======= Date Modified 06 Jan 2011 21:49:21 =======
Interesting issue of The Times' Eureka magazine today with some interesting articles on sexism, from an exploration of the idea that women just aren't "hard-wired" for science careers, to comment on the small numbers of female professors despite the high numbers of female academics at lower levels.

As a (female) prospective PhD student what I found the most interesting was Hannah Devlin's piece on research into academic references (seems to be this study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19916666 ) which concluded that female students are seen as more "communal" and more likely to be described as "nurturing" and "agreeable" by their supervisors, while male students are considered more "agentive" and their references are more likely to describe them with words like "independent" and "intellectual", terms which are more concrete and describe qualities more relevant to the science jobs the applicants are going for.

I doubt my (male) MSc supervisor would ever describe me as "nurturing" on any of my references and I never had any problems with him, and while in the lab I actually found most of the sexism I encountered was pretty subtle and seemed to come from other female students- sad but true. I'm struggling to recall any sexism from my undergraduate days, but this may just be because I didn't do a lab project- I have no idea what the lab environment at my first uni was like.

Have any of you, male or female, experienced sexism in the lab, and can anyone report a more positive experience?

Hi Flack,

You raise some interesting points. Personally I don't feel I have been the victim of sexism at any point in my career to date (junior post-doc of 11 months), although i have noticed a few differences in the way men around the lab seemed to go about things compared with women. Firstly, most women (and I am generalising massively here and accept there will be exceptions) seem to have a more friendly relationship with their supervisors, this is just something i've seemed to notice. Maybe this would indicate something like what was being mentioned in the article. I also notice that women seem to get supported more by their bosses in terms of retaining them in employment, or providing a little bit of extra funding to tide them through the write up period. This was something I once discussed with one of my fellow male PhDers and he agreed.

In terms of numbers I would agree that there are fewer women than men in the higher positions in science and yet more women than men in post-doc and PhD positions. Don't know why this is, it could be less equality of oppurtunities, but considering Britain had a female prime minister in the 1980's, when most of todays profs etc would have been doing their PhDs this seems unlikely.

One could suggest that having children is adversely affecting women's career progression. It certainly can't help, although I would like to think in the modern age that a woman can do both, or indeed either as she so wishes. Could it be that childbirth affects women's career aspirations? or is it just that men, who know that they will be working for 40 or so years whatever happens are that bit more ambitious, I don't know, although the topic intrigues me.

One other thing I notice, is that in spite of more women than men entering science in my field, there are still specific award schemes for women in science eg L'oreal women in science schemes. I suspect that if you had a male specific funding award it would be considered sexist, yet posters for this scheme were placed openly around the department, strange?.

In short, I don't really know why the situation is how it is, but it does intrigue me.