Feminist Pub IX. Newbies and regulars welcome - pop your cognitive dissonance down outside and have a gin.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Right, thought I'd better start a new pub. I warn you, my knowledge of Roman numerals conks out shortly after this one, so either buffy will have to start the next thread, or we'll have to go Arabic.

Everyone is welcome in - if you want to chat, or just jump in with a question/link/gin, please do. Especially if it's too small for a thread or you don't feel up to thread-starting.

The old thread has, at my count, about 9 posts to go, and it was here: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/2126791-Feminist-Pub-VIII-not-as-prolific-as-the-Swaggerers-but-there-are-cushions-and-consciousness?

We were just chatting about feministy light reading, and will doubtless meander onto other topics shortly.

If we aren't culturally Christian, why do our schools have Christian assemblies?

...and why do I know random hymns despite being an unchristened heathen ?

Yes, and what are all those funny-shaped buildings with spires all over the place?

annie - I'll have you know I'm turning thirty in two months. I'll be old like you fuckers.

Pfffft, you'll still be a young whippersnapper!

annie you've now tarred me (28yo) as an idealist young 20-something

i'll have you know i'm as jaded and pessimistic as anyone else

I apologize sincerely.

You're just old.

for the scientists

(and anyone else who's interested obviously)

buffy we did the same at the beginning of this year and it was so worth it!

Very interesting, Petula. I'm not the least bit surprised. But also disappointed that biology has been discounted as "science". Perhaps because far more women are in that particular field than other sciences?

i think it's because they used arXiv for their research which is predominantly physics and maths, so it's simply that that's not a location where biology papers are likely to be found

that said, it is a criticism of the study itself. it would be interesting to see what the results were if you used pubmed instead for example

i had a fascinating conversation with a mathematics journal editor not that long ago. apparently their papers can easily take three years from submission to acceptance due to the sheer amount of time it takes to peer review, revise, second peer review etc

(hopefully lordcopper might be able to confirm/deny!)

Indeed, Petula, why not use the databases for a range of scientific fields.

LOL Buffy. Purity isn't all it's cracked up to be anyway!

annie i've tried to similar in a very basic way using scopus (i wanted to do a citation-based analysis), but it would take more free time than i have to arrange and it's not really within the scope of my job, it would just be personal interest. you have to look at each individual author and decide whether their name is male or female, which takes even longer if they aren't first names that you recognise easily as male/female, and many are just listed using initials so you have to do a lot of manual searching

This is why I rather like my RL name. You'd be hard-pressed to guess my gender or ethnicity from it. Har har! I went to collect the posters for myself and a female colleague. Let's call her Kate and me Radu. When I asked for the posters for Kate and Radu, she assumed I was Kate. Few people expect me to be a small British blonde woman from my name. So my cunning plan for being, erm, indeterminate on paper appears to be working.

Sorry if that makes like more difficult for people like Petula and the person who did the study in that link.

I have to ask this question - but I don't mean to be rude or anything, it's just I found the whole sentence very intriguing: Annie, if you and DH are both aetheists, why did you have to convert from Christianity to Judaism?

Also, did anyone else read Lucy Mangan's column in The Guardian magazine on Saturday? About the Terf debate. I know her column is meant to be funny and light-hearted, but it rather depressingly missed the whole point and about six minor points too, while she was at it.

There was a great response to that column by Glosswatch: glosswatch.com/2014/08/09/on-feminists-who-fight-like-girls/

I thought it was awful, I was really surprised. I think Lucy Mangan is generally great, but that was completely 'I'm ok, so why isn't everyone else ok,' wasn't it?

i didn't read the original article rosabud until after i'd seen glosswatch's comment on the article