Is Biology “a women’s science”?
There has been a lot of talk about the fact that two of the three Nobel winners for Physiology and Medicine were women this year – a state of affairs that seems so astronomically impossible to some commentators that they’ve been speculating that telomeres (the area of research that was honored by the Prize) must somehow be a “girl’s” area.
There’s a nice quote from one of the female laureates, Carol Greider, about why this might be, and it basically boils down to “the Founder effect” – good women getting nurtured and trained at the very beginning of the field, thereby making it a female-friendly place that attracted more women as the field grew larger and more competitive.
That’s not what I want to talk about today, though. I want to talk about the gentleman who approached me after my Skeptics in the Pub talk this past Monday and, in response to some of the feminist-tinged topics in my lecture, tried to goad me into admitting that all of Biology was essentially “women’s science”. His reasons (a bit blurry after the number of pints he’d probably consumed) seemed to be that since Biology has a lot of women in it, unlike other fields, it must by definition be easier, softer, more feminine. My attempts to explain that there can be many reasons besides ability that women can feel comfortable in a field fell on deaf ears. I suspect that if more women felt more welcomed in the ‘harder’ sciences – if they saw a critical mass of other women already there, for example, it could make a big difference to recruitment and retention of female scientists in traditionally male disciplines. That I know dozens of talented and successful female chemists, mathematicians and physicists speaks to the fallacy that women are too feeble to do anything else other than muck about in Biology.
Also, given how incredibly complex and often computational modern biology can be, it’s also an insult to the many men who work in this field to imply that this science is less challenging. And of course, how “womanly” can Biology actually be if the majority of higher positions – and prizes – continue to be won by men?
Gosh, I didn’t know that Larry Summers attends SITP!
Hahahahaha!
Good one.
I must say I found SiTP to be very welcoming generally, but there was a lot of testosterone in the room. It was a really fun night, and I wasn’t really that irritated by that man – just wishing I could have persuaded him to consider my point of view.
what errant wankery.
Like a science can be ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ FFS. It’s simply studying the world.
We are either suggesting that things like cosmology, or living things, or chemical reactions, or ordinary differential equations, have features in common with the sexual dimorphism (and other supposed differences) of one gobby ape species. Or we are suggesting that some sad sacks are so hung up on said differences that they can’t help but see them everywhere.
‘errant’ or ‘arrant’?
I think, Bill, that some people are out and out sexist pigs, and short of a punch up the throat (I was tempted) nothing will change it.
There is NO repression of women in science. Please don’t speak of that 600lb gorilla in the room. Don’t talk about statistics (not significant)? There are endless just so stories why women aren’t represented here there and everywhere that counts unless they speak for unrestricted corporate charters. Surely someone at this site knows that this is the first time in 100 years that more than one women (4) has won this corporate prize. Larry Summers will revise survival of the fittest economics is USA and a women with anarchist tendencies wins that prize?
You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, Curt. I wasn’t arguing that women are repressed in science. If you read my post a bit more carefully this time, you’ll see that I was discussing whether women are mentally less capable of doing certain types of science (for example, physics). I personally believe that they aren’t, from the evidence in front of my own eyes.
But since you bring up that particular topic, I would say that until there are equality in gender numbers in the professional sciences – a state that still appears a long way off from the perspective of this female scientist – then it is perfectly appropriate to postulate ‘repression’ as one of a number of hypotheses that might explain the phenomenon. I certainly have experienced direct chauvinism throughout the course of my career, so it clearly can be a factor, even if that is one factor among many. To deny a priori that it can’t be is equally as naive and unscientific as claiming it’s the sole factor.
Things may have changed, but when I applied for a bank loan for postgraduate studies in genetics in 1980, I was turned down because, as a woman I was allegedly “only going to get married and their investment would be wasted”. The bank was, however, willing to help 1st year undergraduate male students, even though their dropout rate was higher than that of female students.