It says something if the men are the ones who are mostly making money and gaining prestige from science, and the women are doing it as a hobby
Well, and at the time, my science job was a science education job, which is underpaid and largely women, sooo. I mean, a lot of male SF fans are not scientists or science background folks either, but I kind of wonder what the relative percentage is. I do vaguely recall that the (boring, not very good) science programming at that con was all men, but I may be misremembering since I nearly fell asleep and left in the middle of a couple presentations.
(The panel on writing fight scenes also showed some...uh...interesting gender dynamics, although I don't recall them now.)
I don't understand what you mean by connection between science and SF -- whether there's any discrepancy between the numbers of women who read SF vs. the number of women who work in science or have a science background, d'you mean?
Hmmm, let me see if I can remember what I was thinking at the time--I don't want to speak for zixi, but I like SF despite my science background, and pretty strongly prefer sociological/soft SF (most of the women in the group did, iirc). Most "hard" SF makes me giggle because I know too much about actual science to take most of it seriously. Most of what I consider legitimate hard SF in the sense of being rigorous is anthropological or linguistic SF, but neither are considered "hard sciences," so most people don't call that hard SF.
So I guess what I would wonder--and it might well vary by culture--is how SF and science and regarded as interests by the average person. Is liking science considered nerdy or within the normal range of hobbies/careers/interests? Is liking SF considered an ordinary interest or way out there weird? And also how SF is regarded by scientists in the culture--do other scientists look at you funny if you admit to reading SF, or do they all have shelves of it at home?
And I'm not entirely sure how that plays out in the US, so I have even less idea how it would play out elsewhere, but I suspect that might also intersect with gender in terms of panel composition, IDK.
If that makes ANY sense at all, which I'm not sure it does.
(I do kind of wonder if female scientists in Asian countries get the "Woah, you're a scientist? But math is so hard for women!" reaction all the time. My impression from test scores and so on is that there doesn't seem to be the same set of underlying societal assumptions about aptitude, but I obviously don't know.)
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Date: 2012-06-02 12:37 am (UTC)Well, and at the time, my science job was a science education job, which is underpaid and largely women, sooo. I mean, a lot of male SF fans are not scientists or science background folks either, but I kind of wonder what the relative percentage is. I do vaguely recall that the (boring, not very good) science programming at that con was all men, but I may be misremembering since I nearly fell asleep and left in the middle of a couple presentations.
(The panel on writing fight scenes also showed some...uh...interesting gender dynamics, although I don't recall them now.)
I don't understand what you mean by connection between science and SF -- whether there's any discrepancy between the numbers of women who read SF vs. the number of women who work in science or have a science background, d'you mean?
Hmmm, let me see if I can remember what I was thinking at the time--I don't want to speak for
So I guess what I would wonder--and it might well vary by culture--is how SF and science and regarded as interests by the average person. Is liking science considered nerdy or within the normal range of hobbies/careers/interests? Is liking SF considered an ordinary interest or way out there weird? And also how SF is regarded by scientists in the culture--do other scientists look at you funny if you admit to reading SF, or do they all have shelves of it at home?
And I'm not entirely sure how that plays out in the US, so I have even less idea how it would play out elsewhere, but I suspect that might also intersect with gender in terms of panel composition, IDK.
If that makes ANY sense at all, which I'm not sure it does.
(I do kind of wonder if female scientists in Asian countries get the "Woah, you're a scientist? But math is so hard for women!" reaction all the time. My impression from test scores and so on is that there doesn't seem to be the same set of underlying societal assumptions about aptitude, but I obviously don't know.)