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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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Although I do have to query your use of "gentleman" to describe Dave.
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But yes, agreeing with the other commenter; you look like you are alert and engaged and authoritative, not like you don't belong. I'm still going to have that song in my head all day, though.
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Flippancy aside, my first two thoughts were:
a) ayup, never going to Eastercon
b) I wonder if you'd have better gender balance at a science panel at an Asian convention. I'm inclined to think so because I haven't observed the same focused funnelling of women into the arts and men into the sciences in the Asian cultures I'm familiar with as there is in the UK/US. But, y'know, anecdata.
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Also, dude next to you is wearing a faaaaaaabulous vest. (Er, waistcoat? Vest means something else in BrEng, I seem to recall.)
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(And yes, vest here = your undershirt, I believe.)
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Waistcoat is the correct British English word.
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It's a shame I didn't have a shot of the audience to counterpoint this one, as it was much better balanced in terms of gender (though not race). Which would seem to indicate that "hard science" fiction writers and fans have achieved more parity than actual scientists in the UK. Although, as you say, this is a single instance and hence anecdata.
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When is Dave not a gentleman? I have yet to witness this phenomenon.
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But...I am glad you are there, and even more glad for the outreach you do and the little girls who want to grow up to be Nanilas. I mean, I honestly don't know what I would have done with my life if I'd thought when I was a kind that scientists were all old white dudes. So, it sucks that panels still look like that a lot of the time, and it sucks that it takes a special effort to make panels more diverse, but you absolutely belong.
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Anecdotally, the first (so far only) con I went to,
So yeah, I wonder. Although I think the connection between science and SF probably affects it also, and I'm not even sure I understand that in the US, so I wouldn't begin to speculate about other countries.
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Regardless of his efforts, I think it's sort of depressing that it takes special effort to make up a diverse panel, and that last-minute panels tend to default to white guys. That's not the fault of the organizer, but it says something about society, I think.
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By the way, are Asian scientists under-represented in the UK? I just ask out of curiosity. In the US, Asians make up nearly half of young physicists and are growing in number in the senior ranks. I'll admit we don't have many Filipinos, but we have lots of Japanese, Koreans, Thais, Indians and especially Chinese. When I got my PhD, I was the only one of the four grad students in my group who wasn't Chinese. I would never think of an Asian as a box ticker for race because here, Asians are the new majority.
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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 (reminds me a bit of the thing with how women are crafters and write fanfic for $0 and their work is devalued etc). I mean, I don't know if that's true, but it would be sad -- and unsurprising -- if it was!
Although I think the connection between science and SF probably affects it also
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?
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