Eastercon and diversity

[nanila]

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?

Comments

[shirou]

Your story is just one anecdote, and I'm not very fond of anecdotes, but it does identify a serious hole in my data: we collected only hiring statistics, not drop-out statistics. So while I maintain that science appears to do a fair or better-than-fair job of hiring women, I can't speak to retention. Thanks for giving me something else to think about.

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.

[boundbooks]

Yeah, definitely drop out statistics are informative.

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. :)

[boundbooks]

Hi! :)

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