On Women in the Sciences

Years ago, I attended a panel on Women in Science for which the prompt was the shitstorm stirred up by Harvard president Lawrence Summers remarking that tenure appointments of female science and mathematics professors at Harvard had probably declined steadily throughout his tenure because of a) babbys, and b) innate differences in the sciencey parts of women's brains. The panel was made up of three female scientists and one male scientist; the audience was...well, I went to a panel later in the same conference titled A Woman's Right To Jimmy Choos and the demographic composition was roughly the same.

The male scientist was the first speaker, and looking distinctly uncomfortable, he explained that while he in no wise agreed with Summers' assessment, he felt it would be a disservice to the panel format to have only panelists who were in total agreement, and so he would advance what he felt was the best defense of the innate differences theory he could muster. Basically, that defense was: it was utterly ridiculous to dismiss discrimination and socialization as factors in women's low representation in science jobs in the manner Summers had been presented as doing, but to treat the idea of innate differences between men and women as an already-settled question was unscientific, and more research should always be conducted.

The female speakers all declined to touch directly on the subject of Summers' remarks, and I had the distinct impression of them scooting their chairs ever so slightly away from the first speaker.  Instead the female scientists focused on their personal narratives as girls and then women interested in science. All noted that they had been routinely mistaken for secretaries by male colleagues of all ages, and all bemoaned the difficulty of finding mentors who people would decline to spread rumors they were fucking. The second speaker, who seemed most interested in talking about female scientists in the aggregate and least interested in talking about her journey, mentioned the case of Ben A. Barres. Barres, an M.I.T.-educated neuroscientist, transitioned from female to male in his thirties, and recalled, for example, overhearing colleagues discussing his work commenting "He's such a better researcher than his sister Barbara!"

Then came the Q&A portion of the panel, where people could get up and query the panelists. To a woman, it consisted of people who wanted to unleash a blistering torrent of invective at Larry Summers and were not reluctant to use the unhappy male speaker as a surrogate, whatever his views. After three or four of these the moderator opted to restrict commenters to only caustic screeds which could be phrased in the form of a question, and it was around then that I decided it would be a better use of my time to wander off.