dinsdag 23 maart 2010

Why women can not get into key positions in science?

[  Time Crunch for Female Scientists: They Do More Housework Than Men. (The Chronicle for higher education/Jill Laster/ 19-01-2010) :

-When the biologist Carol W. Greider received a call from Stockholm last fall, telling her she had won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, she wasn't working in her lab at the Johns Hopkins University. The professor of molecular biology and genetics was at home, folding laundry- ]

After reading this article I remembered a letter I wrote to and for my daughter who was struggling to become a scientist. 
She made it, became Dr. In Neuroscience last September but the struggle continues, now that she is pregnant, the one year contract she got for investigation ( she was supposed to have a two year contract considering the money that was granted) wont give her the time to finish the project. 
So she is back to where she was. 
I’ll share the letter with you:

Why women can not get into key positions in science?

Well,  there are several reasons, most of them will be called 'feminist reasons' of course and will be disabled as 'real reasons' in no time by the desperate holders of those key positions. But I'll mention them anyway.

One of the most important reasons why women don't get to fill in the positions they should have, is that they are pure science. 
Their bodies can make new scientists and in order to be able to do so they were made much stronger than men, which of course is very scary.

You give them a seed and they can produce whatever is necessary to make this (men's)world go round. They can produce money-makers, soldiers, oil-magnates, weapon-producers and atom bombinventors. 

They create babies that are helpless and they make them into strong men, and of course, strong women.

They breastfeed future Nobel- price-winners.
And they produce female scientists who must make the world go round in an opposite direction, the typical female direction:
-Let's feed everybody and lets get into a think-tank about the way to do so. 
-Let's make medication to combat Aids and let's get it to Africa for free.
-Let's find solutions to stop the killing of mother earth, of poor people, of battered wives and abused children.
-Let's find a scientific way to make this world a better place.



These are some of the reasons why women are not to be chosen, by men, for key positions in science. If all of the solutions above would take place, how would weapon-producers survive? And the pharmaceutical money-makers. If everybody would be occupied with producing food , who would be a soldier? Who would be this great male president of whatever state, that goes on a trip to see how few people are fighting and how well they do without his help?

A female scientist in a key position would have twice as many possibilities to do something good with what she's got: a useful brain with two decently connected hemispheres and a womb to create new female and also male scientists.

That is probably enough for the male-key-position-holders-in-science to make sure women will never get where they themselves are.

But of course there are many more reasons why they don't want women ahead or next to them.
Menstruation is a very nasty thing for men to cope with, motherhood absence is disturbing their simple organisation and the fact that you have a woman working next to you and not being able to screw her is very frustrating.


I know that these reasons must come as a surprise to male scientists in key positions and even in a lesser one and that if they would free their minds of envy and frustration for only two minutes, they wouldn't even have to think, they simply could agree: 

Women and especially women-scientists are not holding key positions because the whole idea scares the shit out of men.




©Gavi Mensch
Jerez, 04-10-2007
Maastricht 22-3-2010 All rights reserved 2007-2016

Updates: 

2016: 

http://www.undispatch.com/today-is-the-day-the-un-celebrates-women-and-girls-in-science-heres-why-thats-so-important/

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/articles/2016-02-11/academia-must-correct-systemic-discrimination-and-bias-against-mothers

met als voetnoot de opmerking van een wetenschapper: 12-2-2016

Deze blog was van 2007, nu 9 jaar later is het alleen maar erger...ze hebben zelfs per januari 2016 de 4 maanden zwangerschaps-/bevallingsverlof verlenging AFGESCHAFT. Dus als je zwanger wordt tijdens je tijdelijke contract dan heb je ook nog eens 4 maanden minder de tijd om je project af te ronden. En dat terwijl 90% van deze kosten door het UWV aan de universiteit betaald wordt...you tell me !!!!



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3 opmerkingen:

Anoniem zei

because they are better than men, that scares them...

Mar64 zei

Top!

Gavi Mensch zei

Nu nog de verandering;-)

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