What can men do to help women stay in science?
As we know, there are a number of men who are concerned about issues related to women in science and who do take action. However rarely is the question, "what can men do to help women in science?" explicitly asked, especially in public . Well someone is asking it now. The Scientist will be publishing an article in January outlining suggestions for helping men help women scientists. Their ideas include:
"Call a woman scientist from time to time, to chat about science, a recent breakthrough, your puzzling results, their puzzling results. Even better, call one once a week. "
"If you're on a hiring or tenure committee, don't start reading the files until after you review the primary literature on unconscious bias."
Even better, they want your ideas as well and say that they will publish the best comments in print along with the article. So give them your ideas here . I'm giving them one of my favorites.
"When someone is making comments that could be construed as being sexist, even (or maybe especially) if it is "only in fun", call them on it. If women aren't participating in equal numbers, ask why and be prepared to challenge the results. When men say, "Why aren't there more women here?", it is, in many ways, a lot more powerful than when a woman says it. And if you think this works well for gender issues, wait until you try it for issues of race/ethnicity."
FairerScience friend Eric Jolly says, we won't have equality until a group's issues are on the table, even when members of that group aren't present. Ok he says it better than I, but you get what he means.
PS Thanks to another FairerScience friend Erika Biga Lee for bringing this to our attention. FairerScience is very fortunate in its friends.
Comments
I can't remember who said this, so I will have to potentially paraphrase: "The worst thing that could happen to civil rights is for white people to stop caring about it."
The people in power unfortunately are still the ultimate arbiters of equality.
Posted by: lost academic | November 7, 2007 02:32 PM