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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: 4, Insightful) by velex on Monday September 22 2014, @04:26PM
Here's my experience. Granted, this is programming, not STEM in general.
1. Attempt to train somebody to perform basic programming tasks. They just don't get it. That person happens to be female. Now I'm a sexist.
2. Attempt to train somebody else to perform basic programming tasks. They just don't get it. That person happens to be female. Now I'm even more of a sexist.
3. Attempt to train somebody else to perform basic programming tasks. They just don't get it. That person happens to be female. Now I'm being told to my face that I'm a no-talent hack who only has my job because of my assigned gender.
4. Attempt to train somebody else to perform basic programming tasks. They just don't get it. That person happens to be male. Meh. It happens.
5. Attempt to train somebody else to perform basic programming tasks. They catch on. That person happens to be female. Oh, I guess I wasn't a sexist after all.
That's the trouble about being accused of sexism. You have to rely on the actions of others to disprove it. You also have to be careful of not becoming bitter when you've been on the receiving end of sexism many times (see my comments on the other site for an example of what not to do). And, furthermore, the accusation of sexism can be itself motivated by sexism. IOW, you'd better be damned sure the person you're accusing of sexism has actually committed an act of sexism.
It's like a comment I read about date rape a while back. Girl gets date raped. What was she advised not to do? Report it to the cops. So, the guy never gets reported, goes on to date rape a hundred others, and instead we wind up with a "rape culture" where we hold hundreds of assigned males collectively accountable for the actions of 1. In fact, the insane part about these rape cultures is that we force men to attend presentations about it and leave women in the dark.
It's almost like we have some sick cycle here where we'd rather hold men accountable as a whole instead of going after the individual, and we arrange things such that the individual who's the jackass criminal keeps doing what he's doing so we can continue to hold all men accountable for his actions.
So, ok. The question: is it effective? I suppose it's like XML and violence. If sexism isn't solving the problem of sexism, you're not using enough of it.
And remember, girls: we totally want more of you in STEM, but you're going to be sexually assaulted if you do go into STEM! Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me.
Ok, so we have these numbers even though other posters are questioning the methodology. Here's what I want. I want to know how often sexual harassment policies are enforced. Let's ask HR departments how many complaints they have. Are there repeat offenders? What remedy is enacted when sexual harassment is reported?
Talking about this is great. However, if things haven't changed in the past 30 years of talking about this issue, I'm going to hedge my bets that our current strategy is not working.