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lapswood was kind enough to send me a few photos he took at Eastercon last month. I thought this one made a nice illustration of some points that were made about PoCs and the (lack of) diversity at science fiction conventions.This is from the panel I was on. Myself, the gentleman next to me and the man on the opposite end from me are all working scientists. The other man is the moderator - I'm not sure whether or not he is a scientist.
When I look at this picture, the first thing that pops into my head is the Sesame Street song: "One of these things is not like the others/One of these things just doesn't belong."
Visually, the thing that doesn't belong is me. And that makes me sad. What does it make you think?
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From:
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I think scientific talent is gender-blind and colour-blind. I don't think scientists or science research culture are. Especially academic research culture. I think the continuing lack of women in higher positions in academia and industry is pretty compelling evidence of this.
By the way, are Asian scientists under-represented in the UK? I just ask out of curiosity.
It's very field-dependent. For instance, in physics, there are still few non-white scientists, with the exceptions of atmospheric physics and biophysics. Also, the meaning of "Asian" is slightly different. In the US, it tends to mean Chinese or southeast Asian. In the UK, it means Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi. Other Asians (including Filipinos) tend to be specifically denoted "East Asian".
From:
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I actually disagree with this. I agree that the under-representation is a result of a cultural bias, but I believe it's a bias that the population at large has about science -- especially "hard" sciences like physics -- not a bias within science. On average, the fraction of graduate, postdoc and faculty positions offered to people of under-represented groups, especially women, is equal to or greater than the fraction of applicants.* The problem is that there are very few women and minority applicants, which I think stems from a culture that discourages people in those groups from pursuing science at a young age.
I overstated my original claim for the sake of simplicity, although I stand by my main point: you were selected for the panel because you deserved it, not so that you could check the diversity box. I don't think many scientists would even think about checking a diversity box, which one could probably argue as evidence for either blindness or bias. However, I do strongly believe that the real problem with recruitment of women and minorities into the sciences results more from prevalent cultures attitudes about science than from biases or practices among scientists.
*Data from select (top-tier) universities who contributed to an internal study my graduate school physics department performed regarding diversity - a small but not trivial sample size.
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My professor was a tenured astrophysicist. One time in class he told an anecdote from this days as a graduate student. My professor was in his late 40s, so this was probably 15 - 25 years ago, tops. So, late 80s to early 90s.
He told us that in his astrophysics graduate classes, there was one woman. The rest were men. He told us that he was in awe of how brilliant she was, and how she regularly her work outshone his own. He told us how the primary Big Name Astrophysicist professor, the one who was an adviser to many of the astrophysics students, would pick on her during class.
How that professor would make jokes about women being dumb, about how 'oh, but X is a girl, she wouldn't understand'. About how the professor would encourage the rest of the class to join in as they laughed at this woman. About how the female graduate student would regularly turn in work that was better than my professor's work, but receive grades an entire grade level below his. (ex. He'd receive an A, she'd receive a B or lower).
How she was relentlessly harassed and humiliated by that Big Name Astrophysicist, had her work graded far more harshly than anyone else in the entire program, and how she was held up as an example by that Big Name Astrophysicist of 'why women shouldn't be in science'.
She ended up dropping out of the program. My professor eventually graduated with a PhD and is now tenured at a university that is considered to have one of the world's top programs in Physics.
When our professor told us this anecdote, it was only 3 - 4 minutes out of the class. The one thing that sticks out in particular in my memory was just how sad he sounded. And how he kept saying 'she was smarter than I was' at several points.
So, I'm going to side with
Women are missing generations of mentors, rolemodels, and simply people who won't say 'you can't do science because you're a woman' because of people like that Big Name Astrophysicist that once taught my college professor.
From:
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That said, I still think that the presence of gender disparity early in the scientific career track suggests that society discourages women from pursuing scientific careers beginning at a young age.
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no subject
Say:
'How many women enter science undergraduates and switch majors' and then compare to male ratios
'How many women enter PhD programs and drop out' versus male PhD candidates
'How many women start tenure track and don't get tenure' versus male ratios
Etc.
I think that those kind of numbers would be valuable too. :)
From:
no subject
I know that this thread is super-old, but it was totally an interesting debate. Today, something came across my radar that I thought you might find interesting, so I came back to pass it on to you! :)
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/09/19/scientists-your-gender-bias-is-showing/
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109