There were many startling things that stuck out to me when reading the NY Times article, “Why There Are Still So Few Women In Science”. One being that a women experienced in her classes grading students based on a “boy curve” and a “girl curve” because the teacher though that you couldn’t really expect a girl to compete with boys in Physics on equal terms. Teachers are supposed to be the ones that encourage women and help break this stigma, but instead enabled this gender bias. As the author noted, all she wanted to hear was someone praise her and tell her to go get her Ph.D. But, her teacher actually noted that he doesn’t encourage anyone to go into physics of math because it’s a hard life. I think it’s very important to reinforce this message to teachers, whether that be in training sessions or by the school principle that women need positive reinforcement. Beyond encouraging girls to go into science, teachers need to make sure that girls aren’t interested because they believe that science and math just isn’t something that girls don’t go into to or whether it is truly something that doesn’t interest them.
When reading the other NY Times article about the interview with C. Megan Urry I was very much surprised by the problem of sexual harassment at academic conferences. Being at these types of conferences as a women is hard to begin with because of the intimidation of being a woman, but having the fear of being sexually assaulted is not acceptable. Also, the importance of your mentor really surprised, which is usually a male, and him having the power of the success of your career. This is very scary because you are going to listen to anything he says. This is bound to have many negative consequences. There are many times when I feel intimidated being a women in business being a woman, but I cannot imagine my levels of fear knowing the prevalence of sexual harassment at conferences.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017 12:55 am
When reading through the interview with C. Megan Urry I was interested at first in seeing the scientific side of the article and how astronomy has taken off in recent years. Once I finished reading the article I was very excited to learn about the new technology and possibilities within the astronomical industry, however, I was more shocked to hear about the sexist issues that Urry had to face when going to her conferences and the ban that was put into effect in order to allow for a more friendly and professional environment. First of all, I thought that this ban was a very good idea especially when you have younger women who are new to the field and are trying to get their first taste of the science industry as a whole. If they are constantly showing up to work and to these large conferences being slightly scared or worried then they are not receiving their full education potential and their work is essentially useless. Then, when reading further into the article it was made clear that the issues aren’t related just to the astronomy and science industry but across all industries as a whole. This is something that I found troubling because it would be terrible to be nervous when walking around the office on a daily basis and I wouldn’t want anyone to have to deal with this. After reading the Pollack article as well it was clear to me that the stigma of science being a man’s industry should be changed if we want to see more progress within the industry itself. While this may take some time because it has been such a historically entrenched belief, because throughout the years many people have looked at the industry as a male’s industry, I believe that it is essential in order to continue these advances in science and women to contribute just as much as men.
Tuesday, March 21, 2017 12:41 am
Reading through the articles that were assigned to us, there were a few ideas that stuck out at me that I think would be interesting to everyone else in the class as well.
In the first New York Times article titled “Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?”, I found the quote “You don’t need to be a genius to do what I do.” to be different and unlike many pieces of advice I have received in the past. I’ve been told that in whatever field I choose to work in when I get out of college, it must be something that I’m not only interested in, but also talented in. In college, I’m supposed to find the major and the work that I have a natural ability to excel in. But reading that quote made me realize that I don’t have to already be ‘gifted’ in whatever I want to do. This also showed me that I don’t have to know everything about my work to take part in it or make that my career. The questions we have in the presence of what we already know is what keeps all workforces expanding and moving forward.
In the ‘Science of Equality’ text, one of the suggested ways in which we can maintain female interest in STEM-related subjects was to implement more applied learning in the classroom. It says “unlike boys, girls are most engaged in STEM subjects when educational activities include communal work, hands-on learning, applied knowledge tasks, relevant applications, and problem solving.” I found this striking because I’m used to reading education stats that support all types of learning methods: visual, auditory, kinesthetic. Stats that usually say the optimal learning methods for students varied or ranged across the board between boys and girls. I’m not used to there being one major teaching method that works best for the majority of a group.
Monday, March 20, 2017 8:32 pm
In reading ‘Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?’, I began to analyze my own academic history in the sciences. Pollack cites many examples of her professors and advisors at Yale not encouraging her to pursue graduate school, much less a PhD program. She thinks that if someone had encouraged her earlier on, she perhaps wouldn’t have locked up her physics books immediately after college. Academic encouragement goes a long way. I remember my kindergarten teacher telling me that I was a good writer; she liked my stories. She told my mom, and reading and writing very soon became my academic identity. I knew if all else failed, I could compose a good sentence. I don’t remember being attracted to math or science in school. I’m not sure if it was because I thought being good at one thing was enough, or because no one praised my work in the sciences as they did in the literary arts. I like to think that I was not completely molded by praise, but it probably played a big part in shaping my academic confidence. I operated out of the mindset that words were conquerable, but numbers were not. I struggled through advanced math and science courses in high school, simply taking them because I thought I had to, never delighting in the work like I did in English or art classes. Now that I am primarily in English classes, I see that they are mostly composed of women. I’ve learned that because literature is not objective, it is not considered as serious as math or science. Therefore, my studies are inferior to math and science.
Examining the way that encouragement shaped me and other women is important because it makes me want to encourage any form of talent that I see. If I ever end up teaching in any capacity, I must remember that words stick with people, whether they are negative or positive.
Monday, March 20, 2017 8:20 pm
I get excited every time I get to meet a woman in banking. I am going into investment banking this summer and I am currently networking with different groups to see which companies I will be covering during my internship. In these calls, we talk about the culture, opportunities for personal growth, and daily job activities. Banking is a man dominated environment. But banks are trying to change this by hosting women leadership conferences focused on recruiting attendees. In the reading, we see that gender stereotypes “affect how we perceive both men and women’s abilities.” I find startling that women are judged this way in banking. I believe that because it is a male-dominated environment, men are significantly picky with the women they invite to their teams. These gender stereotypes are rooted in our brains and even as we try to eliminate them, we sometimes fail to acknowledge them. As I begin to meet people, especially women, I get excited to be working in a bank that is actively trying to improve their gender and diversity statistics in a world filled with people who do not think the same way. Following the details in the reading, I have still not seen these women face to face, but I imagine that the association between women and beauty exists in banking. This gender role that has been created and discussed in the reading will probably be present, because, even as the bank moves to hire more women, the people in charge of choosing the women to fill the open roles might choose the prettier women. With this in mind, I hope we can continue to improve the statistics of women in the workplace and gender stereotypes.
In addition to the reading on gender roles, I was also surprised to read in the NYT article that women in science also face some discrimination. My sister is considering research as a potential career, so I am glad that I can give her a heads-up about it before she starts her full-time career.
Monday, March 20, 2017 4:34 pm
This series of articles presented a few ideas that struck me as thought provoking. First, I agree that women are not any meaner to other women, they are simpler expected to be nicer. This is entirely true and I had never considered it before reading these articles. Our society expects women to do a lot of things, but we also put this pressure on men as well. Women are also expected to help more and are therefore considered “selfish” when they do not have time to help, whereas men are considered “busy”. On the other hand, men are expected to be tough and care for their families, often times suppressing their emotions in unhealthy ways. These ideas all surround us growing up, completely altering our perceptions of the world during our most formative years. We grow up watching our mothers care for us and then believe they are more caring and more nurturing. After all, these women cared for us for nine months while we were in their wombs! This point speaks directly to the article, “Why are there so few women in science?” This question is something I have pondered myself as an aspiring physician. I have heard many of the biological arguments, such as “female brains are better with people and writing and male brains are better at mathematics and spatial arrangements”, and for a while fell prey to many of those ideas. I believed I was not good at math for many years following a rough pre-calculus class in high school until I realized with startling clarity recently that I actually truly enjoy doing math. My misconception of my “weakness” in math was simply generated by years of bias that had completely shaped the way I viewed the world. Another important concept brought forth by that article is the portrayal of women in science. This was an idea also touched upon by the article about Harvard Business School, but focused more on women in the business school classroom feeling tension between wanting to be liked as a potential mate but also respected as a classmate or business partner. What is a woman’s role in a predominantly male driven field? The first and foremost thing I have noticed women do is mask their femininity. Why do women need to wear ugly loose blouses at many scientific conferences while males can wear sleek suits that still give them some essence of sexiness? The idea of a “sexy scientist” is one played out in some comedic movies and pornographic film; but in any serious movies, scientific women are portrayed as women who wear their hair pulled back with glasses, very little make up and bland clothing. Even worse, they are often depicted as boring, rude, bossy or simply uninteresting. How can we act as though women who are changing the scientific world are uninteresting? In movie, they often pull down their hair at the end and reveal that they had been beautiful the entire time, if only we had all noticed. It’s incredibly frustrating that this is the message we portray through media and stereotypes because we then perpetuate this problem. I spent this past weekend in a neuroscience conference and found myself talking to a woman from Brazil about her work studying the neural correlates of emotion processing in autistic children. Instead of focusing on the incredible and groundbreaking work she was doing, I could only notice that she was wearing a more “revealing” outfit that I deemed to be inappropriate for the conference. Here I was, perpetuating the stereotypes and judging a brilliant woman instead of praising her on her incredible work and I was really ashamed when I realized I was thinking in that way. Sheryl Sandberg pointed out that women need to recognize we can help each other without hurting ourselves, and we need to stop being so hard on each other and instead collaborate to find this equality that will then benefit everyone.
Monday, March 20, 2017 2:24 pm
Lawren Desai is the founder of a/perture Cinema in downtown Winston-Salem.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017 4:47 pm
I will write a profile on Jennifer Gentry. She studied at Wake Forest University and today she is an associate studio art professor at Wake Forest and operates her startup ‘Gentry Visualization’ designing medical illustrations.
Tuesday, March 14, 2017 9:24 pm
Rebeccah Byer is the founder of The Olio, a nonprofit organization on glass blowing in Winston-Salem.
Tuesday, March 14, 2017 5:30 am
I will be interviewing Ms. Joy Nelson-Thomas, executive director/founder of LEAD Girls of NC.
Monday, March 13, 2017 9:03 pm
