All my years in IT, I have been tortured immensely by this question. Am I any lesser than a man?
Do I lack something? Why is it science and technology and algos is so tough to me while it seems to come easily to many men? Do they have genetic advantages because they are men?
I always felt that many men were better (technically). I had no woman to look upto in my org. All women were managers - non technical people or HR or Finance.
Why were there no WOW women around me?
I attended the GHC to improve myself. I found a few WOW women but not many.
Even as doctors, men come across as more technical.
Even in official mails, women tend to be more elaborate and flowery and subtle while men are to the point and impersonal.
I found myself trapped in gender biases regarding women.
There were very few women photographers.. very few astronauts.. very few computer programmers. Why?
================= Interspersed with Women in Science Part 1 ====================
http://www.bwfund.org/feature-women-science-part-one
Are girls wired differently, so that verbal skills come more naturally than mathematics? Are they socialized to go into more nurturing professions? Does the burden of child-rearing get in the way of their achievement? Or is the culture of the workplace toxic to women? But one question that has not received as much attention as the rest is why it matters that there are not as many women as men in the scientific profession.
I started feeling that due to years of conditioning to an outside world, men's genes had certain abilities. Women, from a long time, were nurturers. They tended to family. They did arts. So, they excelled in it. These genetic advantages got passed on to their daughters. Somehow the father's advantages never seemed to reach the daughters. Girls stuck to pink barbie dolls and boys to speedy cars. Women excelled in arts and hospitality. Men in Science and engineering.
Somehow I felt I could do nothing about it. I am a streetsmart woman. I am dumb in a few ways but not the stereotypical dumb blonde girl types. What prevents me from excelling in science?
Yday my frustration and imagination led me to think "If we created a world in which arts and literature were more important than money and science, how would men feel?"
I really wanted to do that. Make people feel incompetent and worthless (that's how they've made women feel). I want to see them play out in a stage where they are disadvantaged genetically. How does it affect them, not being the best and not being the fastest? Imagine what would happen if all the supporting women, withdrew their support? Let's say the maids stopped cleaning, the women stopped cooking..would their life come to a grinding halt or they'd turn to McD all day? Would that affect their abilities?
If men had to grow up children, how difficult would it be for them? If they had to cook and clean and take care of the house while the women worked, how long would they take to be as efficient as the woman? Will a woman be able to catch up with men's so called scientific advantanges in the same time? Can we change our wiring and bridge this gap in a while or would men still be advantaged?
Somehow women feel its a "man's world". They feel less talented and less valued and less employable.. less worthy. They feel their natural abilities to nurture a family is under valued because that does not fetch them a salary. The men have, probably very unconsciously, created a world where their skills and their work are the most valued. Women feel like losers. They may have difficulties understanding algorithms. They may be unable to roam around all day in motorbikes (sales). They may get stressed at work because their brain is not conditioned. All the small things add up.
In her book Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women, Virginia Valian explains that expectations of men and women in our society are different, and those expectations – “gender schemas” – skew our perceptions, even among the very scientists whose livelihood is based on their objectivity. Because of the influence of these gender schemas, the abilities and contributions of men tend to be overrated whereas those of women go underrated. A large body of research exists suggesting that each disadvantage – not getting credit for an idea, not being invited to a scientific meeting – can add up over time, so that men reach the top faster and in greater numbers than women do. As Dr. Valian later writes, “Well-meaning observers may tell the woman not to make a mountain out of a molehill. What they do not understand is that the notion of the accumulation of advantage encapsulates. Mountains are molehills, piled one on top of the other.”
I can see changes today. Many girls are learning fast. Technology is going to change some things. The fact that a whole generation of women worked before you - gives you an advantage. How long would it take to see women equal to men in so called STEM? How will the world change if you allow a woman's perspective? I've always said, I felt the need for changes at workplace. The beauty that women bring to a workplace is unappreciated. I have personally been very let down by the absence of any credit given to women at workplace. All my efforts at mentoring and guiding people never found the appreciation that it deserved.
Compared to the previous generation, women are vocal now. They voice their opinions loud and clear and many rational and open minded men value women. So, that's going to change men's circuitry for sure. This interaction, along with the interaction with technology will lead to a new breed of men. Workplaces will definitely acquire a different aura. I won't live long enough to see women on an equal footing, but I hope it will happen.
"When diversity is lost in any discipline – whether in terms of racial diversity, ethnic diversity, or gender diversity – a certain amount of intellectual content is lost as well, says Dr. Leboy."
“In effect you are training a huge amount of people who have creative, important thoughts who are never going to continue to contribute to scientific discovery,” Dr. Wagers says. “That then limits the pool of creative thought that goes into science.”
“It is not a matter of one field being better than another, but rather it is important that we are covering diversity in the kinds of questions that people ask about science.” And it is not only the questions that women ask, but the way that they ask them that may make female researchers a particular asset to the scientific process. Women may have a different style of interaction than men, one that could foster the collaboration and cooperation needed for the success of today’s large-scale research endeavors.
“I frankly don’t care how many women do science,” says Dr. Hopkins. “I just care that the ones who want to do it can do it without worrying about this problem.”
====================================================================
http://www.bwfund.org/feature-women-science-part-two
“People were questioning why there weren’t more women in science, and I had to point out that we are not going to be banging down the doors to enter a profession that just sounds so awful,” said Wu, who just completed her doctorate at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke. “While I do love science, I just don’t know that I can be the heart and soul of it.”
“If all you know about scientists, if the vision of a scientist is a brilliant white man with glasses and funny hair and a lab coat, then none of us are going to feel like we match that model,” said Mary Wyer, “The truth of the matter is that women and people of color have made substantive contributions to science and that these are forgotten, they are lost history.”
One concept she teaches is that of stereotype threat, or the risk that a negative stereotype about one’s group –such as being female or African-American – will lead to self-doubt and affect academic performance. In the classic study of this self-fulfilling prophesy, social psychologists Steven Spencer, Claude Steele and Diane Quinn told a group of students that they were going to take a very difficult math test. When they scored the exam, they found that on average, the women earned ten points, whereas the men got twenty-five.
This experiment, and over a hundred others like it, indicated that it was not simply innate ability, but rather the perception of one’s ability that can make a significant difference in how women scientists perform.
“Tons of students leave graduate school not because they aren’t good at the subject but because they feel like they just don’t fit in,” said Carol Frieze.
“Our intellectual capability may be the same, but our life experiences and the culture we live in can be different.”
====================================================================
http://www.bwfund.org/feature-women-science-part-three
“Nobody told me how to do it, I just figured it out on my own,” said Dr. Pisano, who is also vice dean at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. “There is nothing magic about having a career and kids – it just takes hard work and support and some luck.”
But finding that right combination can be a challenge in a culture where scientists are faced with a limited amount of time to prove themselves worthy of tenure.
Dr. Halpern says the problem is that tenure clocks and biological clocks run on the same time zone. The average age for receiving tenure in the sciences (according to Mason’s report) is around age 39, well past the peak child-bearing years.
“They wonder if they have the baby early if it will hurt their chances of tenure, or if they wait until they get tenure if it will be too late,” Dr. Wolf-Wendel said. “When we interviewed their male colleagues, they hadn’t considered timing to be an issue -- they had never even thought about it.”
Stopping the clock may help women balance family responsibilities when their children are infants, but when the clock turns back on, those responsibilities do not magically disappear. Scientists on average work about 50 hours a week until retirement age. When you add to that care-giving hours and housework, women faculty with children in the University of California system report a weekly average of over 100 hours of combined activities, says Dr. Mason, who is also co-director of the Center for Economics & Family Security at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. That is in comparison to 86 hours for men with children.
“Women are expected to do the second shift, but it works against them” says education researcher Dr. Wolf-Wendel. “Many of the women I interviewed gave this example of leaving a meeting to pick up their kids from day care. When the woman did it, she felt like their colleagues believed that she cared more about her kids than her work. When a man did it, everyone seemed to respond that he was such a great dad. So the same action is criticized when one type of person does it and lauded when another type of person does it.”
Emily Monosson, editor of Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory, says that it can be a real struggle to keep up a high-profile academic career and take care of your family.
“As one of my contributors said it best, you can’t be superscientist and a supermom,” said Dr. Monosson. “It is the rare person who really has it all. You just have to know that up front, and make your decisions from there.”
Research and parenthood are both greedy, time-intensive endeavors.
For Dr. Monosson and the other women who contributed their stories to Motherhood, that often meant choosing nontraditional careers – as consultants, writers, lecturers. An academic post may be considered the gold standard, but many other – often unrecognized -- opportunities do exist that enable women to continue to contribute to science without dropping out completely.
“There is this impression that the only way to be a good scientist is to work 80 hours a week – that it is not a part time job, not something you could turn on or turn off,” said Dr. Wolf-Wendel. “If you want to win the Nobel Prize or if you want to cure cancer you need to be doing it all the time -- you are either devoted to it or not. Many women today are fighting that notion. In my opinion, it serves everyone, not just new mothers, if institutions recognize that you can’t do science 80 to 90 hours a week, whether it is because you have kids or because you want to ride your bike or just do something to take care of yourself.”
Do I lack something? Why is it science and technology and algos is so tough to me while it seems to come easily to many men? Do they have genetic advantages because they are men?
I always felt that many men were better (technically). I had no woman to look upto in my org. All women were managers - non technical people or HR or Finance.
Why were there no WOW women around me?
I attended the GHC to improve myself. I found a few WOW women but not many.
Even as doctors, men come across as more technical.
Even in official mails, women tend to be more elaborate and flowery and subtle while men are to the point and impersonal.
I found myself trapped in gender biases regarding women.
There were very few women photographers.. very few astronauts.. very few computer programmers. Why?
================= Interspersed with Women in Science Part 1 ====================
http://www.bwfund.org/feature-women-science-part-one
Are girls wired differently, so that verbal skills come more naturally than mathematics? Are they socialized to go into more nurturing professions? Does the burden of child-rearing get in the way of their achievement? Or is the culture of the workplace toxic to women? But one question that has not received as much attention as the rest is why it matters that there are not as many women as men in the scientific profession.
I started feeling that due to years of conditioning to an outside world, men's genes had certain abilities. Women, from a long time, were nurturers. They tended to family. They did arts. So, they excelled in it. These genetic advantages got passed on to their daughters. Somehow the father's advantages never seemed to reach the daughters. Girls stuck to pink barbie dolls and boys to speedy cars. Women excelled in arts and hospitality. Men in Science and engineering.
Somehow I felt I could do nothing about it. I am a streetsmart woman. I am dumb in a few ways but not the stereotypical dumb blonde girl types. What prevents me from excelling in science?
Yday my frustration and imagination led me to think "If we created a world in which arts and literature were more important than money and science, how would men feel?"
I really wanted to do that. Make people feel incompetent and worthless (that's how they've made women feel). I want to see them play out in a stage where they are disadvantaged genetically. How does it affect them, not being the best and not being the fastest? Imagine what would happen if all the supporting women, withdrew their support? Let's say the maids stopped cleaning, the women stopped cooking..would their life come to a grinding halt or they'd turn to McD all day? Would that affect their abilities?
If men had to grow up children, how difficult would it be for them? If they had to cook and clean and take care of the house while the women worked, how long would they take to be as efficient as the woman? Will a woman be able to catch up with men's so called scientific advantanges in the same time? Can we change our wiring and bridge this gap in a while or would men still be advantaged?
Somehow women feel its a "man's world". They feel less talented and less valued and less employable.. less worthy. They feel their natural abilities to nurture a family is under valued because that does not fetch them a salary. The men have, probably very unconsciously, created a world where their skills and their work are the most valued. Women feel like losers. They may have difficulties understanding algorithms. They may be unable to roam around all day in motorbikes (sales). They may get stressed at work because their brain is not conditioned. All the small things add up.
In her book Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women, Virginia Valian explains that expectations of men and women in our society are different, and those expectations – “gender schemas” – skew our perceptions, even among the very scientists whose livelihood is based on their objectivity. Because of the influence of these gender schemas, the abilities and contributions of men tend to be overrated whereas those of women go underrated. A large body of research exists suggesting that each disadvantage – not getting credit for an idea, not being invited to a scientific meeting – can add up over time, so that men reach the top faster and in greater numbers than women do. As Dr. Valian later writes, “Well-meaning observers may tell the woman not to make a mountain out of a molehill. What they do not understand is that the notion of the accumulation of advantage encapsulates. Mountains are molehills, piled one on top of the other.”
I can see changes today. Many girls are learning fast. Technology is going to change some things. The fact that a whole generation of women worked before you - gives you an advantage. How long would it take to see women equal to men in so called STEM? How will the world change if you allow a woman's perspective? I've always said, I felt the need for changes at workplace. The beauty that women bring to a workplace is unappreciated. I have personally been very let down by the absence of any credit given to women at workplace. All my efforts at mentoring and guiding people never found the appreciation that it deserved.
Compared to the previous generation, women are vocal now. They voice their opinions loud and clear and many rational and open minded men value women. So, that's going to change men's circuitry for sure. This interaction, along with the interaction with technology will lead to a new breed of men. Workplaces will definitely acquire a different aura. I won't live long enough to see women on an equal footing, but I hope it will happen.
"When diversity is lost in any discipline – whether in terms of racial diversity, ethnic diversity, or gender diversity – a certain amount of intellectual content is lost as well, says Dr. Leboy."
“In effect you are training a huge amount of people who have creative, important thoughts who are never going to continue to contribute to scientific discovery,” Dr. Wagers says. “That then limits the pool of creative thought that goes into science.”
“It is not a matter of one field being better than another, but rather it is important that we are covering diversity in the kinds of questions that people ask about science.” And it is not only the questions that women ask, but the way that they ask them that may make female researchers a particular asset to the scientific process. Women may have a different style of interaction than men, one that could foster the collaboration and cooperation needed for the success of today’s large-scale research endeavors.
“I frankly don’t care how many women do science,” says Dr. Hopkins. “I just care that the ones who want to do it can do it without worrying about this problem.”
====================================================================
http://www.bwfund.org/feature-women-science-part-two
“People were questioning why there weren’t more women in science, and I had to point out that we are not going to be banging down the doors to enter a profession that just sounds so awful,” said Wu, who just completed her doctorate at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke. “While I do love science, I just don’t know that I can be the heart and soul of it.”
“If all you know about scientists, if the vision of a scientist is a brilliant white man with glasses and funny hair and a lab coat, then none of us are going to feel like we match that model,” said Mary Wyer, “The truth of the matter is that women and people of color have made substantive contributions to science and that these are forgotten, they are lost history.”
One concept she teaches is that of stereotype threat, or the risk that a negative stereotype about one’s group –such as being female or African-American – will lead to self-doubt and affect academic performance. In the classic study of this self-fulfilling prophesy, social psychologists Steven Spencer, Claude Steele and Diane Quinn told a group of students that they were going to take a very difficult math test. When they scored the exam, they found that on average, the women earned ten points, whereas the men got twenty-five.
This experiment, and over a hundred others like it, indicated that it was not simply innate ability, but rather the perception of one’s ability that can make a significant difference in how women scientists perform.
“Tons of students leave graduate school not because they aren’t good at the subject but because they feel like they just don’t fit in,” said Carol Frieze.
“Our intellectual capability may be the same, but our life experiences and the culture we live in can be different.”
====================================================================
http://www.bwfund.org/feature-women-science-part-three
“Nobody told me how to do it, I just figured it out on my own,” said Dr. Pisano, who is also vice dean at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. “There is nothing magic about having a career and kids – it just takes hard work and support and some luck.”
But finding that right combination can be a challenge in a culture where scientists are faced with a limited amount of time to prove themselves worthy of tenure.
Dr. Halpern says the problem is that tenure clocks and biological clocks run on the same time zone. The average age for receiving tenure in the sciences (according to Mason’s report) is around age 39, well past the peak child-bearing years.
“They wonder if they have the baby early if it will hurt their chances of tenure, or if they wait until they get tenure if it will be too late,” Dr. Wolf-Wendel said. “When we interviewed their male colleagues, they hadn’t considered timing to be an issue -- they had never even thought about it.”
Stopping the clock may help women balance family responsibilities when their children are infants, but when the clock turns back on, those responsibilities do not magically disappear. Scientists on average work about 50 hours a week until retirement age. When you add to that care-giving hours and housework, women faculty with children in the University of California system report a weekly average of over 100 hours of combined activities, says Dr. Mason, who is also co-director of the Center for Economics & Family Security at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. That is in comparison to 86 hours for men with children.
“Women are expected to do the second shift, but it works against them” says education researcher Dr. Wolf-Wendel. “Many of the women I interviewed gave this example of leaving a meeting to pick up their kids from day care. When the woman did it, she felt like their colleagues believed that she cared more about her kids than her work. When a man did it, everyone seemed to respond that he was such a great dad. So the same action is criticized when one type of person does it and lauded when another type of person does it.”
Emily Monosson, editor of Motherhood, the Elephant in the Laboratory, says that it can be a real struggle to keep up a high-profile academic career and take care of your family.
“As one of my contributors said it best, you can’t be superscientist and a supermom,” said Dr. Monosson. “It is the rare person who really has it all. You just have to know that up front, and make your decisions from there.”
Research and parenthood are both greedy, time-intensive endeavors.
For Dr. Monosson and the other women who contributed their stories to Motherhood, that often meant choosing nontraditional careers – as consultants, writers, lecturers. An academic post may be considered the gold standard, but many other – often unrecognized -- opportunities do exist that enable women to continue to contribute to science without dropping out completely.
“There is this impression that the only way to be a good scientist is to work 80 hours a week – that it is not a part time job, not something you could turn on or turn off,” said Dr. Wolf-Wendel. “If you want to win the Nobel Prize or if you want to cure cancer you need to be doing it all the time -- you are either devoted to it or not. Many women today are fighting that notion. In my opinion, it serves everyone, not just new mothers, if institutions recognize that you can’t do science 80 to 90 hours a week, whether it is because you have kids or because you want to ride your bike or just do something to take care of yourself.”
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