Encouragement Isn't Enough; Reality Interferes

Mr. S was recently at a conference. His field has many famous female scientists- in part because back in the day, it was considered trivial and boring. PIs kept coming up to him and asking what was he doing next year and was he looking for a postdoc? Maybe with them? And he kept explaining that he'd stay at Snooty U another year while I finished. And they'd say, 'Oh, is she looking for a postdoc too? I know those dual-scientist job searches can be hard.' And he'd say, 'No, she's not.'

To a woman, the female PIs said, in tones of horror, 'Oh no! You must encourage her to stay! Can't you change her mind? We need more female faculty!'

I think that many women, myself included, love research and want to do it. But we don't want it twice as much as our husbands. We don't want it enough to see women passed over or denied tenure because we took time 'off' to have a baby and didn't publish anything that year. We don't want it enough to earn $10,000 less than the male junior professor in the next office over.

Aside from the purely financial, childbearing is a very real barrier. When I see the obstacles, especially in academia, to having children, it does not make me want to postdoc so I can be faculty one day if I'm a very good girl. Yes, women have children in college, in grad school, before tenure, whenever. Sometimes it's fine, professionally. But especially at places like this, women with children pay a heavy professional as well as economic price for their children. This on top of the inherent disadvantages of being female in a world run by 60-year-old white men.

When I look at all these factors together, I am left with utterly no desire to be faculty. I, and all the women I know whose career plan is 'run away', have already eaten all the condescension and slights and obstruction that we want to for just now. We want to go somewhere else, where there is a chance for professionalism and respect. We already know what it's like in here. We don't want it.

I applaud the women who want more women to do postdocs and come to the academic-research world. It's wonderful to tell us we can do it and we should do it. Their encouragement to stay in the academy is lovely. But it's not what I need. I need things to change. Yesterday, ideally.

(P.S. Yes, my sister's baby is due like tomorrow. What? An obsession with offspring? Who, me?)

Friday Ramblings: Insanity and a Cat

I believe it's traditional: In lieu of actual though, I give you a cat.

A fat cat. Sadly, not mine. Ever since the finch died from neglect.... (Just kidding!)

I am filled with further musings on motherhood, rural poverty, tuition assistance, wildlife preserves, the inherent bias in postdoc funding, how a few easy changes could help more women not run away screaming from science, and my dear alma mater's unrelenting, tedious habit of hitting me up for cash.* Instead of musing on these things with you, dear readers, I am reading more of the eternal manuscripts, re-doing the journal's website AGAIN, and, as ever, a mountain of lab work. Sigh.
[*Which I refuse to give them, following how both female profs in my department quit, and the best junior professor was fired against the unanimous recommendation of the department. ]

A few thoughts floated off the top of the brain:

• I never want to quit so much as a) after I talk to my advisor or b) after I talk to our tech. Who earns 2.5 times my salary and couldn't draw a straight line between two points. A typical conversation goes something like: Yes, it's broken. Broken. It doesn't cool off. Cool. Like a refrigerator. COLD!! LIKE ICE!!! Yes, call the company. The refrigerator repair person? NO!! Call the company. On the card. The card. Right here. No, I didn't break it. No. No, it just broke. It broke. Broke. You have a car? Doesn't it break? Oh my dear Cthulu why do we pay you for this? Give me that phone.
• Someone told Mr. S last week that really, Snooty U was doing poor students a favor, because they couldn't possibly have the proper preparation for a Snooty education. Mr. S grew up very poor indeed. Steam from the ears.
• Mr. S has a defense date! The paper went out! At least one of us gets to leave this hellhole.
• Right before which Titania flaked out. That thing where she and Mr. S had talked in JANUARY and she said, oh yes, I'll pay you a postdoc salary for a year? Yeah, that thing. No go! No money! Sorry! Freaking out ensued.
• Fortunately, someone offered him a one-year postdoc within a day. A good one. In fact, said someone was practically begging on hands and knees. Why yes, it was a junior professor!
• The postal carrier relabeled our box Scientists Gloomy. I guess he got tired of delivering mail to an imaginary person, and re-invented me.

Out my friend's front window in Rural Elsewhere:


Hope you all have lovely, peaceful, sunny weekends.

A Survey of the Seminar Reveals:

So I work in biology. In the subfield of bricklaying, which is under the general heading of architecture and construction, as it were. Let's say I specialize in historical analysis of decorative brick patterns. My lab is mainly made of plumbers and electricians, and my advisor specializes in pre-CAD architectural drawing. We also have an automobile mechanic, just for variety.

Therefore, we have to go to all seminars on plumbing, advances in electrical work, new computer-controlled car diagnostics, and so on. Some of them are thrilling. But. The last seminar speaker started with 25 minutes on bricklaying styles, with a complete history of the trowel. Please, my friends, when you are giving talks, spare us the trowel. Summarize.

Nonetheless, it's amusing to go to seminars for a variety of other reasons. For example, birdwatching. At the TrowelMania seminar, I observed:

• 6 fine exemplars of the bearded turkey
  
• 2 baldpate American widgeons
  
• An entire row of young prarie hens trying to rewire the microphone
  
• The fighting behaviors of the mocking-wren, the monkey-faced owl, and the pied wagtail
  
• A bobsucker (also known as the woodcock) demonstrating its mating call while putting in a new alternator
  
• A complete insufficiency of millet for the finches, and a distressing shortage of suet.
  

In other news: of all the cardinals recently invited to demonstrate their territorial behavior, ten were of the male (red) variety and only one female was seen. A newly-hatched kiwi proved, on inspection, to be mated to one of the older cardinals. (All together now: eeewwwww.)

Home Sweet Fireplacing Home

I have returned from a lovely week of hiking, canoeing, playing with the World's Friendliest German Shepherd ('Let me lick you! Pet me pet me pet me!!'), picking gallons and gallons of strawberries, a mini college reunion, a winery trip, the Mennonite country store, an amazing musical-instruments museum and, of course, quality time with my friends. Oh, it was wonderful.

This morning I was woken at 6:45 by construction equipment. Upon consulting the city code, I learned that construction can make as much noise as it wants from 7 am until 10 pm.

On the way to work I saw the paper. A large-ish number of dead bodies with bullet holes have been found in the past week.

And they wonder why people won't move here.

Gone Fishin'

Also, I'm off to the wilds of Pennsylvania to eat strawberries, hike, and garden. Back in a week. Cheerio!

Continued Disturbance About Motherhood, Price Of

My dear spouse wants to teach and do research: he wants it passionately. He loves it. He wants a job that also happens to be a career. His academic life is laid out, one, two, three: grad school, postdoc, faculty job. Minivan, 2.5 kids, publish, tenure. A straight path with (supposedly) no interruptions.

I want... to not be here.

So what does this have to do with my price of motherhood? In my ideal universe the Scientist household will be blessed with little ones and I will work part-time. What a lovely picture it makes. (Also, if I stayed home full-time, I would lose my mind.)

Except it probably won't happen that way. Statistically speaking, I will be unable to find a decent part-time job. Even if I do, the ratio of my earnings to either what I would earn full-time or to childcare costs will be a small, small number. And I certainly can't get a part-time job being a professor and running a lab. The straight path doesn't work well with childbearing, and it doesn't work well with less than 60-hour weeks. At least not in my field.

(Incidentally, a woman who was on the 'Beyond Bias and Barriers' panel spoke here a while ago. A professor in my department said 'But I cannot work part-time and run a lab. I cannot work even forty hours a week, not if I want tenure!' And the speaker said, 'Why not?' Because it is that way, but it doesn't have to be.)

The dilemma is about guilt. If I can't have what I want- intellectually satisfying work AND children- I don't want to play that game. If I have to pay a high price for motherhood, especially in the academic world, I don't want to be there. But maybe I should. If we, as women, don't fight the good fight to make it better for the next generation in science, are we at fault? If we choose to leave 'science', i.e. the work of a PI in academia, is it because we don't want it enough?

Or not.

"You can say we actively chose to leave the academic path, and some of us never gave it a backward glance. We chose, but it was a choice with a lot of push behind it. And we were all aware of how we were viewed by those who stayed on the path - those who were still in the pipeline. We had leaked out through our own fault... If we had been good enough to become professors, we would never have wanted to do anything else." (courtesy of the excellent Zuska)

Academia tells me that I should stay and make sacrifices for the greater good. I should see the barriers in front of me, and they should be overcome by the force of my desire to be professorial. I should compare what I want to what I can have in academia, and give up what I want. I should see the price of motherhood in academia and elsewhere, and pay it.

I know that this kind of system benefits no-one: not parents, not single people, and certainly not single parents. At the same time, I have never once heard a young man in my class say 'I don't know if I could have children and tenure.' As long as women are asked to pay such a high price, the percentage of women scientists will creep up ever so slowly.... just like it's doing now.

scientiae-carnival

Friday Corruption Recipes: Iraq

(Haiti recipes updated.)

Iraq! Which the US single-handedly moved twenty or thirty spots down the list in two short years. Regardless of the colossally corrupt mare's nest we've made of their country, the food remains tasty.


Lissan el quathi ('Tongue of the Judge')

2 large eggplants
oil

1 tomato, sliced
1 onion, diced
14 oz tomato sauce
1/2 c lemon juice
1 c stock
1 t salt
1/2 t pepper
1 t turmeric

2 lbs lean ground meat
1 medium onion, minced
1/4 t salt
1/4 t pepper

Peel eggplants and slice about 1/4 inch thick lengthwise. Salt and let stand; rinse and pat dry. Either fry until both sides are brown, or brush 2 baking sheets liberally with oil and bake on one side until browned (375 or 400 F).

Saute onion, then add tomato, tomato sauce, lemon juice, stock, and spices. Simmer 10 minutes.

Mix ground meat, onion, salt, and pepper. Divide meat into sausage shaped portions 1 inch thick and 2 inches long. Place a sausage at one end of an eggplant strip and carefully roll the eggplant up around it. Place rolls in a baking dish- 2 layers is okay- and pour sauce over. Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 425 F for one hour or until done.

Rice with saffron, almonds and raisins

4 c water
1 T rose water (in Middle Eastern groceries; sometimes the kind perfumeries sell is food-grade, check the label)
1 pinch saffron (Spanish saffron fine, and also much more economical)
4 T oil
2 c long-grain basmati rice
1 T salt

2 T oil
1/2 c slivered almonds
1/2 c raisins

In a dish, mix 1 c water and saffron; let sit at least 5 minutes. In a large saucepan, heat oil, then add rice and fry until it becomes more opaque and starts to brown just a little. Add all the water, including saffron water, immediately. Let simmer uncovered until most of the water is absorbed. Stir, cover, and cook 15 more minutes. Add salt and rose water.

Meanwhile, heat 2 T oil and fry almonds until slightly brown. Add raisins; stir.

Serve rice with almonds and raisins sprinkled across the top.