I think science is pretty gender-blind and color-blind.
I think science likes to think it is pretty gender-blind and color-blind, but I've got a growing collection of anecdata to the contrary. It's not that people have bad intentions, but scientists are just as prone to unexamined assumptions as anyone else, and possibly more prone to thinking we don't have them because we are so Rational and Scientific and Logical, we must be beyond all that.
I did my graduate work in a lab that was at most points about half women of color, and almost all women, and pretty much everyone had a long list of Stories. And I've read a lot of the studies on retention of women and minorities in physics and the geosciences, and I just don't think the numbers would be so bad if the field were doing so great already.
Science probably isn't the worst area to work in, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.
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I think science likes to think it is pretty gender-blind and color-blind, but I've got a growing collection of anecdata to the contrary. It's not that people have bad intentions, but scientists are just as prone to unexamined assumptions as anyone else, and possibly more prone to thinking we don't have them because we are so Rational and Scientific and Logical, we must be beyond all that.
I did my graduate work in a lab that was at most points about half women of color, and almost all women, and pretty much everyone had a long list of Stories. And I've read a lot of the studies on retention of women and minorities in physics and the geosciences, and I just don't think the numbers would be so bad if the field were doing so great already.
Science probably isn't the worst area to work in, but there's still a lot of room for improvement.