For those of you following the previous conversation about my opinion that the Times’ new science magazine Eureka is male-centric, but who aren’t likely to wade through the 100+ comments, just to let you know that its editor, Antonia Senior, has been kind enough to defend her position on that thread (near the bottom).
I’ve reproduced her comment below, and the discussion rages on over at the original post – but feel free to add your thoughts to this update if you’d find it easier.
I’m the editor of Eureka, and yes I am a woman, and a very committed feminist. I have been following your blog, and reading your comments online. It’s taken a while for me to reply because I’ve been furiously busy, apologies for that. I do want to reply because I think you all raise incredibly important issues.
I would like to just explain our thinking about the number of women in the issue. Yes, we knew they were under-represented. Yes, we agonised about it. (I’m stung by the suggestion we didn’t notice, or that the graphics are dictated by marketing!)
But I, and my female picture editor, are absolutely committed to the principle of including ideas and pictures based on merit alone. We were looking for 15 astonishing ideas, and only 4 of the ideas we loved were being championed by women – Libby Heaney, Angela Belcher, Laura Chamberlain and Rachel Armstrong.
At one point we nearly put in a few more ideas, solely to have more pictures of women in the photo essay, but rejected the idea as patronising and ridiculous.
As for the columnists being male, I make no apologies for that. We wanted Martin Rees to be our guest columnist for our launch issue, but there will be women in that slot in the future (suggestions welcome!). The Times’ environment editor and science editor are male – but as a lifelong Times employee I can assure you that this is coincidental; there are plenty of women in positions of real power here, just not any in those two jobs. Ben Miller is male, but the market for comics with a scientific background is a niche one.
In a previous incarnation I was Deputy Business Editor of The Times and faced a similar problem; women were under-represented in senior roles in business, and getting them into our pages felt like a struggle. I came to the same conclusion then: our job is to report the world not invent it as we would like it to be.
I know that many of you felt that the furniture was male, and you are probably right. We could make more effort with the graphics etc.
I have plenty of plans for championing women in science in future editions, but I’m afraid I will not be shoe-horning women into any issue in just for the sake of it.
If any of you have ideas for women whose work you think we would like to know about because the work is astonishing, then I would be delighted to hear about them. I can be reached at [email protected]
I would also like to highlight Maxine Clarke’s response:
But there are just so many women doing great scientific work – as I mentioned above, it really is not hard to find them. They are not invisible. I am afraid I absolutely do not buy the argument put forth by Henry and maybe others that it is harder to get women to write. I have personally commissioned literally hundreds of articles over the years, and have never found it a problem to publish those by women as well as those by men. I think every commissioning editor, whether of Eureka, or of a Nature or other scientific journal, or anywhere, can find people who are fully representative of the scientific world – gender, geographical location, etc. It really is not difficult. And if it takes an extra five minutes of phone calls/search to find a woman who isn’t into self-promotion bigtime but is doing superior work, then that is five minutes well spent.
Finally, I would again point out that numerous studies over decades suggest that what is considered ‘astonishing’ (whether it be a CV, a grant application or research impact) is strongly subconsciously influenced when the gender of its creator is known – and that both men and women fall prey to this.
I rather like Antonia Senior’s response. In particular the statements:
I came to the same conclusion then: our job is to report the world not invent it as we would like it to be.
and
I’m afraid I will not be shoe-horning women into any issue in just for the sake of it.
Are rather nicely stated.
And – it seems that there are a couple of recent Nobel Laureates whose work is “astonishing” – but you (Antonia) have probably thought of that already.
I came to the same conclusion then: our job is to report the world not invent it as we would like it to be.
that’s a cop-out, really. We have to be the change we wish to see. (And it neatly side-steps the whole biological sciences sex ratio anyway). Oh, what’s the other quote? All that is needed for evil to triumph, etc?
The second statement was irrelevant, as none of us were saying that’s what we wanted.
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, Wintle. Are you?
Reporting the world as it is would be a far shot more than 4 out of 24 women or whatever the final total was when you factor in the three blokes who made the cut for internet but not print version. That is more like reporting the world not as it truly is but as popular culture sees it – as male pretty much everywhere you look in reporting, broadcast, fiction etc. – everywhere you look except in actual labs.*
obviously not in all disciplines of science, but in a fair number
I guess we are going to have to mark Eureka’s report card as “could do better”, especially in light of the comments from the editor.
Off the top of my head and thinking only of my particular speciality (structural biology), I can name:
Jennifer Doudna (Berkeley) – pioneer of structural analysis of large RNAs and protein-RNA complexes
Carol Robinson (Cambridge – about to move to Oxford) – Mass spec. revolutionary who showed the world how to analyse non-covalent macromolecular complexes by this technique
Elena Conti (Max Planck Institute) – leading light in structural analysis of RNA transport and processing
All easy to find via Google. No shoe-horns required.
The problem with Eureka’s debut brief was that they were not looking for Nobel laureates or pioneers of textbook research, but of new, up-and-coming original ideas. (At least that was the claim, though some of their candidates were pretty staid.) These are no as easy to find – a lot of the women I know doing stuff like this are too busy in the lab making it work to be shopping their work to the media 24-7 like some people we could mention.
I also think it defeats the purpose for us to do Eureka’s research for them. It is, after all, their job.
Given the ages, I wouldn’t have classed some of those features as ‘up and coming’, either.
Carol Robinson is great value. She helped me in my DPhil years and is doing stuff you wouldn’t believe with mass spec.
It was an odd assortment, I thought. But this is another problem – what is ‘astonishing’ to one person might be old hat/conventional to another. Everyone will have such diverse interests, tastes and thresholds for that elusive ‘wow’ factor.
Hi!
First, we’re very pleased that Antonia wrote in, and found her comments interesting and helpful.
We’ve already written to Mark Henderson at the Times offering our help, and will certainly contact Antonia in the same spirit.
Lifting it away from the specific experience of Eureka to the more general, there are issues around how ‘merit’ and ‘fairness’/’equality’/’inclusion’ etc are defined and applied. Are they necessarily in conflict, or are there ways in which they can be brought together? I guess that’s a conversation that can be had at a theoretical level, and then case by case. It comes up a lot for us in different circumstances.
Thanks, Antonia, for writing on Jennifer’s blog.
Great to hear you’ve contacted them, Ruth. I hope it makes a difference. For me, a difference would be defined as even a mild improvement – at least one or two women writing column/review/being Q&A’d, and if scientists are featured, then at least slightly closer to numbers that reflect reality. I’d fall off my chair if, for example, life scientists featured now approached the real-life 50/50 mark. But I’d feel happy with just a slight boost, such that the anthropologist from Mars wouldn’t conclude that science is almost exclusively a game by and for men.
About your question, I’m not really sure what you mean. When you ask whether ‘merit’ and ‘fairness’ can be brought together, to what are you referring? If you mean is it possible to feature women and still feature great science – including women because they deserve to be and not as a token – then reality already furnishes those women, as Maxine points out.
A shift in the ‘furniture’ would be nice too.
Actually Jenny, I meant those profiled didn’t seem to be up and coming. Many seemed decidedly mid-career, which isn’t what I would have thought the piece was supposed to be about. And this is relevant because I think you find higher percentages of women in that demographic.
I think the merit vs equality debate can suggest that if you make deliberate efforts to seek out and include minority groups you are lowering standards/weakining merit. As you say, this isn’t necessarily the case.
Hope that’s clearer!
I think that’s what Antonia Senior was implying: she said she didn’t want to lower the standards of her magazine by including more female scientists for the sake of it. But my point is that no lowering of standards would be necessary if there were good women in her editors’ longlist in the first place. Her reply implies that science is like business – there are so few good women that it’s hard to find great candidates. And this is what I, and Maxine and others, are strongly contesting. I think what failed here is how they prepared their longlist – if it was mostly mediocre women, of course there weren’t more than four to choose from (and of course we wouldn’t want poor examples featured).
But I would argue it’s their search that failed, not that great ideas championed by female scientists are the limiting factor. Anyone actually practicing science knows this is just a fallacy, because the evidence is right in front of their eyes. It would be great if they could do some good journalism and discover what is so readily there for the taking.
I think that’s what Antonia Senior was implying: she said she didn’t want to lower the standards of her magazine by including more female scientists for the sake of it.
No, I wasn’t being sarcastic/ironic. This is precisely the point Antonia made, and I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt and agreeing with it as stated. That’s not mutually exclusive with also agreeing with Jenny’s point
_ But my point is that no lowering of standards would be necessary if there were good women in her editors’ longlist in the first place._
by the way.
Stupid markup language. Again.
yes – I don’t have anything significant/new to add. As Jenny says, I don’t for a second buy the argument that it’s hard to find women scientists or that they aren’t doing work that is any more or less “amazing” at whatever stage of their career because they are female. ie the “amazingness” of their work is not defined by them being female. But possibly there are more brash, confident, self-promotional men than there are women? Maybe, maybe not (one cannot generalise of course). Either way, there are plenty of them about.
Interesting that Prof Senior states “I and my picture editor….”. What role does the pic editor have in determining who is doing amazing work – is the photogeneity of the subject relevant?
I’m very glad that Ruth and others have engaged constructively, and as written on the previous post, let’s hope they redress the balance in the next issue, though from Prof Senior’s response (justifying her poor track record to date) I am not all that optimistic. I hope I am proved wrong.
We’re agreed then, Richard. I was just checking.
Tokenism is hard to swallow if you feel you’re only wanted because you’re a minority. On the other hand, it’s amazing how many times mediocre men slip into the picture, probably because of their gender, but we don’t give these cases much thought. They just naturally belong, talented or otherwise.
bq. Interesting that Prof Senior states “I and my picture editor….”. What role does the pic editor have in determining who is doing amazing work – is the photogeneity of the subject relevant?
snort
sorry. As you were.
On a lighter note, the new series of The Thick of It will soon be on our screens (see trailer) and the good news is that this time the hapless, ineffectual know-nothing minister is a…
…woman!
Ha! Wonderful.
I find Ms. Senior’s remarks surprising, from a self-proclaimed feminist:
We were looking for 15 astonishing ideas, and only 4 of the ideas we loved were being championed by women [….]. At one point we nearly put in a few more ideas, solely to have more pictures of women in the photo essay, but rejected the idea as patronising and ridiculous.
It depends if you interpret “our job is to report the world not invent it as we would like it to be” as being something to be done proactively or not. That is, do you represent the world really as it is (that is, with an equal proportion of innovative ideas coming from women) or as you think it is (resorting to researching those ideas with the easiest accessibility to you and your staff)? That’s a true editorial decision. Not putting in a “few more ideas” is a decision to go with the easiest course of action, the status quo.
A truly unbiased decision would have been to have the assistants dredge up an equal number of great ideas from women and men to start, submit that list to an editor, and see if by chance the editor would have picked only the ones by men. I suspect not. But that would require a choice by the editor to make the assistants work more, since representing the world as it is is a priority, rather than making an easy, quick list of ideas.
In the spirit of not doing Eureka’s homework for them, there over a thousand biomedical researchers that have been affiliated with the enormously prestigious Howard Hughes Medical Institute alone, and they are searchable.
Many of these are women. More than four, anyhow.
Off the top of my head, Professor Christine Petit at the Institut Pasteur has been instrumental in finding causes for deafness and new avenues to cure it. What more can one ask?
Then again, one could choose to ignore such pointers and continue wringing one’s hands over the lack of well-promoted women researchers with press releases at the ready.
Thanks for your comments, Heather.
Someone on LabLit forums reminded me of the case of symphony orchestras, in which certain sections were almost entirely male-dominated (e.g. the violin section) in earlier days. In the 60’s, it became standard practice in America to conduct auditions behind screens so that the identity and gender of the auditioning musician remained obscure. Lo and behold, suddenly women could play the violin just as well as men! Fancy that. Now it’s more or less standard practice to hold auditions that way, and many of the gender inequalities have been addressed as a result.
So a great experiment for Ms Senior would be to ask her team to bring her a new ‘great ideas’ longlist but not reveal the gender or identity of the scientists. I wonder what would happen to her perception of how ‘astonishing’ the various candidates’ ideas were then?
I’m sure journalists don’t have time for experiments, but it would be interesting.
Jenny; the audition study is a very clear test of how much we as humans are influenced by our “up bringing/society” without thinking aobut it.
I know there was a suggestion about the “no names when sending out grants for grading or articles for reviewing” and I also remembered the response from some very distinguished scientists that “we are above folly things like careing about names on the article, therefore the names can still be there” … .. .
I still end up wondering about the cut off for “excellent new science” when they started to choose research areas. As Heather stated; there are manypeople affiliated with HHMI and that would be a good example of good scientists. I guess however, that you won’t find it if you don’t look for it. After all, it is much easier to just pick random good scientists who are the most in the paper?!
Asa, also British journalists wouldn’t have much contact with scientists affiliated with the HHMI, though I confess I can’t remember if there was a British bias to what was chosen. If they wanted to be British biased, as a British paper, there are certainly excellent funding bodies here who have rosters and publicly available Annual Reports.
I suspect you are very right about most people assuming they are “above” being influenced by these things. Unfortunately, studies don’t bear this out. In some cases women are even more severe on their own sex than are men, which is interesting.
It’s very easy to assume that what you’re working on is above sexism, as Jennifor mentioned previously. In the research I’m writing up at the moment in which the public voted which research projects they would choose to fund, women’s projects consistently ranked lower. I didn’t want to have to write about this in my results, because I’d like it not to be an issue, but it’s reflected in another study my research is based on, so I will. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence women are working on projects that are less popular, or in this case less ‘astonishing’, but evidence suggests otherwise.
As much as I am convinced these sort of hypotheses are correct (there is inherent sex bias even among women in judging a scientific idea “innovative”) they are still not proven. A word of caution for the manner in which one reports such observations, if we don’t want to be accused of our own bias in return.
What constitutes ‘proof’? There has been a hell of a lot of scientific studies about the phenomenon in general, and about science-related prowess (in particular, grant applications) in particular. But you are right – not even Nobel-prize winning findings can ever be said to be 100% ‘proved’, if we agree that truth is impossible to pin down absolutely.
Still, if there are a lion’s share of studies supporting that a hypothesis is true, at some point I feel it’s more accurate to believe than to discount.
Hi
Research we funded in 2006 may be of interest. Presence and representation of women scientists, engineers and technologists in the UK media (scroll down the page a bit to find it).
A research team led by Professor Jenny Kitzinger from the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies analysed how TV, film and newspapers portray women scientists, engineers and technologists and whether the media impacts on the under-recruitment of and failure to retain women in SET. The researchers also conducted interviews with programme makers, scientists, science representatives and journalists to further explore representations and profiles of scientists in the media.
These are their findings with regard to newspapers (there’s more on broadcast media plus recommendations):
• Men were much more often cited as expert scientific sources than women: 5 men were quoted by journalists for every 1 woman. The same was true for in-depth interviews: 5 male scientists were profiled in the press for every 1 female scientist.
• Journalists were more likely to comment on appearance when writing about women: half the profiles of female scientists mentioned clothing, physique or hairstyle whereas the equivalent was true for only a fifth of the profiles of male scientists.
• Descriptions of women could imply a contradiction between being a ‘real woman’ and a ‘real scientist’. Women in SET who were seen as conforming to traditional stereotypes such as ‘the geek’ were sometimes implicitly presented as unfeminine. Alternatively, if they were ‘sexy’ and ‘glamorous’ their status as scientists may be thrown into question.
• By contrast, descriptions of men working in SET seemed to confirm men’s status as bona fide scientists, computer whiz-kids or technological innovators.
• Interviews with scientists revealed the negative impact that gender stereotypes and scrutiny of appearance can have on women working in male-dominated work places. These interviews also highlighted how media industries may constrain the range of publicly available images of women working in SET.
I see a comment you made at Eureka about this issue has been included in today’s issue… (‘letters’ page).
Linky?
Just dropped in to add a comment about issue 2 when I saw your exchange Stephen and Richard. Digging around in the thing I find the comment on page 14 (don’t know if the mag is online yet – it took a few days last issue). In full it is “Eureka resembles a lad’s mag and offers only a frosty reception to women in its content and illustrations. As a woman scientist, I was disappointed.” Jennifer Rohn. (no affiliation or address provided).
What I dropped in to write is that the second issue is even worse than the first. Everything is male – there is one editorial picture of a woman, who is a suject sitting in a chair having a (male) scientist peform some test on her (possibly a lie detector – I am not reading this thing on principle). The scientists featured are all men and the main article is by a man (Bill Bryson). The five “opinion” articles are all by men. The “fight club” (opposing views) are both men.
There are two big colour pictures of women in ads. All three of them are very well dressed, made up etc.
Oh darn it, life is too short for this. But honestly, what planet is Eureka again? What alternative universe?
I think the online edition doesn’t come out immediately. I can only see the October one on the Times website.
Probably rashly, I’ve just called them on it in a retweet.
Maxine_Clarke RTTimesScience: Eureka science magazine out today. I didn’t think possible but No. 2 has even fewer women scientists (0) than issue No. 1.Oh well, I guess that issue 3 can’t be worse than issue 2 (zero), so let’s look on the bright side. Unless they get in some “amazing” piece of research that allows them to go below zero women scientists.
There is a preview/interview with Sue Hartley, the RI Xmas lecturer this year. It’s towards the back, just one page.
I must have flung it down before getting that far, Frank!
Now I have found her, she is on a very dark grey page, whose text is barely distinguishable from the background. Probably why I missed it. I have corrected my retweet.
Also, this means that in fact it could get worse, in that they could now have fewer in issue 3 than they have in issue 2. Joy!
Maxine wrote:
Something where they count them using complex numbers, perhaps? How about -4 i women scientists?
To be honest, folks, I’d been afraid to look and I still haven’t. Sounds as if I needn’t bother!
Maxine, keep tweeting. Honestly.
And Ruth, thank you so much for the intriguing precis about how female scientists are portrayed. I’d love to see studies, also, on what effect such portrayals have.
Could someone post me their copy? I can’t find one for sale now and am morbidly curious, now you’ve all whetted my appetite. Maxine, if you still have yours you could give it to someone in the band and they could bring it along to the rehearsal on Sunday. Contact me on email if so…but I expect you’ve probably already burned yours.
Actually (wheels turning more and more)…I have a theory. If the editor had responded directly to our complaints by improving the second issue to our specifications, she would have looked weak and in the wrong, subject to the whims of the readers. (Disregarding for the moment that they carried out an aggressive mail campaign claiming they were interested in reader feedback.) By brazenly carrying on the male theme, she is saving face. What I might expect is a gradual improvement over subsequent issues so it looks more natural – so it all averages out and appears like sample error in retrospect.
Or is that just wishful thinking?
I’m really getting into the swing of this tweting now. The US just announced 3 science envoys – guess what? All men.
RT @franknorman: Alberts, Zerhouni and Zewail (all men, natch!) are US science envoys: http://bit.ly/tvSs8 Who wd you choose for yr country?
Jenny – yes I still have my copy (unread by me!) but “the Prof” wants to read it over the weekend. Happy to mail it to you on Monday if that isn’t too late – will send to your lab address. (I don’t actually know who is in “the band” but I’m a bit out of things once I stray off the internet 😉 .)
Jenny again – my theory is the cock-up/lazy theory which in my experience usually turns out to be right in most matters. Lazy in that the features (if not the newsy bits) in the second issue were pre-planned before the first issue came out, and they didn’t bother to commission any quick pieces to redress the balance, or did not think to (or did not want to, but I would not like to think of anyone that this type of discrimination really truly is deliberate). It is possible that they have redressed the balance and commissioned more pieces about woman scientists and more articles by women (scientists or journalists) – and these will come out in future issues, depending on their backlog.
But what the heck – I’ve stopped caring. Eureka was an opportunity for the Times to do something a bit different in the presentation of science to general readers, and they didn’t take it. It is probably all very good and interesting stuff, but not striking its own, distinctive path.
(PS just in case anyone is thinking pots and kettles, I believe Nature can do a lot more in the gender balance regard of its content and the scientists it interviews and features. It does a great deal better than Eureka, but still “could do a bit better” I think. Other publications also – science does tend to have a male-dominated image in the media.)
BTW if anyone wants to suggest UK science envoys, they’ve got a hashtag on twitter for it now, #UKenvoys (hashtag idea suggested by TimesScience 😉 ). Oliver Morton has suggested John Sulston, that’s it so far.
oh, I thought it was going to be a bit better (as in “not portreaying good looking women in a decorative ad” as the female alibi in th science edition…) I guess I shouldn’t be too sad about not having seen issue 2?
It still pisses me off though. Sorry. I’d be happy if gender didn’t matter when talking about science but it is still obvious that is not true. THanks Maxine and Jenny for reporting and being alert! If they respond somehow I’d be interested to know …. (and I don’t have twitter so the updates here are good)
I’m sorry there wasn’t better news to report. Was at a party last night with a number of science/media types and there were not a few disparaging opinions about Eureka – there was much head-shaking about the gender composition of issue 2, but the main issue seemed to be how boring it is. One prominent science journalist predicted it would fold within 6 months. I won’t shed any tears.