> Jan Henry (jan.henry at ucl.ac.uk)
> 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!
In a word, horsefeathers!
> 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!?
Naturally there are women who are difficult to work for. There are
also men who are difficult to work for, and I would argue, more of
the latter than the former! Why is it we expect that women will
necessarily all be sweet and nice but do not expect this of the men?
Why should the women be any different from the men? this is a demanding,
difficutl, and sometimes brutal profession; there are lots of
people who don't handle their employees well regardless of gender.
Beware--is this an example of what I see in the graduate course
I teach? My lecture style and my grading is the same as my male
colleagues, but I am "the bitch" and satirized in the skits as the
meanest grader in the department; the men are simply tough or challenging.
Yet objectively, there is no difference.
That's not to say that Jan has not run into some difficult women.
But has she ignored the difficult men?
Frankly it's hard enough to get students to consider working for
a woman without this sort of attitude added into it. And, I
would warrant, my students and postdocs find me a good boss, not
a bad one. So be careful about tarring an entire population with
a few bad experiences, and make sure you aren't demanding MORE of
the women than the men.
--
-susan
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S L Forsburg, PhD forsburg at salk.edu
Molecular Biology and Virology Lab
The Salk Institute, La Jolla CA
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Women in Biology Internet Launch Page
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