In which I need to get a grip

A couple weeks ago, Mathbabe posted some thoughts on survivorship bias that got me thinking about the anecdata in my life.

In case you do not want to look up the Wikipedia article, survivorship bias is a bias introduced into data when a studied population is compared to historical averages, ignoring the fact that the studied population has certain non-average characteristics that cause it to be observed/ in the sample.

It is a sort of selection bias introduced by assuming that the portion of the sample that does not complete the study is randomly distributed, when that is not the case.

I'm not going anywhere with this. I just need to air my thoughts.

1. I know two African Americans in my field. Someone who knows my circle of colleagues should feel free to correct me. I went to graduate school with one of these scientists. Through a series of confounding and rather stupid events, I had a conversation with him about "growing up black in the US." It turned out that he did not consider himself black, but mixed race. Given the "one drop" policy that is still an unspoken truth in much of the US, I asked him what the difference was. His answer: he did not grow up immersed in black culture. I forget the details, but it involved a small college town, and hanging out with other children of academics. I am not arguing anyone's right to identify racially however he/she chooses. I am simply struck, that of all the African Americans either my partner or I know, the only one who identifies as mixed race is a successful academic.
2. At one of the women in my field meetings I went to several years back, I found myself sitting next to a post-doc, very insistent on the fact that there was not difference in the treatment of women and men in her field. She was often the only female in her sub-field at conferences, but that was because her field was new, and women had not yet flocked to it. Considering the field as a whole, she thought that women just needed to learn to deal with the crap a bit more. Once we did that, we were just judged on our publication record. Naive as I was at the time, I tried to argue with her on just the arguments that she presented: that she claimed that men needed to be good scientists to succeed, while women needed to be good scientists and pachiderms to succeed. Ignoring all else, wasn't the extra pachidermal requirement itself a sign of inequality? I should have kept my mouth shut. I only succeeded in spoiling my lunch. I do not know if I offered any solace to any of the other attenders. I certainly did nothing to convince my intended audience. It still rankles me on bad days.
3. For the second time in my career, I recently attended a two part conference where I was the most senior woman for the first part. Moments like this disgust me. This conference also had the added feature that there were no female speakers in either part. That is a first for me. I am immensely grateful to the older gentleman who also pointed out the lack of female speakers. I am saddened by the number of women a pointed out the gender distribution to who did not seem to notice or mind. (To be fair, it is not as if the men I pointed the gender distribution out to really seemed to care either.) I envy the women who can go through something like this and not notice. Life must be easier for them somehow, I imagine. If you do not feel the insults that are thrust at you, consciously or not, you cannot be hurt by them.
4. Various people close to me are in very shitty situations right now. Compared to them, I live a pampered life. Class differences in my friend set should not surprise me, but it disturbs me greatly when the situation is put before me quite so clearly. They do not have PhDs, they do not have dual income households. Sometimes, it is simply a matter of financial or emotional survival for them. They live in situations that, I am fairly certain, given my emotional and physical shortcomings would leave me crippled or dead. But they survive. Given all the advantages I have in life, I wonder what exactly it is I am doing, pretending that I can speak for women. The circles I surround myself with on a day to day basis are those of such a tiny elite.

For those of you who know my moods: yes, I just submitted a job application.

Friday's Female: Courage

"Are you sure you want to finish that bottle of red? You know what they say."

She finished pouring. She had gone out for dinner then drinks with seven other colleagues. Six of them were male. "What? That I will be gang raped?"

The liquor that had urged her colleague to make vague innuendos over her glass now stuttered to find a response to this less vague accusation.  "No! Of course not. I would never mean that." The flush on his face seemed not only to be from the alcohol.

"What do they say?"

"In the part of the world I come from, they say that any woman in a group who finishes a bottle of red will be the next to become pregnant."

"I see." That was a perfectly logical and apt subject to bring up at a social dinner at a conference. "Then tell me, why have you only ever let your wife finish one bottle of red wine?"

***

I do not know the woman in question. I know the man well. He works down the hall from my partner. His (only) son is in the same room at the university nursery as Epsilon. The above conversation is embellished by me from my partner's recollection of a night of tapas and wine where the group of eight had consumed a horrifying number of bottles of alcohol.

My respect for the unknown woman's quick wittedness is immense. In the time that has passed since I heard this story, my respect for my partner's colleague has plummeted. My opinion of him poisoned, I now see cracks in his persona that may be indications of deeper sexism. We keep our conversations about the kids.

A family friendly career

Walking into work today, my partner mentioned one of this colleagues is trying to figure out how to make it clearer to students earlier in their careers that academia is not as family friendly as it seemed.

"WHAT?! Who thinks academia is family friendly? No one I know thinks that."
"Well, the question is, how many people you knew at 21 thought that."

So I paused and thought about it. My incoming college class had  a 55/45 M/F ratio, the most equal class to date. My university had a reputation for gender discrimination. It also had a reputation for working to get past that. So the students who entered with me were all aware of this issue, if even as a point of trivia about our incoming class to be forgotten about later. I think for many women, this colored our view of our future.

I did not see a female professor until my junior year. In total, I had 6 female professors and 3 female TAs. Two of the 6 were not in full time employment by my university. This made me, and all my female friends, talk and think about our chances in academia. Consciously or not, we asked ourselves variants of the question, if our professors are having a hard time making it, what makes us think we can? So we asked around, and found out that, yeah.. it's hard. And that from the people who didn't have families. When talking to people about grad school, we heard the rumor that once we enter grad school, extra curricular activities were frowned on. Not only was this devastating to someone who had heard all her pre-college life that the way to get into college was by having lots of extra curricular activities, and whose social life was built completely around the things she did outside of class, this perception clearly had family implications for me. "If PIs frown on someone spending 20 hours a week swimming competitively, how will they feel about families?" Graduate student friends talked about having to move away from their boyfriends for post docs. Post docs talked about PI's passing them up for conferences out of a desire to "be nice to them" since they had just become mothers.

I can't think of a single point in my post freshman life when I thought that academia was family friendly. I can't think of a single female friends who wanted to be an academic who relished the idea of having a family while doing so. When I think back on it, I recall conversations with women on the fence leaning towards industry because they wanted a family.

Not so for the women at University E. They see few female professors, but they also see professors of both genders not come in every day. They see that our "schedules" are similar to school schedules so that it is easier to take time off with kids. They see that we "get to travel to fun cities for conferences." They don't see the rest of it? How is that?

I know at my last institute, I did my best to discourage young women from thinking that academia and motherhood was compatible, in spite of myself, mostly by looking like a miserable under slept zombie for the first few years of Epsilon's life. More explicitly:

"Hi professor, I saw you bike into work today with your trailer. I was hoping to see you pull your kid out of it."
"No, I've dropped him off at daycare. By the time I get here, there's only a laptop in there." If I'd pulled my kid out of the trailer, how did you think I'd be teaching your 10 am class?""How is having a kid and being in academia?"
Well, that's direct. How do I be honest, and not discourage a very smart woman from going into academia? "One of the reason's I chose academia was that I've tried, and hated working 9-5. I've always enjoyed being able to go camping on Tuesday and Wednesday, when the parks are empty, and know that I can make up by working over the weekend. You lose a lot of that flexibility after becoming a parent. You work when you have daycare, or when the kid's sleeping."
"Yeah, I like that about this lifestyle as well. I wouldn't want to give that up."
"I work 8:30-4:30 now, so it's not 9-5. That makes it better. Let's start today's class."

My partner thinks that much of the difference in perception comes from the lack of discussion/awareness about any sort of discrimination in the general public discourse. If people aren't trained to think about this as a possibility by growing up with it being discussed, they are less likely to be able to look ahead and see potential pitfalls. I don't know if that it the primary cause, though I don't have a candidate hypothesis.

I do know that conversations like that over at IBAM's place today makes me very sad. As it does when mentors like GMP get overwhelmed, or Isis thinks about quitting.

Visiting

• Its a bad situation, when I meet Dr. Superstar after nearly 4 years, the first thing he asks about is Epsilon, and then proceeds to tell me how he also now has a child. It doesn't help that the connection I want to draw between my work and his starts a philosophy discussion, since he is less aware of my particular sub-field than I'd thought.
• Pubs with obscure literary names make me very happy. Especially when I catch the reference.
• We all send off class signals, in the way we dress, the way we talk, and even how we carry ourselves. I don't know if we do this less in the US than in other countries, or if we are more likely to believe that the US is a classless society, and therefore we don't have a socio-economic class, but we all do it. I can't help the class signals I give off, but I do try to not be pretentious about it. So when I find myself surrounded by The Accent, I have to remind myself that I should not go running with my tail between my legs from my social betters; I do belong here, that in the US, I belong to the equivalent class. 
• The conversation on the train between the drunk guys next to me and the trans man in front of me sounds like I may need to intervene, until one of the drunks tells the trans man how one of his friends now wants to be a woman. Sometimes things go well.

Hiring by the Numbers

Or, how regional difference make a big difference in the job hunt.

If there are job search lessons to be taken out of this post, they are:

• KNOW THE HIRING NORMS OF THE COUNRTY YOU ARE APPLYING TO! 
• GET PEOPLE YOU KNOW FROM THE COUNTRY OF APPLICATION TO SIT WITH YOU TO MAKE SURE YOU ARE COMING ACROSS THE RIGHT WAY!

Or, I suppose, you could be so good that it doesn't really matter how you present yourself. Your brilliance just shines through.

Over the last few months, I've been getting some much needed feedback on my applications, and I am being surprised by what I'm finding. Consider the following:

"Your CV makes you look like someone from the rope design and development department. When competing against other bridge makers for this position, it is really hard to advocate for a CV that looks like yours versus other CVs that come across our desk."

"But I make rope bridges. In the US, that lives in the Bridgemaking department." 

"I know, but the lines are different here. It does cause a good deal of confusion as well for applicants from here who are applying to departments in the US."

Okay. Good advice. I know how to make use of it, after a rejection from that position.

Then I have a conversation from a friend in a different setting who points out to me that my teaching and advising experience is not on my CV. Of course it isn't. That goes on the Teaching statement that is a standard supplement .... in .... the .... U... S.... 

I can't blame anyone but myself for this one. I know that for all the jobs I've been applying to, I've only been submitting my CV and a research plan. I know that my letters don't get read until late in the game. I know that my teaching experience makes me stand out from other applicants applying to a similar position. Why didn't I update my CV? 

Don't answer that.

Water under the bridge. A few more rejection letters have come and gone.

Then there's this:

 "You look like a decent candidate, but because of the rules of the upcoming review, the committee will be really looking for people who have X knots."

 Well, damn. This one is complicated. By the rules of the upcoming review, the university will consider the best Y knots I have, for Y<X. These Y knots are clearly marked on my CV. What is also marked (though maybe not so clearly) is one of the reasons I think I only need Y knots. But the main reason I only need Y knots is not mentioned at all on the CV. It is Epsilon.

So how do I communicate to the committee that I only need Y knots without talking about family? I had hoped that the picture of Epsilon on my webpage might be enough. But if the issue is that sometimes the faculty members on the hiring committee aren't abreast of all the details of the review, how do I make them aware? How many other places have seen my application, and not put two and two together to get Y?

I've settled on pointing out the Y knots again in my cover letter, and explaining why I expect that I will be evaluated on Y and not X. I hope that doesn't come across as bizarre. But this really emphasizes the need to know the system well, and how to make oneself look appealing to the constraints obvious and subtle.

Dear readers, if you happen to know what system I am talking about, and want to chime in with advice, I will eagerly accept it. Please do so privately, via barefootdoctoral@gmail.com. I will anonymise and post any useful feedback I get via e-mail in the comments section.

Confidence

It took me a long time to really feel comfortable in my new skin of being an academic and a parent. At my last post doc, I would feel apologetic about interrupting a skype session to put Epsilon back to sleep, or about only being available to meet in the evenings after his bed time.

I've always known that I shouldn't be apologetic. I've heard all the rhetoric about not explaining that I can't attend for family reasons, and just being point blank about having other appointments. Knowing doesn't imply feeling. I tried to follow all the "don't apologize for procreating" rules and watched what I said to colleagues, but that didn't change the fact that I felt apologetic.

I'm realizing that this is changing. I don't know if this is because I am changing, or I am interacting with a different set of colleagues, or something else completely. I feel no guilt saying I am available from 8:30-4 pm and 7-10 pm, knowing full well that chunks of this period are unthinkably early, or dinner time for my colleagues.

Last night, Epsilon came out of his bedroom and curled up asleep in my lap while I was mid meeting. It was nice being able to excuse myself, turn of the bedroom light and continue the conversation in hushed tones. It was even nicer when my colleague apologized for eating while skyping, I was able to give a rejoinder about snoring three year olds. Much of the credit goes to how comfortable I feel with this colleague, but I think I could now do this for people I keep a more arms length relationship with.

I think for me, confidence is not marked by when I can confidently excuse myself from an obligation without giving a reasons, but when I CAN be honest about what my life looks like, even in a mildly hostile environment.

I'm not all the way there, but it's good to see that I'm making progress.



*Epsilon is 3, and I'm just writing this post. 

Silly me

It's time to give out teaching assignments for the term.

Female grad student (FGS) sits down with her advisor (A) to talk about what she felt comfortable TAing. FGS tells A that she has no problem teaching any of the subjects he has proposed, but could he please make sure she is not assigned to work with Post Doc (PD). When A inquires further about her request, FGS explains that she feels uncomfortable around PD because of his attempts to hit on her and his misconception that her face hovers somewhere in the region of her breasts. A decides to grant her the request, but tells her to be careful in the future not to create a situation like this with any other of her colleagues.

Somehow I still manage to be shocked by things like this. Naively, I believe that stories like this can only happen if one of the actors are 20 or more years older than me. Silly me.

An analogy

Walk with me, if you will, to an alternate reality.

You are still an undergraduate. You've decided that you want to go to graduate school. But there's a problem. In this world, none of your professors or academic advisers want to talk to you about graduate school, even though many (not all) of them have attended graduate school. They are happy to talk to you about jobs in industry, however. It is really hard to get advice about how to apply, or find out what it's like. And what information is out there either says that it the best thing ever, that anyone serious about their subject who doesn't go to grad school is somehow incomplete as a person, or tells you that it is hard, gruelling, bone crushing work that will eat your soul, your social life and your sanity. You suspect that the truth lies somewhere in the middle, but very few people will talk to you without resorting to these hyperbole.

Its rare for people, in any field, to go straight through. Most people wait a while. They go into industry first, make a few bucks, then decided to go into graduate school for a midlife promotion, or because they want to enter academia. For various reasons, you don't want to wait. Or at least, you want to think about the possibility of not waiting. Your peers all want to go into industry first. Some of them may see graduate school in their future, but certainly not now, and probably not to go into academia.

At the same time, outside of academia, graduate school is seen as a plus. Your family wants you to go to graduate school. Your family is encouraging you in this direction. Many of your family members (and those of your peers) have gone to grad school. Those that haven't seem to regret it. But none of them are academics, which is really what you want to do. They have advice about applying to and surviving graduate school. But they have no idea of how to go to graduate school and become a professor. The process of postdocs, tenure track and tenure is completely foreign to them.

Come to think of it, none of your female relatives survived graduate school. In fact, very few of your female professors went to grad school either. As you start looking into it, it seems that many women who go to graduate school drop out of their field entirely. If you are female, this is disheartening, especially since you love your field. Although, this may explain why, if you are female, people seemed to grow uncomfortable talking to you about graduate school.

You can get some advice on the internet, but who knows who these psuedo anonymous people who write academic blogs are? The other place you find any help is the National Honors Society conference. It has a panel on career prospects after college which spends some time on some issues surrounding graduate school, even on going on to become a professor. It's not the most useful panel at the conference. Much of the discussion is in vague generalities and the same useless advice you've heard before, but there are some thought provoking comments. You leave with a few friends to grab lunch. There is general displeasure with how the panel was conducted, but not for the reasons you think.

"I hate these discussions about going on to academia. There's so much more to one's career than that!"
"I liked the discussion about dealing with sexual harassment in the workplace. Though I wish they'd done more than tell us what legal rights we have"
"Seriously. That's an issue that effects so many women, why don't people talk about that more, instead of discussing grad school?! I mean, is the issue of grad school just so big that it eclipses the other ones we could be having?

******************

To all those who complain about the women in science events that focus on babies, I posit that for some, the search for trying to find a context in which one can talk about children and career is much like the scenario described above. Few role models, and the women with children don't want to talk about it because they want to be perceived as scientists, not mothers. Men of a certain generation have kids, but also have wives who have borne 51-100% of the cost of having them. I am not saying that it isn't important to talk about the other things that face women (sexist comments, sexual harassment, letters of rec that describe women's personality before their academic achievements  glass ceilings, two body problems without children, to name a few). I'm saying that, in my experience, it has been much easier to talk about many of these problems (sexual harassment being the obvious exception) with other colleagues than to talk about pregnancy or having kids, or pathways to stay in academia after having kids. If someone has a different experience, do share. I am generalizing from a sample of one.

Forums for women need to have a space for discussing children, even if it is not applicable to everyone, because it is a discussion that is nearly impossible to have outside of these forums.

Be the change you want

This has nothing to do with the US election.

Last year, when on the job market, and looking up random people's websites at schools interesting looking department, I noticed that when a department had lots of pictures of young fathers with pictures of their children on their website, it made me feel like that might be a department I would be comfortable in, were I to work there. Then I noticed that there were no women, in any departments who had pictures of their children on their front page, and I wondered whether I should put up a picture of myself with Epsilon on my webpage.

I'm still on the job market. I'm at a new place, so my webpage needed to be brought over. I've decided to come out as a parent.

Yes, I know, in some ways, this is a stupid move. But moving here has made me mad. These last few months, I find myself living in possibly the most sexists environment that I have encountered in the developed world*. For the first time in my career, I feel like I have no role models near me, and I hear much more about the paucity of role models from the grad students down the hall than I ever did in the US. So, yeah. I'm mad. And anger leads me to do stupid things. Maybe this will effect me poorly. Maybe it won't. I'll probably never know. But I feel like someone has to step up to the plate.






*Visits to my family, who, as all diaspora do, still think they are living in the old county of 45 years ago, is not being counted for this analysis. 

Women's dinner

"So what did that have to do with discrimination against women?" someone asked after half the table excused themselves from dinner to get work done. The remaining women looked at each other awkwardly, until someone said "Not much."

I hemmed and hawed my reasons for not bringing up any of the issues I so easily talk about in private. But the truth is, if the permanent faculty member at the dinner wasn't introducing the fact that this was a dinner for women in the department, and a safe forum to discuss any issues one may have, I didn't feel comfortable doing it at all. This is a startling and disturbing realization.

Once we realized that there were, in fact, several women at the dinner who wanted to talk to other women about sexism they face in life and work, the conversation quickly turned to swapping stories, and giving advice.

"How you deal with non-academic discrimination, such as the neighbor who says that women's brains are scientifically proven to be less capable of mathematical thinking?"

"How do you tell your adviser that you are pregnant?" Unfortunately, I could not remember this series of three posts off  the top of my head.

"I've decided to publicly start warning women against men I've had bad experiences with." I venture.
"We should make lists like this public," someone says. After a while, someone else points out that it is very hard to talk about this. "I don't want to spread rumors, and it is hard to tell if it is just me, or if the person really is a problem." If I had a dollar for every time I've heard that last sentiment.

"How do you get out from under the influence of a scientist who is biased against you?"

"How do you deal with the nepotism of academia?" Move to a country that is less nepotistic, unfortunately. 

Walking home, I ask "why women in Europe seem to leave the workforce more than their American counterparts?" Someone asks "If having children is so hard, why did you do it?" Damned if I could tell you now.

This is why we have women's only events. Once a safe space is established, there is too often so much to say. Can I name a few men who would contribute to and benefit from these dinners as much as the women? Sure. Do I want to be a gate keeper? No. Do I want to ruin the feeling of a safe space by having to pause and explain to someone who hasn't faced a certain behavior, why that behavior is harmful? No.

For now, I've made piece with this exclusionary policy. Yes, we are diminished when we exclude half of humanity from any event. But we are not excluding them from the discussion. We talk to them every single day. If they are not as keenly aware of how few female colleagues they have, then that is not my problem. This dinner was a chance to put my guard down. It is sad that in the 21rst century, I still need such a place.

Say it like a man

A little over a month ago, I sat down to dinner the night before a conference at the other end of the table  from a colleague. I have a lot of respect for this man as a scientist, he's done a lot for my personal career. I don't think I'd ever suggest to a female student of mine that she work with him, at least not unforewarned.

Colleague: Hey Barefoot, how are you liking University F?
Me: Um, I just got there, but its been good so far.
C: Have you checked out [foreign word] yet?
Me: What's that?
C: Its an interesting place.
At this point, since the conversation is being shouted across the table, everyone else who doesn't live in My City is curious what is being talked about.
Me: Could you tell me more?
C: It's like Disney Land.
Different colleague: You mean it has rides?
C: Well, yes, for adults. To me. You wouldn't like it.
The danger wave function that is present in so many non-scientific conversations with C collapses, and  I think "How do you know I wouldn't like it?" But any (more) discussion of sex and sexuality was not appropriate.
Me: Is this the red light district?
The woman across the table from me,  also from University F, nods, embarrassed.
Me: Why couldn't you just say that?

Weeks pass. It is late at night, and my computer is doubling as a radio. I follow a series of links to a show about prostitution. All of a sudden, I realize what I should have ended that conversation with.

Me: So C, you can't say "red light district" like a man? You call it Disney Land like a pubescent boy?

Women's spaces

People occasionally write about whether or not women in STEM groups/meetings should include men.

Another hope of mine, perhaps an even less realistic one, is that it wouldn't always be women talking about careers-and-babies, but that more men would be involved in these discussions. It is still common for FSPs who are invited speakers at other institutions to be asked to have a "pizza lunch" or whatever with female students and postdocs, typically to talk about work-life issues.* Are any of you in departments that routinely invite men to do the same?

Up until I entered grad school (and therefore really faced discrimination on an impersonal systematic level, as opposed to the personal cultural discrimination that goes on inside most homes) I did not understand the need, in this day and age, for women's only spaces. After all, conventional wisdom is that for any "minority" to gain access to its rights, the issue of their rights has to stop being a niche issue, and has to start being a mainstream issue.

Furthermore, a lot of the things we discuss in "women in my field" meetings are really general interest issues. We talk about networking, research opportunities, job applications, grants and lots of other things that all academics care about. I find myself wondering whether or not men get similar career counselling. I am very grateful that I get this opportunity to talk frankly with people other than my supervisor about these general issues. I know a lot of men who would be too.

But then invitations like this pop up in my inbox:

Dear all,
Time for a new meeting of the [our groups] women has come! 

Which is about getting together, having a nice supper, teaming up, group-therapying about any sexist situation you may have suffered, brain-storming for avoiding them in the future, having many laughs and all in all have a nice evening together :)

"Group therapy." "Sexist situation." This is really why we have these meetings. We just don't necessarily say it so directly.

Okay fine, so we need a safe place to talk and discuss issues that detrimentally effect us in ways it doesn't effect men, but wouldn't it be useful for us invite men as well, especially the ones that are known to be safe to talk to? Yes, ideally. But how does one do that without acting like a teenager?

"Professor X, you are invited because this gaggle of girls have decided you are cool. Postdoc Y, you are not cool enough to be invited."

If one invites men to these meetings, how does one mediate against sexism at the meetings? Should one ask people not to come back? Wouldn't that be more exclusionary? How would one make sure that the standards are applied in a non-discriminatory fashion? 

Be careful, you'll get a reputation

As women, we hear variants of this line all the time. It's usually used to warn us about how we dress, or about how aggressive we are, how much make-up we choose to wear, or not to wear. It starts shockingly young, middle school really, just about when we hit puberty, and follows us all our lives.

This is not to say that men aren't reminded about their reputations as well. They hear it about getting a reputation for being a bully, or for being a cheater, or not being dependable. They hear it regarding qualities that all people want to be careful with their reputations about. Please correct me if I'm wrong, men. Are there gendered reputation characteristics you get warned about?

As academics, we have reputations to worry about. Are we good advisors? Are our papers clearly written? Do we manage our labs well? Are we as dull as dishwater in front of undergrads? Do we get along with our colleagues and pull our weight in the faculty? Women, it seems from anecdotal evidence, worry more about appearing bitchy. I've known very few men whose reputation for being a chauvinist has preceded them.

Maybe this is because I've been unlucky. Maybe this is because given the gender balances in my field, I get most of my information from other men, since that's generally who is around. Maybe because chauvinist is not a name to attach to someone in polite company, just like it is really hard to call someone a bigot. Maybe it's because women (many minorities do this too), when they experience a negative interaction, tend to think it was a personal, one time thing. We don't tend to wonder if there is something systematic, and even if we do, we stay quiet. If we tell the wrong person, we'll just get a reputation for being over sensitive.

Fuck that. I'm keeping a list. My reputation can go to hell.

Where have all the women gone?

Two weeks ago, I asked this question about women in academia in the part of the world where my partner and I currently work when I wrote about the observation that there seemed to be fewer women in both my and my partner's departments than there we'd experienced in the States. Furthermore, I observed that no one in our respective departments seemed to think the current numbers odd. To be fair, since that post, I attended a large department gathering, the first after the semester had started, and realized that counting the new graduate students, the numbers are not as bad as I had previously assumed, but they are still pretty bad.

IBAM commented that perhaps the cultural norm was for women to work part time after having kids. Anecdotal evidence of our friends and neighbors seem to support this, and it is possible that if the perception is that a mother should work part time after children, then women who want kids are more likely to choose fields where that is possible (i.e. NOT academia).

This got me thinking. Not being a cultural anthropologist with a focus on gender issues, I turned to The Googlz. Wanna see a scary movie?

Oh my, are the girls sexay. (Yes, girls. They all look like jail bait to me.) This was the ad put out by the European Commission's initial attempt this June to promote female participation in science. It's been widely mocked and since retracted, but the front page for the "It's a girl thing" campaign is still a bit frivolous and pink for my liking. Meh. Maybe it's just a matter of taste. Show me some data, you say.

This scary graph keeps popping up wherever I look.

For a better view, check out page 73 of this PDF.[1] The shades of violet are female percentage of women in 2002 and 2006. The shades of salmon are the same stats for men. The points on the x-axis correspond to advanced stages of an academic career, starting with a graduate student (or equivalent), ending with tenured faculty (or equivalent). But it gets better. Page 74 of the same report has the following graph, looking only at the numbers in the sciences and engineering departments [1]

Okay, so what about the US? The NSF collects fairly good data about this on a regular basis. From their 2011 report, I was able to dig up the following graphs.[2]

These are the percentages for female full time, full professors in the sciences and engineering (essentially Grade A from the EC data):

The NSF has data about PostDoc (Grade C in the EC Data) held at US institutions by gender and citizenship status.[3] There is much more flux of scholars coming to the US from outside of it that to the EU from outside of it. I feel like I should recognize that the data for non US residents is different than the data for US residents, though I don't know what the implications of the distinction are.

The NSF also has data about PhD's granted in Science and Engineering from 2001 to 2010, (the fourth dot in the EC data.)

So what have I learned? My perception that there are fewer women in my field in the EU than in the States at all advanced degree levels matches the data about the presence of women in Science and Engineering fields in the US versus the EU. There are several ways to break this down further. There are, of course regional and field variations that I have not delved into yet. There is the question of how much the lack of female presence has to do with current hiring policy than with previous hiring policy. I still haven't come close to addressing whether or not more women work part time in the EU, and how this interacts with the number of women seen in academia. I leave this for future investigations.

I hope this turns into a regular blog series, though the posts will be spaced some distance apart due to time constraints. If you have any comments or thoughts or questions you would like to see answered, I welcome them. I especially welcome comments from European readers, since the main point of this project is to understand gender and academia in Europe.



[1] She figures 2009: Statistics and Indicators on Gender Equality in Science, European Commission Report, EUR 23856 EN
[2] Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering, Digest, 2011 (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/digest)
[3] Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering, Data Tables, 2011 (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/wmpd/tables.cfm)

Jobs and genders

I complain a lot about the US. I do so lovingly, though it may not
seem that way. The US is my country, and if I have any patriotism in
me, it is in the firm belief that I need to do everything I can to
make my country better than it is (in the direction I believe is
better of course... opinions may differ about whether my better vector
actually is). Now that I've moved away, I have a clearer perspective on
the strengths an weaknesses of my country. Nothing I didn't know in
principal before, but some things have come into sharper focus over
these last few months.

I spend most of my time living in what some 'Mer'cans would call
"Socialist States." In some ways its great. I don't need to own a car;
there's decent public transportation. I don't have to worry about
healthcare. My partner's doctor apologized for how expensive it was to
fill a perscription ($13). He almost laughed out loud. Our
universities deal with our pensions. There are humane maternity
benefits and childcare becomes affordable after the age of 3. I feel
like I've walked into a dream.

"It's so nice having another girl around" says the female grad student
from the office next door.

"We're not the only woman in this department?" I ask. I swear I've
talked to other female grad students, and I know there is a female
professor, but I'm still a bit disoriented, waking up from my dream.

"There's A and B, and of course Professor C, but you are the only
woman in this building."

Shit. I've talked to _all_ of the women in my subdepartment, and it is about the size of my previous department. In the States, I'm used to 25% gradstudents
being female, and 2 in 10 professors being female. The postdocs slices
of departments I've seen are small enough that I don't want to draw
generalizations. Here, the numbers a are less than 1 in 10 female grad
students, and 1 in female professor in 15.

In the states, my partner sees a minority of female faculty in his
field, but it hovers between 35-45% female in high ranked
departments. His field is much more self conscious about this gender
disparity than mine is. His current department is closer to 1 in 5
female faculty, heavily concentrated in a non-mathematical
subfield. He's asked around, and it seems that this gender
distribution is normal, not an outlier.

Where have all the women gone?

Euro Crisis Fall Out

The academic job situation in southern Europe isn't good. ... The academic job situation anywhere isn't good. I hear stories of yearly contracts not being renewed, or not being renewed until they have either almost expired, or a few weeks after they've expired. I hear about faculty staying on for months without pay or with reduced pay. 

I just heard a story about a woman who commutes a long distance to teach classes at a satellite campus. Her baby is due at the end of November. The university doesn't have a plan yet to cover her classes. I blurted out something about a belief I had about Europe having great healthcare/maternity protections. The others at the table tell me that not giving her a break may not be legal, but now isn't the time to push on these issues. I don't know what to say. If there are faculty working for no pay, how does a pregnant woman demand that someone cover the last few weeks of term?

This isn't the biggest issue in the European economic crisis. But insofar as this blog chronicles the instances of sexism I see in my field, this situation is worth noting.

More than a coffee problem

Would you buy coffee from a woman swimming in chocolate? I take that question back. Today's post is not about judging your, dear reader's, sense of hygiene. Most health regulatory agencies make it a moot point.

Personally, I really wouldn't want to buy coffee from a woman swimming in chocolate, especially if she looked like she was experiencing a highly sensual, and possibly private experience. The fact that she is wearing a really cool hat made of spoons and fun espresso cup earrings wouldn't change my mind.

I'm not really thrilled about buying coffee from a machine with her picture on it at work either.

I feel like I'm experiencing a small act of violence every time I go to the department lounge to get coffee. If I weren't only visiting for a few days, I'd make other arrangements for my caffeine.

What I hate about conferences

I hate being a woman at a conference.

I hate being a woman at a conference who is outspoken about the problems women face in my field.

I hate being a woman at a conference who other women seek out for advice, or a shoulder to vent at.

I hate being a woman at a conference who feels obligated to follow another woman, who I've only met twice before, to her room, after she leaves near tears from breakfast in the hotel lobby because a male colleague has been riding her ass academically for the last two days about her scientific techniques.

I hate being asked "what would you do if you had to choose between your family or your job?" I have no FUCKING CLUE. The question SCARES ME SHITLESS. I hate not being able to say that publicly, quite in those terms.

I hate watching aforementioned male colleague be polite to all the people more senior to him, and rude to female post docs and graduate students of both genders. I hate choosing my seat at meals so that this colleague cannot sit next to or across from me. I hate having aforementioned female colleague follow me into the ladies room so she can avoid sitting next to him as well.

I hate using sarcasm, always with a smile on my face, never in anger, to shock someone into stopping inappropriate behavior, even for a few minutes. I hate that because I was composed enough to smile through breakfast,  while someone else was not, she is now perceived as being short tempered, while the male colleague is merely has a hot headed-type. I, on the other hand, am not threatening ... still.

I hate feeling like a hunted deer whenever someone comments that I am an aggressive woman, whether or not they mean it in jest, whether or not they mean it as a bad thing.

I hate the being on the winning side of a stylistic argument with aforementioned male colleague, but not feeling up to the task of discussing it with him again, after making this discovery, perhaps even offering some friendly advice, because I don't have the energy to handle the strong possibility that the discussion may turn ugly. I hate realizing that we are actually working in closely related fields, and that a collaboration may be good for both of us, if only I could stomach talking to him.

But enough of that. What I love about conferences, what I live for in conferences, are the conversations between colleagues working on the same problem from different approaches, realizing that the approaches are not only not incompatible, but that there is a lot of overlap, perhaps even room for collaboration. I love pitching a talk at a few people in the room, and having them walk away excited about the research, and eager to work with me. This is why I'm in this field. The rest of the day can go to hell.

Things that make me sad

I know several professional women or female Phd candidates who keep making decisions to put their career behind that of their husband's, behind the perceived needs of the family. I don't think I can name a single case (in my small and biased sample) where the woman isn't convinced, or has eventually convinced herself that she is happy with her decision.

I can't sit easy with their comfort, because more women make the choice to prioritise their own career behind their partners and families than men do. Furthermore, fewer women make these choices in this country, where the last few decades has seen a lot of discussion about the importance of women not only in the workplace, but in highly demanding fields, than they did 50 years ago before this public discussion, or in other parts of the world where this discussion has yet to happen or take effect. I doubt there is anything fundamental about the womanness of my foremothers, nor of the womanness of my cohort abroad causing this difference.

It makes me think of the times when friends or family have been singled out by the police, or gotten rude service from a take out counter that is normally very good. It raises the question of whether the other person was having a bad day, or did they see something in the skin color? It is impossible to tell whether each interaction is a draw from the bad day distribution, or from the racist distribution. The only things that people who study these these things have been able to measure is that certain people get bad draws more often, and those people tend to belong to various minorities.

The public discussion about women's roles in the workplace has changed the underlying population distribution to less women being willing to sacrifice their careers for the needs of the family and to more men being willing to do the same. But the choice profiles for the two genders aren't even close. Each woman I know who leaves her professional job, or chooses not to finish her PhD, or makes decisions (with her family) that she should bear more of the burden for the family, is a draw from a distribution that isn't where I think it should be. I have no idea whether I can be truly happy for my friends' decisions, even if they seem happy with them, because I don't know where they stand in the distribution. This makes me sad.

A recent toast

I was at a relatively female heavy conference recently. The modal conference I attend has about a 1:10 F:M ratio. This one was about 1:4. This fact was toasted several times, by men and women alike, at the conference dinner. One gentleman (he is of the age and class where the word gentleman is still appropriate) stood up, and after declaiming the history of the building we were dining in, told us how grateful he was that we are no longer living in a world where we would not be returning to our respective monasteries after the conclusion of this conference; that the current situation allowed him to interact with his "monastic sisters"; that he is happy to see this change occur in his field over his lifetime.

Some of us rolled our eyes at each other at the slightly patronizing tone of his comment, and were immediately, simultaneously, aware of how lucky we were to be in a room with enough women to be able to roll our eyes, and also aware that his age and experience perhaps allows for some condescension to what must seem a supremely young crowd gathered at his knees.

Here's to old men who get it in their own ways and really care.