Phase States of a Career Woman

Many days, gender really is not an issue. Many days, it is. YMMV, etc. One of the biggest problems many women encounter, as Ms. PhD points out, is walking the fine line between not promoting yourself and being overlooked, versus promoting yourself and being viewed as arrogant or pushy. Hence my humble attempt at illustrating the difficulty as a graph, thus:

Go compete at the stupid poster session!

A rant:

A few times a year, The University decides to show off the fact that it has grad students who do things. The upper administration never quite stoops to interacting with us directly, but they decree events like "Graduate student showcase" or "Science extravaganzapalooza" or some such silly name. There are generally long-winded speeches, fancy food, and, oh yeah, a poster session to show off what the graduate students are up to. So that graduate students actually bother to attend, the poster session usually includes a competition for various cash prizes and shiny certificates printed on stock paper from Office Depot.

Most graduate students in the sciences who have been around long enough to have a bit of data, also have a fairly decent, fairly recent poster. At least at my school they do. We have an annual shindig that we are supposed to have posters for anyway, so most of us have posters that are less than a year old literally sitting there on the wall. So you would expect that tons of grad students would attend these poster competitions, right? It is simply a matter of dressing up slightly (or not) pulling the poster down from the wall, walking a block or two, standing there for two hours, and walking back. It gets you out of the lab, it's good practice for bigger conferences, and there is free food. Yet despite this, hardly anyone goes. I don't get it, personally. I have won close to 1k in book store certificates and travel grants for a total of 8hrs of work. That's like a 8% raise when you are on a grad student salary! It's nice resume padding and helps you improve your poster and communication skills so you can look super-professional at big conferences, where prizes or no, the impressions you give are important.

The thing that really torques me off, is the other students who say things to me like "How do you always win all these prizes? I wish I could do that." I respond appropriately in person, but this is almost always coming from people who never go. You can't win if you don't play, guys.

Gender Issues -- in which I vent in my own "personal" space.

This rant was inspired by a recent Pharyngula post, in which he invited women to vent, which resulted in a lot of people saying a lot of stupid things.

I am Tired of hearing people trying to argue that there aren't barriers towards women in science. I am tired of hearing people argue that women stay out of science/math because they don't want to be there in the first place, that discrimination isn't an issue anymore.

Granted, I grew up in one of those conservative "square" states, but I have personally experienced:

• Growing up with relatives and family friends telling me, sometimes repeatedly: "girls can't do science", "that's too hard for you," "girls don't need math", "all you need to know is how to balance your checkbook", "it's more important to learn how to bake a pie", "you can marry a scientist when you grow up", "why bother, you will have to quit when you get married/have a family", "why don't you teach science to kids instead?", "what do you want a microscope for, why don't I get you some pretty clothes instead?" etc.... my parents tried to prevent it, and my grandmother was once "grounded" from seeing me for a month for one of her comments, but it was pervasive.

• Teachers telling me things like "oh, you're so good at English/Spanish/History, why would you want to get into science?
  

• The embarrassment of being the first girl at my high school EVER to take the engineering course, and the fuss that was made about that (I had no idea when I signed up for it).

• The embarrassment of being offered a "diversity" undergraduate scholarship to Dream Big School X that I didn't accept because I didn't feel like I had earned it.
  

• College Chemistry/Math/Physics courses where I was obviously in the minority.
  

• Being steered towards molecular biology as an undergrad because it's "less lonely" and actively discouraged by my counselor from taking advanced math classes beyond the requirements (and even though I took some, I have been hurting from not taking more for years)

• Working for a lab (as an undergrad) where the PI told me one day that "Women make great techs and grad students because they are good at repetitive tasks like knitting and PCR, but they really aren't all that good at innovative thought and experimental design. You should keep that in mind as you plan your career." I didn't stay there much longer... The really sick thing is this guy actively recruits from the university's "get women into labs" internships (how I ended up there) because they are "good at repetitive tasks".
  

• Finally getting into grad school, and having female faculty tell me I look "too much like a girl"

• Still being drastically outnumbered half the time. It's about 50/50 in my "bio" classes, but in the "physics" classes I am still often the only girl, and I have yet to take a biophysics course where I am not the only American girl.
  

• Sexist comments (from male students and faculty evaluators both) on my teaching evaluations.
  

• Dealing with sexist behavior in male students.
  

• Family members frequently encouraging me to quit grad school for various reasons, often invoking guilt about "family responsibilities".
  

• The only time the lines to the ladies room are shorter is when I am at a conference....

That's just things I've dealt with, that I could think of off the top of my head, and I'm just about half-way through grad school.

It is tiring to constantly feel in the minority, to feel like you have something to prove, to feel like you have to be 10x better to get equal treatment and respect. It wears you out.

Speaking of which, I have to go check on a gel. Good night.