Women and physics

This story and this man's behaviour towards women wanting a career in Physics has made me incredibly angry! How dare he. I cannot believe he can actively state his open misogyny and expect to continue unaffected. Just goes to show how institutionally sexist these sorts of places are, if he is totally comfortable to do this.

If the promotions were purely on academic ability there would be (in my experience) 2 fewer women in senior-ish academic positions

Really? You don’t think any of the men had a leg-up into their positions and got there on pure academic ability?

In my line of work I can think of plenty of mediocre men in positions of responsibility given a leg-up by having a wife have their babies and do the majority of the childcare.

The 'leg ups' need to way be earlier than senior academic appointments, and more focussed on addressing structural sexism. More schemes like the one in my area, the Dorothy Hodgkin fellowships which support young researchers (of either sex) who have caring responsibilities type thing.

I do begrudge the leg-up I’m afraid. If the promotions were purely on academic ability there would be (in my experience) 2 fewer women in senior-ish academic positions. If that were replicated across the board maybe, just maybe, some thought would be given to the structural inequalities that led to that imbalance. Instead, the quota has been filled and evidence is given to numbats like this bloke.

And the particular women I’m thinking of provide little inspiration to younger women coming into academia - though this is acecdata. It’s obvious when you hear one of them talk of their career that they succeeded because they have a big age difference with their life partner (retired) and are child-free by choice. How does that inspire the majority of 25 year old women that it is possible to forge an academic career.

Yes, sorry, I missed your postive discrimination comment in OP.

The men are better with things, women are better with people point is obviously just such a load of bollocks too. Even if it were possible to make such a broad generalisation (which it’s not) has he not noticed that modern science has moved on a bit from model of the gentleman working alone at his country estate until he’s ready to come at present his findings at the Royal Society to rapturous acclaim. Interpersonal and team working skills are vital nowadays - some papers coming out of CERN list hundreds if not thousands of authors.

But interviewee, think of all the less academically strong males who have gained positions because women are discriminated against. I expect that is far more of a problem.

Positions are never filled entirely and only based on merit. Men have such an overwhelming leg-up the majority of the time that we should not begrudge women the few boosts they may get to try to balance the scales.

Cern says "Cern is a culturally diverse organisation bringing together people from dozens of nationalities. It is a place where everyone is welcome, and all have the same opportunities, regardless of ethnicity, beliefs, gender or sexual orientation"
The answer is obvious: identify as a woman.
(Can we teach the physicists some biology, please)

I love his quote where he says "men prefer working with things and women prefer working with people". I wonder what his colleagues think of being referred to as 'things'.

My OH looked him up on his commute in. He is indeed a sexist pig. And on a she'd load of appointment panels.

This was just on Woman's Hour.

It’s tricky without having seen the talk but I can sort of see that there may be a good point buried in there....but I think the conclusions reached are wrong.

I’ve just completed a phd in physical chemistry, I was heavily involved in the Athena Swan committee at my university etc. What I see and experience in my discipline was that the actual structure of the post-phd academic career was indirectly discriminatory towards women. So the requirement to do a series of (preferably international) short term post-doc contracts, the pressure to keep a research output churning even through “maternity leave” etc etc tends to discriminate against women. Therefore there are many fewer women in academic careers.

However, instituations are offered ‘cookies’ (Athena Swan) to paper over the cracks and hire as many female academics as possible. So I’ve seen in my discipline, a couple of women who are aren’t as academically strong as their male colleagues but who have decided not to pursue family/marriage and/or who have non-stereotypically female set-ups get fellowships and chairs because their institutions are so desperate to appear non-biased.

It’s much easier for a university to appear ‘feminist’ and ‘non-gender biased’ by just hiring a less ‘good’ women than it is to address why the structure means that there are fewer good women even in the running.

I wonder why such a charmer was overlooked in a job interview.

Bump