It is more than 40 years since the American psychologist Carol Gilligan wrote her book, In a Different Voice, challenging the view that women were morally less developed than men, pointing out this difference arose because the schema had been developed from studies on (white) males. According to Gilligan’s analysis, women are more centred around caring whereas men prioritise justice. It has been criticised as reinforcing stereotypes and treating ‘women’ (and ‘men’) as homogeneous, regardless of other characteristics such as ethnicity, age or socio-economic status. It also begs the question – present in so many of these debates around gender issues – of whether there is an innate biological difference or simply the way we bring up our children that creates this difference. It is the nature versus nurture debate once more.
When I first read it, maybe 15 years ago, the book certainly resonated with me in terms of how I viewed my life and my place in it. It isn’t clear to me that, in a situation like this, the origin of any difference in the way men and women approach problems (one of Gilligan’s earliest studies was around attitudes to abortion) is relevant. What matters is that, in many situations, women and men may approach or envisage problems differently. In talks I give about women in STEM, I cite the word clouds Let Toys be Toys produced about toys for children. Those toys marketed at boys (specifically 4-8 year olds) stress words like ‘battle’ and ‘power’, whereas girls were directed towards ‘magic’ and ‘glitter’, with ‘beautiful’ being another oft-appearing word thrown in. It is hard to imagine children don’t receive messages from these words, at least at some subliminal level.
Historically, of course, women ‘knew their place’, and in the science community that meant that a rare woman had to tread carefully if she was to be heard and not shunned. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, eschewed such actions, and therefore got tarred with labels such as Mad Madge, and more comments about her dress, when she visited the Royal Society in 1667, than her thinking (which Samuel Pepys swiftly dismissed: ’nor did I hear her say anything that was worth hearing’) . Caroline Herschel was much more careful, even – or perhaps particularly – when writing to the secretary of the Royal Society to inform him she had discovered a new comet (the first of seven she laid claim to). As she put it
‘In consequence of the Friendship I know to exist between you and my brother I venture to trouble you in his absence with the following imperfect account of a comet..’ ,
a suitably modest way of daring to break into what was then solely a male preserve, and invoking her famous, if absent, brother to demonstrate her credentials. It is a very self-effacing introduction, while equally being forthright about the claim she is making, even without her brother looking over her shoulder.
We may have got beyond the need for women to be quite so modest, but nevertheless most successful women know they always have a fine line to walk between being seen as assertive and aggressive, between bigging oneself up and being seen as a threat to the establishment, primarily male, or coming across as overtly ambitious (not a trait that is seen as attractive in most women). But this difference in approach manifests itself in many ways.
Take Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna writing in the introduction to Venki Ramakrishnan’s 2018 book Gene Machine. This is a book in which he discusses his life and how he succeeded in unravelling the structure of the ribosome, the work for which he won the Nobel Prize, rushing along in order to beat others chasing the same prize. She says ‘the story is one of professional dilemmas, the serendipity of discovery and the deeply human nature of research, in which personalities play a central role.’ These sentences stress the interpersonal challenges everyone faces and the book discusses how they were tackled. In contrast, journalist Roger Highfield is quoted as saying of the book ‘this exhilarating account of the race to understand the molecular machine …..’ conjuring up an image of competition and individualism. Back to battle and power of the boy’s toy’s ads for Roger. Of course, both descriptions are right, but the emphasis is very different between them. Whether their different takes on identically the same book (and person) reflect nature or nurture isn’t the point. The fact is, what they see as the key takeaways are very different. An illustrative single data point to ponder.
I believe a key challenge for our (western) society, in science or other professions, is that the presumption remains that the male norm is the norm. Increasingly backwards-facing attitudes to DEI initiatives will not help this change. How many young female scientists still feel a need to be understated, if not positively self-effacing, in case the males around them have their egos upset because the women are being ‘unwomanly’? How many of the men notice and try to encourage the women, rather than stamp on them? Clearly, stereotypes being the dangerous things they are, some women will be the ones doing the stamping and some men doing all they can to encourage the women. So, yes, ‘not all men’ believe in the importance of battle and power in our laboratories – or offices, or law chambers or wherever. But nevertheless, quite a few.
The question of ‘what voice’ should a woman use, however, to be most persuasive or most successful remains. Having had a supportive colleague once ask me if I’d thought of having voice coaching lessons to lower my voice (think Maggie Thatcher), in some senses I mean literally ‘what voice’ as well as what words to use. But there is also the of ‘what voice’ in terms of what sits centre stage: it could be a change from an active to a passive voice in the narrative, but it could also be a change in the dynamics of the narrative from – as the Doudna/Highfield example shows – one reflecting people to one reflecting power or control. Unfortunately, unless we change the subtle cues children receive from everything (including advertisements, but also all kinds of media) and everyone (parents, teachers and peers) around them, this delicate dance that women often feel obliged to execute will have to continue. It can be very exhausting.
