Genetics Symposium and Women in Science

<---- Wonderful photoshop job by Jess P. for the fliers! Yay Pipet-Man!! This weekend (yesterday actually) was the annual genetics symposium-- and this year it was here in Hershey. I do have to say we did a WAY WAY WAY better job than they do in state college organizing it (for example... we had enough food for everyone, and actually picked up the speakers from the airport/train station on time). A few of the gals in my class and a few in the year before me got together and decided at last years fiasco that we should not let that happen here, so we did. As a side effect of the committee being (almost) entirely female, we decided to invite two prominent women as speakers (we'd never had a women in the 20 speakers previous years had invited) and while I was not as gung ho on the "it has to be a girl thing" as some people-- there were some other folks I would have preferred to have speak.... it did provided us the opportunity to have a side session about the state of women in science. We were lucky in that two members of the national academy of science- Dr. Susan Wessler and Dr. Nancy Hopkins accepted as Keynote speakers for the symposium-- and agreed to share their inputs on being a successful woman in science. So along comes the seminar on Friday afternoon, the majority of the female grad students in the building are there and there was only one man in the room-- that part was kinda funny. So the women start off on their spiels (sp?)-- Nancy Hopkins was a driving force behind a revolution and MIT about the position of women within that university that was then taken on a nationwide level. If you are interested, here is a brief article by her about the status of women in science. She gave a speech on the facts and figures of women making it through their PhDs by year through this century and then on how many made it to be full tenured professors. It was informative and data heavy... I thought she did a very good job with that part.
Dr. Wessler went second-- she got her first professor job at 29 at the University of Georgia and has been there ever since... she has received many accolades for both her teaching and research efforts and offered us her "advice" and lessons learned over the last 25 years on how to be a successful woman scientist and a mom.

A few of her points paraphrased as they struck me--

"don't have kids til you have your job" To me this would mean waiting til I was 35ish when at best I could even hope to have a "professor" style job-- I know reproductive assistance has come a long way-- but that strikes me as a risky gamble. And to me it suggested that science was a higher priority for her than her family.

"don't expect to be the "earth momma" type" She tried nursing, but then a conference came up and she left the kid.... end of nursing. The kids were also in day care full time from the beginning-- and she thought that was the ideal solution. This seemed kind of a iffy decision to me, I'm going on the theory for now that any kids we have should be a high priority-- not something that should be put aside when not convenient.

"don't bother being a "soccer mom"" You're not going to be able to take your kids to piano and ballet and soccer practice. It's not worth it. For me I wondered what part of her kids growing up was important enough then.

With all these things... From what she showed in pictures and described she has raised 2 lovely adolescent daughters who are intelligent and really good kids, so it has obviously worked for her and she has made the time to take long exotic vacations with them every year... but for me I don't know if trading every day life and family events for 2 weeks on safari would be worth it.

I really was not a fan of her talk-- though I do understand that her opinions are absolutely valid... I was more put off by the fact that she belittled women who make the choice to take "lower" positions to compromise family and work. I think thats the problem with the feminist movement-- they are purportedly all for women being able to make their own choices... but only really want women to make the choices they themselves have made. If I choose to be a teacher instead of run a research lab, and I am happy with my choice and can help educate the future-- why is that a less valuable option??? particularly if by doing so I am able to more fully participate in the raising of any children we may be so lucky to have.

The goal of those talks was to give us female grad students some tips and ideas on how to face a "male dominated" field (not sure I agree that it is--- 75% of the grad students here are women!) and how to balance family life with a career. We had one speaker who was divorced at 30 when she was starting her career and is now as she approaches retirement engaged again (and seemingly very happy about it) and the other who was married with a children but who has now been divorced. I would love to see women who have actually balanced a career and a family happily --- I'm not sure you can really have it ALL. I think you may have to decide which parts of ALL matter most to you and then do your best with them. I think if you can be happy with what you have and what you have done and do then you have it all... not by trying to juggle 10 balls and always worrying which one is going to drop first. The talks were a somewhat sad revelation for me... in that even women will judge other women for being family oriented and it was one more nail in the coffin of my even wanting to have a research lab of my own.

Dinner with the speakers (lucky me being on the planning committee) was painful... these women were so far left of me that by comparison Craig should be keeping me in a burkha.... it was BAD. At one point it was suggested that Bush alone was responsible for global warming. And that was among the more mild of their statements from my point of view. It was a very long dinner... during which I shoveled food in or bit my tongue to prevent myself from screaming so much of the time. I had to be the polite host... and I think yelling at the table would have undone that. ugh. it was not a fun dinner (plus my chicken saltimbuca was not very tender.... )

Their science talks were fine, and I again displayed the poster I had taken to colorado... and it was well receieved. I got some suggestions that I should get it published already-- now I have to keep convincing my boss that it is time too! I ended up skipping out on the reception that I helped plan (and some darn good food!) to go do something far more exciting--- but that is another post and waiting on photos...