Nancy Hopkins' Keynote Speech Shockers
Dear friends of women in science,
We had the pleasure of a guest posting recently by Nancy Hopkins about the new report on the status of women at MIT here. Nancy sent the text of her keynote speech to me, and it is clear that the women of MIT have made great progress, although they still need to receive the respect they deserve. The subtitle of Nancy's speech was Congratulations, with Caveats.
For me, though, what will stick in my mind forever will be two anecdotes she used to illustrate some of her points. The first was about sexual harassment that was not recognized as such when it occurred. She said,
" For example, when I was an undergraduate at Harvard, I was sitting at my lab desk one day writing up notes when the door of the lab flew open. There stood a scientist I didn't know but recognized instantly. Before I could rise and shake hands, he had zoomed across the room, stood behind me, put his hands on my breasts and said, "What are you working on?" It was Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. Did I feel harassed? Not at all. I was very embarrassed, but for him, not for myself."
That incident shocked me, and Nancy went on to say she didn't realize at the time that his behavior suggested something about how interested he might really be in her research findings. But she also reported on an incident back before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when Barbara McClintock was a young, highly impressive scientist. Here it is:
"One day Barbara showed me a letter that had been written a number of years earlier (probably in the 1940s) to a biology department chair by a well-known geneticist. The chair was soliciting suggestions for candidates to fill a faculty opening in his department. The geneticist had offered several candidates' names, and then added. "Of course the #1 person in the world in this field is Barbara McClintock. It's too bad you can't hire her because she's a woman. " Barbara told me she could not get a faculty job in any university science department, only in home economics departments. Women simply could not get faculty jobs in science departments before the mid 1960s. Fortunately, Barbara managed to get a job as a research scientist at CSH with support from the Carnegie Foundation. Oh, by the way, at age 81 Barbara McClintock won the Nobel prize in medicine."
Nancy used this anecdote to illustrate the findings about women professors before the 1960s. Here is a picture of McClintock and the graph showing these results.
This is a difficult thing to talk about because as with all sexual harassment claims, it is something that you simply don't talk about because it can mean the end of your scientific career. The stigma is on the person who reports it, not on the person who commits the act.
I had this brought home in grad school when a "repeat offender" professor was finally banned from taking female students but only after ruining the career of his third student after she came forward and refused to be paid off as the previous two had. Her career was over, because she stood her ground. It was a chilling lesson for all of us.
For my own experience, we had a chair in our department who had a breast fetish. He didn't touch...just stared intently...all the time and at any woman's breasts...even in the presence of his wife. He did it while he was talking to you...while he was talking to your professor in your presence. And NO ONE ever did anything about it. It was a joke. They had to "hide" him when the NIH training grant review team came through so that he didn't offend any of the female professors on the team. Everyone knew and nothing was done. He "couldn't help himself". In retrospect, it was ridiculous that this was tolerated, but when faced with the choice of how much I cared to report him vs. my own career, I did cover my own butt and stayed quiet. But it did affect me (as you can tell) even to this day. I still have that impotent anger inside. I doubt it will ever go away.
Hi Laura,
What interesting stories! It really puts into context the numbers that we see today. And the poll results are very telling as well. Thanks for such an interesting post.
Christi
Hi Melissa,
I am not really surprised. When I was dean here at Pomona College, I heard a lot about these things, and actively referred people to our support program for harassment many times. Even today, there are still professors who hit on students. There are also many who do not, thank goodness. But some men who behave themselves at home go wild when they take young women from their labs to scientific meetings. And when we ask a question like that, women are integrating their life-long experience. So even one incident makes it a yes.
I probably ran into it (when I was younger and more hit-upon-able) about every 3-4 years, not daily.
But every time it made me feel unwelcome in science. I tried not to focus on it, though.
cheers,
Laura
What is shocking me is how the poll is shaping up. Laura, do you find this surprising? So much harassment?
MKS
Hi Donna,
I know there are thousands of women who are quietly reading the postings, and I'm always glad when one joins the conversation. I agree that figure is a good one. People today don't realize how strong the barrier used to be against women in academic science. In industry it was often similar. My dad's company had two PhD chemists working there, one, a man, supervised a whole section. The other, a woman, was asked to run the technical support library after working alone in the lab for some years.
cheers,
Laura
Thanks, Laura, for posting these meaningful anecdotes from Nancy Hopkins' talk. And for the very nice figure with Barbara McClintock's photo and the graph on women scientists in academia. Younger women may not be very aware of the history that has shaped the attitudes of some of us 'mature' women scientists!
And, thanks for all you do in keeping this forum alive... I read it frequently, even though I don't post comments very often. Regards, -Donna
