Way to combat the idea that the hard sciences are full of unrepentant misogynists, lads.
Dropping in the essay, Sexism in the Academy :
The problems of misogynist [Principal Investigators] and tepid reference letters may stem from the same root: the widespread assumption that only men can be brilliant. This view is prevalent in the hard sciences, but also in literature, musical composition, and philosophy. “As predicted,” noted Sarah-Jane Leslie and her coauthors in a recent article in Science, “the more a field valued giftedness, the fewer the female PhDs.”18 Philosophy is nearly off the charts in this regard. Yet not only do men not seem to believe in the possibility of female genius, they seem to doubt female competence. Such an attitude is not only demeaning, it also leads to the theft of women’s time.19 A supervisor’s command to “prove it again” (that is, run another experiment) often leads female scholars to be much more careful in their work, but also less productive as a result. This bias is especially pronounced against black female scientists.
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What is more vile is that other men sometimes benefit from their complicity with sexual predators.... It is important in this context to recall that sexual harassment is less about sexual desire than the assertion of male power.
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MALE UNDERGRADUATES DEMONSTRATE a sharp bias against both their female peers and female instructors. In a study of three US undergraduate biology courses, students voted for their most intelligent peer during the semester. Generally the women gave a very slight edge to other women in their voting, but men favored other men by a nineteenfold margin.61 Such a divergence in gendered evaluative patterns has been observed elsewhere. This meant that a woman would need to have “over three-quarters of a GPA point higher” than a man to be nominated.62 In the study, an “outspoken” man (someone who participated in class) was always voted by his peers as the best student, even though many course sections had an “outspoken” woman who had earned as high a grade. The study’s authors reckon that these results, as skewed as they are, represent a “conservative case” because biology is considered a “soft” science. Most striking, perhaps, is that men’s prejudice became stronger by the end of the course, suggesting that sexism is an attitude reinforced rather than extirpated during one’s university years.63 Another study quoted several undergrads who shared the sentiment that “I didn’t know I was a girl until I came to Harvard.”
nplusonemag.com/issue-34/essays/sexism-in-the-academy/