{"id":205,"date":"2011-01-17T19:17:02","date_gmt":"2011-01-17T19:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/?p=205"},"modified":"2011-01-18T02:15:25","modified_gmt":"2011-01-18T02:15:25","slug":"translating-words-into-action%e2%80%94trials-of-a-male-feminist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/2011\/01\/17\/translating-words-into-action%e2%80%94trials-of-a-male-feminist\/","title":{"rendered":"Translating words into action\u2014trials of a male feminist"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been sitting on the sidelines watching, reading and cheering (no, not cheerleading\u2014let\u2019s not get into that debate…) as I follow the blogs, commentaries, lectures and personal examples of wonderful women in science who are leaders of the movement towards equal representation, opportunity and equality. I am honored to be among several who blog regularly here at this site, in particular the superb blogs of Jenny Rohn (Mind the Gap<\/a>) and Athene Donald (Athene Donald\u2019s blog<\/a>), and of course many others.<\/p>\n

I agree 100% with everything being said. My spouse unconditionally agrees that I am a certified feminist. So now what? How can I translate this into action?<\/p>\n

Please, this is a serious question, and I invite input on the matter. The gap between \u201cdeclaration\u201d and \u201cdoing\u201d is beginning to bother me.<\/p>\n

Until now I was fighting for my own career, my own survival. Now that I have a foothold (also known as tenure), I feel compelled to do more for science, women in science and minorities in science (a matter which I believe is separate and I will come to shortly).<\/p>\n

I have always been puzzled by women who choose not to work and stay home to raise children. Of course I \u2018accept\u2019 this as a woman\u2019s right, or a couple\u2019s right to decide how to manage their own lives. But from my perspective, a person is defined by their work. This does not mean that people who work in tasks outside science are inferior. No, my point is that I hold very high respect for someone who takes her\/his job seriously and is good or efficient at it. Believe me, I am full of respect for the checkout person at the supermarket who rapidly checks me out. I am in awe of the clerk at the bank who quickly processes my request, and the plumber who quickly diagnoses and fixes the leak in my toilet. It is not an elitist respect, but simple respect for a job well done. And I am certain that each and every one of these workers goes home at the end of the day, proud of their mastery at work.<\/p>\n

Women who choose to stay home puzzle me\u2014regardless of whether their families have enough money to afford this practice. The reason is that to me, staying home symbolizes a person\u2019s giving up on her\/his own career in favor of the next generation. Well it\u2019s important to ensure survival of the next generation, but once our children are born, do we give up our own identity to promote theirs?<\/p>\n

Throughout my own career I have had strong female role models. My Masters and Ph.D. advisors were both female, and the latter played a particularly strong role in shaping my scientific career. Another tremendous female scientist with whom I had the honor of being affiliated, was Dr. Peggy Wheelock. She was a wonderful person who played a unique and special role in promoting the careers of newly-independent researchers, and women in science. She was the type of person who would pick up the phone, call me, and say: \u201cI was thinking about your career, and it\u2019s time for you to get on a journal editorial board or two. E-mail this editor\u2014if he tells you that I am already on the board and he doesn\u2019t want another person from the same institute\u2014just tell him I said to take me off.\u201d This outstanding example of mentorship\u2014and giving me the feeling that I was not alone in my career battle\u2014is something I will never forget, and will do my best to pass on to my students, both female and male.<\/p>\n

Well, back to the main question: what can I do to prove my loyalty to feminist values? As a parent, I promote the idea of gender equality, equal opportunities, and no glass ceilings. I am sure that this message is well understood. In my own laboratory, I never look at gender as a reason for favoring one student or postdoc over another, and I already have 75% females in the lab. So no \u2018leveling of the playing field\u2019 is needed at this stage. My graduated students have gone on to postdoctoral positions, and I am doing my best to help an outstanding female student to obtain a well-deserved faculty position. But this is hardly feminism; it is just doing what any mentor should naturally do.<\/p>\n

I was recently asked to be Chairperson of a grant review study section. I received a pile of charts explaining the association\u2019s policies and \u201ctarget ratios\u201d for women reviewers in the study panels. The aim, of course, is 1:1. My own panel currently has an 8:1 male:female ratio, and my first task was to nominate 4 women scientists to fill in the 3-4 slots that are open. So perhaps this was my first ever opportunity to institute some minor change for the better.<\/p>\n

So where is the problem? If I have 75% female students who are among the best in the department, and they are succeeding as graduate students and going on to promising careers, how is it that the faculty in my department (as well as the grant review study section) is 90% male? Where are we going wrong?<\/p>\n

Before trying to answer and asking for input on this important question, I would like to bring in an additional complex issue\u2014primarily for the purpose of comparing and contrasting the situation. This is the issue of minorities in science.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, my grant review group also has targets for reviewers who are \u2018minorities\u2019. I use the quotations here because minorities have been qualified into two sections: 1) under-represented minorities, and 2) minorities.<\/p>\n

The under-represented minorities are scientists who are African American or \u2018black\u2019, of Hispanic, Alaskan, Native American or Polynesian descent. Please forgive me if I\u2019ve inadvertently left any under-represented minorities out of the equation, as I don\u2019t have the forms in front of me.<\/p>\n

As an \u201caside\u201d, I must say that I personally don\u2019t really understand this type of categorization. I would be catalogued as \u201cwhite\u201d, although my own skin is more of a beige\/pink\/brown hue. It\u2019s also not clear to me why those of North African descent are considered differently on this artificial scale than those of Hispanic descent\u2014are there more North African scientists? Well, this categorization probably deserves a blog by someone more knowledgeable in evolution and anthropology, so I\u2019ll get back to the point.<\/p>\n

The other \u2018minorities\u2019 are qualified by those of Asian descent, and it turns out that reviewers of Chinese and Indian descent are not really minorities\u2014at least in science\u2014and some study sections even have a majority of reviewers from these countries.<\/p>\n

So for all practical purposes, I propose in this blog to ignore the latter \u2018minority\u2019, as they are well represented in science. Now, with regards to all the under-represented minorities\u2014who truly are under-represented\u2014what is the reason for this? Without providing numbers and statistics, I think it is easy to see the reason\u2014there are simply very few graduate students proportionally who belong to the above under-represented minority groups. Probably, this has to do with the fact that there are proportionally low levels of undergraduate students from these groups studying science\u2014and perhaps in university overall.<\/p>\n

All of this leads of to the conclusion that, as opposed to the situation with women in science, there is a problem early on somewhere in the education of these minorities. Women, on the other hand, appear to encounter difficulties only much, much later on, in obtaining and\/or maintaining faculty positions.<\/p>\n

Thus, it would be easy to contrast these two groups of minorities and suggest that lack of access to a good (science) education is the major concern for the under-represented minorities, whereas with women, the central problem comes from lack of career advancement at the postdoctoral level and above. Why?<\/p>\n

I am certain that Athene and Jenny\u2019s blogs will shed a lot more light on these issues than I can, with my limited perspective, but I would like to propose that there is an early educational issue that might still need to be rectified in this case as well. It is not the science level or content that is at stake, but rather the lack of sufficient women-in-science models\u2014something that I know is noticed by girls in school at an early age, that may play a part of the attrition of women in science at the higher levels. Obviously the \u201cglass ceilings\u201d set by male scientists is a major reason (among many others, including women \u2018sacrificing their careers’ for those of their partners)\u2014but I suggest that even reading about historical experiments performed almost exclusively by males has so permeated scientific culture that it will take a conscious effort by parents and educators to explain and prepare girls and young women to charge forward in science and not look back. I am optimistic that in my lifetime we will see equality and justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been sitting on the sidelines watching, reading and cheering (no, not cheerleading\u2014let\u2019s not get into that debate…) as I follow the blogs, commentaries, lectures and personal examples of wonderful women in science who are leaders of the movement … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[48,54,53,1236,52],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-uncategorized","tag-education-2","tag-feminism","tag-minorities","tag-science","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/stevecaplan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}