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feminism sexism

The paralyzing guilt of being good at math

I’m okay at math. Or at least I was. I haven’t done anything more difficult than long division and some statistics in years, and the thing about math is that it’s a language. If you don’t use it, you tend to forget how to do it. (Though conversely it’s easier to pick back up on the second go round.)

I almost ended up going for an applied mathematics minor to go with my bachelor’s degree. The reason I didn’t was because one of the geologists I worked with at the time pulled me aside and laid down some truth: How much do you really like math, Rachael? Eh, not that much. Well, if you get any kind of degree, even a minor in math, and it gets around the office you’re working in, you will be The Math Guy. All of the other geologists will fling the math at you in the hopes it will stick, so they don’t have to do it, because geologists are lazy. So unless you want to spend the rest of your life doing math, get a minor in something else.

I followed his advice. I didn’t get a minor in something else, I got a second major in Japanese Language and Culture. (Still waiting for the other geologists to fling their Japanese stuff at me. So far, no luck.) I might have been okay at math, with the potential to be good at it, but I never really liked it. Not enough that I wanted to keep doing math outside of a context that involved a hot Russian doctoral candidate teaching us three dimensional solids.

I was telling my friend John Dee about this while we were hanging out in the Oklahoma City airport and waiting for our flights. Yeah, John, I was almost the math guy. And I was trying to articulate to him how I still sometimes feel a little guilty that I’m not the math guy, entirely because I’m a woman.

It’s a weird, weird thing to think about, but there can be a lot of pressure you feel, if you’re a woman who is even peripherally interested in math, engineering, or science.

Because this is the thing. When you’re a woman, you spend a lot of time getting told by the media, by your peers, even by teachers, that girls just aren’t good at math. Our ladybrains can’t handle it, because logic! And masculine things! And we’re diaphanous right-brained creatures of art and emotions (and presumably bullshit). Math is a Man Thing. And then from the other side you hear over and over and over again that there are not enough women doing science, engineering, and math. Because no shit we can do it, so we have to overcome the institutional barriers in or way.

(And then this traitorous voice in your head asks, do I not like doing math because I don’t actually like doing it, or because the patriarchy has convinced me in its horrid, insidious way that I shouldn’t, just like I’m still deep down emotionally convinced that I hate my body?)

I was actually interested in doing geophysics instead of pure geology, when I went back to Uni for my bachelors. Then the undergrad counselor pulled me aside and basically said the program was just way too hard, and way too much math. I have no idea if he ever gave that line to a man who was interested in geophysics. Ultitmately, I’m also glad I didn’t decide to keep going and beat my head against those physics classes (because I would have, I’m damn stubborn sometimes, and it would have been miserable), but thinking about it still makes me so angry I could spit nails.

It feels almost like, if you can prove people wrong, then you should. Like there’s some kind of obligation to not let the side down and give the essentialist nonsense more fuel. Like you have something to prove on behalf of an entire unfairly maligned gender. Only you know it will never be enough proof to get those guys to shut the hell up.

I don’t want to do math. What’s wrong with that? Why should I feel compelled to spend my life doing something I don’t like just because some impotent, bald asshole wants to believe he’s superior by grace of chromosomal lottery? (And where did this secondary bullshit narrative come from, that math as an academic topic is somehow more worthy a pursuit than geology, or literature, or dance for that matter?)

There are days when I really do wish I had a math minor on my diploma, just so I could wrap that paper around my fist and then punch anyone who says girls can’t do math. Fuck you, I can do math. I just choose to not. Which is a million times better than being an condescending asshole and choosing to open your damn mouth.

Life is really too short for this nonsense, and I resent that it’s still got its claws sunk into my brain. Do what you’re good at, as long as it’s what you love.

Categories
feminism women in science writing

In which I am interviewed

I was kind of surprised when I got a request for an interview for Laurel Zuckerman’s Paris Weblog. Turns out I caught her attention with my strongly-worded ire about the SFWA Bulletin issue #202 mess. This is actually the first interview I’ve ever had (even if it was by e-mail) and I was very nervous about it. But I think it turned out all right! Dimitri Keramitas asked me some really good questions, and I think I managed to not drool on myself as I typed. The topics ranged from the issue #202 thing to women in writing, women in science, and out from there.

I had a lot of fun, and hopefully you’ll find it interesting! (…and then I found out it was online by the President of SFWA tweeting about it and I may have peed just a little.)

Funny enough, right as I was working on this interview, Waylines also asked me to do a much shorter interview for issue #4. So you should check that out too for more interview-y goodness. It’s under “This Month’s Writers & Filmmakers” in the TOC.

Categories
feminism rants sfwa women in science writing

Lady [Insert Job Title Here]

This may come as a shock, but I am not a “Lady Geologist.” I do not examine women visually and use lab tests in order to understand their physical properties, provenance, and environment of deposition. I have never gone up to a female stranger, hammered a chunk off of her, and sent it to the lab so I could determine the abundance of her constituent minerals. That kind of thing would, I assume, land me in jail.

I’m a Sedimentary Geologist. I commit those sorts of friendly acts on sedimentary rocks, which are mineralogically more interesting and also don’t mind if you take a hammer to them. (Okay maybe they do mind, but they have no legal standing under current US law.)

I would likewise think that “Lady Lawyers” don’t limit themselves to female clients. And “Lady Engineers” don’t spend their time designing more durable women in AutoCAD. And “Lady Writers” (this I can speak to personally) don’t just write women or about women. And “Lady Editors” don’t leave trails of women in their wake, panting and covered with marks made in track changes.

Oh, right. The “Lady” is supposed to indicate that we’re a professional of some sort that happens to be a lady. And what’s wrong with that?

It’s simple. By feeling the need to point out that holy shit, that engineer is a woman, you are paying lip service to the idea that it’s only normal for men to be engineers. That women are the exception instead of just a normal part of the professional landscape. When you append or job titles with the unnecessary flag of gender, it effectively removes us from the work ecosystem and marks us as an invasive species, abnormal and not belonging.

Maybe I could have understood that more back when women were just starting to claw our way as a group out of the role of housewife, but our presence in the workforce hasn’t been a surprise in decades or far longer. (At my ripe old age of 32, I literally do not remember a time when women were not doctors, lawyers, and engineers, though admittedly not without struggle.) It isn’t shocking–SHOCKING!–that women write scifi. You have heard about this little book called Frankenstein, right?

And using the word Lady instead of Woman? Just makes it sound more cutesy and condescending because it’s a callback to all that chivalry bullshit. I’m not a lady, guys. I’m a woman. I’ve yet to hear someone referred to as a Lady Anything when her accomplishments or her gender weren’t then subsequently (if subtly) belittled. Wow, look what she did, and she’s a lady! Look what that lady did, unlike all those other women! Pretending to be amazed over and over again that we are here and working and doing just fine effectively erases our presence in the past.

Do you get what I’m saying? Do you get why I (and many of my fellow women, though please don’t think I am in any way claiming to speak for all women) are getting a little tired of that shit? Do you get why, even if it wasn’t meant to be patronizing or paternalistic, it might sound that way?

Good. Now kindly knock it off.

When I’m at work, I’m a goddamn Sedimentary Geologist. I’m a Writer. The presence or absence of tits does not change either of these facts.

Categories
women in science

Ego > IQ?

Well, obviously. For guys, at least.

I find this very unsurprising, to be honest. Sorry, but we still very much live in a society where women feel a definite pressure to dumb themselves down. This sort of study also lines up pretty nicely with the “girls are bad at science/math” attitude as well. Men think they’re smarter than us; we do too. And I imagine if a woman thinks that she’s not as smart as her fellow men, she’s not going to fight as hard for her share of education or her right to be there.

I’m sure of course that there are egotistical women (like me?) that think they’re far smarter than they actually are. It’s just that the general trend is for men to have the ego and women to agree that ladyparts suck the oxygen out of your brain.

While this may be funny in some ways (I’m obviously poking fun at it myself), let’s also not forget that there are real and horrible consequences to this sort of sexism. Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Massacre, when a man who hated feminists and believed they didn’t belong in the field entered an engineering seminar, separated the men from the women, and began shooting the women.

Pretending we’re different when we’re not may bring the funny, but it also can fuel much, much darker things.

Categories
grad school women in science

Women and geoscience degrees.

There are some new statistics from the AGI regarding women earning science degrees – and more specifically geoscience degrees. The general upward trend makes me quite happy, as far as geoscience degrees being conferred. There looks like there’s been a teeny dip in the percentage of undergraduate degrees over the past couple of years, but there could be quite a few reasons for that. We’re above 40% now, which I find heartening. Geology isn’t the old boys club that it used to be, even if you can’t necessarily tell that quite yet if you work in oil and gas.

What I thought was interesting is actually in the bar graphs. The greatest percentage change in degrees conferred for women was non-science and engineering degrees first, then geoscience. So we’re making bigger gains than the other science/engineering fields. But if you look at the two percentage graphs below it, the comparing 1993 to 2006, it’s also interesting. Some fields have taken a pretty big bump, but the only two where women are getting more than 50% of the degrees are social sciences and non-science and engineering fields. Considering that more women attend college than men (in 2006 the New York Times reported that men were down to 42% of college attendees), we’re still not getting an even distribution across the fields. But who knows if we ever will. I think for now, just seeing that more women are going in to these fields is encouraging.

Looking at the graphs a second time, there is one other thing that struck me. For the most part, women are doing pretty darn good at getting bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Except in geoscience and engineering, there’s still a major (at least 10 point) gap between master’s degrees and PhDs, even though we are getting more PhDs than we used to, by a lot. It’s not like we haven’t noticed this before. A brief cruise through the feminist stylings of the amazing Dr. Isis provide some lovely anecdotes regarding why being cursed with ladyparts make life rough if you want a PhD.

But, I’m hoping that if we’re seeing increases in other degrees, some day we’ll see the institutional adjustments that will let women pursue their doctorates, rather than being forced to choose between advanced education and producing the next generation of li’l scientists.

Personally, I’m just going for a Master’s right now. Not because of any sort of external difficulty, but mostly because I have no idea what research I’d even want to do for a PhD. Some day, it’d be nice to get to wear the big-girl “doctor” pants, but I definitely need some focus first.

And since I’m mentioning graduate school, here’s a random aside: Why is it that of the three colleges that I attended, the only one that’s charging me for official transcripts (to the tune of $10.25 each) is the one I attended for only one semester? Grr, I say. Grr.

Categories
feminism women in science

What, you mean my ladybrain can do math?

The Math Gap

The majority of the girls who have been chosen to represent the United States in international mathematics competitions come from a set of about 20 high schools with elite math teams.

This extreme concentration of talent strongly indicates the crucial role that environmental factors, not just innate ability, play in shaping the accomplishments of students. “It’s significant that the top girls are coming from a very, very small subset of schools with strong math programs,” says Ellison. “That suggests most of the girls who could be doing well, aren’t doing well. The thousands and thousands of other schools in the United States must have a lot of talent, too, but it’s not coming out.”

That is very interesting. And something that, as a nerd of the female variety, I don’t find all that surprising. I may spend a lot of time complaining about those darn kids I’m in university with right now, but high school wasn’t that long ago. I remember the general pressures from teachers and peers, and I have no doubt that those can effect one’s ability to learn and perform academically. I was actually lucky, at that age. I was on my school’s quiz bowl team, which was composed of unabashed nerds, and I think that was good for me. I also did get to go to a math competition one year – I didn’t make it past the first round – but I do recall how few other girls were around. The only reason I was even there myself was because I’d been encouraged by my parents and my math teacher at the time.

I have something of a tortured relationship with math, to be honest. I’m not too bad at it. I’m even good at it, sometimes. But I crapped out after I finished my third semester of calculus because, simply, I don’t really like it. The third semester of calculus was actually one further than I needed to go for my degree, but at the time I did it because I was considering a minor in math, and because the professor I’d had for calculus II talked me in to it. And I’m not sorry. But I’m also mostly not sorry I stopped there.

That’s where the love-hate relationship comes in. Sometimes I love math. It’s beautiful. It’s fascinating. It’s a puzzle. Sometimes I hate it, because I find it so incredibly frustrating, and it makes me feel so incredibly dumb, and those times inevitably lead to me screaming and throwing my book across the room. (You think I’m kidding, but I’m not.) In the interest of not causing my fiance or my cats to end up with PTSD, it’s probably a good thing that I did call it quits. I may be smart enough – more than smart enough – for math, but I don’t have the patience, or the right attitude for it, I guess.

But sometimes, I still feel a little guilty. Because every time this issue is brought up, this idea that Maybe Women Just Aren’t Good At Math, I’m forced to remember that I was, and that I gave up on it. Then again, if you’re struggling up the ladder to upper division mathematics, you should probably have a better reason to do it than to make a point to a bunch of dicky misogynists that will dismiss you as the exception rather than the rule anyway.