Margaret C. Hardy reports that the life sciences have recently come under fire with a study that investigated the level of sexual harassment and sexual assault of trainees in academic fieldwork environments and found that 71% of women and 41% of men respondents experienced sexual harassment, while 26% of women and 6% of men reported experiencing sexual assault. The research team also found that within the hierarchy of academic field sites surveyed, the majority of incidents were perpetrated by peers and supervisors. "More often it is the men of one’s own field team, one’s co-workers, who violate their female colleagues," writes A. Hope Jahren:
There is a fundamental and culturally learned power imbalance between men and women, and it follows us into the workplace. The violence born of this imbalance follows us also. We would like to believe that it stops short of following us into the laboratory and into the field — but it does not. I listen to my colleagues talk endlessly about recruiting more women into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines, and postulate what the barriers might be. Sexual assault is a pernicious and formidable barrier to women in science, partly because we have consistently gifted to it our silence. I have given it 18 years of my silence and I will not give it one day more.
Many of us work in fields related to this study - what are your experiences?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2014, @05:40AM
Troll huh?
Not only is it the straight up truth without any spin or distortion, it isn't intended to provoke anyone.
If you think pointing out the gender imbalance on SN is trolling then you are part of the reason there is an imbalance.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Monday September 22 2014, @06:45AM
May be because it is an unwarranted assumption? What makes you think there are no women here?
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Monday September 22 2014, @01:01PM
The aim is to get women to self-identify in response. In the most common form of the troll, they are then posed the dilemma "tits or gtfo" although there are many other possibilities.
But excitable white-knight types attempting to argue the point are bonus points as well.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2014, @01:51PM
As I wrote both the original and the complaint about moderation, I'm pretty sure the point was not what you described.
Fix your damn font, it is antisocial.