> From: 102374.3265 at compuserve.com (Alison Mack)
> --Have you found participating in meetings to be useful in promoting
> your
> own career?
You bet. The first meeting where I gave a big talk when I was a post
doc, I gave it because my PI couldn't go to the meeting. I got
two job interviews out of that talk (two people came up to me,
separately, afterwards, to ask when I was coming on the market),
and I got at least one more small-meeting talk from it (organizer
wrote my PI, and said, "please come to our meeting, and if you
can't, can Susan?")
However, since I forged out on my own, I find that the
invitations to give meeting talks or seminars are
few and far between. Men in my field who have
done no more, or less, than I have been getting invited talks.
(sometimes one wonders, "where's the beef?")
It's frustrating, because it feels as though I'm being squeezed
out. Right now my lab are doing good stuff, writing
some papers, so it's even more annoying.
Plus, I give good talks. :-)
> --Do you think women scientists have substantially different
> experiences at
> meetings than men?
yes. Alice's comments about women feeling intimidated and men
feeling energized, while a generalization, has a big kernal of
truth in it. Many men view meetings (at least, they behave at
meetings) like mediaeval knights at a joust--it's a contest
where they can prove themselves. THere's a lot of posturing,
figuring out who's where in the heirarchy and how they can
get something out of the other guy.
To my mind, that gets in the way of the productive exchange of
information.
It CAN be very funny to watch, though! :-)
> -- Some female scientists I've spoken to have observed that relatively
> few
> women get invited to speak at meetings, and especially to give keynote
> addresses.
Here's a suggestion. Go through the back of science, Nature, Cell, and
any other journals that advertise meetings with speaker lists.
Count the percentage of women on the list. Correlate this with
women organizers. Not uncommon to see lists where there are no
women at all, and many more women speakers when there's a woman
organizer.
Women just don't get noticed. I was speaking to one of my
(male) colleagues this weekend about the paucity of women junior
faculty--and that poor representation is in the applicant
pool as well. We agreed that there were about 50% women postdocs,
but far fewer than 50% job applicants are women.
I remarked that everyone chases a few women "superstars"
--he replied, "but there are so few women superstars."
Yet with 50% women postdocs, shouldn't roughly half the
"Superstars" be women? So more goes into being a superstar
and a hot proprety--it's also a way of
interacting. I commented to my colleague that women tend
to be quieter and less in-your-face confident than men, and
so are overlooked. He bristled. "There's no one here like that!"
he said.
Right.
I've also noticed that the bright young men are much more likely
to have a lot of positive press--which often ends up with meeting
invites. ("My postdoc Joe Smith is on his own now, you should ask
HIM to give a talk!") For whatever reason, women are less likely
to have that push from a mentor or interested observer.
They fall through the cracks. They don't stand out
and thus get ignored. Also, I think there is often a
discomfort for some men dealing with young women -- as though
they can't get past the gender difference, or a fear that
someone will think they're sleeping together, or something.
Finally, men are socialized to be very self-promoting
confident of their place in the world.
Women who are selfpromoting get described as "manipulative",
"aggressive", and "bitchy", and those who arent end up,
as Alice's post shows, being worn down by the non-science part and
questioning whether they belong in the field.
Alice--stick it out. You are here because you belong. And
you can't win if you don't stay in the game!
--
-susan, who has been watching this biz for years now and finds that
the more things change, the more they stay the same.
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