NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/soc/feminism/3040

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-27 | 4.0 KB

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From: anonymous
Subject: Women's Networking-- various disciplines outside mathematics
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Date: 28 Dec 92 00:46:57 GMT


Lenore Levine, who seems to be a mathematics type, wrote at length
about the subject of "women supporting other women in academics"...
This is a ticklish topic, and I should first qualify my statements
by saying that they are my humble opinions.

I am not particularly acquainted with the power and emotional aspects
of the mathematician's world; for most lab scientists, the
relationship between advisors/lab directors/group leaders and an
underling, be s/he graduate student, undergraduate or Ph.D. is almost,
in my experience, overwhelmingly directed towards power.  The wrong
judgment about a prospective advisor can cause grievous harm.

At the place that I graduated from, there was stories going about the
dorms and at least two departments of how (male) professors "screwed"
advisees, both in the physical and metaphorical sense.  I myself chose
to follow someone who is less than emotionally mature (the consensus
of our group and of the rest of the department being "B. is about
mental age five.") or nice in the general sense because of the
technical and academic excellence (my advisor did acquire tenure
relatively young-- while I was a grad student) which I valued more.
It did lead to a substantial delay in my graduation (no S.H.
overtones, I should hasten to add... just general nastiness) because I
had grown to be too indispensable around the lab.

In what I can see I do not perceive female faculty as particularly
supportive of other female students-- the only female "senior" faculty
member, while an accomplished expert in her field, was very harsh
toward her students who were exclusively male at the time (I decided
against her group on her personality) and indeed was known as "the
(wicked) Witch of the East".... there was in fact a different
nickname, one that _rhymes_.  My acquaintances from other disciplines
of lab science/engineering work had similar experiences.

My conjecture is that the women in at least moderately prestigious
academic locations often labor under the pressure of (male) peers
considering them to be either freaks or (worse) "Affirmative Action
quotas" and strive very hard to prove their merit, which is usually
considerable (with no offense intended toward men here)-- but that is
even less likely to cause them to become popular, and the vicious
cycle continues.  Among other things, they are also worried that any
perceived favoratism toward female students will add to the pressure--
hence, they often bend backwards _not_ to favor women.

I would imagine that in mathematics, where there is less of a group
factor, mentor-protegee relations are even more important and
sometimes overwhelming.  To be brief, I see no reason why women should
not preferentially back other women so long as the latter are
qualified... the existing discrimination insures that given "equal"
qualifications a woman is likely to be intrinsically better than a man
so there must be some gap, for differences less than which in current
performance one would be ethically warranted (even compelled) to back
the female candidate [I am not a mathematician--- I am sure that this
can be better put in Analysis language], not to mention the fact that
women will be discriminated against by a good proportion of men....
[Certain notorious "Prof. Paws"'s goes unpunished at my school, and
many women had to babysit etc. for their advisors that _I_ know of.
It is probably not the norm, but a "substantial minority".]


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