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charlieanne313's review
4.0
Pollack does a really great job articulating the biases women in face in STEM fields. Reading her words and memories I felt as though they were my own. A great read!
drudenko2's review
4.0
This book was one of the best books I have read. It clearly explains the reasons why many women are not in stem fields and what we can do to change that. This is a book everyone should read even if they are not in stem fields
joinreallife's review
2.0
Originally posted at Musings of an Incurable Bookworm
I'm feeling conflicted about this book. I honestly think that if I'd had a more clear picture of what the book was about going into it I might not feel as disappointed as I do. Then again, I also probably wouldn't have requested or read it in the first place.
I'll start with the things that I liked, which was basically the final third of the book. I appreciated hearing from other women struggling to survive in the sciences, especially the voices of women who are undergrads or graduate or PhD students. These women are clearly right in the thick of it, and this section helped to legitimize the anecdotal "evidence" that comprised the first two thirds of the book.
As several other reviewers have noted on both LibraryThing and Goodreads, the title and the subtitle are incredibly misleading. First, the title implies that Pollack is the only woman in the room, which seems to imply a present tense, when in reality Pollack is not even in science anymore. Second, the subtitle makes it seem as though it's going to be a thorough, researched examination of why women have a hard time breaking into the boys' club of science, when two-thirds of the book is more an autobiography of Pollack.
Not only is the title misleading, but so is the description, at least to me. The description included in the Early Reviewers batch info was this: "Why are there still so few women in the hard sciences, mathematics, and engineering? Eileen Pollack sets out to answer this question by interviewing dozens of women, drawing on the latest research, and telling her own story about giving up on a promising science career after being one of the first women to graduate with a B.S. in physics from Yale. A personal investigation for women in the hard sciences, engineering, computer sciences, and mathematics—especially those who know firsthand the limitations of academic studies on women and science."
To me, the order of the list implies order of importance/focus. So when I saw that the description first said Pollack set out to answer the question by interviewing dozens of women, I thought that would be the primary focus. Overall, I probably would have respected the book and hypotheses included within the book if that had been the case. In my mind, if somebody is trying to answer the question to a systemic problem, the most helpful thing to do is to get as much data as possible in order to be able to adequately extrapolate a possible cause. This is especially true when Pollack's experiences—the majority of the content in the book—are nearly thirty years old, taking place during her time as an undergrad at Yale studying physics. How much can the world change in thirty years? Not to mention, the book seemed full of humblebrags interspersed with whining about how nobody recognized quite how special she was. For example, when she relates how she missed getting a perfect score on her AP exam in English because she misspelled boulevard, and then excuses herself by asking, "But where would I have seen the word? Liberty [her hometown] had avenues, and streets, but not a boulevard." Excuses, excuses. It's called studying. The nature of the book had me asking myself if I would think the same thing if the same words came from a male author; overwhelmingly, I found myself answering yes.
To some extent, I can understand where she's coming from. Societal structures are set up to create a system where, generally, men feel confident enough to not feel they need validation. But at some point, as a woman, you can't expect to always get praise and support and encouragement. Or you have to learn how to specifically ask for what you need, instead of assuming that it's not being given to you because it doesn't exist.
I actually found Pollack herself sexist and demeaning and stereotypical at times. She seems to tear down other women, most often those who decided to pursue Bachelor of Arts degrees, which Pollack deems as "cheating." Pollack seems to only remember the instructors who she had a "crush" on (her exact words, when she can't recall much about a particular professor because he was the only one she didn't have a crush on), which only serves to perpetuate the stereotypes about women in science.
It was frustrating to read this book, which may be taken by many at face value, as I initially took it; women obviously do experience this systemic sexism, as relayed in the last third of the book, but the often whiny, entitled autobiographical content that precedes it may turn many off to the legitimate struggles that women still face in the STEM fields today.
It was quite poignant to have finished reading this about the same time as the backlash after a Nobel-prize winning scientist, Sir Tim Hunt, remarked that women scientists don't belong in labs because three things happen: the men fall in love with the women, the women fall in love with the men, and when you criticize the women they cry. This is the perfect epitome of what I imagined the book was going to examine, on a large scale—rather than the incredibly micro scale that was offered. If you're interested, you can find out more about the backlash on social media following Sir Hunt's remarks here.
(I received this ARC through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program in exchange for a review.)
I'm feeling conflicted about this book. I honestly think that if I'd had a more clear picture of what the book was about going into it I might not feel as disappointed as I do. Then again, I also probably wouldn't have requested or read it in the first place.
I'll start with the things that I liked, which was basically the final third of the book. I appreciated hearing from other women struggling to survive in the sciences, especially the voices of women who are undergrads or graduate or PhD students. These women are clearly right in the thick of it, and this section helped to legitimize the anecdotal "evidence" that comprised the first two thirds of the book.
As several other reviewers have noted on both LibraryThing and Goodreads, the title and the subtitle are incredibly misleading. First, the title implies that Pollack is the only woman in the room, which seems to imply a present tense, when in reality Pollack is not even in science anymore. Second, the subtitle makes it seem as though it's going to be a thorough, researched examination of why women have a hard time breaking into the boys' club of science, when two-thirds of the book is more an autobiography of Pollack.
Not only is the title misleading, but so is the description, at least to me. The description included in the Early Reviewers batch info was this: "Why are there still so few women in the hard sciences, mathematics, and engineering? Eileen Pollack sets out to answer this question by interviewing dozens of women, drawing on the latest research, and telling her own story about giving up on a promising science career after being one of the first women to graduate with a B.S. in physics from Yale. A personal investigation for women in the hard sciences, engineering, computer sciences, and mathematics—especially those who know firsthand the limitations of academic studies on women and science."
To me, the order of the list implies order of importance/focus. So when I saw that the description first said Pollack set out to answer the question by interviewing dozens of women, I thought that would be the primary focus. Overall, I probably would have respected the book and hypotheses included within the book if that had been the case. In my mind, if somebody is trying to answer the question to a systemic problem, the most helpful thing to do is to get as much data as possible in order to be able to adequately extrapolate a possible cause. This is especially true when Pollack's experiences—the majority of the content in the book—are nearly thirty years old, taking place during her time as an undergrad at Yale studying physics. How much can the world change in thirty years? Not to mention, the book seemed full of humblebrags interspersed with whining about how nobody recognized quite how special she was. For example, when she relates how she missed getting a perfect score on her AP exam in English because she misspelled boulevard, and then excuses herself by asking, "But where would I have seen the word? Liberty [her hometown] had avenues, and streets, but not a boulevard." Excuses, excuses. It's called studying. The nature of the book had me asking myself if I would think the same thing if the same words came from a male author; overwhelmingly, I found myself answering yes.
To some extent, I can understand where she's coming from. Societal structures are set up to create a system where, generally, men feel confident enough to not feel they need validation. But at some point, as a woman, you can't expect to always get praise and support and encouragement. Or you have to learn how to specifically ask for what you need, instead of assuming that it's not being given to you because it doesn't exist.
I actually found Pollack herself sexist and demeaning and stereotypical at times. She seems to tear down other women, most often those who decided to pursue Bachelor of Arts degrees, which Pollack deems as "cheating." Pollack seems to only remember the instructors who she had a "crush" on (her exact words, when she can't recall much about a particular professor because he was the only one she didn't have a crush on), which only serves to perpetuate the stereotypes about women in science.
It was frustrating to read this book, which may be taken by many at face value, as I initially took it; women obviously do experience this systemic sexism, as relayed in the last third of the book, but the often whiny, entitled autobiographical content that precedes it may turn many off to the legitimate struggles that women still face in the STEM fields today.
It was quite poignant to have finished reading this about the same time as the backlash after a Nobel-prize winning scientist, Sir Tim Hunt, remarked that women scientists don't belong in labs because three things happen: the men fall in love with the women, the women fall in love with the men, and when you criticize the women they cry. This is the perfect epitome of what I imagined the book was going to examine, on a large scale—rather than the incredibly micro scale that was offered. If you're interested, you can find out more about the backlash on social media following Sir Hunt's remarks here.
(I received this ARC through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program in exchange for a review.)
lisarue's review against another edition
4.0
Heartbreaking personal story (I'm glad I was oblivious, rather than sensitive as this author) as well as statistics/studies information.
sumomcgrath's review against another edition
5.0
I had a surprising amount to say after reading this book. See my full response here: http://susan-reads.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-only-woman-in-room.html
mscalls's review against another edition
5.0
Absolutely fantastic. I found I could identify with some of the themes and stories presented in this book; makes me want to go back to school and shoulder my way up there with the guys!
thegoblinempress's review against another edition
3.0
Check out this review and more on my blog!
I received an eARC of The Only Woman in the Room from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The first thing I feel like I must say is that I'm not a scientifically-minded person at all. I didn't enjoy science in school, and while science is something I've gotten a little more interested in as I've gotten older I'm still much more of a literature and history person. You might wonder why I requested this book in the first place if that's the case, but just because I'm not very into science myself doesn't mean I'm not aware of the stigma against women in science that still exists. Other than Marie Curie I don't remember learning about any female scientists at school, and there are so many unsung heroines of the science world; Margaret Cavendish; Ada Lovelace; Mary Anning; Barbara McClintock; Rosalind Franklin... You get the point. I already know plenty about women in literature and history who have been overlooked for their white, male counterparts, so I wanted to learn a little more about what it's like for women in the sciences.
This is a hard book to review, because there were some things I really loved and some things... not so much. An important thing to point out is that I think this book is actually quite misleading; both the title and the blurb imply that the entire book follows Eileen Pollack as she talks to women in the sciences, but that only takes up the final third of the book. The first two thirds of the book are Eileen's memoir, following her childhood, her time at university and the time in which she strayed from physics to writing. Personally I didn't mind that, I thought her memoir was really interesting, but I think it's very misleading for anyone coming to this book just for that final section, and it left the book feeling like two smaller books that had been mushed together.
I've become a lot more interested in non-fiction this year, and for the most part this is the kind of non-fiction I like - the majority of the non-fiction books I've read this year have focused on feminism, so I was glad to add this one to my list. As you can see from my rating I enjoyed it, there was a lot that reminded me of myself despite the focus on science, and I think all women could read this and relate to some of Pollack's experiences.
However, I think I could have given this book five stars if it weren't for a few things that just grated on me.
Firstly, I felt as though Pollack had a tendency to perpetuate some of the negative stereotypes that often work against women who want to work in the sciences. More than once she admits to only remembering the professors she had a crush on, and something about that really annoyed me. I think it's only natural for people to develop crushes on their teachers or professors, though I must admit that never happened to me, but Pollack seemed to have an obsession with potential romantic partners. When interviewing some other scientists she often asked them if they were married or in serious relationships, and while I could understand the question's relevance to the idea that a woman can't be a scientist and a wife, it felt as though we'd stepped back fifty years.
Quite often Pollack openly admitted her outright jealousy towards other women in science who had been able to do what she hadn't by working in science, and while I think it's very brave of her to openly admit that jealousy and there's the whole problem of internal misogyny that, as women, we must continue to fight against, it sometimes felt as though Pollack wanted to be the only woman in the room. She wanted to be told she was special, whether she was a scientist or a writer, and as much as I think there's a part of all of us that wants that, I don't think it's fair of Pollack to hold other women's success against them. When women in the sciences are already struggling, there's no room for girl hate.
One other thing that annoyed me quite a bit was Pollack's insinuation that women who decided to pursue the arts instead of the sciences were 'cheating'. Firstly, I think that's very hypocritical coming from a woman who now makes her living as a writer, and secondly, the arts aren't an easy fallback; I didn't pursue English Literature at university because I couldn't make it as an astronaut. I do agree that a lot more women need to be encouraged to pursue the sciences if they enjoy it or they have an aptitude for it, but I didn't like the insinuation that the arts is full of women who'd rather be doing science.
I do think this is worth reading. I know my review seems very negative, but please keep my rating in mind - there was so much in here that spoke to me and I enjoyed reading it, for the most part, I just had a lot of thoughts about the stuff I didn't like so much.
I received an eARC of The Only Woman in the Room from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
The first thing I feel like I must say is that I'm not a scientifically-minded person at all. I didn't enjoy science in school, and while science is something I've gotten a little more interested in as I've gotten older I'm still much more of a literature and history person. You might wonder why I requested this book in the first place if that's the case, but just because I'm not very into science myself doesn't mean I'm not aware of the stigma against women in science that still exists. Other than Marie Curie I don't remember learning about any female scientists at school, and there are so many unsung heroines of the science world; Margaret Cavendish; Ada Lovelace; Mary Anning; Barbara McClintock; Rosalind Franklin... You get the point. I already know plenty about women in literature and history who have been overlooked for their white, male counterparts, so I wanted to learn a little more about what it's like for women in the sciences.
This is a hard book to review, because there were some things I really loved and some things... not so much. An important thing to point out is that I think this book is actually quite misleading; both the title and the blurb imply that the entire book follows Eileen Pollack as she talks to women in the sciences, but that only takes up the final third of the book. The first two thirds of the book are Eileen's memoir, following her childhood, her time at university and the time in which she strayed from physics to writing. Personally I didn't mind that, I thought her memoir was really interesting, but I think it's very misleading for anyone coming to this book just for that final section, and it left the book feeling like two smaller books that had been mushed together.
I've become a lot more interested in non-fiction this year, and for the most part this is the kind of non-fiction I like - the majority of the non-fiction books I've read this year have focused on feminism, so I was glad to add this one to my list. As you can see from my rating I enjoyed it, there was a lot that reminded me of myself despite the focus on science, and I think all women could read this and relate to some of Pollack's experiences.
However, I think I could have given this book five stars if it weren't for a few things that just grated on me.
Firstly, I felt as though Pollack had a tendency to perpetuate some of the negative stereotypes that often work against women who want to work in the sciences. More than once she admits to only remembering the professors she had a crush on, and something about that really annoyed me. I think it's only natural for people to develop crushes on their teachers or professors, though I must admit that never happened to me, but Pollack seemed to have an obsession with potential romantic partners. When interviewing some other scientists she often asked them if they were married or in serious relationships, and while I could understand the question's relevance to the idea that a woman can't be a scientist and a wife, it felt as though we'd stepped back fifty years.
Quite often Pollack openly admitted her outright jealousy towards other women in science who had been able to do what she hadn't by working in science, and while I think it's very brave of her to openly admit that jealousy and there's the whole problem of internal misogyny that, as women, we must continue to fight against, it sometimes felt as though Pollack wanted to be the only woman in the room. She wanted to be told she was special, whether she was a scientist or a writer, and as much as I think there's a part of all of us that wants that, I don't think it's fair of Pollack to hold other women's success against them. When women in the sciences are already struggling, there's no room for girl hate.
One other thing that annoyed me quite a bit was Pollack's insinuation that women who decided to pursue the arts instead of the sciences were 'cheating'. Firstly, I think that's very hypocritical coming from a woman who now makes her living as a writer, and secondly, the arts aren't an easy fallback; I didn't pursue English Literature at university because I couldn't make it as an astronaut. I do agree that a lot more women need to be encouraged to pursue the sciences if they enjoy it or they have an aptitude for it, but I didn't like the insinuation that the arts is full of women who'd rather be doing science.
I do think this is worth reading. I know my review seems very negative, but please keep my rating in mind - there was so much in here that spoke to me and I enjoyed reading it, for the most part, I just had a lot of thoughts about the stuff I didn't like so much.
bluepigeon's review
3.0
I think much of what could be better about The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is Still a Boy's Club have been told by other reviewers, so I'll cut to the chase. The expectation is that the author, in some way or shape, will answer the question of why there is still a lack of female scientists. Reading the detailed account of Eileen Pollack of (mostly) her singular experience, which is then somehow generalized and perhaps holds true for some women, I concluded that the answer is: women have low self-esteem and lack self-confidence. I conclude this, and I am alienated from these women. I do not know who they are. OK, maybe I know some, but really, most of my science colleagues did not "panic" at the sight of a difficult problem in the lab or in the classroom, did not have crushes on every other male counterpart, and did not "feel like failures" every time something they tried failed. Who are these women who feel uncomfortable with boys or men in the classroom? Coming from a developing country where the power struggle between the sexes (only two sexes recognized, I'm afraid) is much more apparent, I thought it was strange that all these bright-eyed, privileged girls in my science classes were too timid, too much in need of constant assurance. The boys were not much better. Socially awkward, desperate to drink and lose inhibitions, mostly quiet or annoying in the classroom. I spent many a modern algebra class in my freshman year yawning, and finally having to decide which one of us (we were two foreign girls in a class full of American men) would finally raise our hand and answer the damn question so the awkward silence would end and the professor would continue the lecture (he had a habit of just waiting and waiting and waiting...) Perhaps we were immune, because we had not gone through the "trauma" of junior high in the USA?
Does that sound like I just unloaded a bunch of my personal experience in a book review. Well, I did. One can only expect that for a book that is marketed as a study, yet is mostly a memoir? So long story short, America (and perhaps the rest of the world) needs to raise their girls with more oomph. Girls who don't care so much about what everyone else thinks, girls who are immune to peer pressure, girls who don't just go cry in a corner when someone calls them names or tells them they are stupid, girls who are not emotionally so desperate to have a crush left and right... I am not saying there is anything wrong with crying, or having crushes, or getting upset at people calling you names, etc. I am just saying that boys endure these things to. To ignore this fact would be sexist. Everyone copes differently. But coping must be done. So what if girls cry when angered or frustrated and boys become violent when their ego is challenged (regardless whether the reason is nature or nurture for this difference)? Ah, the problem is that we, as a society, interpret crying as weakness and breaking things and screaming as strength. Well, that does come from somewhere: the former hurts only you, so is harmless to others, and the latter can hurt others, so is harmful, therefore dangerous. And danger equals strength and power.
Now, why are there more men than women in the sciences. First of all, in biology, there are more women than men! That is, up until professorship... Then there is a big drop off, and you get closer to the other sciences. I can tell you that most Americans who are not that good at math but like science choose biology. That's my impression from years of being in academia, specifically in the life sciences. This is bound to change and is already changing with the advent of genomics and systems biology (and whatever the new buzz word is today...) Second of all, there are VERY good reasons why fewer women are in the sciences, and I doubt that this will change much: the academic career has gotten to be this ridiculous creature! Basically feminism and post-feminism managed to get women in the door just at the time the academic career in the sciences became almost impossible to sustain for most humans. Which leads to the third point: women are the ones who have to give birth. Unfortunately, we are NOT all created equally. Men cannot have babies (yet), women can... I imagine there are many careers out there that are exceptionally grueling for people with young children, and discriminate against humans who have the potential to bear children (i.e., women) like being a police detective or certain types of surgeons or heavy duty manual labor (I don't see a lot of books about the obvious lack of women in construction. Any recommendations?) This seems to be getting better overall in the west. But in general, it would be very naive to assume that men and women are equal. We are not. Not biologically, and not in terms of nurture. So nature and nurture contribute to make us different. I would doubt that any smart person will argue that there is a clear duality here; it is more like a bimodal distribution where the two peaks kind of merge into one another... lots of women who can do math and lots of men who can multitask. Lots of men who would love to stay at home and look after babies and lots of women who prefer to commute two hours each day to some job...
But the burning question in my mind is: who is crazy enough to have an academic career in the sciences anymore? Back in the day (yes, the 1970s!) my PhD boss (the lab head, or P.I. [principal investigator]) would take off for a few months in the summer to go "study wine yeast" in Europe. Yeah, nice life. Even when I was doing my PhD in the early 2000s, one professor had a girlfriend in Germany and was there half the year, leaving the lab to one of the senior post-docs to run. Gone are those days! The newly minted professors in competitive institutions work as hard, if not harder, than they did in their post-docs, and guess what, they worked their asses off in their post-docs. Now, nobody can get grants, not the newbies, not the well-established people who fetch millions (for research, not for personal spending...) to migrate from one institution to another (if they can manage it, and cope with losing a good year during re-location). So you work 80 hours a week, you get paid nothing like a junior partner in investment banking, and this after putting off your "adulthood" during the PhD and post-doc (because, let's face it, you could not earn enough money to buy a house, have children, or even have time to date and find a partner...) The women I see still getting professorships in the life sciences are those who have very supportive husbands and partners who don't mind the 80-hour-a-week schedule their wives/partners keep, or they are single without worry of having a life. Because there is no work-life balance. It's work, and more work.
The thing is, this lack of self-esteem and confidence, these years of training to try to appease men in high places, actually produces very strange results for female faculty in the sciences. Even the most "normal" and "non-crazy" female P.I. I have known had one major fault, which I saw in ALL female P.I.s I have ever worked with: she loved her boys! Meaning, the men working under them could do no wrong, had great ideas, and were, in general, held to lower standards, while the women, though usually harder working with great ideas and skills, could never quite be as good as the boys. (I noticed that I call the men "boys," perhaps my feeble attempt to ridicule them, but what for, as they have done nothing wrong but be biological males...) I personally observed this in several top labs in some of the most prestigious institutions in the US (but I wasn't a victim of it, not directly.)
So, my two cents to all those women out there: don't do it! Not because men/others think you can't, but because I've been there and done that and it's not worth it! (I am half joking, of course, one should do it, if one wants, but seriously, think long and hard about it before you commit your youth to it!)
Is science a boy's club? Yes, indeed it is. Is it special in this regard. No, absolutely not. It is just like everything else in the world. In fact, I would argue that, because it involves highly educated people and institutions dedicated to education, it is much more self-aware of these imbalances than, say, investment banking or the construction industry.
Now how do we raise self-confident, self-assured, headstrong, curious girls (and boys!)? That's the real question.
And who are all these boys and men, but not sons of mothers who raised them to be who they are? Someone once said, and I can't remember who or where it was, something like: the biggest power women have in the world is that they raise the boys who become men. This is a a realistic statement, and underlines the fact that children are raised mostly by their mothers in the world. So mothers need to raise their boys to respect women and reassure all those girls who need reassurance and encouragement in the sciences... But perhaps, lacking self-esteem and confidence, a person cannot raise a boy to see girls as his equals? All children see who does all the house work and who comes home, brings the money, sits at the table expecting dinner (OK, big generalization, but not by numbers; most of the world still operates like this, but it is not necessarily the home life of academics here in the USA.)
Pollack's memoir is valuable for just that: it is the account of a female scientist's education experience starting in the 70s. I am sure many can relate to her experiences at different levels and there is a lot of personal lessons to be learned in these pages. Diversity is very important for science, because even the questions one sets out to answer, even the assumptions made and hypotheses tested are influenced by personal experiences and the unique knowledge pool of the scientists working in a project. And for that, we must wonder what more could we achieve if we had more diversity in the sciences: more women, more racial and ethnic diversity, more LGBTQA presence, more creative types, more generalists...
I am glad I read this book. Do read it with different expectations than those set out in the marketing material.
Thanks to LibraryThing and the publisher for a free copy of the book in exchange of my honest review.
Does that sound like I just unloaded a bunch of my personal experience in a book review. Well, I did. One can only expect that for a book that is marketed as a study, yet is mostly a memoir? So long story short, America (and perhaps the rest of the world) needs to raise their girls with more oomph. Girls who don't care so much about what everyone else thinks, girls who are immune to peer pressure, girls who don't just go cry in a corner when someone calls them names or tells them they are stupid, girls who are not emotionally so desperate to have a crush left and right... I am not saying there is anything wrong with crying, or having crushes, or getting upset at people calling you names, etc. I am just saying that boys endure these things to. To ignore this fact would be sexist. Everyone copes differently. But coping must be done. So what if girls cry when angered or frustrated and boys become violent when their ego is challenged (regardless whether the reason is nature or nurture for this difference)? Ah, the problem is that we, as a society, interpret crying as weakness and breaking things and screaming as strength. Well, that does come from somewhere: the former hurts only you, so is harmless to others, and the latter can hurt others, so is harmful, therefore dangerous. And danger equals strength and power.
Now, why are there more men than women in the sciences. First of all, in biology, there are more women than men! That is, up until professorship... Then there is a big drop off, and you get closer to the other sciences. I can tell you that most Americans who are not that good at math but like science choose biology. That's my impression from years of being in academia, specifically in the life sciences. This is bound to change and is already changing with the advent of genomics and systems biology (and whatever the new buzz word is today...) Second of all, there are VERY good reasons why fewer women are in the sciences, and I doubt that this will change much: the academic career has gotten to be this ridiculous creature! Basically feminism and post-feminism managed to get women in the door just at the time the academic career in the sciences became almost impossible to sustain for most humans. Which leads to the third point: women are the ones who have to give birth. Unfortunately, we are NOT all created equally. Men cannot have babies (yet), women can... I imagine there are many careers out there that are exceptionally grueling for people with young children, and discriminate against humans who have the potential to bear children (i.e., women) like being a police detective or certain types of surgeons or heavy duty manual labor (I don't see a lot of books about the obvious lack of women in construction. Any recommendations?) This seems to be getting better overall in the west. But in general, it would be very naive to assume that men and women are equal. We are not. Not biologically, and not in terms of nurture. So nature and nurture contribute to make us different. I would doubt that any smart person will argue that there is a clear duality here; it is more like a bimodal distribution where the two peaks kind of merge into one another... lots of women who can do math and lots of men who can multitask. Lots of men who would love to stay at home and look after babies and lots of women who prefer to commute two hours each day to some job...
But the burning question in my mind is: who is crazy enough to have an academic career in the sciences anymore? Back in the day (yes, the 1970s!) my PhD boss (the lab head, or P.I. [principal investigator]) would take off for a few months in the summer to go "study wine yeast" in Europe. Yeah, nice life. Even when I was doing my PhD in the early 2000s, one professor had a girlfriend in Germany and was there half the year, leaving the lab to one of the senior post-docs to run. Gone are those days! The newly minted professors in competitive institutions work as hard, if not harder, than they did in their post-docs, and guess what, they worked their asses off in their post-docs. Now, nobody can get grants, not the newbies, not the well-established people who fetch millions (for research, not for personal spending...) to migrate from one institution to another (if they can manage it, and cope with losing a good year during re-location). So you work 80 hours a week, you get paid nothing like a junior partner in investment banking, and this after putting off your "adulthood" during the PhD and post-doc (because, let's face it, you could not earn enough money to buy a house, have children, or even have time to date and find a partner...) The women I see still getting professorships in the life sciences are those who have very supportive husbands and partners who don't mind the 80-hour-a-week schedule their wives/partners keep, or they are single without worry of having a life. Because there is no work-life balance. It's work, and more work.
The thing is, this lack of self-esteem and confidence, these years of training to try to appease men in high places, actually produces very strange results for female faculty in the sciences. Even the most "normal" and "non-crazy" female P.I. I have known had one major fault, which I saw in ALL female P.I.s I have ever worked with: she loved her boys! Meaning, the men working under them could do no wrong, had great ideas, and were, in general, held to lower standards, while the women, though usually harder working with great ideas and skills, could never quite be as good as the boys. (I noticed that I call the men "boys," perhaps my feeble attempt to ridicule them, but what for, as they have done nothing wrong but be biological males...) I personally observed this in several top labs in some of the most prestigious institutions in the US (but I wasn't a victim of it, not directly.)
So, my two cents to all those women out there: don't do it! Not because men/others think you can't, but because I've been there and done that and it's not worth it! (I am half joking, of course, one should do it, if one wants, but seriously, think long and hard about it before you commit your youth to it!)
Is science a boy's club? Yes, indeed it is. Is it special in this regard. No, absolutely not. It is just like everything else in the world. In fact, I would argue that, because it involves highly educated people and institutions dedicated to education, it is much more self-aware of these imbalances than, say, investment banking or the construction industry.
Now how do we raise self-confident, self-assured, headstrong, curious girls (and boys!)? That's the real question.
And who are all these boys and men, but not sons of mothers who raised them to be who they are? Someone once said, and I can't remember who or where it was, something like: the biggest power women have in the world is that they raise the boys who become men. This is a a realistic statement, and underlines the fact that children are raised mostly by their mothers in the world. So mothers need to raise their boys to respect women and reassure all those girls who need reassurance and encouragement in the sciences... But perhaps, lacking self-esteem and confidence, a person cannot raise a boy to see girls as his equals? All children see who does all the house work and who comes home, brings the money, sits at the table expecting dinner (OK, big generalization, but not by numbers; most of the world still operates like this, but it is not necessarily the home life of academics here in the USA.)
Pollack's memoir is valuable for just that: it is the account of a female scientist's education experience starting in the 70s. I am sure many can relate to her experiences at different levels and there is a lot of personal lessons to be learned in these pages. Diversity is very important for science, because even the questions one sets out to answer, even the assumptions made and hypotheses tested are influenced by personal experiences and the unique knowledge pool of the scientists working in a project. And for that, we must wonder what more could we achieve if we had more diversity in the sciences: more women, more racial and ethnic diversity, more LGBTQA presence, more creative types, more generalists...
I am glad I read this book. Do read it with different expectations than those set out in the marketing material.
Thanks to LibraryThing and the publisher for a free copy of the book in exchange of my honest review.
beckyreadsitall's review
3.0
Full disclosure: I didn't "fully" finish this book. I got stuck more than halfway through and kind of skimmed the rest.
The premise is interesting, and it really moved at the beginning, but somewhere in the middle the pace slowed, and it was hard to get through. I renewed it three times from the library but in that time only picked it back up a couple of times. I finally declared "uncle." Not a bad book, but obviously not for me!
The premise is interesting, and it really moved at the beginning, but somewhere in the middle the pace slowed, and it was hard to get through. I renewed it three times from the library but in that time only picked it back up a couple of times. I finally declared "uncle." Not a bad book, but obviously not for me!