Women and research

This post says it all: "Like we didn't know this." Links there to the NPR story on bias that's been making the rounds and the PNAS story that confirms once again that if you put a woman's name on something it's automatically less competent regardless of contents. Old news, old news.


On the one hand, I don't want to talk about it. On the other hand, I would urge men who care about unconscious sexism and racism manifesting in mathematics to read the story on stereotype threat and consider it. It rings true now that I am observing my own interactions with other mathematicians, male and female, and it's brought home very strongly now that it's NSF proposal time. I can't quite believe that I have anything valuable to say and I very strongly feel the need to be absolutely correct about every statement because I feel any incorrect statement is a reason to dismiss everything I might say. These contribute to difficulty writing the thing and a stress burden that is unnecessary -- unnecessary because there's not a damn thing I can do about it and that stress only hurts me. My stomach in particular.

A saving grace is that I saw a collaborator's proposal and saw some of my ideas in print in that proposal, describing our collaboration. They sounded so valuable and interesting coming from someone else! Cognitive dissonance. A kick in the ass. Get writing.

As an early-career mathematician, it's my first NSF. I've written most of it now. It brought up another point quite strongly, which I can't disentangle from this gender stuff: I don't feel like I've ever believed I could be a research mathematician. From another angle, it feels like something I am not allowed to do. Allowed? Sure, the prohibition is some mythical nonsense other that doesn't exist, but I carry the feeling. When I go to seminars and conferences I feel like a guest with a limited-time pass that will expire, and then I will be kicked out of the club. Mathematics is a paradise I cannot stay in. I'm gonna eat that apple and that's going to be it. I keep making plans for the eventuality, in fact.

Mostly written. I feel slightly ill and slightly thrilled.

Does anyone else feel like being a research mathematician is a transgression?

"On Tuesday, the female participants..."

Why have these "women in math" lunches or get-togethers at conferences, in grad school, elsewhere?

Oh, how I hate this tired old discussion. It is just like teaching: you may get older, but freshmen are always freshmen. I may get older and wiser, but there will always, always be some guy who thinks he is super-clever saying, "What about lunch for the men?"

Clever, eh? I bet you never thought of that line!

Current response: well, go have lunch!

Now that we're done with that, to the more educational component of today's post. Why lunch for the women? Because it's nice to meet each other and reassure ourselves that we're not freaks and share some experiences. (Why can't I stop being snarky about this?)

Try again. To share experiences and notes and develop effective ways to deal with the usual non-gender-specific thoughts (my research is never going to succeed! I am sooo dumb! I always forget the statistic on tableau that produces the blah function, so how will I ever prove anything again!) and the more-gender-specific (I don't belong here! All these guys won't talk to me and the guy who knows everything about the KdV equations is scared of girls and scurries into a corner every time I try to ask him about remark four in his recent paper! The senior professor who's lecturing on stacks switches to talking about love and beauty instead of orbifolds every time I come near and it is freaking me out! I want to have a baby, or three! I keep getting nominated for committees, so now they want me to be on the women in math committee and the diversity in sciences committee and the undergraduate curriculum committee and the mentoring committee!!!! I just want to be on the funding committee.)

When we talk, we can figure out some of these things that no one else is going to figure out for us. We can learn techniques for gracefully declining those committee nominations, figure out how to shake up conference speaker lists so that speakers don't just include the male organizer's male friends, get tips on organizing our time between work, travel, family, and the rest of life, learn different ways of seeing the world that might free us from our own prejudices. We can make some important professional connections. We can learn from women ahead of us how they made life as a research mathematician or liberal arts college professor work, with or without kids/aging parents/a demanding Ironman training schedule. These models are important because life and society still do demand different things from men and women, and the model that some senior men present (have stay-at-home wife, move anywhere in world for career, work all the time and have wife take care of kids/parents/Christmas cards) is simply untenable and kicks us right out of the picture.

Guys, we like talking to you. Don't be so gosh-darned sensitive. You're fine. But we need a network of women: for advice, sometimes for validation that we're not crazy, sometimes for a tampon in an emergency. You're not qualified for a number of these things, some for understandable reasons (the last, I hope) and sometimes because you are simply unobservant and/or don't experience the same world as we do. The next time I hear some guy saying, "But he never stares at my chest" I'm going to start screeching like a hyena.

Atlantic article

Like everyone else in the blogosphere, I feel the need to weigh in on Anne-Marie Slaughter's article on women in the workforce and women in leadership. I'm exactly her subject matter: a female in her early thirties trying to figure out work, family, ambition, and what to do with her PhD.

She mentions that academia made it possible for her to do it all for a long time because of its flexible schedule. I agree, if you can live near your work. When I've lived near my academic job I've enjoyed a lot of freedom and flexibility: I can work really hard and still get a haircut, get groceries, go to the dentist, etc. I've also lived far from my academic job in order to deal with a two-body problem + a mortgage. When I'm commuting a substantial distance, living at home rather than coming home only on weekends, and teaching classes in the morning and attending required committee or department meetings in the late afternoon, I too have felt the stress. Hate it. I hate leaving home by 7 am and coming home at 8 pm. If I have to do it again I will quit -- I learned a lot about work-life balance!

And travel is rough. This summer I am spending five weeks on the road. Sure, it's a choice, and one I've looked at closely. (I believe in making conscious choices to the extent that's possible.) I have considered canceling some of those weeks on the road -- but the conferences seem essential to the progress of my career, if I want to have a career, and the family time seems essential if I want to maintain family connections. On the other hand, time at home with my nuclear family seems pretty important too! I want to see friends and go to cool city events and do a triathlon and weed the garden... when is that going to happen?

I am very fortunate: I get to do work that I find interesting and meaningful while being financially supported for travel to interesting locations. Many people I know find the life, from the outside, almost glamorous (crazy to say about a mathematician's life). On the inside, I don't know. What price am I paying in trying to climb this ladder that in the end seems to have little sawed-off rungs every few steps? It's not like I've got a steady job to rely on...