Cutting off other futures

I'm having trouble not caring.

I was fired¹ in March. I've witnessed a series of poor decisions that have crushed staff and faculty morale and negatively impacted students. I've seen in-fighting over the scraps the administration/Board dangles over our heads. And every time a new bad thing comes, I say, "This is it. I'm done."

But I'm not done. I keep fighting it. I keep resisting these changes. Sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly, but always pushing back.

I am appealing the decision to fire me. It is a tedious process. It was not made for my benefit. It feels specifically designed to discourage its own use. Somehow the hostility makes me want to keep pressing forward. Like I need to know what's on the other side of a fence marked "Keep out."

There are so many things wrong in the world right now that my complaints feel insignificant. People are dying in Gaza. The US Senate Republicans are pretending the Jan 6 insurrection was no big deal. Black people keep getting killed by police. Nikole Hannah-Jones was just denied tenure by the trustees of UNC-Chapel Hill despite being phenomenally qualified. The pandemic isn't over.

But my problems are still problems, and their size in the scheme of the world does not render them insignificant to my life. The injustices here² are not absolved by their mundanity.

Still, I wish I could stop caring, and let go. When layoffs were imminent last fall, I started looking for jobs. Now I have actually started applying, and the difference feels immense. When browsing job postings, everything is possible, but submitting an application is making a decision. I recall something I read in a middle school English textbook: decision and scissors are cognates. The meaning of that shared cis root is "to cut off." When you make a decision, you cut off other futures and possibilities.

When I decide to apply to jobs elsewhere, I am cutting off possible futures here. And that process is hard and painful and scary.

I know that staying is an unlikely option. I know that things are Not Good at this university, and even if I could stay, it is probably not wise to stay. But it's still hard to go.

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1: I was informed that my contract would not be renewed and that I've been moved from a tenure-track position to a term position

2: The injustices are not only to me, but also to my colleagues: 11 others fired, 6 denied tenure decisions (not denied tenure, denied even a decision about tenure), 19 more without hope of tenure for years, all justified with specious claims about the "needs of the University both now and into the future"

Guilty

Geoff Marcy recently resigned from Berkeley after word got out that he’d been a serial sexual harasser of women in astronomy, that a Berkeley investigation concluded he had violated campus conduct policies, that the university had barely even slapped his wrist for it, and that the women in astrophysics (and the rest of the sciences) were sick of this same old crap.

Okay then. One down, more to go.

Marcy is not the last harasser. His resignation does not mark the eradication of this disease. There are more creeps out there. There are more people making science and unwelcome place. We’re not done.

Hearing about Marcy, his misdeeds, and his shield of privileges and achievements, I was reminded of another creep, one I could have called out, but didn’t. I feel guilty hearing about these cases. I know of sexual harassment in science that has gone unreported. Am I, by staying silent, complicit?

I will tell you the story, but I am not prepared to name names. I am not the victim, and I have no wish to bring her unwanted attention. I wasn’t even present when it happened, but when a person tells you of her harassment, you’d better believe her. It’s been over a year, but that doesn’t make his actions any less wrong.

Last year at a conference I attended, a graduate student, who I’ll call Annie, was groped by a senior professor, who I’ll call Jack. It was the last night of a week-long conference. There was a party, with dancing and booze. Jack was on the dance floor. Annie walked by him, and he grabbed her butt. As Annie’s companions emphasized, this was not a case of “accidentally” bumping into or brushing up against someone. This was a middle-aged man grabbing a young woman in a clearly sexual way. Annie and her companions left the party immediately, unwilling to risk more time in an unwelcome space.

I heard about the incident moments later from Annie and the other junior scientists (grad students & post-docs) who had seen it happen. My initial response was shock: He did what?! My next thought was discouragement and disappointment. It had been a pretty great week: I’d learned about exciting science, had some great conversations, and met some delightful people. But Jack’s inability to keep his hands to himself tarnished my impression of the conference. And – even though it didn’t happen to me, and I hadn’t been in the room – it made me feel unwelcome.

We didn’t report Jack. We talked about it, the group of us. Who would we tell? Jack wasn’t just an attendee; he chaired the conference. The best we could foresee was one of our advisors just saying ‘steer clear.’ So we said nothing. The conference was over, anyway. What was the harm?

The harm is that Annie is almost certainly not the first woman Jack has grabbed. She probably won’t be the last. Annie and Jack are at different institutions in different cities, but we’re all in the same field. We’re likely to cross paths again. Even if those of us who know about his harassment of Annie warn others away, Jack just becomes another open secret.

Jack made our group feel unwelcome at the conference party. Who else is he pushing out? What if Jack is harassing women in his own department? Who is listening to them?

You might say “It’s not so bad. He just grabbed her butt, it’s not like he really did any damage.” Except it is that bad. Someone is getting pushed out every time. And it’s damaging for every single woman. It shouldn’t have to take four women multiple years to get a man to keep his hands to himself.

Jack has a name, and a home department, and a publication list as long as my arm. Jack has a reputation and a position of privilege that far outweighs mine, or Annie’s. I can’t fight that battle right now, even though I feel guilty for letting another creep skate by. So the guilt buzzes in my ear when I hear these stories, and it reminds me that I need to do better next time – and that, sadly, there is likely to be a next time.

Some thoughts about crying

Reset your "days since a sexism-in-science incident" counters to zero. A Nobel laureate dug himself a pretty deep and boggy hole when, among other things, he explained why he thought men and women shouldn't be in labs together. Apparently, the womenz are just too irresistible and men "fall in love with them," but women also cry too much.

Much digital ink has already been spilled on the many things wrong with the speech, the speaker's behavior, the non-pology circus, and the pathetic and tone-deaf kinds of support he has received. I just want to focus on the part about crying.

I cry easily. When I'm excited, I tend to tear up. I cry during movies. I have cried in the lab, in my advisor's office, while presenting a group meeting, and, yes, at the end of my thesis defense. I don't recall anyone ever calling it unprofessional, but I do know that that message has been implied at times. Several people, at several points in my life, have told me to "get a thicker skin" so I wouldn't cry as often.

I have a few problems with that.

For one thing, not crying, for me, is like not sneezing. I can control it a little bit, but it's hard and sometimes painful, and I often end up with my eyes watering anyway.

For another, you get a thicker skin by developing callouses, and you get callouses from repeated, sustained exposure to something abrasive or otherwise painful. No thank you, I don't want to become calloused. I don't want to expose myself to painful and abrasive things any more than necessary.

I want to be a person who feels.

The Invisible Woman

I wrote this in October and somehow didn't manage to post it then.

I know a professor – a youngish white guy who looks older than he is – who wears a suit an tie to every class because, he says, he wants to command authority in the classroom. He doesn’t need to dress up for his students to think he’s the one in charge. All he has to do is feed their assumptions.

I work with another professor who told me during my interview that, as a middle-aged white guy, he knew he could be intimidating, and he’d rather that the subject be the scary part, not him as the instructor. He wears Hawaiian print shirts and makes goofy memes. He makes himself approachable.

And I? I am small and young and female. I want to wear skirts, but I’ve opted for khakis. They’re somehow safer. A friend of mine, who also teaches chemistry, recently told me she had finally “dared” to wear teal tights while teaching. We worry—and I think rightfully so—that if we present as too young and too feminine, that we won’t keep enough of our authority.

I like to be informal with my students. I want them to be comfortable asking questions without fear of looking stupid. But I insist on Dr. Haas. I need to be their professor more than their pal.

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Since August, three women in gaming have left their homes and changed their speaking plans in response to rape and death threats. Ostensibly this is in a fight over ethics in video game journalism. It’s been reported as a “controversy,” as if there are two equally reasonable sides. But there aren’t two sides here. People are making threats of violence against women. That is wrong. Full. Stop.

In recent years, more and more women in tech & gaming have been targeted simply for being visible. For speaking up. For expressing opinions. For existing in a "male" space.

Science can be a pretty male space, too. Women in science – thankfully – aren't getting the kind of abuse women in gaming are, but that does not mean science is always a welcoming, egalitarian place.

The Nobel prizes in physics and chemistry were announced earlier this month and yet again a bunch of men won the prize, the recognition, the press, the attention, the praise, the legitimacy. There have been two female laureates in physics, and four in chemistry. And that’s not even a total of six women because Marie Curie won both a physics and a chemistry Nobel.

Five women. One hundred years of awards, up to three people each year, and only five women.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the blue LED is wonderful. I’m delighted that my own field, single-molecule microscopy, has been recognized. I think all the men involved are smart and talented and deserving of recognition. I just think we are way past due recognizing women for their works and listening to their voices.

We need to make women more visible. We need to change the norms so that is no longer remarkable to have female scientists or female gamers or female developers or female anything else. When few women stand out, they are seen as anomalies, rareities, and exceptions. Instead of individuals, they become symbols, whether the penultimate female scientist to gather the sisterhood behind or the feminist nail MRAs believe they must hammer down.

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My heart is full. I am applying for jobs and I doubt myself so strongly sometimes. I worry that my voice will not be heard. That my science will not be recognized. That if I shout into the void, no one will hear, or worse, the darkness will come roaring back at me.

A week or so ago I spent multiple hours trying to write a short reply to a simple email. Sometimes I have opinions that I am afraid to express. I want things I am afraid to ask for. I am so fully aware that men who ask for more are seen more favorably than women who request less. I watch my words like I choose my clothes. Carefully. Weighing consequences. Debating if it’s even worth expressing my preferences, using my voice, making myself more visible.

I know the price of silence. I just worry at times that the price of speaking is greater.

In case you had forgotten

This is your weekly reminder that science isn't sexist.

In other news, we have always been at war with Eastasia and these are not the droids you are looking for.

The chemistry Nobel should go to a woman

It's Nobel Prize season, and everyone has their picks for which chemists might get a phone call from Sweden. All the names I've seen are of accomplished people who've done excellent, influential work. There's a problem with all these lists, though: I haven't seen a single woman on any of them. Not a damn one.¹ Also notable: a general lack of brown/black people of either gender. What gives? Chemistry is not solely the domain of white and Asian men.

Folks on Twittter have been passing around the Slate article about the 50-year drought of female laureates in physics, but I think it's worth noting that the story is hardly any better in chemistry. I counted four women among the chemistry Nobel laureates: Marie Curie (1911), Irene Joliot-Curie (1935), Dorothy Hodgkin (1964), and Ada Yonath (2009). Did I miss any? I really hope so. Four is a pitiful number.

Are women really not doing Nobel-worthy work? Or do we not recognize their work with the same prestige?

Do we only recognize the super-women? Those who aren't just better, but leagues better, like Curie and Goeppert-Mayer?

When we speak of scientists, do we remember to count the women? Or do they become faceless and forgotten? Do we even listen when they speak?

So, with a few more hours to go, can we think of a few women who should be on the Nobel shortlist?

Update: I missed C&EN's list, but it also doesn't have any women. Still bummed.

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1: Admittedly, I didn't check the much longer list of previous predictions from Everyday Science. I may have overlooked somebody.

More on career breaks

I have a few more things to say about how taking a break from science/academia could kill a woman's career.

First, the Executive Director of the Elsevier Foundation wrote a letter to the New York Times about retaining women in STEM (emphasis mine):

The work-life balance challenge faced by working women is particularly difficult for those in STEM professions (science, technology, engineering and math). Taking time off the research track can be a potentially career-ending decision for a woman, as she can lose valuable connections and funding.

Career brakes indeed. This letter prompted me to flip the issue and think about it from another side: what if men took more career breaks? The anecdata I have say that paternity leave (or, parental leave, in more generic terms) is becoming more common. Could we make it an expectation that parents will take breaks?

I have heard of a university (but now can't seem to find the article in which I read about it) that stops the tenure clock for new parents automatically. They have to ask for it not to stop, rather than the other way around. This is to encourage people to use the parental leave they have and make using it less stigmatized. It's a simple enough policy that might actually change academic culture. Parental leave is generally a few months, not multiple years, of course, but if we can change the attitudes about short breaks, I think it's possible to make longer breaks more acceptable, too.

Then there's this post at Chronicle Vitae about the proliferation of "quit lit," the genre of essays about leaving academia. I have read a number of quit lit pieces, but what strikes me about the topic this time around is that academia is a place people leave. Not take a break from, but leave for good. In that sense, it's not just women who might be unwelcome to return after time away, though men aren't likely to be accused of "leaning out" in the process.

I have to wonder how much of this attitude is related to the priesthood of science (and academia in general) and the ridiculous notion that "dedicated" scientists are single-minded in the pursuit of their work to the exclusion of other interests or obligations. I'm not sure and have no data to back it up, but I suspect they are linked.

Lastly, here are a few thoughts about working parents, moms in particular.

From an interview with Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo.:

I don't think women can have it all. I just don't think so. We pretend we have it all. We pretend we can have it all. My husband and I have been married for 34 years. And we have two daughters. And every day you have to make a decision about whether you are going to be a wife or a mother, in fact many times during the day you have to make those decisions. And you have to co-opt a lot of people to help you. We co-opted our families to help us. We plan our lives meticulously so we can be decent parents. But if you ask our daughters, I'm not sure they will say that I've been a good mom. I'm not sure. And I try all kinds of coping mechanisms.

She says "you have to make a decision about whether you are going to be a wife or a mother," but is her husband also presented with the same decisions about being a husband or a father? Maybe, but maybe not.

I also feel the need to invoke the Finkbeiner test on her interviewer, even though she's not a scientist.¹ Until men are asked in equal proportion about how they balance family with work, we have got to stop interrogating women about it.

Finally, go read this post by dinahere about being the daughter of a working mother.

For the first 12 years of my life I don’t remember my father being there for my birthdays or attending a school play. He was busy saving lives in the OR, earning his share of the money and my mother was there for all of those occasions. So, why didn’t his absence count while hers did? Why were her absences so glaring while her presence so fading?

You know why. Women will never be able to have it all because what we think ‘all’ refers to has been pre-determined by a society that will always be stacked against us.

We can't keep blaming women when they don't measure up to an unachievable standard. The culture has got to change.

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1: I'll just leave this right here, in case you haven't seen it yet.

Career brakes

From SciLogs:

When Adam Spencer asked if female scientists should consider taking an extended break of two or three years, the answer was a resounding “No.” “Science is really a fast-moving world,” [Suzanne] Cory said. “If you get out, even for three years, it becomes very difficult to get back in.

I have heard that position many times from both men and women, and I find it repugnant. It’s a “that’s the way it is” kind of attitude.

My grandmother was a music teacher before she was a mother. She’s told me if she could do it again, she would have become an accountant, but that’s not something girls did in those days. Girls could become teachers, nurses or secretaries. And then they could become mothers. Boys could become accountants or scientists or doctors or lawyers or whatever else they wanted. “That’s the way it is.”

Well that’s not the way it is now, and thank goodness. Thank goodness that somebody stepped up and said “This is what I want to do, and my gender doesn’t matter.” Thank goodness for the women who took the hard path – and the men who helped them – so that I could become a scientist. So that I could be treated as an equal.

Does my expertise have an expiration date? Does leaving the lab for more than a month make me forget how to be a scientist? Will my PhD turn into a pumpkin after midnight? No.

But “science is a fast-moving world” they insist. So what? We all had to learn how to get into that world once, so why can’t someone do it a second time? People also change fields and get into new topics they haven’t studied before. How is that any different from “getting into” the world of science after time away? No, the “fast-moving” argument strikes me as justification to leave things as they are and not bother to make it better.

It galls me to think that women are told that if they leaves, they will not be welcome back—that a career break soon becomes a career brake.

The panel in the article was discussing “possible solutions to fixing this leaky pipeline.” Their conclusion appears to be that women shouldn’t leave in the first place.¹ But why on earth don’t we do something to support the women who want to come back?

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1: Suzanne Cory:

“You are at a crucial age now. Don’t drop off.”

The panelists also said that women need more confidence. Tell me just how much confidence I’ll have after I’ve been told time and again that it’s damn hard to be a woman in science and you can’t leave because then you’ll have let down Womanhood and leaked out of the pipeline, and if you do go you won’t be welcome back because Reasons. And how far will that confidence get me when my words are ignored until spoken by a man? How confident do I need to be to get men to stop patting me on my head? How much confidence will I need to muster to get a seat at the table and be able to keep it?

I have sworn off Women in Science luncheons because I’m sick being told that the solution for the leaky pipeline is “Believe in yourself,” like if I just close my eyes and click my heels together, that will just fix everything.

An important read about quitting vs staying in STEM

Choosing to end any phase of your life is never easy. As a woman, choosing to leave science is harder still. Although there are support groups and professional associations for women in science, there is little day-to-day support for staying. There is even less support for leaving.

This article by Frances Hocutt spoke to me. I know many people (especially women) who have stood at that same threshold and thought "Do I dare quit?" I'm glad she had the courage to choose self-respect.

When a pipeline leaks, we don't blame the water.

Go read it.

via @shanley