Ignorant physicists

[steuard]

I just received the American Physical Society's monthly newsletter, APS News. In the "Letters" section, they published a letter entitled "Nothing Wrong with Fewer Women Physicists" by someone names Jeffery Winkler from Hanford, CA. Winkler was evidently "shocked" by a February article about how encouraging women to pursue careers in physics is a priority for the APS.

I won't try to formally rebut his arguments, but it's like shooting fish in a barrel: this guy thinks he's boldly standing up for some moral principle, but his entire letter is a classic example of sexism and ignorance. He insists that targeting any particular male/female ratio is equally wrong, whether 50/50 or 100/0. He then says, and I'm not making this up, that nurses, elementary teachers, and secretaries are 90% women and "Nobody thinks that's a problem." So clearly, he says, it's just as unreasonable to push for greater equality among physicists.

I have no idea how this tripe got published in the newsletter; maybe they were low on content this month. (I've already written to ask.) Not that I'd object to having a serious discussion about how and why we should encourage women to study physics! But this clearly isn't an example of that. Instead, it's an example of how much sexism is still present in the physics community and of how that sexism gets reinforced. And that's deeply frustrating.

Comments

[zathrus.livejournal.com]

The one nurse J responded well to during his 5-day hospital stay two years ago was the male nursing student who was brought in so he could get experience with "a noncompliant patient." I don't know whether the better response was because of the male-ness or because of the man's willingness to be taught, but the entire episode was one of the highlights of our hospital stay. I'd love to see more male nurses - both from the mother-of-male-patient perspective and from the sociological perspective that it's a rather family-friendly profession (which is why several of my female friends have pursued nursing) and I'd like to see more acceptance of men choosing their professions on that basis.

Newt

[ricevermicelli.livejournal.com]

One thing I've noticed with Danger Lad! is that he does find male teachers, nurses, etc., pretty exciting - probably because he sees them so seldom. It's a slightly weird thing that at the age when children are becoming most aware of gender differences, we send them off into a world in which over 90% of the adults they encounter are female. It's as though the only adult male role is Dad. A better gender balance there would really help.