A review by nukie19
The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science Is Still a Boys' Club by Eileen Pollack

2.0

I really wanted to love this book. I wanted to read more about other women's experiences in science and how to help encourage more women to join the field. With a subtitle of "Why Science is Still a Boy's Club," I fully expected to read about those things. However, Pollack waits until the epilogue to address this issue, and spends very little of the book doing so. Instead, she spends chapter after chapter discussing her personal experiences as a physics undergrad - which in and of itself wasn't really the problem, had the book been touted as her memoir. Having been a physics undergrad (and now working in a male-dominated military field), her experiences resonated with me and reflected many of the biases I have faced and I expect many woman like me have.

The real problem with this book is that Pollack takes her reactions to those biases and makes sweeping generalizations about those reactions just being because she was a woman. No reference to the idea that her reactions might have been skewed by her anxiety disorder or depression (which she admits to having) rather than her gender alone. Or the fact that she spends over one hundred pages talking about dropping out of physics and only one line talking about her leaving the Marshall scholarship she received in a different field.

All in all, the fact that this book exists is a good thing. There are a few great nuggets of ideas and information that I found really insightful, but all in all, it could have been summed up in an Atlantic article rather than a full length book. The title alone may lead to further discussions and research on the topic of women in STEM, which we certainly need more of. Now, if I could only find a book that delivers on the promise of breaking down this issue more - that is a book I want to read.