Telling Women's Lives

Reader Response 3/20

In the article, “Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?,” Eileen Pollack describes the ways in which women are discouraged from pursuing careers in math and science, despite their intellectual abilities. It is amazing how society’s perceptions of you based on your gender can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, as shown by the results from the University of Michigan study. When reading the section of the article about Handelsman’s research on mentoring, I could not help but think of my mother and her interaction with her advisor in college. During the end of her college career, my mother was considering going on to law school. When my mother discussed her potential plans to become a lawyer with her advisor, instead of talking about my mother’s academic abilities, her advisor started asking her about her relationship with her boyfriend at the time (my father). After concluding that my mom was probably going to get married, my mother’s advisor said to her, “Do me a favor and don’t go to law school.” I cannot imagine that this was the only interaction that discouraged my mom from pursuing graduate school, and I always wonder whether or not she regrets never becoming a lawyer. As her daughter, I know first hand that no one has a chance of winning in an argument with her, and her passion for government never went away—she is now extremely involved in our town’s local government. Even still, whenever I’m having trouble with my academic path, my mom always recommends seeing my advisor, which goes to show how much faith is put into people who are supposed to be mentors. Listening to your advisors, teachers, and mentors seems like the logical thing to do, and students like my mother value those opinions, so gender-biases in mentoring can be very impactful. This is probably why the McKinsey Centered Leadership Project found that so many successful female leaders had sponsors. Having a positive mentor can be just as helpful as having a negative mentor can be hurtful. Handelsman is right to describe her research on mentoring “devastating,” because there are so many talented women who have the all the capabilities, but never get that extra push, or even sometimes, like my mother, get an extra knock-down instead.