Women in Physics

blackraven

What is the sexism in physics field like? I heard there's a lot of sexism in the field.

lisab

There's a lot of info in this thread from a while back:

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=587624

genericusrnme

As a short anecdote, most of the girls I've met who have complained about sexism have been the ones who went out of their way to make themselves look more provocative (and the ones that go overboard with the 'im one of the guys' carry on).

ParticleGrl

Define provocative? It sounds like you are saying that the girls who dress like girls complain about sexism. But then, so do the ones who act like one-of-the-guys, who conceivably don't dress like girls? Doesn't that encompass a wide range of people?

But anyway, in my opinion the sexism in physics exists, and it ranges from subtle to fairly ridiculous. Some of it is intentional, but quite a lot is the result of an institutional culture that developed largely in the absence of women (i.e. its very, very hard to have a kid at any point before tenure and stay in the field. I've had childless women professors tell me they wish they had frozen their eggs)

The best advice I can give is to contact your local society of women engineers (or find a woman physicist) and meet some people who have been through it that you can meet face to face. In person advice from someone who is living he sort of career will be a lot more beneficial than internet message board advice.

lisab

They went out of their way to look more provocative - what do you mean by that?

eri

I agree with ParticleGirl - the sexism I've encountered has been mostly unintentional on the part of the guy. That's not to say it's not there, just that they usually don't realize they're being sexist. For example, I was recently hired as a tenure-track physics faculty member at a university. When meeting an older, male member of the engineering faculty, he asked me what I was teaching. When I told him 'physics', he said 'Wow! Good for you!' He probably didn't realize it was pretty insulting. He certainly didn't react like that when he met the new male engineer I was walking around with. I'm sure he thought he was being the opposite of sexist.

I've heard many women complain (quite legitimately) about sexist co-workers, and none of them dress 'provocatively'. Nor do I.

MathematicalPhysicist

eri, I don't see it as being sexist, the fact is that women are a minority in Physical Sciences so when he heard this it surprised him.

I guess that if more women will get interested in academic life in the sciences we'll see a different attitude, and it won't surprise anyone.

king vitamin

Of course, I hope you realize that the problem isn't that women aren't interested in getting into academic life, but that there's innate institutionalized sexism that should be actively fought against. A comment like "good for you!" that's motivated by the sex of who you're talking is offensive, period.

I've heard a lot of complaints from women where I just graduated (undergrad) about communicating with professors/students and being ignored in a group conversation, and feeling helpless due to their sex. I personally found it to be a "boy's club" and really didn't enjoy some of the conversations my fellow male physicists had that I found really sexist. I've also heard women I know outside of physics tell me that they were discouraged from mathematical sciences in middle/high school by counselors/teachers from what they perceived to be a gender bias.

With that said, I've found the bias to be less severe at the grad school/academia level compared to undergrad at a state school, but there's always progress to be made.

Rika

Is that really sexism? o.o To tell you the truth I don't see sexism here.

I graduated with BEng in Engineering Physics and I have never seen anything like this during my studies. However m/f ratio in physics is about 50:50 in my country.

Again, it's a news to me.

Now I'm in a field where m/f ratio is 9:1 and again - I haven't felt any sexism.

Now when I think about it I just don't give a **** about my gender. I mean I like my gender but I don't think about it and I don't feel inferior because of it. I have never though "should I go into physics/engineering/any other "male" field because I'm a woman?". I do what I like to do and don't care if it's "for males/females".

I think it's mutual - if you don't see a problem with your gender, others won't see it either.

Or maybe sexism is more common in US than in Europe. After all in Europe during 60's women engineers were quite common while in US women were treated as nice looking maids.

ThinkToday

It could have also been a comment/compliment as to such a young person taking up the mantle to teach physics. The sexism I've seen (I'm a guy btw) has been more female on female. I don't understand the reason, but they seem to be harder on each other. For guys, I suspect some attraction issues are mistaken as sexism. Some of us guys can be down right stupid about how to approach a women, let alone one that may (often is) smarter than us Thank god I'm married now and don’t have to worry about it, and yes, she's a teacher that is smarter than me in several ways.

eri

I found the 'good for you!' to be a pretty patronizing remark. But I think things are getting better. My high school physics teacher was the worst, actually - he handed around a sheet the first day of class and told us to put our names down if we wanted to study for the AP exam, since our school didn't have a separate 'AP physics' class. We never heard about it again, and assumed he decided not to hold the extra study sessions for it. Imagine our surprise when it turned out he only got back to the guys who put their names down, none of the women.

TMFKAN64

I'm sure things are getting better, but that's cold comfort to women in science today.

"Good for you!" sounds pretty patronizing to me too. And honestly, I think the fact that he meant it as a complement would have just annoyed me even more.

Part of the problem with being a member of a Privileged class is that sometimes you don't even realize that you *are* privileged. I'm sure this professor would have never said that if he had stopped to think about how it sounded.

StatGuy2000

What I would be interested to know is (a) if the sexism that is experienced by women in physics is either worse or more pervasive than those experienced by women in other scientific or technical disciplines, especially those which are still male-dominated (e.g. mathematics), and (b) if the sexism is worse in academia as opposed to outside of academia.

NewtonianAlch

Why not stop going on and on and on and on about it and just study it? If it's sexism today, it will be long beards and body odour tomorrow, just get on with it.

Geezer

I'm currently a female physics grad student and I regularly experience sexism. I don't really care to get irritated right now--I took a break from studying for the Comps to check out physics forums---so I won't go into any details, but yeah, sexism still exists in physics. On average, I have about one overt sexist experience per week. Sometimes it's something subtle; other times it's downright obvious to anyone, male or female, in the vicinity.

Threadjack:

I'm married and have a kid. I did the stay-at-home mom thing for the first few years, putting off grad school until our child was ready for preschool. During a meeting with a female professor with whom I was beginning a research project, I commented that I was jealous that she was just a few years older than me, but was already a tenured professor, while I was just starting grad school.

Her response?

That she envied me, because not only do I get to have a family---a husband and a child---but I still have a shot of having a physics career, too. She, on the other hand, "put off" romantic relationships in the pursuit of research and becoming a professor; she's now nearing 40 with no boyfriend/husband and the chances of her having natural children are around 0%.

Geezer

OMG, this has happened sooo many times to me and other women I know...

Aero51

I found, in my experience, that a lot of women (early 20's age) working in the sciences are intimidated by their male counterparts, being that they are surrounded by them. As a result (again, in my opinion), these girls tend to be more defensive than necessary. In acting this way I think a lot of girls problems in the field of science are brought on more by their insecurities and lack of confidence in themselves.

Sexism probably exists in the field; its a combination of the men's lack of perceptiveness (which I've also noticed among men in technical fields) of feelings, and the women's unnecessary defensive attitude.

SIDE NOTE: I don't think this is confined to the sciences alone as recently one of my female friends and I were talking about working out at the gym and she mentioned that she is intimidated lifting weights because of being surrounded by men.