I’m in the midst of preparing to film the next scene for “Noether’s Women” (very tangentially based on the brilliantly brilliant Emmy Noether and her influence on math and physics in the 20th and 21st centuries) and, just this morning, re-discovered Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian mathematician who, just a few years ago, became the first women to ever win the Fields Medal – the "Nobel Prize" in mathematics. The first! A total of 54 men and only one women in over 80 years of the award!
Perusing Mother Jones, I came across this headline: “64 Percent of Women Scientists Say They've Been Sexually Harassed Doing Fieldwork.” [This was supported by valid sources across the board.] This "news" has been circulating over the past year or so with reports from across ALL the STEM fields; but, as unconscious as I can sometimes be, I never expected scientists, in such great numbers, to be such complete, festering scumbags. Turns out, STEM fields are among the most hostile to women… almost next to the level of sexual harassment women experience in the restaurant industry (up to 90%). So, while considering the role education plays in building more humanistic behaviors, I discovered that the so called “educated” are as poorly behaved as the grossly ill-informed.
To compare, 33% of women between the ages of 18 and 34 have been sexually harassed at work (all jobs and fields); but in public, more than 65% of women have experienced street harassment. In other words, it’s as unsafe for a woman to walk to the subway as it is for a woman to do "field research."
Where will these numbers be when my daughter, a strong STEM candidate, enters the workforce? For Chrissake, she was being harassed while walking to and from school when she was only 12!
The rabbit hole of percentages is staggering,... but, alas, not surprising. From mother, to spouse, to daughter -- their stories are 100% proof that it's an ugly scene out there (and on here).
Dinner conversation tonight.
Perusing Mother Jones, I came across this headline: “64 Percent of Women Scientists Say They've Been Sexually Harassed Doing Fieldwork.” [This was supported by valid sources across the board.] This "news" has been circulating over the past year or so with reports from across ALL the STEM fields; but, as unconscious as I can sometimes be, I never expected scientists, in such great numbers, to be such complete, festering scumbags. Turns out, STEM fields are among the most hostile to women… almost next to the level of sexual harassment women experience in the restaurant industry (up to 90%). So, while considering the role education plays in building more humanistic behaviors, I discovered that the so called “educated” are as poorly behaved as the grossly ill-informed.
To compare, 33% of women between the ages of 18 and 34 have been sexually harassed at work (all jobs and fields); but in public, more than 65% of women have experienced street harassment. In other words, it’s as unsafe for a woman to walk to the subway as it is for a woman to do "field research."
Where will these numbers be when my daughter, a strong STEM candidate, enters the workforce? For Chrissake, she was being harassed while walking to and from school when she was only 12!
The rabbit hole of percentages is staggering,... but, alas, not surprising. From mother, to spouse, to daughter -- their stories are 100% proof that it's an ugly scene out there (and on here).
Dinner conversation tonight.
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