feminism

What to write??!!

I've recently had several very, very kind people tell me how much they enjoy my blog, which 1) made my head swell to an unbearable size and 2) has caused me to panic every time I try to add a new post. I fear that if I keep writing, then the truth will be exposed; that even an infinite number of monkeys can come up with Hamlet, given enough tries.

In any case, life has been blissfully uneventful, compared to the last few months, so it's a little harder to think of topics to write about. What a nice thing.

I did a Lunchtime Learning seminar for some 5th graders this week, which was a huge success. Apparently, I made a big impact on some 5th grade girls who are interested in science, and who were thrilled to see a woman scientist that was a real person, too. My friend Kim told me her daughter Beth, who was at my talk, is now convinced that a woman can have an interesting career and have a family and enjoy life and, well, she can "have it all". I add here that in theory I really don't like that phrase very much since it's clear that every choice we make consists of gains and losses (cake, eating it, all that). But I appreciate the sentiment - that women aren't required to choose between career and life/family. In any case, I nearly wept with joy when Kim told me that. Personally, I think the kids just simply loved making the model of a satellite from candy. Mom, I did go ahead and use the sticks of gum for the solar panels. I haven't had any teachers give me the evil eye for that yet, so I'll keep it in my act until they do. Anyway, the praise I got for my talk just absolutely made me glow. I figure that did more for the future of humankind than any of my research actually does. :-)

...and this has lead me into thinking about the opportunities for women that are out there in this country now, and what feminism is (funny how these blog posts kind of write themselves once you just start typing. Infinite monkeys, you see...). I am a woman in a field that is still dominated by men, but that is changing incredibly rapidly. When I was in grad school, I was one of maybe 5 women in a department with 40 or 50 men. The numbers were about the same, or perhaps even worse when I started my job at NASA 17 years ago. I never felt like I was singled out because I was a woman - well, not blatently, and not enough so that I felt like it was ever a hinderance. The coursework and research requirements were infinitely more difficult for me than the fact that I was a woman.

I'm not saying that being a woman in a male dominated world wasn't noticed by me. I once made an appointment with a professor to go over some stuff for my qualifiers, only to have him ask me to shut the door and ask where the wine was when I showed up. (feigning stupidity worked in that case. I simply chuckled like an idiot and then just asked him my question and left.) This same professor asked me to quit sleeping with one of his students so he'd get more work done. Ironically, the other student in question was gay. We were fantastic friends but the idea that we were sleeping together was absurd. You see though, the professor confronted *me* and not his male student.

There was also an incident at work one time, where I got pretty aggressive (shouting, pissed off aggressive) at a visiting student. He happened to be black and went straight to my supervisor after the fact with cries of racial discrimination. I was called into the hotseat and asked about the "incident", at which point I looked my supervisor in the eye and told him I was pissed off at this guy because he had been treating me poorly because I was a woman (he really was, not just a line). I watched my poor supervisor nearly pass out from the stress, and subsequently, it all blew over with little other impact, other than undue stress and anxiety on my part, no matter how packed inside I tried to keep it. I mention this incident because I am convinced that if I were a man, this never would have happened. You see, men are allowed to be loud and assertive in the workplace (to a point, of course). Women are not. Plus, this student, was from Kenya, obviously a place with an entirely foreign culture to ours, and he really did see me as subservient. I ignored it for as long as I could, but finally blew.

I am where I am today because I have stood on the shoulders generations of women before me - women who have been braver than I'll ever be, and women who have cared about the future of girls like me. Despite my personal relatively uneventful path into the world of science, I know that women still have a long way to go. And maybe what we still have to accomplish is the most difficult part of it. While the legal obstacles are essentially gone, young women today still face cultural obstacles, which are infinitely more difficult to change. I was naive enough to not realize or think that there were any limits to what I could do, so I forged ahead oblivious to what the world may have been trying to tell me. This was not a result of any bravery on my part, but just my tendency to be unobservant. Until that mindset is present in all women for the right reasons (i.e., amongst the non-naive) we will still have a need for the feminist movement to be active.