I know that. I was only highlighting the “sad but true” element.

Again, thanks for posting this.

–IP

-cvj

As regards the “untapped pool of talent” issue…I don’t think it’s the best argument, but not for the reasons that Rob and Nicole gave above. The reason we should make sure that men and women are being treated equally isn’t because of the “points” we might score on some Progress of Science Meter (seems too far in the direction of “What’s in it for me?” from those who are comfortably privileged within science), but because it’s the decent thing to do. (I know you didn’t mean “What’s in it for me?”, Clifford, but so many of the people who use or respond to this argument do think in terms of “What’s in it for me?”).

Thanks for posting this. I’m on my way to a computer science lecture now where women students make up less than 10% of the class and non-white students make up about half that. It’s really important to me and other students to hear from faculty who really support equal opps, so keep posting on this!

–IP

I generally try to give the perspective when it comes to the stage of applying to graudate school. That’s the point when you’re committing several years of your life being underpaid and overworked; as an undergrad, yeah, there’s a chance you’ll work a bit harder as a Physics major than in many other majors, but the undergrad experience isn’t *that* different for physics majors and everybody else. When it comes to recruiting at the undergrad level — you’re right, you’re hardly committing anything at that point, and Physics *is* a really cool major regardless of whether you go on in it or not.

An undergraduate degree in Physics can open an infinite number of doors, and I think more and more people should be majoring in Physics. I also think that probably there are too many Physics departments out there that only celebrate their go-on-to-grad-school students as the top successes of their departments. The world needs more Physics majors teaching high school, in congress, etc.

-Rob

YES! Thanks for reminding us that there are young people out there who entertain the idea of doing something for the love of it!!

From Yvette….

I think physics is the utterly coolest thing I can be doing with my life”

Ok! Let’s print the T-shirt with that on it right now!

Real choice is one of the things I was trying to emphasize in my above comments… the idea of clearing open access for all to make their own decision about whether they want to pursue that career if they are able. Not to have the doors closed because they have the wrong gender or skin colour. Equal opportunity. One of those administrative phrases that is actually rather good.

-cvj

I’m involved with our Physics and Astronomy Club here on campus, and one of the most fun things I get to do is convince freshman to join the physics fold at our events- something I’m pretty good at, I suppose, as the astronomy kids keep accusing me of stealing their majors. And I’ve noticed that for every comment I make about hard work and impossible homework sets, I have to counter it with at least one description on why I think physics is the utterly coolest thing I can be doing with my life (preferably before the hard work comment and involving either quantum mechanics or a really sweet laser). It’s a lot easier to be scared off of something than to be drawn in, and when I listen to professors talk I don’t think they always quite realize that.

Ok, this is a little off of what the original topic was about, but I think it’s worth noting that no one ever went into science because they were intent on being miserable (or at least no one I willingly hang out with). So while perspective is an important thing to have, it should never cause the wonder or excitement of the field to be compromised!

I truly believe that we should all have jobs that make us happy. If we aren’t happy with our current jobs, we have the responsibility to switch. I admire you for going after your dream “against all odds,” and I wish you the best of luck and happiness in your career.

Regardless of the student, I try to give them a realistic message. Of course, fi they read my whining blog posts, they get a very bleak picture. What I say to them directly isn’t so bleak, but I do point out that there are a lot of physicists trying to get a smaller number of jobs; that funding is mercurial and not at all guaranteed; that they will have a lot of competition from a lot of hot-shots; etc.

What I tell my students is that if they go to grad school in Physics, they should do so because they want to study physics, not just because they want a faculty job in Physics. Of course, if you want the latter, you have to go to grad school; but if you view grad school as the sacrifice you make to get a faculty job in physics, then it’s not worth it.

On the other hand, if you want to give it a shot, and you think it would be really cool to study physics and do research for six years even if you are underpaid, then by all means go to grad school. Maybe you will end up one of the faculty members! As as you’ll still think that it was worth it to have spent the years doing what you did, it’s worth going on and doing it.

I suspect that the people who view grad school as simply a means to an employment end are less likely to be the ones who will be most competetive for faculty jobs anyway, so…. The important thing is to go in with your eyes open. Whereas completeing medical school close to guarantees you a job as a doctor somewhere (even if not a sexy, high-paying job), competing a PhD in Physics does not guarantee you a job that requires a PhD in Physics. Of course, your PhD can still help you in other jobs — for instance, I’d love it if more of the best teachers who have PhD’s were happily teaching high school science.

-Rob

But what the hell do I know as a confused little undergradling

A lot. You are the future. Keep up the fight.

BTW, it is *never* an issue commenting on older comments..

-cvj

As someone who is really just starting out on what I hope will be a long-term vocational path, one of the most depressing things for me to hear right now is other women saying that they aren’t sure that they would recommend a life in physics to other women (or men, for that matter). It’s not something I just became aware of recently, but it’s been there as an undercurrent even before I decided to try and study physics.

I do wonder if men in physics hear the same thing from their mentors. Do they hear the message of hopelessness and futility that I pick on with frightening regularity? ‘No, really, you won’t like it here, go try something else.’

It depresses me because this is something I’ve wanted to do my whole life, and now I’m coming into the game quite late and against all odds (I have a full-time professional career and go to school in the evenings), and yet the broadcast message is, ‘eh, why bother?’

I bother because it’s a dream of mine to do this, and because I want to do this, but now I live in fear of what lurks behind every metaphorical door. On the one hand, I know feel like a moderately insane person tilting at windmills, and on the other I just want to cover my ears and say ‘LA LA LA I can’t hear you!’

Anyway, I’m not sure what my point is or how to tie it into the overarching discussion except to say that: when you have a climate such that potentially talented people are scared off despite the fact that they are desperate to learn more and excited by the tantalising bits that they see…I can’t help but think that there is some sense of moral obligation to re-dress that problem.

I also get scared off by the tendency to over-focus on academia. Academia is the most obvious problem, but when people say ‘jobs’ and mean only academic jobs to the exclusion of other possibly rewarding jobs in industry, that’s a bit frightening to me. But what the hell do I know as a confused little undergradling?

It’s very hard to figure out who is best.

Yes of course it is! But you’ll never get anyone good if you assume that there is no best! That’s the point. You’ve got to try to sift through a candidate pool and find the best candidates for the job. Assuming that the concept of “best candidate for the job” is fundamentally flawed is a self-defeating approach. That is like confusing the following two things: (1) The fact that an equation is hard to solve… (2) The non-existence of solutions.

Cheers,

-cvj

Even that isn’t obvious though. Usually there will be a number of potential candidates who will do an excellent job with a given position — and, it may not turn out that whoever ended up at the top of the list is as “good” as one of the others.

It’s very hard to figure out who is best. It’s not like running a chi-square on various models. Never mind the fact that it’s hard to predict just how well somebody will do; different people will bring different things.

-cvj

it will be impossible for white males to succesfully address those issues without having better representation on faculties from women and minorities. Just by being there they help.

Agreed… But I’m afraid we need to address the issues in a more substantial way before we can get better representation of women and minorities on science faculties. It’s a vicious circle if there ever was one.

And by the way, I’m with you on the whole “best person” thing: it’s problematic because the criteria for determining who’s “best” are usually left unspecified, implying that they are obvious to all concerned. This leaves lots of room for inherent bias to play its part (cf. the debates about whether women have the inherent ability to be Good Scientists — as if the specific skills necessary for being a Good Scientist are well known and agreed upon). I’d much rather see a committee acknowledge that the search is for a “best fit” person for the department, and spell out their criteria explicitly, making it clear that factors beyond the number of publications on someone’s resume are at work in the decision making. (And in my opinion, if a department is concerned about the gender and racial makeup of its faculty and/or students, one of those factors could very reasonably be the ability of a candidate to attract a variety of diverse and talented students to the program.)

-cvj

I think this is a great argument.

Indeed, it’s also an argument that first world countries should be contributing to create first-rate science academies and universities around the world.

I also think this is a different argument from “we need a bigger pool of scientists to choose from.” You’re talking the systematics here, not the statistics.

-Rob

To the extent that the problem attitudes come from the older white males — this is probably all true. And, of course, they won’t have any personal worries about competition, because they already have tenure.

I suspect, though, that it would be naive to assume that attitudinal problems don’t also exist among the younger white male faculty as well. Again, Lubos Motl is a good poster boy for this, but that’s anecdotal evidence. I know that five years ago I had blinders on about some things, which leads me to suspect that right now I still have blinders on about things that I’m completely unaware of.

As such, we need arguments that play with the young boys as well as ones that play with the old boys. To me, the “duh, it’s the right thing to do” argument trumps all, but others have argued that that doesn’t really sell the case.

-Rob

You’re sort of misrepresenting me, but it’s not your fault — I wasn’t clear. I don’t think it’s the job of women and minorities to address the sociological problems that exist in science — it’s everybody’s job.

But I also think that no matter how hard we try, and how well-meaning we are, it will be impossible for white males to succesfully address those issues without having better representation on faculties from women and minorities. Just by being there they help. If nothing else, it immediately puts the lie to Lubos Motl-style arguments that “women usually aren’t good physicists.” If you’ve got (say) a third of your faculty (or even half, if one really wants to dream) that are women, that makes the Lubos argument a lot harder to make.

Plus, it helps give hope to the students who are women and minorities that, hey, I don’t have to look like a white guy in order to have a chance of going all the way in this career.

Additionally, I suspect that part of the overly aggressive, overly competetive, overly attack-ful nature of the fights we see in science come from the “dick measuring” culture that exists among men in Western civilization. The fact that men are never supposed to show weakness, and are supposed to vanquish their opposition at all costs. I use hyperbole, of course, but the dog-eat-dog nature of the stereotypical business world also exists in science. Now, I’m not saying that men must be that way, and women must be nice and friendly and nurturing– but when you live in a testosterone-dominated field, it’s no surprise that the downsides of the cultural attachments to testosterone rear their ugly heads. This may not really happen, but I’m hoping that as more and more women get into Physics, it will help us guys see how stupid and unnecessary some of these behaviors are.

-Rob

Sorry if what I said upset you, but I’m just trying to understand. (I’m sorry, but I don’t think all of the analogy was a misrepresentation, actually.)

All I am saying is that we need to give as many people as possible the chance to pursue science as a career if they want to, and if they have the ability. Katie put it rather well:

It’s important to provide underrepresented groups with opportunities to discover if they have a passion for science and, if they do, to provide them with information and support for turning it into a career that they can enjoy.

Nobody is talking about forcing people into science if they don’t want to do it, to acheive the ends of some social engineering program.

For me, one the biggest reasons for having more representation in science is the following. Science affects the day to day lives of everyone on the planet… more and more each day. These effects are hugely significant, and life changing. I am not comfortable with the decisions about such things -and yes, the scientists do make a lot of these decisions- being in the hands of a small and unrepresentative subset of the people they affect. For example, I’d be much happier knowing that scientific research on the health issues of women from the inner city actually have some women from the inner city taking part in the research. I could go on with several examples like this… but you get the point.

It is just overwhelmingly inappropriate -and severly limiting to the scope of the science (in myriad ways, most of which we probably cannot even see right now)- to have white males dominating the scientific future of our speicies. I just don’t see why this is hard to appreciate.

Cheers,

-cvj

Something in the comments that i find disturbing is the notion that availability of jobs in science is a major determining factor in encouraging greater participation parity in the sciences. I look not from the top down, or from the middle out, but from the bottom up. If it is publicized that science is not a good career choice from women and minorities (for whatever valid and invalid reasons) then young children and students are exposed to pessimistic ideation much earlier than is beneficial for their own well being, and for that of the society as a whole. We need the best minds and the best creative visions to develop across this nation (the whole planet really), particularly from the coming generations. The problems are huge, and the solutions are far from being advanced. Without participational parity being clearly available to our young people, we cutoff the capacity of the society to open itself to discoveries and ideas as yet unknown. This problem of parity (particularly the pressure of the validated glass ceiling) ripples down to repress and enclose the minds of children. We do a major disservice to the next seven generations by suggesting that their leaders aren’t really welcome, because there aren’t enough jobs, or that there are too many out there already, or that we really don’t need the very best minds.

I agree with all of this — and none of it is in contradiction with my belief that the notion that there is one “best” is a fictional notion.

Really? Then how come you don’t just give the next job that arises in your department to the next random person who walks into the building?

Er, there’s a lot of ground between believing that there is no single best person who is the only one for the job, and believing that every single random person is right for the job.

Obviously.

Let me put it another way. You’re essentially saying the equivalent of (say, several years ago) “Why give women the vote? There’s enough people voting already, and women have better things to do with their time than voting, and anyway, there’s nothing lacking in the current pool of people (all men) voting… they’re clearly good at it… and having more people voting will just confuse things and make it harder for the men to get their way… so why bother?

That’s not what we’re saying at all! What we’re saying is that the opposite argument — we need more voters — would have not sold anybody on the idea of women’s suffrage.

If your goal is to have enough people voting — then, sure, you can make the argument that you need women’s suffrage to bulk out the voter rolls. But I don’t think arguments for women’s sufferage were based on the need to have more voters… they were based on it being the right thing to do. Just as “we need more voters” wouldn’t have been a real argument for women’s suffrage, I think that “we need a bigger pool of scientists” isn’t the most convincing argument for improving female and minority representation.

And on the “more competition” issue. Are you really so insecure in your ability to do your job that you don’t want more women and minorities in the pool because they may reduce your chances of getting a job? I hope not.

Not if you put it that way.

And I’m not insecure in my ability to do my job, and to do very well at it.

But you bet I am tremendously insecure in my abaility to keep my job and to get a job that I think would be better suited for me! (See, for example, this post and this post on my blog. There are so many talented people out there that it’s a real crap shoot for me to get a better job! This is a personal thing: I don’t think this is at all an argument that we shouldn’t have more women and minorities. However, we should recognize the reality that it’s not just me: a lot of people feel very insecure about obtaining long-term employment in science academia, and as such any sign of increased competition is going to make them feel nervous. That may not be a valid reaction, and it’s certainly not a moral or reasonable argument for holding down women and minorities, but if the goal is to figure out the best marketing strategy, it’s worth taking into account.

Again, because you seem to be responding to arguments I’m not making — I am not, absolutely not, arguing that it shouldn’t be a top priority for us to improve the representation of women and minorities in physics. Your suffrage analogy suggests that you seem to think I am making the argument that we don’t need women and minorities, and I want to be very clear that that is not what I’m saying. All I’m saying is that the “we need a bigger pool” argument isn’t as compelling as the real reasons, and if it is going to be used, it should be used well.