>My dad said something to me recently which rather shocked me: he said
>"Never, NEVER work for a woman if you can help it". My first reaction was
>as any reasonable feminist type would -- how can you make such a terrible
>generalisation -- but I think he may actually be right!
>>There are some women in science who are as nice as they are intelligent and
>hard-working, but in my experience (in getting now to the end of a PhD) a
>great number of the women in charge are nasty, vindictive, spiteful and
>seem to have chips on their shoulders, and their behaviour seems
>particularly directed towards other women! Men under their care seem to be
>treated as golden boys whilst the women are treated like naughty, lazy,
>sullen little girls.
>>These are the senior women who were supposed to be our role models in
>science and in society, and yet they seem to want us relative youngsters to
>fail whilst they sneer (perhaps they are resentful because they had it
>harder, but that seems to be a pretty low excuse!). It was said that
>Rosalind Franklin was fairly difficult to work with too, but surely we have
>moved on since THEN!?
>>Jan
>Jan Henry
>Cardiovascular Genetics Centre
>Rayne Institute
>UCL Medical School
>London
>Tel: 0171 209 6977
>Fax: 0171 209 6212
That sounds like a gross generalization to me. I have had 3 women mentors
(M.S., Ph.D., and post doc) and 2 of them were bright, balanced, caring
people, i.e. great mentors. The 3rd woman was extremely bright, but not as
adept interacting with people; she was a challenge to work with. However,
she was much easier to work with than her husband!
I performed my graduate studies in a department with a woman chair. She
came up through the ranks in the 50's. From the stories I've heard, it was
a difficult climb. When she took over the department in the early 80's, she
converted a teaching department to a teaching/research department. She
brought in some outstanding young women faculty and built an outstanding
research department with an impressive funding and publication record. She
also brought in women with spouses who needed faculty level jobs (so the
husband got the job because she wanted the woman for a position). I was
quite fortunate to have this department chair on my dissertation committee.
I know that the graduate school dean would agree with you that this woman
was "nasty, vindictive, spiteful" because he lost many battles with her.
She fought to create that department.
My current department chair, who is a man, had her as a "mentor" when he
first became chair of our department. He often comments on how much she
helped guide and advise him. Her name was Barbara Bowman, Department of
Cellular and Structural Biology at the Univ Tex Health Science Center in
San Antonio. Sadly, she died of breast cancer a couple of years ago (after
a long, courageous fight).
I'm always disappointed when people are so willing to judge other people
based on a "male/female" category.It is so shallow and often very
inaccurate. How about evaluating the person and dropping the stereotypes
and conventional expectations?
*****************************************************************
Laura Cox, Ph.D.
Department of Genetics
Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research
PO Box 760549
San Antonio, TX 78245-0549
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