is at least 2 post-docs in 2 different (preferably international) labs. Post-docs are short fixed term contracts. Then you can start applying for permanent lectureships (tenure) probably in your late 20s, early 30s. Then there’s a huge push for research and publications literally continuously till professorship in late 30s, early 40s. Maternity leave in my area of research is very much not a thing at all. One can probably get away with a term away from lecturing but research output must be maintained.

It’s the structure of the short-term, no fixed abode post-docs followed by horrific pressure on those in junior lectureship posts that is unappealing to many young women (and me!) and it’s that early career structure that needs to be addressed.

Giving leg ups at tenure stage to women who aren’t as academically able is just obscuring the problem that the system has lost huge numbers of very academically able people (men and women) years earlier.

When I was still in academia (years ago) I came across a study that showed very convincingly that women need to have one top-tier AND two second tier publications more than men, to be perceived as equally capable/hire-able.

Unfortunately I don't have access to that stuff anymore and can't find it easily.

Meanwhile, IFLS sums up that women do not need a leg up, they just need to stop having their legs all tied up.