{"id":324,"date":"2010-01-10T18:26:11","date_gmt":"2010-01-10T18:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2010\/01\/10\/on_sex\/"},"modified":"2010-01-10T18:26:11","modified_gmt":"2010-01-10T18:26:11","slug":"on_sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2010\/01\/10\/on_sex\/","title":{"rendered":"On sex"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/em> readers<\/a> excepted.)<\/p>\n

\nIt all started when I gave a friend a Bosch cordless drill for her birthday.<\/p>\n

\n\"Doing
\nSomething that isn’t pink<\/em><\/p>\n

\nShe 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).<\/p>\n

\n<img src="http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/519KlQIopgL.SS400<\/em>.jpg” title=”Sweet Jesus it’s pink” alt=”Sweet Jesus it’s pink” width=”400″ height=”400″ \/>
\nSomething too pink<\/em><\/p>\n

\nIt’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<\/a> by pretending to be responsible and caring.<\/p>\n

\nSo this drill. I think its non-pinkness was appreciated, and that set me to thinking that anyone who really appreciated power toys<\/del> tools wouldn’t<\/em> 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. <\/p>\n

\nI 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\u2014no, masculinity is good<\/em> ; this is more patriarchalism\u2014of the Eureka<\/em> supplement<\/a>. And of the “cavilling response”:http:\/\/network.nature.com\/people\/UE19877E8\/blog\/2009\/10\/14\/in-which-i-have-seen-the-future-of-science-\u2013-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.)<\/p>\n

\nFortunately, the state of science and technology with respect to sexual equality is not all bleak (and this is where my wireless scanner<\/a> comes in handy). Jenny was feeling a little homesick last week and went and bought a copy of the New Yorker<\/em>. We were quite taken by the cover, and indeed podcasted<\/a> it.<\/p>\n

\n\"New<\/a>
\nThe<\/em> New Yorker last week<\/em><\/p>\n

\nLeaving 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<\/strong>. This is brilliant stuff, and The Times<\/em> would do well to learn from the New Yorker<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\nThumbs up there, then.<\/p>\n

\nKinda related to this directionless ramble is a little shi<\/del> flurry that blew up on Twitter last week. Via @womenintech<\/a> I saw that Maggie Philbin<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\nBut 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\u2014and 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.<\/p>\n

\nAccording to the RS<\/a> itself, women comprise 5% of its membership. And 2\/50 is four percent, which to a cell biologist<\/a> 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?<\/p>\n

\nWell, in the last eight years ten percent of new members have been women, which is a bit ‘better’. According to their website<\/a>, candidates for election to the Fellowship must have made <\/p>\n

\n“a substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science and medical science”.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nand seeing as the Society’s place is not<\/em> 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<\/em>, 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

\nAgain, quoting from the RS website (emphasis mine), <\/p>\n

\nIn 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<\/strong>.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nListen up. You’ve got to be good<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n

\nSo there is a related question, the which I don’t know how to go about answering: what percentage of ‘top’ papers are authored\u2014and I suppose we should say, in the biological sciences at least, senior<\/em> authors\u2014are women? Does it reflect that 10% figure? <\/p>\n

\nAnd if not, why<\/em>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}