Well, I still can be a fool sometimes. But this story is about a time when I was biased against a woman doing science, which I thought would be appropriate for Peggy's Scientiae Canival theme. I can’t believe I ever felt this way. I won’t do it again.
When I was in college, I worked in the lab of a brand new assistant professor. I went to a smallish school with no PhD program and a limited number of master’s student in the department, so undergrads had great access to research opportunities. Because this professor was new, she was still setting up her lab when I joined it. And because the department was small, she was doing most of it by herself. I recall one day I was there during the installation of a fancy piece of equipment that I now know is pretty standard fare for labs in our subfield. There were problems with the installation that required much troubleshooting during the first weeks she had the instrument. As this bright, capable women was buried up to the elbows in tubing and electronics, performing major surgery on the new instrument, I thought, Can she really fix this? She needs to get a man to deal with this. She’s going to break it! Of course, she didn’t break it. She fixed it. And when I moved on to the next lab, I met several very smart and technically savvy women who did similar work and expected me to be able to use and troubleshoot just such an instrument. Which I did, thank you very much.
I shudder now to admit those thoughts even crossed my mind! I would never think such a thing now. There’s no job a woman can’t do with the right tools. But knowing that someone like me could have had those thoughts once upon a time makes me realize that lots of people still have them. I think that’s why I’m drawn to women-in-science issues even though I rarely feel bias myself. Hopefully, women doing great work and speaking out about these issues will shown the remaining fools just how foolish they are.
scientiae-carnival
5 comments:
"Hopefully, women doing great work and speaking out about these issues will shown the remaining fools just how foolish they are."
YES!!
Conversely, there have been cases where a male grad student in my lab found himself up to his elbows where my gut reaction was "Um, you do realize that I could fix that?" Once he got out of the way, he saw that I was right.
Great post! I think there's a lot to be said for changing people's opinions of women in science by women scientists doing good work and demonstrating their competence.
I remember the first time I saw my (male) advisor poking around a piece of equipment and I thought, "Oh my god, he doesn't know any more about this than I do!"
Boy, was that a revelation.
Then later when I worked in a lab with a couple of gearhead women, I felt like that was great for them, but I had no idea where to start (they didn't even try to teach me).
They said their dads taught them.
MrPhD and I talk about this a lot, how he was allowed to take apart the toaster when he was growing up, and later on the computers, but my parents were always afraid I would get hurt playing with something that was already broken, and god forbid I should break something that wasn't.
Maybe it would have been different if there had been boys in the house?
Now I get annoyed with girls who are afraid to touch equipment or who complain (like someone did in my lab the other day) about something perfectly manageable being "too heavy" (she didn't even try to lift it).
I try to set a good example by showing that even someone as diminutive as me can do these things, but the other girls in lab tend to comment by saying things like, "Wow, you're so strong, I could never do that."
Sheesh! I'm not particularly strong at all. But I'm apparently not setting such a great example- they just assume I'm an outlier.
I like this post a lot. I find that some people have these sort of biases, but don't realize it (until someone points it out to them). And I think that when we do things like this, it shows that we really can do anything.
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