<p>Diminished by discrimination we can barely see; part 2</p>
<p>Meg Urry</p>
<p>I loved MIT, but it could be a harsh environment for women 20 years ago.
(It's changed a lot!) I remember two professors having a dinner
conversation in my presence about the inferiority of women scientists who
had been hired because of affirmative action. (When I mentioned this to
the man who'd hired me, he hastened to assure me that it didn't apply to
me.) My ambition to be an academic was sometimes met with encouragement, but one male professor told me, "Oh, we would never hire you." And discouragement always makes a bigger impression than encouragement.</p>
<p>During my postdoc career, I started wondering why women weren't getting
hired into faculty positions. I'd been told, from graduate school on, that
I'd have no trouble getting ahead: I was a woman, people would come after
me. When they didn't, I subliminally absorbed the idea that I wasn't good
enough. But was it possible that all the women getting physics and
astronomy degrees from top institutions weren't good enough? I saw
precious few being hired into faculty jobs.</p>
<p>For some reason, I hung in there. Maybe it was the strong support from my
parents and from the fellow physicist I married, who took on half (and
sometimes more than half) the responsibilities of child rearing. He
doesn't "help" -- we share. Our two daughters, Amelia (nearly 14) and
Sophia (11) carry both our last names, as their middle and last names, but
in alternate order. We made it equal, start to finish.</p>
<p>But work was never equal. When I told my thesis adviser I was pregnant,
he said, "So, you want to have it all!" I smiled but later thought, Wait a
minute, isn't that what all you guys have? Why is it "all" for me and
"normal" for you?</p>
<p>Over the years, I saw women in the scientific world treated badly, being
marginalized, mistreated, harassed. One woman manager I know was
second-guessed, unlike any of the male managers, and when she pointed this
out, was told she was depressed and should get professional help. Another
told me it had become routine for her to cry while driving home from work.
Every woman I know has had her suggestions ignored in a mainly male
meeting, only to hear the same idea praised when later raised by a man.</p>
<p>Hey, bad things happen. But feeling out of place over and over again
eventually soaks in; it did for me. About a decade ago, frustrated and
alienated, I approached the director of my institution to ask about
special management training for women: Maybe there were tips that would
help me navigate the foreign waters in which I found myself. He didn't
seem to understand. I said, "You know, it's like being the red fish in the
sea of blue fish -- I want to understand the blue-fish rules." "Oh," he
answered. "Maybe it's not your lack of training, Meg, maybe it's just your
difficult personality."</p>
<p>After enough of this kind of thing, women feel beaten down and
underappreciated, or worse, they feel incapable. That's the most insidious
thing. After years of being passed over, ignored, and insulted, we start
wondering what we are doing wrong. Maybe if I had made the suggestion
differently, it would have been heard. Maybe if I lowered my voice and
spoke more slowly, I would get more respect. Maybe -- even though I
published many papers, did seminal work in more than one field, brought in
big grants, had successful students and postdocs -- maybe I wasn't a good
enough scientist.</p>
<p>It was easier to see what was happening to other women than to me. My
good friend Anne Kinney (now "Director of the Universe" at NASA -- how's
that for a title?) said in an after-dinner speech to a conference on women
in astronomy that she'd never had a five-year plan because there were no
women five years ahead of her. Her speech was very funny and I laughed a
lot, but I didn't think it applied to me, exactly. Weeks later, it dawned
on me that I'd never had a five-year plan either -- and for much the same
reason.</p>
<p>I watched women around me, especially young women, who were smart and
keen to work hard, but who, after a few years in grad school or after a
discouraging spell as a postdoc, decided maybe they weren't cut out for
science, or maybe they would find a non-academic job, or maybe they'd get
married and have a family rather than a research career.</p>
<p>I have no problem with any of these choices. What troubles me, though, is
that I rarely saw men making them, especially the choice to stay home with
kids. I think some women use "family" as an excuse to leave science when
science actually drives them away.</p>
<p>This is a huge loss for our country -- these women PhDs are some of the
best scientists we train. We need their talent.</p>
<p>In my field, physics and astronomy, women still make up a small
percentage of active scientists -- about 7 percent of physics faculty are
female and about 12 percent of astronomers. Those percentages are
increasing, but slowly. So I grew up with almost no women professors. When
I first heard of Beatrice Tinsley -- who came to the United States in 1964
from New Zealand with a master's in physics, created an entire sub-field
of astronomy, finished her thesis under adverse circumstances and by all
accounts was an incredible person -- I felt the kind of relief that a
child raised by wolves must feel when she first sees a human being.</p>
<p>Physics has fewer women than other scientific disciplines. I think it may
be because physics is more hierarchical, more aggressive than other areas.
("Combat physics," a friend of mine calls it.) Physicists act as if they
are better and smarter than everyone else. The standard for excellence is
to be the best in the world -- and that seems pretty boa****l to polite
girls raised not to brag.</p>
<p>When I expressed ambition, though, I sometimes got put back down. I
suggested I was ready to be tenured -- "Be patient, Meg, it's too early
for you." I mentioned I was interested in a high-level national committee
-- "Isn't that a bit ambitious, Meg?" I expressed interest in a promotion:
"You're not a leader, no one would follow you."</p>
<p>Social scientists like Virginia Valian of Hunter College have developed a
lot of evidence showing that women and men are treated and evaluated
differently. Yet physicists reject the possibility that scientists are not
objective. I learned about the lack of objectivity the hard way -- through
experience.</p>
<p>On hiring committees or tenure and promotion committees I served on, we'd
evaluate men and women, and somehow the women seldom came out on top. They were "good," even "very good" but the men were always better. Some of this was caused by letters of recommendation. Every woman was always compared to other women, as if every woman scientist is female first and a
scientist second. Also, women's letters were somehow more pedestrian --
the candidate "works hard" and she "has a nice personality," "gets along
well with others." Once you see the patterns, you realize that these
evaluations reflect people's expectations more than reality.</p>
<p>As I got more educated about the abundant social science research, I got
more frustrated: The answers were there, if only physicists and
astronomers would read the literature. So I made it easier. I organized
conferences to talk about these issues. We held that first conference on
Women in Astronomy in 1992 and wrote the Baltimore Charter, a kind of
manifesto for change <a href="http://www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/WiA/BaltoCharter.html%5B/url%5D">www.stsci.edu/stsci/meetings/WiA/BaltoCharter.html</a>).
In 2003 we organized a second meeting, from which the Pasadena
Recommendations have just been produced (<a href="http://www.aas.org/cswa/%5B/url%5D">www.aas.org/cswa/</a>).</p>
<p>It's been slow, but we've made progress, and we're making a difference.
More young women are flocking to science every year. It's a great life,
after all, doing something you love, having control of your time, being
paid pretty well.</p>
<p>And, however slowly, the barriers women face are being abraded. The
American Astronomical Society and American Physical Society, my
professional organizations, have been immensely forward thinking. As for
me, Yale hired me with tenure four years ago and treats me wonderfully. My
science has never been better. I bet some people say I got this job
because I'm female. But now that I've been around awhile, I'm finally able
to say, confidently, that I'm really great at this job. I'm lucky to be
here at Yale, yes, but even more, they are really lucky to have me. The
doubt is finally going away.</p>