Women Speaking at Caltech Biology Division
Dear friends of women in science,
After the last posting, I've had speakers on my mind, so I noticed the list of the major biology seminar speakers for the year at nearby Caltech that I received by email. I counted up the men and women invited to speak there this coming academic year and found that 17% of the planned talks were by women.
That seemed low to me, so I decided to compare that to the percentage of the faculty who were women. I counted 36 men and 14 women in the division of biology, soon to become the division of biology and biological engineering. That's 28%.
I don't know what the mechanisms for inviting speakers might be at Caltech. For all I know, they are invited by a small group with not much interest in how they might subliminally speak of opportunities for women, or the opposite. But I'm disturbed to find that the percentage of women isn't even close to the percentage representation among the faculty itself. I would have hoped that the women there would take it upon themselves to recommend fascinating women in science to speak to the graduate students and postdocs. I'm sure they know such women, and studies have shown that when women are involved in setting up speakers for scientific meetings, they invite a more diverse group than men, in general.
Perhaps this year is an anomaly. But the dearth of women reminded me of a conference I attended there a couple of years ago where there were no women speakers and only five women in the whole lecture hall. There was no way I could really be threatened by this situation, yet I felt uneasy and uncomfortable. I left early, after the last talk I really needed to hear but before all the talks were over, with a sense of relief.
Those of you in university settings, what do you know of how seminar speakers are chosen? Are the organizers open to inviting people others suggest? Am I being unreasonable here?
cheers,
Laura
Hi Laura,
I agree with Elizabeth and Christi, and no, you are not being unreasonable.
The lack of inclusion of course creates a cycle. If women are not included in seminar series, then their visibility is reduced. Women won't come to mind readily when considering whom to invite to write reviews or perspective pieces in journals, or whom to consider for awards, or feature at conferences, etc. Women will not be visible, and they will not easily "come to mind", so they will not be included in seminar series. I don't know that a lack of women in a seminar series means that women in that field are not doing great work. It may mean they are less visible. In my experience, some women travel less than their male peers because of other obligations. Perhaps women were invited, but turned down the invitation?
I'm not in a university environment. In my liberal arts dept one person is given the charge of inviting seminar speakers each year. That person is usually a junior faculty member and they often invite people they know.
Jennifer
Hi Laura,
I think you're absolutely right that those who invite speakers to give lectures should consider the representation of men and women invited. Virginia Valian mentions this very issue in her discussion of gender schemas. She says that men will most likely come to mind for most organizers of lecture series, but that it is important for organizers to do the extra work of inviting women at least in proportion to the representation of women in the field. What you're describing at CalTech - while (unfortunately) not unique - is a clear case of gender bias at work.
Christi
Laura--
Caltech may be more this way than a lot of major universities, but choosing speakers isn't a plum job and probably those forced into it just slap something together without much thought, choosing the first people who come to mind. Often, yes, they'll be the ones who made recent important breakthroughs, and/or Nobel laureates and other important scientists who regularly produce interesting new data. But they'll be "top of the mind" choices, not deeply considered for what messages that selection list might carry to the students and postdocs. I suspect they'll think you're being totatlly unreasonable to expect more women to be included.
EMK
