{"id":527,"date":"2010-12-19T11:52:33","date_gmt":"2010-12-19T11:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/?p=527"},"modified":"2012-10-13T19:02:28","modified_gmt":"2012-10-13T19:02:28","slug":"on-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2010\/12\/19\/on-passion\/","title":{"rendered":"On Passion"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past few weeks there have been a number of articles commenting on the lack of women fronting up science on TV. First there was Jenny Rohn<\/a> writing on \u2018In which I Contemplate the Ranks of the Invisible\u2019<\/a>, quickly followed by Alom Shaha in the Guardian on \u2018Where\u2019s the Female Brian Cox?\u2019<\/a> (to which I responded Do we Need a Female Brian Cox?<\/a> , which provoked a lot of comment in the twittersphere tending to agree with me that it wasn\u2019t a vital step to encourage girls into science). More recently Jenny Rohn wrote about why \u2018Women Scientists Must Speak Up\u2019<\/a> wanting to encourage young women to practice making themselves heard, to prepare for what she terms punditry.<\/p>\n

Jenny in particular has identified a number of possible reasons for the absence of women in the science media, ranging from lack of self-confidence to the feeling that public debate, with its potential for cut and thrust, is not palatable to them. But she also implies that there is unconscious and unintended sexism occurring, when producers are looking for people to front their programmes, quoting one TV producer saying that the public wouldn\u2019t accept science if presented by\u00a0 “a young, blonde girl” who was under consideration.\u00a0 So if young blondes aren\u2019t suitable, are older women, or is one then up against the ageism the BBC has been charged with in the case of newsreaders such as Moira Stuart<\/a>? Certainly the BBC has recently been willing to get \u2018mature\u2019 women to present major programmes in arts subjects: the historian Amanda Vickery<\/a> being At Home with the Georgians, and my Cambridge colleague Mary Beard<\/a> considering Pompeii, both being broadcast during this month. So it would appear there is something peculiar to the way science \u2018needs\u2019 to be presented \u2013 in the eyes of a TV producer \u2013 which women, of any age, appear to \u2018lack\u2019 (note the inverted commas).<\/p>\n

Since, as Jenny has said, there are plenty of women with appropriate skills and enthusiasm to take on the media challenge (though obviously fewer than men) perhaps there is something in the way they speak which implies to the producer a lack of gravitas, or a presentation style which isn\u2019t believed to mesh with weighty matters. Is this some hark back to the original 16th<\/sup> century ideas of Francis Bacon that science is all about the mastery of man [sic] over nature, with implications of domination and control? This underlying theme of aggression pervades much of the language of early science writing; power was seen to be at the heart of science. This view was still present well into the 20th<\/sup> century (at least). If such an attitude towards the underlying scientific method lurks in the producer\u2019s mind, no wonder a feminine face might not fit their bill: hard science would then be unable to be presented by the soft face of a woman since the subliminal message of male domination over nature would be missing<\/p>\n

This effect looks to be another version of unconscious bias, that uncomfortable phenomenon identified by so many authors in their discussion of why numbers of women rising through the scientific ranks remain so low. In which case, the exhortations Jenny presents encouraging women to stand up and speak out will be insufficient. We need to challenge the assumptions about how science can be presented – as well as simply identify the appropriate media-savvy and microphone-comfortable women to stand up in front of the camera with the swagger and style of a celebrity, which also seems to be a sina qua non<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I would like to suggest one particular form in which unconscious bias presents itself in this context, in perceptions about style of presentation. Not about dress (we don\u2019t need to consider hemlines or hairstyles here), but about verbal style. My hypothesis is that there are male and female adjectives to describe speaking styles, akin to the well known pairing \u2018men are assertive, women are aggressive\u2019. Here I would propose \u2018men are charismatic, women are passionate\u2019. Have you ever heard of a woman being described as charismatic? Because, when I think about it, I don\u2019t think I have, and yet it is always seen as such a desirable attribute in a public speaker. But, an enthusiastic woman who talks forcefully and fluently about her science is liable to be labeled with the word \u2018passionate\u2019 \u2013 I know I am, and I have grown to hate it. I shouldn\u2019t, it isn\u2019t in itself a bad term, but one knows that in the context what was meant was that I wasn\u2019t quite lady-like, that as a (female) scientist I should be moderate but I actually looked as if I had fun with what I was doing and it was excessive. The Victorians certainly believed enthusiasm was most improper in a young girl, it was unseemly to be keen about anything rather than act merely demure, and I fear this attitude unconsciously lingers. So, if I am viewed as passionate I am being marked down for simply enjoying my science; yet conversely and perversely, if the Brian Cox\u2019s on TV demonstrate their own enthusiasm, this is seen as a plus by making science approachable.<\/p>\n

However, until we have an Amanda Vickery in science stacked up against Brian Cox, we won\u2019t know what the viewing audience really wants. The producers may be making entirely erroneous decisions about who can \u2018sell\u2019 the science by eliminating half the population, if not half the scientists. As scientists we should stand up and require evidence-based television productions, so \u2013 as Jenny said<\/a> \u2013 let us do the experiment of having a mainstream science series fronted by a woman. Then we can judge the success of the experiment from the ratings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the past few weeks there have been a number of articles commenting on the lack of women fronting up science on TV. First there was Jenny Rohn writing on \u2018In which I Contemplate the Ranks of the Invisible\u2019, quickly … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,5,1,27],"tags":[948,170,171],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communicating-science","category-science-culture","category-uncategorized","category-women-in-science","tag-brian-cox","tag-science-on-tv","tag-women-on-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}