In a training session today, one rather senior science academic from my workplace asked why there were such amzaing disparities between male and female participation in the sciences after PhD completion rates (which were roughly equal to female centric).
Two people in the room responsed with raised hands – me, the male academic from Commerce (PhD), and the female academic from medicine (MD PhD). The scientist chose to seek my opinion first. I declined and handed off the floor to my female colleague who had responded before me, and was considerably closer to the problem having been in medicine and attached to the sciences. It did demonstrate to me that I just needed to be half as good to be twice as successful – slower and less qualified to speak in the area and still being picked first.
Later in the proceedings, there was one of those group roleplay scenarios, and the case was about a male academic who breached a bucketload of rules, regulations, got themselves hurt and stuffed up company equipment. I was called on to RP the male, and my response was to say “I took the risk, it didn’t pay off, it’s my responsibility for the outcome that was in error, and this is my fault”. My risk, my payoff (good or bad) is my attitude*. Same senior male academic then made a pronouncement regarding responses to that activity. Summary version: Men would deny responsibility, women would accept responsibility because that’s how it is with women. He ignored my protest to the effect I’d accepted responsibility. I had a chance to question him on this, and when I said I had accepted responsibility, he told me in the first instance that I hadn’t (Um, dude, seriously, I had a witness for this), and second, something to the effect that “I wasn’t playing my side”, as an implication that I wasn’t be male/masculine. I have to admit, I had trouble comprehending that much fail in such a short space of time so I can’t quote the exact words.
Short sweet version: Science professor ignored patterns not confirming his gender ideals.
Men do X, Women do Y. Men who do Y don’t exist, and even if they do, they didn’t actual do Y because Men Do X and Women Do Y and that’s The Way It Is. Same guy still probably can’t say why there aren’t that many women continuing on in science because that’s the way it is with women not continuing in science. In related news, Gender Essentialism Arguments that tell you that the world is thus, and that’s the way the world is so there’s no point seeing the world in anything other than the Way Things Are don’t coexist with what we teaching in social marketing about attitude, values and behaviour change. The gender essentialist argument always like to highlight that men are poor at measures of verbal reasoning and writing ability and great at science-wiency stuff without finishing the thought that if this is true, men should be stepped down from positions requiring verbal reasoning and written skills like judges, lawyers, politicians, bloggers, journalists or authors. Wouldn’t that be right Mr Tierney?
* There’s more complexity in the world that something this simplistic – for instance, my various privilege allows me far greater opportunity than is fair, so I don’t believe a libertarian line of “It’s mine and not yours” applies universally to the outcomes in life. Where the inputs are system based advantages, it’s not my efforts to have created the entirety of the output, therefore I can’t claim complete ownership of the results. When I knowingly break the rules, I like to own the consequence of my actions, since it was my effort to route beyond the system. (I hacked it, I bought it)
Just not getting it – falsely gendered reactions in a training scenario
In a training session today, one rather senior science academic from my workplace asked why there were such amzaing disparities between male and female participation in the sciences after PhD completion rates (which were roughly equal to female centric).
Two people in the room responsed with raised hands – me, the male academic from Commerce (PhD), and the female academic from medicine (MD PhD). The scientist chose to seek my opinion first. I declined and handed off the floor to my female colleague who had responded before me, and was considerably closer to the problem having been in medicine and attached to the sciences. It did demonstrate to me that I just needed to be half as good to be twice as successful – slower and less qualified to speak in the area and still being picked first.
Later in the proceedings, there was one of those group roleplay scenarios, and the case was about a male academic who breached a bucketload of rules, regulations, got themselves hurt and stuffed up company equipment. I was called on to RP the male, and my response was to say “I took the risk, it didn’t pay off, it’s my responsibility for the outcome that was in error, and this is my fault”. My risk, my payoff (good or bad) is my attitude*. Same senior male academic then made a pronouncement regarding responses to that activity. Summary version: Men would deny responsibility, women would accept responsibility because that’s how it is with women. He ignored my protest to the effect I’d accepted responsibility. I had a chance to question him on this, and when I said I had accepted responsibility, he told me in the first instance that I hadn’t (Um, dude, seriously, I had a witness for this), and second, something to the effect that “I wasn’t playing my side”, as an implication that I wasn’t be male/masculine. I have to admit, I had trouble comprehending that much fail in such a short space of time so I can’t quote the exact words.
Short sweet version: Science professor ignored patterns not confirming his gender ideals.
Men do X, Women do Y. Men who do Y don’t exist, and even if they do, they didn’t actual do Y because Men Do X and Women Do Y and that’s The Way It Is. Same guy still probably can’t say why there aren’t that many women continuing on in science because that’s the way it is with women not continuing in science. In related news, Gender Essentialism Arguments that tell you that the world is thus, and that’s the way the world is so there’s no point seeing the world in anything other than the Way Things Are don’t coexist with what we teaching in social marketing about attitude, values and behaviour change. The gender essentialist argument always like to highlight that men are poor at measures of verbal reasoning and writing ability and great at science-wiency stuff without finishing the thought that if this is true, men should be stepped down from positions requiring verbal reasoning and written skills like judges, lawyers, politicians, bloggers, journalists or authors. Wouldn’t that be right Mr Tierney?
* There’s more complexity in the world that something this simplistic – for instance, my various privilege allows me far greater opportunity than is fair, so I don’t believe a libertarian line of “It’s mine and not yours” applies universally to the outcomes in life. Where the inputs are system based advantages, it’s not my efforts to have created the entirety of the output, therefore I can’t claim complete ownership of the results. When I knowingly break the rules, I like to own the consequence of my actions, since it was my effort to route beyond the system. (I hacked it, I bought it)