This is completely as known by anyone who has spent the slightest amount of time in academia in ANY field. - ThreadSky

mnitabach.bsky.social • 55 days ago

This is completely as known by anyone who has spent the slightest amount of time in academia in ANY field.

“Women are asked more questions during a seminar and the questions asked of women presenters are more likely to be patronizing or hostile. These effects are not due to women presenting in different fields, different seminar series, or different topics…”

www.nber.org/papers/w28494

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sciencenlucia.bsky.social•55 days ago

Yet if you point this out you are “being too sensitive” or over reacting.

sargoshoe.bsky.social•51 days ago

Soooo, I have no basis of comparison as I've only given seminars as a single gender. However, I received a lot of feedback after starting my job that I was too harsh/direct in my style of asking questions during seminars. (1/n)

sargoshoe.bsky.social•51 days ago

Also, a other women faculty in my postdoc program were ALSO accused of being too harsh/direct when asking questions. Students would complain and get so frustrated. I never linked the two of these together. (2/n)

sargoshoe.bsky.social•51 days ago

I assumed I was too 'east coast' for my west coast job (I actually left that job after 4 years), and the women faculty were just more direct than others. But now it seems these were related. Our question-asking style is primarily driven by how people ask us questions! (3/n).

sargoshoe.bsky.social•51 days ago

TL;DR: Women trainees are asked questions in a different style, and are therefore trained that the 'style of academic questions' is patronizing/hostile/etc. Add on a layer of bias against women who are seen as 'too direct' and it's a losing battle. (4/n)

sargoshoe.bsky.social•51 days ago

In other news, let's try to be kind and less patronizing to all of our colleagues. Let's not make the mistakes of previous generations. (5/5)

mnitabach.bsky.social•55 days ago

It reminds me of an incident about ten years ago when I attended the "job talk" of a woman scientist being considered for a very high-level hybrid PI-administrator role at a well-known research institute.

mnitabach.bsky.social•55 days ago

In the middle of her talk, a relatively prominent senior male scientist in the field (well known to be an egregiously pompous & verbally abusive dick) began to pepper her with insulting questions regarding interpretations of her work.

mnitabach.bsky.social•55 days ago

He simply refused to stop & even began pacing the room begging the audience to agree with him that the work being presented was fatally flawed.

mnitabach.bsky.social•55 days ago

I and a few others spoke up in favor of the solidity of the work, and ultimately she did in fact get the job.

mnitabach.bsky.social•55 days ago

The rumor was that, surprisingly, the research institute actually took some action against this male scientist, drastically limiting his participation in the activities of the institute (altho never publicly rebuking him).

mnitabach.bsky.social•55 days ago

Anyway, shit like this happens every fucking day in academia & starting as grad students, highly aggressive males are praised by senior scholars for their attacks on other academics in seminars & elsewhere as being "rigorous" and "brilliant".

lindley.bsky.social•55 days ago

Also any woman who's ever worked outside the home

poetheghost.bsky.social•55 days ago

I was in an English lit class where this one guy wanted to argue with the professor for 15+ minutes and scoffed at the notion he could make his argument in office hours because other students wanted to learn. He did not behave that way in classes with male professors.

mnitabach.bsky.social•54 days ago

Yup typical

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