Women are poorly represented in physics, making up just 10% of faculty in the United States, for example, but the reasons for this have proved contentious. Now a particle physicist claims to have hard data showing institutional sexism at an experiment at one of America's highest-profile physics labs.
Sherry Towers claims that female postdocs worked significantly harder than their male peers but were awarded one-third as many conference presentations proportionally. “There was this shocking difference,” says Towers, who now studies statistics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. “Particle physics really hasn't moved forward in 30 years.”
Readers are allowed to comment on the news story. After reading the one below I nearly fell out of my seat:
My experience as a physicist working with the occasional female colleagues leads me to a subjective impression that women really think differently. Female thinking seems to be more lateral then vertical. By that I mean, women in physics are generally harder working than male colleagues and are great co-workers in terms of encouragement, diligence, and backup support. They do not, however, contribute a great deal of original ideas and rigorous logical analysis to the research. Female judgment seems to more emotionally biased.
* 23 Apr, 2008
* Posted by: Paul Kantorek
Wow. Just wow. What a discriminatory comment. At a time when the United States is falling behind in science and engineering, more students should be encouraged to study subjects like physics. And then we have people like Mr. Kantorek. I'm glad I never had him as a physics teacher!
2 comments:
I wouldn't necessarily assume that people on the Internet are who they say they are, but if it's true in this case, you might want to contact his employer: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/people/Kantorek.html
It would appear that sexual bigotry is depriving those who's sweat is actually funding the research of approx 50% of all possible brain power. To paraphrase Talleyrand; this is not immoral it's worse much worse, it's STUPID. I also believe that it is wrong to pretend that male and female will not approach the same problem from different view points probably with different levels of validity; and that is a strength.
MARIE CURIE RULES
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