{"id":205,"date":"2009-03-15T13:54:46","date_gmt":"2009-03-15T13:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/2009\/03\/15\/women_just_dont_pimp_their_shit\/"},"modified":"2025-01-30T07:49:12","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T07:49:12","slug":"women_just_dont_pimp_their_shit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/2009\/03\/15\/women_just_dont_pimp_their_shit\/","title":{"rendered":"Women just don’t pimp their shit"},"content":{"rendered":"

What with the recent celebration of International Womens Day 2009<\/a> and the forthcoming Ava Lovelace Day<\/a> I have been thinking about what it means to be a woman and a scientist. And I am certainly not alone<\/a>. This week, a book review<\/a> in Nature<\/em> was a variation on a theme, and I met a celebration<\/a> of 100 Women in Science every time I entered college.<\/p>\n

Twice recently, in conversation with people older and wiser than myself, came up the question of belief in one’s own abilities. A number of my peers struggle, like me, to internalize the fact that they are able. We surely<\/em> are able. We would not have been awarded a degree, would not have gotten a job, would not have been offered a place on the course if we were not able.<\/p>\n

When I described this incongruence between the evidence and the feeling, the feedback was “yes, but you are all women.”<\/p>\n

Which brings me to the above quotation, which caught me by surprise when I was listening to the (typically PG-rated) Guardian Tech Weekly Podcast<\/a>. In an edition entitled women in technology<\/a>, Alex Krotoski<\/a> [1] quoted Leah Culver<\/a> in a panel at SXSW 2008<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(Fast-forward to about ten minutes in.)<\/a><\/p>\n

I had thought that this lack-of-self-belief was a function of being at the beginning of a demanding course, with its workload and its ups and downs. Can it, at least in part, be attributed to being female?<\/p>\n

And is there anything practical that can be done? After all, even good science faces knockbacks<\/a>. Academia is a tough environment to be in. Are there any practical steps that can be taken towards toughening up?<\/p>\n

1<\/sup> From Alex’s profile, she is a PhD student too. I hadn’t realised that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What with the recent celebration of International Womens Day 2009 and the forthcoming Ava Lovelace Day I have been thinking about what it means to be a woman and a scientist. And I am certainly not alone. This week, a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[189,192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging-the-phd","category-nature-network"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3051,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/3051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/erikacule\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}