sex-bias in our lifetimes

[Linnea Ista]

On 25 Sep 1997, Rae Nishi wrote:

> The bias these days is rarely overt.  The kind that drives me crazy is
> the type where women happen to get "overlooked".  One year at my
> institution there was not a single woman speaker invited for a seminar
> series that had a speaker every week for the entire academic year (the
> following year I got together with another female faculty member and
> drew up a list of about 30 prominent women neuroscientists and gave it
> to the organizer of the seminar series). There was also a study
> published in Nature about gender bias in grant reviews-- women applying
> for postdoctoral fellowships (in Sweden, I think) were consistently
> rated lower than men with equal or worse qualifications.  When anyone
> asks (the male) scientists 'who's hot' in science, the answer is rarely
> a woman scientist even though there are plenty publishing in prominent
> journals and doing great work.  Although we can try very hard to raise
> everyone's awareness, this type of subconscious bias is very difficult
> to combat.  I think it's similar to the problem of teachers not calling
> on girls as often as boys to answer questions (they don't consciously
> do this, it just happens--  how many other opportunities are the girls
> missing because they don't come to  mind as standing out?). 

I was taken aback the other day in a class I am taking in an engineering
department here at UNM. We all have an assignment to present a "hot" paper
related to the theme of the class. The professor gave out a list of papers
to choose from. There was *one* where the first author was female. One of
the other women in the class (on the plus side the class is about 40/60
women/men) picked that particular paper. The professor jokingly said "Oh,
you must be a feminist." When my friend said "excuse me?" he replied that
she obviously picked the paper because a woman authored it.  I happen to
know the student, who works in our lab, was very interested in the topic.
We had discussed it ahead of time. I personally didn't take note of the
genders of any of the authors until the professor pointed out that the
fact that he had only selected one with a female author. It was one of
those grrrrr moments!
Linnea