Sexism plagues major chemistry conference: Boycott emerges amid growing outrage
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Re: Sexism plagues major chemistry conference: Boycott emerges amid growing outrage
#2Wow that Kress guy is really missing the point. He keeps yelling true things without realizing that they're irrelevant.
Re: Sexism plagues major chemistry conference: Boycott emerges amid growing outrage
#3I'm not convinced there is a problem. It sounds like some women seized upon this conference as an opportunity to point out a perceived bias.
The article is clearly written to suggest that you are either with us or against us and I take issue with that. The academic content of that kind of conference should not be limited by a speaker's gender, even if that means there are no women speakers. Just to be clear, I would feel the same if there were no male speakers
Re: Sexism plagues major chemistry conference: Boycott emerges amid growing outrage
#4Notably, there are only four female scientists among the 110 living members of IAQMS, which elects new candidates by internal vote. Ten out of 102 talks during the previous three conference were given by women, and only two female chemists have been awarded medals over the past decade, according to the instigators of the boycott.
“These numbers do not reflect the proportion of women active in the field,” said Gagliardi, who is a professor at the University of Minnesota. “Some 50 years ago the gender distribution in Quantum Molecular Sciences may have been so skewed, but nowadays things have changed.”
To illustrate the point, Krylov maintains the Women in Theoretical Chemistry web-directory, listing “more than 300 female scientists holding tenured and tenure track academic positions or equivalent positions in industry and other research establishments pursuing research in theoretical and computational chemistry, biochemistry, material science, as well as theoretical molecular/atomic physics and biophysics.”
That doesn't illustrate the point unless you compare that 300 against the number of male scientists. If there are 3000+ male scientists in the field, then it's not crazy that only 5-10% of the members/talks are given by women.
300 women is undoubtedly just a drop in the bucket compared to everyone working in "theoretical and computational chemistry, biochemistry, material science, as well as theoretical molecular/atomic physics and biophysics", a ridiculously broad set of topics spanning multiple large departments at every major university (most of which have little business at a quantum chemistry conference, of course).
Re: Sexism plagues major chemistry conference: Boycott emerges amid growing outrage
#5Would have been to nice to see some quotes from a woman who was also a minority. But clearly ethnic/racial diversity isn't a problem for this conference.
Re: Sexism plagues major chemistry conference: Boycott emerges amid growing outrage
#6You can talk about theoretical chemistry but can't figure out how to rent a lecture hall and host your own conference?
Re: Sexism plagues major chemistry conference: Boycott emerges amid growing outrage
#7I'm not convinced there is a problem. It sounds like some women seized upon this conference as an opportunity to point out a perceived bias. The article is clearly written to suggest that you are either with us or against us and I take issue with that. The academic content of that kind of conference should not be limited by a speaker's gender, even if that means there are no women speakers. Just to be clear, I would…
It is very slanted and dares you to disagree, which has become the modus operandi for some groups. Now there is the distinct possibility that someone was purposefully excluded it also is quite possible that with so few in the group that none stood out. Did the query the female members (what, are there like four?) if they wanted to present?
Still, make a competing organization. Don't follow the route of protect the children/etc/etc. Just as bad as highly educated groups are in thinking they are too intelligent to be sexist/racist/etc we don't need strawman arguments or worse.
Re: Sexism plagues major chemistry conference: Boycott emerges amid growing outrage
#8I'm not convinced there is a problem. It sounds like some women seized upon this conference as an opportunity to point out a perceived bias. The article is clearly written to suggest that you are either with us or against us and I take issue with that. The academic content of that kind of conference should not be limited by a speaker's gender, even if that means there are no women speakers. Just to be clear, I would…
If there were no male speakers you would think there was no bias? It just happened that every female scheduled had something truly "scientific" to talk about, but the available men had none?
Re: Sexism plagues major chemistry conference: Boycott emerges amid growing outrage
#9I'm not convinced there is a problem. It sounds like some women seized upon this conference as an opportunity to point out a perceived bias. The article is clearly written to suggest that you are either with us or against us and I take issue with that. The academic content of that kind of conference should not be limited by a speaker's gender, even if that means there are no women speakers. Just to be clear, I would…
"Perceived bias"
You are ignoring a larger history and the institutionalized sexism that currently exists in all sects of government, industry, and society as a whole.
Of course you would feel the same if there were no male speakers, because men haven't had to suffer through centuries of exclusion, therefore it would not threaten the position of men. When you take a deeper look at the issue and realize that we have the utility to create a gender-balanced (and gender-fluid if you want to trim some more ignorance) society, it is upsetting that yet another conference has no female speakers. The comment by the dunce about race/body-type/ablism etc completely undermines the position of those speaking out. The people pointing out that women are underrepresented are the same people that will also point out those other imbalances. They are working on their own fight--and yes, there is still largely internalized ignorance of race/gender-identity/ablism and beyond within the movement, but that does not mean they should completely abandon progress just to appease someone that thinks it is only 'perceived bias'. Thoughts?
Re: Sexism plagues major chemistry conference: Boycott emerges amid growing outrage
#10Salon articles are always to be taken with a grain of salt.
Once again though, this appears to be an issue of equal representation. The classic dilemma is that if you have no speakers belonging to X group, you'll appear to be exclusive. Yet if you hire a few speakers of X group just for the sake of having them, then that becomes tokenism and is hardly beneficial in the long term.
Treating the symptoms is only a band-aid. The condition will exacerbate, unless the root cause (which is a sociological one, in many cases) is examined and treated. One must also evaluate whether it is worth doing so.