bq. I should imagine that most readers of this blog do not seriously think that women are any less able, intrinsically, than men to do science. (Wired readers excepted.)
It all started when I gave a friend a Bosch cordless drill for her birthday.
Something that isn’t pink
She was glad it wasn’t pink: there seems to be a lot of pink going around and I don’t know why. Pink used to be a boy’s colour; the colour of blood, but watered down a little. Sometime in the earlier part of the last century it became a girl’s colour, and in the last couple of decades it has been appropriated by marketeers intent on selling things to girls (or their mothers). You can get pink lego, pink mobiles, and yes, pink roadside tool kits (complete with a ‘Help’ sign).
<img src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519KlQIopgL.SS400.jpg” title=”Sweet Jesus it’s pink” alt=”Sweet Jesus it’s pink” width=”400″ height=”400″ />
Something too pink
It’s now necessary to dress your human offspring in either pink or blue, just so people can tell what sex they are. As if that matters. And let’s not even start about the infantilization of one half the human race, and the trivialization of serious matters by corporate bigwigs who make a profit by pretending to be responsible and caring.
So this drill. I think its non-pinkness was appreciated, and that set me to thinking that anyone who really appreciated power toys tools wouldn’t want them in pink, and that anyone who didn’t know what to do with same probably wouldn’t be in any better a position if it were pink.
I find the whole thing a little distressing, because I’d hoped we’d moved on from attitudes that patronized and repressed women (which, if it’s not clear, I think pinkification does). This contributed to the depression I felt at the sheer masculinity—no, masculinity is good ; this is more patriarchalism—of the Eureka supplement. And of the “cavilling response”:http://network.nature.com/people/UE19877E8/blog/2009/10/14/in-which-i-have-seen-the-future-of-science-–-update from its editor. (I notice there’s another issue of that out, but the web version looks boring, and offering to do a special piece on women scientists completely misses the point, so I’m not really keen to give Rupert Murdoch any more of my money.)
Fortunately, the state of science and technology with respect to sexual equality is not all bleak (and this is where my wireless scanner comes in handy). Jenny was feeling a little homesick last week and went and bought a copy of the New Yorker. We were quite taken by the cover, and indeed podcasted it.
The New Yorker last week
Leaving aside the “scientists=white coat + glasses” thing (and to be fair, they probably should be wearing safety goggles anyway), the representation of the sexes among the ‘scientists’ in the cartoon is pretty good. Similarly, check out the ‘engineers’ (who you can tell are engineers because they’re wearing yellow hats): three male and two female. (The dude with the ponytail has stubble. So either a man or a very testosterone-fuelled woman). Not only is 2/5 equal to 1/2 in biological terms (i.e. the sample size is too small), note that the woman engineer is quite obviously the foreman, that is, in charge. This is brilliant stuff, and The Times would do well to learn from the New Yorker.
Thumbs up there, then.
Kinda related to this directionless ramble is a little shi flurry that blew up on Twitter last week. Via @womenintech I saw that Maggie Philbin said she’d been to the Royal Society, and noted that of 50 paintings on the walls, only two were of women. Shock, and indeed horror.
But wait a minute. The Royal Society elects members according to how good they are, and (unrelated to that statement) it’s only been relatively recently that they admitted women—and I think it’s more than slightly unjust of us to judge the actions and attitudes of long-dead men by contemporary standards. So let’s have a closer look.
According to the RS itself, women comprise 5% of its membership. And 2/50 is four percent, which to a cell biologist is the same number. So that sounds fair. But isn’t that number itself discriminatory in some way? Surely more women than that deserve to elected to the RS?
Well, in the last eight years ten percent of new members have been women, which is a bit ‘better’. According to their website, candidates for election to the Fellowship must have made
“a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science”.
and seeing as the Society’s place is not to drive recruitment choices, no matter how noble the cause, but rather to recognize outstanding contributions; and given the Higher Education Statistics Agency reports that of full-time and part-time professors in science subjects at UK universities, about 9% are women, we can see that the proportion of female Fellows now elected reflects the small percentage of female professors in university science subjects from which Fellows are elected.
Again, quoting from the RS website (emphasis mine),
In August 2002, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee published the report of its inquiry into the Government funding of the scientific learned societies. The report concluded: “We do not think that the present low level of female Fellows in the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering represents any discrimination against women.”
Listen up. You’ve got to be good at science to get in the FRS (certain high profile non-FRSes might consider that this is why they didn’t get elected; not because of their sex). It’s nothing at all to do with sexism or positive discrimination.
So there is a related question, the which I don’t know how to go about answering: what percentage of ‘top’ papers are authored—and I suppose we should say, in the biological sciences at least, senior authors—are women? Does it reflect that 10% figure?
And if not, why?
Great post, Richard. As an aside, anyone interested in the vile pinkification phenomenon should have a look at a recent and excellent Guardian piece on this topic.
I’ve never thought the FRS gender ratio was sexist – it’s obvious there are very few female professors to draw from.
About the cover – I still don’t understand why none of the engineers – who should also be smartypants in the eyes of popular culture – have glasses.
Thanks Jenny. And thanks for the link to the Grauniard piece—I was thinking of it but couldn’t be arsed looking for it!
Perhaps the engineers are wearing contacts? They might be ‘cooler’ than scientists. Or maybe H&S haven’t caught up yet?
Excellent post!
I used to have very little choice when it came to buying clothes for little girls – pink or pink.
I do admit to owning a pink camera once but that was only after I checked out the Zeiss optics and the other tech. specs!
Another related Grauniad article, mentioning the Pink Stinks campaign, is here.
Our daughter (aged five and a half) is a big fan of “Pink Stinks”. She flatly refuses to wear anything pink, and tells me she has decided to be a boy when she is a bit older because they get “proper clothes” rather then “horrid dresses”.
Thanks for that link, Austin—Eva pointed it pout to me just now.
That Grauniard writer is a bit short on incisive, methinks. It’s fine to choose to wear pink, but when it’s shoved down your throat like it tends to be, then it’s not choice any more but oppression. Anyway, your daughter sounds cool, and point out that it’s quite difficult to be a boy and want to wear dresses.
“pointed it out‘. Not pout.
Fantastic post, Richard. I’m so happy to see the cover of the New Yorker. A similar feeling came over me yesterday when I was watching a Ford truck commercial, and one of the “tough” people was a woman! Horray! (not that I’d ever buy a Ford truck, but it was nice to see). I’ll celebrate the small victories.
I went through the whole “I hate pink” stage, but now choose it every so often…even seeking it out. But, like you mention in your comment above, I’m more drawn to it now because I have the choice (not like when my room was painted pink when I was a little girl).
So there is a related question, the which I don’t know how to go about answering: what percentage of ‘top’ papers are authored—and I suppose we should say, in the biological sciences at least, senior authors—are women? Does it reflect that 10% figure?
And if not, why?
I don’t know the answer, but if you find out, please do tell me.
Is that something that the Author IDs will help with? Could that allow an analysis of the top 200 cited papers (or whatever the best way is of defining ‘top’ papers)?
Nice post Richard and I love the cover of the New Yorker 🙂
I think that the ratio of senior authors might not be interesting until (if ever that was ever going to happen) manuscripts are reviewed anonymously, as in that the reviewer don’t know who wrote it/did the research. I think the “stigmata” or whatever you’d call it (history still making a mark) will be a factor for the reviewing which in turns gives some impact for the final published papers. In short, I don’t know what the ratio of females in the senior authorship would really tell us.
As of the pink thing. I had a phase when I was 9 when everything I wore was pink (and later purple) and dresses and skirts. This was at the same time as I was super-interested in the home chemistry set and the math problems 🙂 I would like to be able to wear pink without feeling that I am making “I¨m a girl statement”, especially since some people tend to think that girl means weak/sub-standard/something else not equal to boy-man worth . As said before, you can dress girls in blue but if you want to stir things up, try putting the boy baby in pink and wait for the comments on how you are cruel to him etc…. fascinating…
Asa, do you really think sexism comes into play when people are reviewing manuscripts? As an editor I didn’t see any evidence for that. There are multiple authors on the papers and papers with a female senior author often have a male first author, and sometimes a prominent male collaborator near the end of the list. So the ‘femaleness’ of any paper isn’t always that dominant. I think a factor that might be considered more, when possibly it shouldn’t, is the lab’s track record – which could be influenced by sexism, as there is evidence that research grant bestowal has a sex bias. So fewer grants, not as good a track record, and the nebulous idea that “this paper isn’t standing on very much” when really, a paper ought to be judged in isolation on its own merits.
Jenny: I don’t know if it (sexism) plays a role in reviewing… I do think however, that the published article is the end result of many interacting things. As you say in the last sentence; the grant getting, the track record, the impact of your lab etc, do play a role and in the end it may influence how your manuscript is reviewed.
That is why I said that imho the importance of the statistic of “how many female senior authors have been published” will be bigger if the reviewing process of the manuscripts were anynomous since this would “remove” the influence of things like lab reputation, grant money etc. As it looks today, I am not sure that the ratio/statistics would tell much.
I know that there is a couple of researchers (Dr Wold et al) in Sweden who did an investigation about female vs male CVs and track record blindly to see if they were “equivalent” and they found that on average the females needed 2.3 times more than the males to be considered “as good”.
I dunno Scott. Is the whole ORCID thing recording sex? Martin?
Åsa, there’s a whole load of stuff on this (sexism) in peer review, and Maxine commented on it in that thread of Anna’s I linked to above. I should have read it more carefully!
I also found some papers on patents, which was quite interesting, but I need my morning cuppa now.
I’ve said it elsewhere a few times, but blinding the referees to the identity of the authors is pretty damned tricky when the authors spend most of the introduction saying “previously we showed” and citing their own papers. And there is a good case for laying the groundwork in this way: it’s hard to evaluate a paper without having a look at the recent papers directly underpinning them. This isn’t to do with track record, but with the scientific narrative.
Yah, the proponents of double-blind (and indeed, most people, it seems to me, who think peer review needs throwing out) seem to forget that there’s a community here, and people in any given field tend to know each other. I’ve looked at manuscripts with my boss(es) to review and shared with them the thought “Who are these guys?”.
That pink used to be a boys’ colour is very evident if you walk around the Georgian galleries of the National Portrait Gallery in London (the other NPG). Plenty of mighty men posing in pink jackets and hats.
Yes, I’m with Jenny. Blinding the referees to the AUs’ identity is a bugger to do. Blinding the AUs to the referee(s) identity (as at present) is easier, of course, mainly because there are usually multiple plausible possibilities so guessing is not that useful (though in my experience AUs expend a lot of time trying, and constructing conspiracy theories).
Among referees who do “out” themselves, the classic one is the referee who says:
Brackets, of course, being what they don’t write.
Matt, I’m actually quite a fan of the Georgian pink you see on the ceilings of buildings from a certain period (That’ll be Georgian, then, Richard–Ed).
Austin, you speak the truth. I’ve had many a cup of coffee with various bosses trying to guess who the reviewers were. It’s quite a fun game.
(Hey. I think we’re in the middle of discovering a new law here. I’ll formulate it crudely, but perhaps Bob might help: as discussion threads lengthen the probability of it focussing on peer review tends to 1.)
I’m sorry if I was unclear. I just don’t think that it is that clear what the ratio of female senior authors will show since there is a bias in the whole process. I don’t think that it will be possible to block out the authors but tried to argue that only then you might be able to “check the manuscript without too much bias”.
And yes Richard, I have read that link and others. Interesting things. Sorry if that didn’t come through.
But you’re assuming that there is a bias, and Maxine says that there isn’t
The Nature leader-writers and I have gone back to reanalyse other publications and we have concluded that there is no demonstrated gender bias in peer-review.Asa wasn’t just talking about peer review (see her comments further up). She was talking about the whole process of running a good lab – and getting hired to run one in the first place.
It’s easy for native English speakers to disguise their identities as a peer reviewer – use British spelling when you’re a Yank and vice versa. Or go for the exotic and use the mistakes typical of various foreign tongues. (Note: this trick is only for the linguistically refined – if you slip up anywhere the game is up!)
Yars… That is probably harder to quantify than the authorship thing, so I was trying to avoid it 🙂
I like your suggestions to avoid identification. Have you ever seen them (in your career as editor) or used them (in your career as scientist)?
@Austin Our daughter (aged five and a half) is a big fan of “Pink Stinks”. She flatly refuses to wear anything pink, and tells me she has decided to be a boy when she is a bit older because they get “proper clothes” rather then “horrid dresses”.
Then have her go and talk to Dr. Joe. Joe is The Network’s new space science blogger and the epitome of a Tom Boy!
A Tom Boy, huh?
Pink can be an effective strategy for keeping manly men from taking your stuff. I got tired of losing horse halters to “borrowers” (few things are more annoying than not being able to find a halter when you need to catch your horse), and so I bought pink ones, with pink and black lead ropes to match. Unfortunately, when my mare is turned out in cold weather, with her pink breakaway halter and purple blanket, she looks as if a 5 year-old girl dressed her for kindergarten.
I’ve always liked pink, and sometimes I use pale pink as a background color for Powerpoint lecture slides (with black text), just to be contrary.
I’m wearing pink in every school picture from grade 5 to 9. That means that for four or five years, my favourite shirt was a pink shirt. They’re all hot pink, and the first few pictures were during the late eighties when that was actually a fashionable colour, but still. I do wear a lot of purple now, and have to consciously stop myself from buying purple to avoid all my clothes being that colour, but I don’t see that as very girly. Maybe guys don’t like purple, but purple is not really used in marketing for girls. And it’s been my favourite colour since I was two, and my mom needed to get me an entire new box of crayons because the purple one was all used up and I couldn’t possibly draw anything else without it!
Pink is a perfectly cromulent colour, in the right place, and depending on shade.
I was forgetting that .nl doesn’t have school uniforms for a second there, Eva. I was wondering what sort of child abuse you had been subjected to.
The younger Pawn likes pink in small doses. She has at least one pink top; but it has a skull and crossbones on it. This amuses me.
Yes, our pink-averse 5 yr old can be easily induced to wear anything with a skull and crossbones on it, or other association with piracy, or bearing the words “Menace” or “Terror”.
Talking of Tomboys, I did tell her at one stage that she could be a tomboy like her mother. Her response was to ask me:
Didn’t quite know what to answer there.
I’ve often wondered that, Austin. I have an answer, but not sure I should repeat it here.
I would have liked school uniforms… I had to suffer the horrible fashion of the early nineties while in high school.
I was just about to say that I don’t like pink, and then realised that I’m actually wearing my one and only pink(ish) shirt today. D’oh! It’s really at least halfway to purple, though. I also have a pink pen and pink post-its on my desk, but they were freebies at breast cancer symposia. My usual colours are blue, green, brown, and occasionally purple. (My sister-in-law gave me a purple sweater for Christmas. When I said I loved the colour, she turned to her eight year old son and said “oh, well done, you told me she’d like the purple better than the one I was looking at!” He replied “I only said that because you were taking too long and I wanted to get out of the store”).
Two of my friends have six month old daughters, and both of them are being given more clothes than they can manage by friends with older children. Neither of my friends has had to buy a single outfit yet. However, about 90% of the hand-me-downs are – you guessed it – pink. One friend in particular is not happy about this. I bought her baby a dark green t-shirt, but it won’t fit her for another couple of months or so. Mum can’t wait…
Yeah, that’s the thing, Cath. It’s not about ‘liking’ (or not) pink (or any other colour), but about it being forced on one.
I wonder what would happen if we forced one half the population to exclusively wear , or make toys/gadgets/whatever available in that colour?
PS. There was an opinion piece in the Evening Standard today about Susan Greenfield. Someone was saying, basically, that if she were a man her experiments (and therefore eligibility to head the Ri) wouldn’t have been so scrutinized. Not having at my finger tips the history of the last few directors of the Ri, can anyone comment? (side-stepping the argument about whether one should have a good-or-otherwise scientist driving a sci-comms body.)
What, the pink pen? Occupational hazard in my field…
(yeah, the children’s clothes. I know. But there has also been a backlash against the pinkness of the breast cancer “awareness” campaign. See e.g. Boycott October on Jeanne Sather’s Assertive Cancer Patient blog).
Yeah, that’s what the ‘Think before you Pink’ link was all about. To be fair, that’s not just about pinkness but the fact that the companies sponsoring it (a) make more than they spend through increased revenues and (b) are responsible for environmental carcinogens.
Yeah.
Indeed.
Wow. The amount of pinkness (now I’ve had a chance to look at those links) is …
OK. Words fail me. But I do like the phrase “Shopping never cured anything”.
The younger Pawn also has pink skull-and-crossbow earrings but is getting increasingly intransigent with regard to pink in any shape or form. Yay!
Help me out here – I think I’ll compile a list of traits that might lead some people to speculate, unfavorably perhaps, on one’s character, motivations, and/or intellect. Here’s what I have so far:
Voluntarily wearing pink items of clothing, or choosing to use or buy pink tools, pens, smartphones, bicycles, etc.
Owning a small dog, particularly the toy breeds – regardless of whether the dog was an adopted stray, a rescue, or purchased from a breeder
Watching non-educational television programs
Using certain fonts in electronic correspondence or presentations
Primary and secondary education in the public school system (US only)
Southern US drawl and dialect
commenting on blogs
changing your name when you get married
not having children
let’s add “text colour” and “stationery background” to “certain fonts”
unfortunately, also being blonde (women only)
marrying an 80-year-old billionaire (washed-up Playboy models only)
owning more than two cats
The one about cats is fair enough.
being too good looking
being bad smelling/stinky
(I guess these might be too obvious? I therefore left out “thin”/”fat” since there are differences in how people percieve that, right?)
Otherwise I’d end up with
not drinking alcohol (“not even a little?”)
being vegan (where I am in US at least)
Being Swedish, and blonde, and tall…
Having professionally done fingernails in multiple colours (or, if you happen to work in oceanography, ‘having longish fingernails’)
having long hair (if you’re a man)
having short hair (if you’re a woman)
By the way, on that fingernail and pirate thing: I notice a lot of women much younger than me having black fingernails – that used to be reserved for those with goth inclinations. And pirate stuff is the new pink/blue for boys and girls.
I wonder whether I could pull off black nails at work.
Ooh, I thought of another one:
marrying someone with much less formal qualifications than you
A couple of my work friends had very strong reactions when I started dating my carpenter husband. This despite the fact that he is demonstrably (frequently, publicly) smarter than me.
Sheesh. “Much less formal qualifications?” I meant “much less formal education”. Or maybe “fewer formal qualifications”. I must have changed my mind half way through that bullet point.
…thereby proving my point that education ≠ intelligence.
I second that one, Cath – same here. People just automatically assume that, if you’re a woman with a PhD, your man must be a scientist too. I’ve seen the confused look when I tell them mine isn’t many times. The other way around? No problem…
Having a high-pitched voice (female).
It’s mostly making people think you’re younger, but also “less intelligent” quite frequently. And definitely “not authoritative”.
laughing too much
having children
not having children
laughing at Cath
No-one thinks badly of anyone for laughing at me. It’s pretty much a) universal and b) my role in life.
p.s. gotta love the regular, clockwork, simultaneous Friday-pub-closing-time appearance of comments from certain UK based NNers 😉
Aw, Cath hugs
I have NO IDEA what you’re talking about. lies
You’re all my besht friends.
That’s OK, guys – I’m really perfectly OK with my role!
OK. Next round’s on you then.
It’s still a couple of hours until beer o’clock here – do you mind waiting? Or will you be passed out and snoring by then?
We might have moved on to the JD by then, but sure.
Indeed.
Drive-by pinking
I have a five-year-old daughter. She introduces me to parts of the internet I might never otherwise encounter.
As for the ten-year-old’s site, at least it isn’t as pink.
WARNING to my readers: do not click on those links unless you want your computer to explode.
My computer just exploded.
Did you want it to?
I click on the link, the truth that the computer does not explode but I understood nothing. Was probably a sardonic prank at your post Richard.
A prank, Alejandro? Would I ever do that?
I think that Jon play an joke, presumably.
Or according with the nomenclature to Mr. Simon Jenkins is a
Mad Scientific
Ah, I see. You think Jon knew our computers (except for Steffi’s) wouldn’t explode?
No, what happens is that there is a legion of barbie who want to take over the world.
What do we do, General Correa?!
Nothing.
Serious matter for a good story of “The Guardian”.
Sorry, what is? Exploding Barbies?
I fear my daughters will learn their civics from the internet. No wait, that’s not fear it’s certainty. A political Barbie-Poptropica mashup. Then perhaps they will enter public office and order that computers be equipped to explode when users do not behave according to the dictates of the Great Leader.
It’s time to go to the mall now. I fear my computer and must go to the mall. Apricot is in. Our leader told us the strength of our economy lies in malls. She said there is safety at the mall. There is a sale on simplicity at the mall. From each according to his ability, distributed at the mall. It’s time to go to the mall again.
‘mall’ sounds funny if you keep saying.
Actually Jon, I know quite a few people in IT who would love for computers to explode if (l)users didn’t behave according to spec. As long as the blast radius was sufficiently large, at least.
I’m going to go fast to the mall Homecenter sodimac
You have to buy all, pink object commercial everything in the mall rapidly!
Good plan, Alejandro. Would you be so kind as to send me all your money so I can do that?
I’ve spent all money richard. But, how you is my friend I send you virtual money I think there iMoney and iBlogsATMs that receive it, I send at you my dear friend.
On one condition you need to invite me to England at the Festival in Cromer:
Now go shopping!
Thanks. I will now go and buy virtual pinkness.
You are hereby invited to the festival in Cromer. I hope Henry doesn’t mind.
Let’s go to the mall!
(Note: this is not a serious actual song. It’s from “How I Met Your Mother”, a comedy. One of the characters’ storyline includes the fact that she used to be a teen pop sensation in Canada.)
I know this post is pretty old now, but for the archives I thought I’d point out a story from the Women in Science forum: the newest Barbie is going to be a computer engineer and her laptop is hot pink!
Oh grief. Deep in the pile of stuff I haven’t written about and should is the link to that Barbie’s blog.