When I am doing jigsaw puzzles, I’m using half my brain–the analytical half. The other half sends me into social thinking. I think of friends, social issues, social problems. For some reason, today my brain led me to remember graduate school. Specifically, the bad social parts of grad school. For anyone who thinks women & science is a dead issue, I offer my experience.

I walk into orientation for physics grad school and am faced with 25 fellow students. All male. The orientation teachers later told me they were doing everything they could to not scare me off.

First semester sucks. From A student to C student in one semester. I have a study group, but they’re not great. I discover I don’t really like advanced physics. But I’ve wanted to be a college physics professor since high school, and this is the path to that. I stick it out, but struggle, emotionally and in my classes.

I learn from more senior female grad students who NOT to work with. Professor X will steal the credit for your work; Professor Y is straight out sexist.

I encounter the second year grad students. The ones who earned their class the name “The Class From Hell”. They had a poster up in the TA office the previous year with a running total of how many female students came to see each TA. These amazing specimens move from dirty looks or come-on looks to comments: “You wear that just to show off your legs, don’t you?” “Not many skirts around this place.”

The thought that I would dress to show off my legs is so funny it takes my breath away. I’m in grad school, struggling and trying to stay sane, and I’m going to wake up and say “I think I’ll wear those tights that make my legs look good. Maybe that asshole second year will notice.” I didn’t even brush my hair every day. I washed it, braided it, and only rebraided after it got too messy by the third or fourth day. I had custom wrist braces which limited my hand mobility. (Keys on a carabiner clipped to my belt loop, since I couldn’t stick my hand in my pocket.) Obviously my only purpose for being there was to tempt him.

One skank doesn’t let my wedding ring deter him. He doesn’t take my hints. Even after outright refusals, he still hangs around. When he said “I don’t know how your office mate gets any work done. I’d be too distracted looking at you,” I shook with anger and fear. My office mate, a good friend and a sensitive new age guy, helped me cope with it.

Even well-meaning or honest remarks can make for an unwelcoming environment. I like long skirts, the kind where you have to hold them when you go upstairs, or you trip. As I was climbing the staircase one day, one of the profs I didn’t see much stopped and watched me. He commented that it wasn’t something you saw much of anymore. Yup. I was the only one in the whole building who wore skirts who wasn’t a secretary. He didn’t mean anything negative by his comment. But it sent a message all the same.

For a few years we had a female lab manager. She got the crap too. She would set up Monday’s labs on Friday or Saturday. Occasionally, when Monday class came around, there would be key pieces of equipment missing from the lab rooms. It got so bad that a few of the good folks in the department slept in the labs one night. Didn’t catch anyone.

Those who were supportive of the women in the department got together. A small group. Talked, discussed. Couldn’t do too much, though. But a lifeline, a support group. Managed to bring sexual harassment training to the department. It didn’t make a noticeable difference, but gave me a great piece of advice. When someone makes an inappropriate comment, you ask “what does that mean?” If the comment is legit, they won’t mind explaining it. If it isn’t legit, you’ve just brought everyone’s attention to it.

The department has changed a lot since I was there. More female grad students. Less overt discrimination and harassment. I don’t know how much covert crap is going on. Harder to find out. But the stuff I encountered did its job: I did not get a physics PhD. It wasn’t the primary reason, or even the secondary reason. But it was a part of why I left with a masters.

It got a little bit better after I switched programs. My office and my job were still in the physics building, though. I became sort of invisible. She failed, she is no longer worthy of my notice. The feeling that education was a lesser field was palpable. There were a handful of physics professors who encouraged me and worked with me. Two of them served on my dissertation committee. At least being invisible meant I got less crap. But it bugs me that in a way, they won.

P.S. I found out years later that my first year adviser once reached into his pants and “adjusted” himself in the middle of a class. A class with one female student in it. No one noticed but her.

Minnesota Legislature: It’s over — No deal

In an act of defiance in the final hour, DFLers passed a revised tax bill that faces a certain veto. Gov. Tim Pawlenty stayed firm in his decision to make $1.2 billion in budget cuts all by himself.

Star Tribune

Sheila Bair, Brooksley Born: JFK Award Recipients For Predicting Crisis

Two U.S. federal regulators who sounded early warnings on the financial crisis and a Liberian peace activist who helped end that nation’s civil war were honored for their efforts Monday at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairwoman Sheila Bair, former chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Brooksley Born, and peace activist Leymah Gbowee (LAY’-mah BOH’-wee) were presented with Profile in Courage Awards, annual honors named for a 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book written by John F. Kennedy.

Huffington Post

FBI infiltrated Iowa anti-war group before GOP convention

An FBI informant and an undercover Minnesota sheriff’s deputy spied on political activists in Iowa City last year before the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.

Confidential FBI documents obtained by The Des Moines Register show an FBI informant was planted among a group described as an “anarchist collective” that met regularly last year in Iowa City. One of the group’s goals was to organize street blockades to disrupt the Republican convention, held Sept. 1-4, 2008, where U.S. Sen. John McCain was nominated for president.

Des Moines Register

Supreme Court: Pregnancy discrimination A-OK!

Today our nation’s highest court ruled in AT&T v. Hulteen that women who took maternity leave and were discriminated against by AT&T are shit out of luck.

Before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed, when women took leave from their AT&T jobs to have a baby, those days did not count toward their pensions — even though other types of leave, such as temporary disability, were not removed from the pension equation. So when the women went to retire, they had lower pensions than other employees who had worked there the same number of years, even those who had taken leave for other reasons.

Feministing

US to Limit Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Autos

The Obama administration is expected to announce guidelines Tuesday that will toughen existing federal mileage standards. Automakers have signed off on the plan, sources say.

Truthout

Primer on unallotment: How it works and why it’s done

Instead of a flurry of negotiations between Gov. Tim Pawlenty and lawmakers, Session 2009 might end without a deal, what with the governor’s announcement last Thursday that there would be no special session and that he would use his powers of unallotment to balance the state’s budget.

“The governor thinks he’s a dictator,” Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, said at the Capitol Saturday. “He’s like George W. Bush. He’s ‘the decider.’ For him to abuse unallotment is unconscionable, especially for a guy who never got a majority of the vote.”

MinnPost

This was clearly a case of getting to know someone and beginning to think “This is a person who could potentially be a friend. Too bad she lives in Saint Paul.”¹ And as time goes by, the relationship becomes more comfortable. Then one day, you find yourself in a social rather than professional setting, and everyone’s had a little wine, and it’s time to go home, and suddenly there’s a goodbye hug as though there’s always been a goodbye hug. And you had never really previously wondered about the hug–if there was going to be one, if there should be one, if there should not be one. One minute there has not been one, the next minute there is one, and it is perfect.

Other first hugs are attended by a considerable degree of angst, or at least consideration. For example, I think of and compare my first hug with the following people: my mother-in-law (she’s a kisser-hugger), my sister-in-law (after our first hug, she said to me “Wow, you are an outstanding hugger. I don’t just say that about everybody!” which added significant additional angst to the prospect of the second hug) and my father-in-law and brother-in-law (right, like that’s ever going to happen).

I have a friend whom I’ve known for years and had never hugged, and this was such a totally huggable person, but we had known each other for so long without the hug ever happening that things had become uncomfortable. Such a delay is not healthy. Eventually we fixed that and now the hug is part of our normal greeting (we don’t see each other too often). This is an example of some anxiety attending the lead-up to the hug, but then it turns out that everything is just fine. Better than fine in fact.

Then there’s the first hug that probably shouldn’t have ever happened. The one that does not go so well. Did you ever reach into something…a sack, a refrigerator, a small muddy pond…expecting to grasp one thing (a can of tuna fish, the ketchup, a small fish) and ending up with something entirely different (a dead mouse, a wad of rotten lettuce, a wormy parasitic larva of some sort)? The hug that should never have happened can be like that.

A hug is a moment of closeness, of friendship or love. The persons engaged in the hug are taking a moment to hold each other, to let the other person hold them. It is an intimate and very, very warm moment. The hug that should not have been is different. The being held part is a looseness, a sinking into the other person’s arms a bit. That is replaced with a stiffness and resistance, a sort of rigor (as in mortis). The hold action on the other person’s part is transformed from a friendly and meaningful embrace to a clumsy stiff-armed awkwardness. If you were the one not expecting, not wanting, even trying to avoid the hug, it can be like getting jumped on by a big dog that should be better behaved but is not. If your hugee is the one not expecting, not ready for, not wanting the hug then it is like grasping the wet lettuce or the dead mouse, or like popping a bit of warm, salty, tasty popcorn in your mouth and crunching down on an unpopped kernel. Not so tasty after all.

Twice in the last couple of months I’ve had someone…a potential co-hugger…just come out and ask me whether I’m a hugger. That’s funny because I actually think of myself as a person who enjoys intimacy as part of friendship, and I am definitely a hugger. But this made me realize that I am actually somewhat choosy (and there is not a conflict between these two things). In fact, to one of these people, I said “No, not really, nope, that’s not really me,” and to the other person I said, “Of course I am. I’m a total hugger.”

Not surprisingly, hugging is a gendered activity. I have numerous female co-huggers and only a few male co-huggers. I probably have more male co-huggers than the average straight male (even after subtracting non-straight male co-huggers), but not many. There are two reasons that men don’t hug each other as often as women hug each other or as often as women and men hug, and they are both spelled with a “y.”

I have to tell you about one co-hugger of mine. This is a person I’ve only seen once in the last 20 years, but back in the day we were very close friends. I swear that if we were of opposite genders, we’d probably have gotten married. I’ll call my friend “K.” When we hugged, K–about half my body mass and skinny as rails–would take the wind out of me, literally. The first time that happened I actually let out an involuntary noise. After that I learned to expect the reverse Heimlich maneuver every time.

Hugging is political. Democrats hug each other way more often than Republicans. (Other than Michele Bachmann, who not merely hugs but…no, let’s not even talk about that, okay?) You could see this during the meet and greet following the the President’s addresses to the joint session of Congress. It used to be that hugging was ethnically determined as well. I grew up in an ethnically heterogeneous world in which hugging or non-hugging was one of the traits that distinguished different groups of people. But this effect has, I think, transformed over time as hugging has become a more standard part of our commonly held popular culture. There are age effects. Awkward teenagers may forgo hugging for a few years. Elder women are constantly hugging everybody. And so on. And all of these generalizations are only vague determinants of what actually happens, of course.

In fact, you never know when somebody is going to come at you with their arms spreading outwards and their chin tilting to one side to avoid crunching faces. And when they get their arms around you, you never know how long it is supposed to last. Or where exactly you are supposed to put your arms and hands. It can be hell.

My sister-in-law is right that I’m a good hugger. I have a secret. I do what K taught me, but much milder. The person has to know you are hugging them, and the hug should last a little longer than the usual perfunctory “hug” we see so often these days. And if you are short, I might kiss you on top of the head.

My brother-in-law and father-in-law are very tall. Lucky me.

1. This is always an issue in the Twin Cities. Mixed friendships are difficult. Someday, maybe, people from Saint Paul and Minneapolis can just learn to live together. But for now, well, lets just leave it as…things can be difficult.

Mexico troops move in to retake warring border city

Hundreds of heavily armed soldiers fanned out across Mexico’s bloodiest drug war city on Tuesday, trying to prevent a collapse in law and order just south of the U.S. border.

Sirens blared as the army staged one of its biggest troop build-ups in years in Ciudad Juarez, a desert city across the border from El Paso, Texas, where near-daily clashes between drug gangs and police have terrified residents.

Reuters

Homeless in Gaza

With nearly 3,000 families homeless, rented accommodation is scarce in Gaza – Mr Atamna’s pregnant wife and seven children are now staying with relatives, while he sleeps in a corrugated metal shack next to his ruined house.

The Israeli military says it destroyed buildings because of “substantial operational needs”, for example because of booby traps or militants in them, but Amnesty International says “wanton destruction” occurred, in violation of international law.

BBC News

Secretary-General’s remarks on International Women’s Day

One year ago, I launched a campaign calling on people and governments the world over to unite to end violence against women and girls.

We called it “Unite to End Violence against Women”. And unite we must.

United Nations

Women and Conflict

Women experience the brunt of the world’s poverty, with serious implications for their health and livelihoods. They also suffer disproportionately during crises – whether earthquakes, floods, wars or famines.

Reuters AlertNet

The shame of Iraq’s pariah widows

Her husband and three brothers were killed. Her parents were already dead. Her house was burnt down. She was pregnant at the time and lost the baby.

But, in the months that followed, Nadia Hussein had to endure much more.

BBC News

New Foundation to aid women with restraining orders

I just learned about the Tiana Angelique Notice Foundation, created to aid women with restraining orders and prevent domestic violence. The foundation is named for Tiana Angelique (and created by her family), a 25 year old graduate student in CT, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend on Feb. 14. It was the last time he violated her restraining order against him.

Feministing

Why Is Her Paycheck Smaller?

Nearly every occupation has the gap — the seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the size of the paycheck brought home by a woman and the larger one earned by a man doing the same job. Economists cite a few reasons: discrimination as well as personal choices within occupations are two major factors, and part of the gap can be attributed to men having more years of experience and logging more hours.

New York Times

Ex-UN prosecutor: Bush may be next up for International Criminal Court

An ex-UN prosecutor has said that following the issuance of an arrest warrant for the president of Sudan, former US President George W. Bush could — and should — be next on the International Criminal Court’s list.

The Raw Story

Schloz-Backed Voter Fraud Lawsuit Bites The Dust

Another nail in the coffin for those bogus GOP claims of voter fraud…

Remember how Todd Graves was fired as US Attorney for the western district of Missouri, after he wouldn’t go along with a Bradley Schlozman-backed effort to sue Democratic state officials for failing to purge ineligible voters from the rolls, alleging that this failure could open the door to rampant voter fraud? The Bushies then moved Schlozman himself into Graves’ position as US Attorney so that he could push the case personally.

TPM Muckraker

Campaign Against Obama Health Plan Run By Notorious Conservative PR Firm

A new group called Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR) is about to launch the opening salvo in the fight to sink President Obama’s health care plan.

CPR is running TV, radio, and web ads that attempt to stoke irrational fears of “a central national board” in charge of medical decision-making, asking Americans to envision a world where “bureaucrats decide the treatments you receive, the drugs you take, even the doctors you see.” Of course, that vision has nothing to do with the president’s health care plan, but the truth shouldn’t be an impediment to CPR’s dream of killing health care reform.

Talking Points Memo

Who Are The AIG Counterparties? Here Are Some…

Over at TPM, Josh has been doggedly highlighting the refusal of both AIG and the federal government to reveal the identity of AIG’s counter-parties in its disastrous credit default swaps. And several lawmakers have in recent days pressed Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke on the issue.

TPM Muckraker

The American Medical Writers Association is the leading professional organization for medical communicators, with over 5,500 members from around the world. The ratio of female to male members is 4449:1227 (approx. 4:1), mirroring the trend observed with the Google search.

In short, medical writing is a predominately female profession.

Some may argue that women are simply better writers than men and therefore better able to communicate complex medical and scientific ideas. But what about renowned male writers like Carl Zimmer and Gary Taubes?

It is possible that different gender trends exist in different subgroups within the medical/science writing community based on expertise (for example, science vs. medical vs. technical writers), target audience (writing for physicians vs. scientists vs. the public) or kind of degree held by the writer (PhD vs. MD).

Another argument is that many women pursue science/medical writing because they drop out or are pushed out of academia. It is no secret that most scientists in the upper echelons of academia are male, and much has been written about the female plight in academia.

Some women, like Pat Shipman, an adjunct professor of anthropology at Pennsylvania State University, have managed to remain in academia and have a successful science writing career. Other women have chosen one over the other.

Gunjan Sinha, an award-winning female medical writer based in Berlin, suggests that two main reasons why women scientists drop out of academia to pursue alternative careers (like medical writing) are:

1. They choose family over career; and
2. The proverbial glass ceiling—the institutional barriers that impede their advancement in academia.

I would be interested to know what others think are the reasons why more women choose to communicate about science and medicine (professionally) while more men seem to choose the practical aspects of science and medicine (professionally).

Karen Ventii, PhD is a medical writer based in Atlanta. She formerly blogged at Science to Life.

1. Inclusion criteria: individuals (not part of an agency) whose websites clearly define them as a “medical” writer.