Sir Tim Hunt - women should stay out of labs because they distract men

[MurielWoods]

and they cry too easily and make men fall in love with them

I shit you not

I fell in love with DW across a laboratory bench.

She got her undergraduate work published in one of the most highly regarded biochemistry journals in the world. Remarkably rare feat for an undergrad. I meanwhile was just very distracted.

Did either of you cry, More Beta?

Well, if he's crying about this, then according to his own views he is not qualified to be a scientist. Some people criticized something he did, and he cried about it. That's no different from what he says makes women unsuited to be scientists.

Did he actually say that crying makes someone unsuitable to be a scientist?

I may have cried at some point! But then if I'd wanted to be shouted at by some Serjeant Major I would have joined the army. I have known a lot of women cry at some point, if they are doing something they strongly believe in and disaster ooms. Crying is not a bad thing, it can be a way of relieving frustration - and is less destructive than losing one's temper. I wouldn't have blamed a friend of mine who one year of her 3 year project on biochemical markers in a bean crop, who discovered all her plants had died after a year.
If you care for something passionately enough then tears are nothing to be ashamed of.

Tim Hunt was never saying women shouldn't be scientists - look at what he said. He was arguing that maybe we should have single sex labs - which I don't agree with, but that isn't the same thing.

So if sexist twats are married to a woman, they are therefore not sexist twats? Is that the equivalent of "but I have LOADS of black friends..."?

I was really disgusted to see this all unfold, but I was even MORE disgusted by Boris' response to it. I honestly think that this has killed the last of my respect for him. It's like he basically couldn't wait to un-box his "I'm a sexist cunt" t-shirt.

The other ridiculous thing is if Tim Hunt is sooooo keen on single sex labs, what the fuck does he plan to do with gay people? Or do gay people simply not exist in science? Can gay men work in the "MANLY LABS" or are they also prone to crying, or would they be distracted by the other men and fall in love, or would THEY distract the other men due to their gayness?

Of course, there is already a huge HUGE deficit of women working in science professions, and these sort of attitudes are very much a reason.

mummy - what he was saying, is that when women work in labs with men, they are a distraction to the men and let their emotions get in the way of their work (crying, rather than accepting criticism).

You can find plays from over 2 thousand years ago which put forward the exact same views on women (distractions, too emotional), and it would be nice if someone in a position of considering authority/influence had evolved since then.

NotJusta - nope no crying and not even when I got very publicly told off in front of the whole lab for having the most radioactively contaminated pipette handle ever recorded.

Me and DW left biochemistry went to work in the City and came back to academic life as economists. Now both retired again. This issue goes across all academic life - not just STEM subjects.

The problem is that by and large men sit at the top of funding bodies, selection panels and university management. They have a powerful influence over the careers of people below them. Even slight prejudice can have a cumulative debilitating effect on a woman's career. Look at the statistics. Women just dont make it to the top in the same numbers as men in academic life.

It is the allocation of funding, the allocation of work load, inclusion on departmental committees and inclusion or exclusion of someone as co-author on a paper that makes all the difference to career progression. The lack of progression of women throughout all of academic life is because of the is death by a thousand cuts effects. Tiny bits of discrimination over a long career that mean you don't get the funding in this round but in the next round. You get allocated a heavier teaching load than a man that holds back your research. The taking of your work by a professor who publishes it under their name but not including you on the paper as co-author. The slightly harsher peer review of your work that means you dont get in the 4* journal. I strongly suspect that there is also a sort of 'you publish my paper and I will publish yours' collusion between top academics that women are naturally excluded from - especially as journal editors also are almost all men.

Its all cumulative throughout a career. Each event is too small to prove sexism and discrimination actually occurred but it holds back a young female academics career just enough to put her behind her male peers and then she has a baby and the dye is cast. No account is taken of that in your ability to publish. Your lack of publishing proves you are useless. You miss the REF and suddenly you are a whole grade behind your male peers. You come back from maternity leave and find you have been automatically allocated to 'lecturer track' with massive amounts of teaching while your male colleague has bought themselves out of teaching because they have funding and is now sitting on important committees with older male colleagues so gets noticed more.

I know a female professor in biochemistry and she is brilliant but took years to make it to professor and at least 10 years behind her male peers. No doubt at all it is because she is a woman.

Couldn't the university have had an internal disciplinary hearing, told him off, and let him get back to work? What happens if someone actually harasses or bullies someone? Do they get the same punishment? Surely there has to be some kind of disciplinary differential?

I don't think we should only focus on the top positions in this discussion. The vast majority of people who go into science, male or female, will never lead their own research group. I know people keep saying we need more students in science and this may well be true for physics and engineering but in the Life sciences it is difficult to find jobs at the moment. I'm in industry (have been in academia for years though) and we get hundreds of applicants when we advertise a job and there are always people who are way overqualified applying. People with PhDs applying for entrance level technician jobs which are barely paying above minimal wage.
I have seen many scientist leave science because the circumstances are so rubbish and this applies to both male and female scientists. It just gets even tougher if you try to fit a family in with having a career in science.

Igneococcus - problem is that on a £/hour of actual work those overqualified people in academic life really are earning not much more than minimum wage.

A job as a technician with regular hours and no pressure to publish or put in grant applications or deal with students emails in the evening and weekend is actually a better deal.

Sad but true. Its like qualified teachers becoming TAs in schools.

Tim Hunt was never saying women shouldn't be scientists - look at what he said. He was arguing that maybe we should have single sex labs - which I don't agree with, but that isn't the same thing.

It is almost, actually.

We can't have unisex work places or labs. It's highly discriminatory.
We can't have only female or only male science.

I could argue that I find it very distracting working with males because they are messy and untidy in the lab or have fits of anger. But while that is true of some, it's not of all. The same with the falling in love and the crying. (I'm more likely to get angry than to cry, for example)

Did he actually say that crying makes someone unsuitable to be a scientist?

He said that women couldn't take criticism, effectively. And if you can't take criticism, you can't be a scientist.

I know this MoreBeta I have been in science for a long time. I have a very good understanding of what sort of commitment and sacrifices it takes to succeed in science. At least in an academic position you have some control over the research you do even if you are paid badly for it.
The problem is what you do when you are one of the many people who don't get an academic position, after University, MSc (not a requirement in GB, I know), PhD, several postdocs, after spending years of your life working 7 days a week (and I know many who have done that and I know labs where you couldn't go home until your supervisor had left) you suddenly have very few options. Universities have for many years churned out PhDs because they are a cheapish way of funding research with very little thought if there are jobs for all those students. There are of course jobs in industry as well but several companies in the UK have closed down or downsized research facilites as well over the last few years.

I said it on another thread and got flamed but really I don't think that academic life is worth pursuing if you are a woman.

The way universites are treating their academic staff and especially female academic staff shows they have no respect and you have no value to them at all beyond the crude measure of how many fee paying students they can cram in front of you in a lecture theatre.

Unless you are well connected and I really do mean personally well connected to senior academics on funding bodies you have no chance. As a woman your chances of being well connected to senior male professors who hand out funding and decide who gets in journals are minimal. There is a select group of increasingly highly paid male tenured professors who are well connected and then the rest of the academic staff who are treated as mere employees. You have no chance.

Promotions and pay are increasingly allocated in behind the scenes meetings. The published pay and grade structure is being broken up and is impossible to tell what people are being paid. Special side deals, agreements for reduced teaching hours, special deals that allow people to hold two posts or extra pay for admin roles. Its an environment in which discrimination against women is on the increase. Funding cuts are disproportionately loaded on to female staff.

It really is that bad. They can always get a PhD or post doc or increasingly desperate immigrant academic from Greece, Spain, Italy or emerging market economy if you complain.

Commercial life is not a bed or roses but I have worked in both and academic life really has been degraded to the point I truly believe it is not worth pursuing an academic career now.

It turns out that he may be wrong about crying

And actually in my experience "women who cried" were actually better at taking criticism than "some men who didn't". The most frustrating people I've worked with are those who you point out something is wrong, say "Yes yes" and then continue doing the same wrong thing.

But I do think Academia is becoming too "macho" with people working ridiculous hours, under enormous pressures, with crippling targets.

I don't think it's a good thing to be doing whether you are male or female, and my colleagues who "sold out" to the city at least get good rewards for their efforts. But I also don't think Medicine is a good career nowadays...

He said that women couldn't take criticism, effectively. And if you can't take criticism, you can't be a scientist.

He's being criticized right now. That's what all this is about- he said something, and some people criticized it. If he thinks the ability to take criticism is an important part of being a scientist, then by his own standards how he is taking this is a reflection on how qualified he is to be a scientist. If he's going to claim that this is "different" somehow, he should qualify his statements about taking criticism.

Essentially what he was saying was this:

Science Labs are a male dominated space, although women are 'permitted' to be there also. The problem with this however is that women are often quite attractive and have breasts and vaginas and legs which are proving to be an enormous distraction to the men and preventing them from doing their important work.

There is also the added risk that if you criticise a woman or publish her work in your own name taking all the credit for yourself then she may feel a bit emotional.

When I first heard his comments I thought 'what an out of touch old dinosaur' but further reading including the comments on here and online have made it clear that his attitude is far from the exception.

It's truly fucking depressing to be honest

He's been bounced out of his position at UCL without being given a chance to give his side of the story.

If the issue was serious (stealing or faking his results, say, or criminal) due process would have operated. As it is, UCL looks worse than him.

I don't agree with you Ethylred - in his position, he has the power to affect the futures of many female scientists and UCL have made it clear that his attitude to them is unacceptable. Which, IMO, is a good thing.

'His side of the story' was pretty clear from his public statements. He doesn't claim to have been misquoted, he had a chance to clarify and blew it. Actually, I really wish he had been given due process, rather than summary dismissal. Maybe the people (I'm guessing largely men at the top of any scientific institution) who'd have had to deal with him would have found their own positions uncomfortably compromised?

I agree Erol

He said afterwards that although he was sorry for causing any offence, he meant what he said.

The question is, where do we go from here? This has highlighted the gross level of sexism in STEM subjects, what now?

If he thinks the ability to take criticism is an important part of being a scientist, then by his own standards how he is taking this is a reflection on how qualified he is to be a scientist. If he's going to claim that this is "different" somehow, he should qualify his statements about taking criticism.

quite

Not that scientists like to be criticised, and most do hate to be shown wrong. But... that is not a woman's trait. It's a human trait, and if anything, men tend to hate it more than women.

Concur with MoreBeta sad but true.
Then throw into that the attacks from the anti vivisectionists. Real attacks.
Should you have/want children do you risk them?
Interesting to see that the Hunt/Collins have none.