Oh Mr. Tierney

I generally ignore this guy at the NY Times, because he clearly doesn't understand the data.

For example, the supposedly innate difference between women and men in math. He loves to cite the studies that say men are at either end of the bell curve for math, but rarely cites the accompanying evidence that on average men and women are equally good at math and science.

I'll admit, his last article on June 7th (linked above) was not that bad. I actually agree that legislating awareness workshops doesn't really fix anything. Although, who knows, they did help for drastically reducing sexual harassment (he doesn't mention that).

Yesterday's column by Mr. Tierney, on the other hand, was downright offensive.

Mr. Tierney deliberately mis-cites this National Academy study that came out last year as claiming that women and men "enjoy comparable opportunities" in grants and promotion at universities.

One of the things that infuriates me about that study and this article is basically the point of this blog: the problems are in publishing and hiring. The reason those are still the two biggest problems is because they're entirely "confidential" which means THERE ARE NO STUDIES EXAMINING WHETHER THEY ARE FAIR OR NOT.

Of course, he also cites the most anti-feminist female writer Christina Hoff Sommers.

However, we can't just ignore these people, because too many readers get their only information about science from places like the New York Times, and they don't know that Sommers and Tierney are far from representative, and far from being scientists themselves.

Tierney cites the famous Wenneras and Wold paper from 1997 castigating a Swedish postdoctoral grant review panel for being sexist. And then promptly dismisses it as an aberration.

(note that the same newspaper has an article today entitled Oil Executives Tell Committee That BP Spill Is an Aberration.)

Seriously though, I've been thinking long and hard about how to get gray-haired white guys like Mr. Tierney, and crazy anti-feminists like Sommers (okay let's face it, I'd have an easier time with Tierney) to understand how I feel after experiencing gender bias in all its subtle crazymaking persistence on a daily basis for years as a scientist.

Tierney clearly doesn't get it. But he is smart enough to tap into the growing furor over women in science, and he's right that the workshops won't solve our problems. And the controversial style he uses also brings more attention to our cause, even if he's defending Larry Summers while he does it. I'm beginning to think Larry Summers is one of the more open-minded folks out there, if people like Mr. Tierney are any indication.

Tierney is defensive and scared now that women outnumber men in college (an issue that Sommers loves to write about), while again emphasizing that women and men struggle with having children as as academic tenure-track faculty.

It's true that there are more women than men applying to and qualifying for college, but it's not true that they're all admitted. In fact, most colleges actively discriminate against women now, in an effort to maintain near-gender parity and avoid the disdain they would receive upon becoming a "hen house".

Tierney is also completely missing the point that women of child-bearing age routinely experience hiring and discrimination at the postdoc level on the basis of the assumptions that women

a) all want children
b) all lie about wanting children
c) won't do as much work after having children as men do.

At least, that's the type of discrimination I experienced. Repeatedly. Despite my vocal reminders that I don't want children, and that what I wanted was a career in the science field for which I have spent my entire adult life training.

But Mr. Tierney couldn't possibly understand what it's been like to be me.

Denial is a bitch

Every once in a while, I write a post because I read something that makes my blood boil. This particular piece was written by Eileen Burbidge (@eileentso), an early-stage tech angel-investor, and as you'll see, there's nothing angelic about her.

In this case, she writes as a woman who contradicts herself by arguing that offering opportunities specifically for women is "patronizing", even while admitting that It’s not pleasant (or wise) if someone shuts a door on me strictly because I’m a woman.

And yet, she writes an entire post as if this never happens. And she writes as if, when it does, it means the women are not qualified.

Lady, you can't have it both ways. And I think you're in a denier.

By her own admission, she works in a male-dominated atmosphere, and yet she seems to completely miss the point. She writes,

I currently work in the @whitebearyard office space with a lot of men over 2 floors. I’m quite certain that each one of them (or at least most of them) are acutely aware whenever there is a woman in the office. Full stop. They know if a woman enters the office, steps into the floor or is here for a meeting. In this setting, women get a lot more attention than “just another guy”. And if a woman in this setting cannot make a positive impression or assert her value as a prospective vendor, partner, employee/consultant, then maybe she’s actually not qualified or capable enough – or not wanting it.

What really makes me angry is exactly this atmosphere. Full stop.

The sheer inability to understand what it's like for women who have been harassed and abused to the point where even just walking into a situation where all the men suddenly perk up and look you over, head to toe, is enough to make you want to turn around and go home.

The feeling that, no matter what you wear, or how articulate you are, everyone is too obsessed with your female dog-suit to really hear what you're saying.

And by everyone, this can include women. This woman in particular, sounds like the type who thinks no women are ever as good as she is.

My last job had this all-men, all-the-time atmosphere. I hated just walking to my office.

And the feeling never wore off, because there weren't enough other women around. The men never got tired of staring at me like I was a chunk of meat.

Now, they may not have had any intentions of making me uncomfortable, but nobody told them not to do it, or introduced me as an equal, either.

When you go on a job interview, when you're going to be nervous already, and this is the atmosphere, how would you feel?

How about if you're already highly sensitized to it after an entire career of being treated like an unworthy object? Do you think you're likely to do your best?

Of course not.

Does that mean you're not qualified? Not capable?

Of course not.

Does that mean you're not wanting it badly enough?

Fuck you, lady, for even insinuating that "badly enough" means we should be happy to put up with being treated like meat.

You have no fucking idea what you're talking about. I resent the idea that you get to speak for women in any field remotely related to technology.

You're the last kind of person I would want as an advisor to my career, or anyone else's.

***

Having said all that, reading the comments on this post, I get a completely different impression.

For example, there was this exchange:

“I have never heard a woman in tech say she did not receive something because she is a woman. Can you provide some examples of this, as it seems to be your primary reason for the dearth of women in tech?”

While I have heard of women saying this, I agree with you that I’ve never heard it firsthand (and it doesn’t represent my experience nor that of female friends and colleagues) — which is *precisely* the point of my post! I wrote this in response to quite a few other articles I’ve read over the past month or so “blaming” the issue on a systemic issue or bias against women, men who weren’t paying enough attention to hiring women or other such reasons — blaming and in my view complaining about things.

She also writes in response to a comment that tech is better than most industries (more on this in Part II)

So now I'm curious to see what she writes about in Part II. Which fields is she referring to? Business? And whether she might be right that guys in the Tech sector are better than in other fields.

My impression of guys in Tech is twofold:

(1) They tend to be relentlessly logical, which I like, because it means I can often convince them of my point of view more easily than the men in my field

(2) They have never worked with women, so they tend to have many misconceptions about what women are like, based on what they see in videogames and movies. In other words, we might kick ass, but we're still sex objects.

However, (2) can be overcome with (1).

Which is more than I can say for my field, or for the women who also contribute to the culture of denial.

this about says it.

more later.

for now, read this short post from Good Enough Woman.

One more excerpt from the same book by Margaret Rossiter.

I'm putting this here because it so eerily reflects things I have blogged about (30+ years since the 1970s when supposedly much progress was made- at least briefly).

My impression from reading this book is that there was a mini-revolution from 1968-1972, but then the momentum was lost: we're essentially moving forward now at a lazy snail's pace, with no major changes from what it was then.

I say this because I found myself writing still true now! still true now! still true now! over and over in the margins of this book, but especially this page. It touches on three major points I've raised on this blog, all of which were really contentious, namely

(a) Deniers, both male and female, who don't believe there is a problem or that anything needs to be actively done about it

(b) SuperWomen who are not actually useful as role models, and who pull up the ladder behind them as they go

(c) That foreign-born women scientists are treated differently from American women scientists, and have had more success not just abroad but also in the US

from page 381 (essentially the last page of the book):

"But if consciousness was running high and the outpouring of outrage was epidemic in some circles, such feelings were far from universal. Many eminent scientists, women as well as men, did not necessarily agree that there was a problem and wondered what all the fuss was about.

Having adjusted to it all years before and believing staunchly in individual virtues such as hard work, they were either oblivious to the problem or, when it was brought to their attention, adamant that it did not exist.

They were so much a part of the "system" that had treated them comparatively well that it was difficult for them, as it had been earlier for Jessie Bernard, to see a pattern and think of employers and colleagues, even sexist ones, as villains.

Often foreign-born, these faculty women clung to an individualistic view that all that mattered was doing very good work and lots of it; one's sex and marital status were irrelevant. By dint of a lifetime of hard work, considerable self-sacrifice, and perhaps a move to the United States, they had "made it", and they did not wish to criticize American institutions that had made their success possible. Their successful work and high rank on the faculty had blinded them to other views; instead they seemed proof that if, just if, a woman was good enough, she too would be promoted to the highest levels.

Their small numbers could be seen as indicators that a few women offered this successful combination rather than evidence that stronger credentials might be required for women than for men.

For example, German immigrant and Nobel laureate Maria Goeppart Mayer of the University of California at San Diego could not understand why the American Physical Society had created a committee on women in April 1971 or why it had put her on it: she had no interest or expertise in the area.

Similarly, Birgit Vennesland, Norwegian-born and long a full professor of physiology and biochemistry at the University of Chicago, ended her autobiographical statement for her fellow physiologists in the early 1970s with some angry remarks about the younger women who now expected to be put on university faculties just because they felt as qualified as men; for women to press to0 hard in this direction would, she felt sure, lower the quality of the faculty and thus in time endanger the strength of the nation. Academia should hold onto its proven ways and not give in to the merely political pressure of diversifying the faculty. "