Do I suck at feminism?

You know how sometimes it takes so long to form an opinion that it’s almost not worth voicing it anymore? That’s what happened after I read this list of tips for male academics on how to deal with women on TenureSheWrote. My first opinion was:”If we (women) are telling men how to behave, isn’t that exactly what we don’t want to have happen to ourselves?”. Isn’t the idea of feminism that we (men and women) are all treated equally and that therefore neither men nor women should tell the other sex how to behave?

It is not that I don’t agree with the list; I’ve had many of those things happen to me and I think that sucks. But after seeing the amount of anger and annoyance when people commented on this exact issue, I didn’t really dare to voice that opinion until I had thought about it a bit more. Because the reactions on twitter and in the comments made me doubt:”do I suck at feminism?”. Am I too privileged with a grandmother who had a job and a grandfather who walked behind the stroller? Am I too privileged with two parents who have PhDs? Am I too privileged because my mom always treated my brother and me the same? Am I too privileged because all my life I had this knowledge instilled in me that I could become anything I wanted if I just worked hard enough for it? Even though I get comments on the way I’m dressed and the amount of children I produce or the fact that I look way too young to be where I am in my career, my first thought is:”You can say that, but I have every right to be here and be as awesome as whoever just gave me that comment.”

But this upbringing also makes me think that everybody thinks the same way. And that maybe even though a man may comment on my outfit, that does not make him think less of me in a scientific way. This is where I probably go wrong. Perhaps my idea that if we all work together we can create a happy society where nobody needs to tell the other sex how to behave is a bit too optimistic. Perhaps it is necessary to tell each other how to behave in order to create more equality. Not just in science, but for everybody who needs feminism.

On motivation in the lab

Without going into too much detail about the state that our lab is in due to the economy and sequestration, there is a great lack in motivation in some people in the lab. This is not new, as I have written about this before, but it does make me wonder what PIs do to motivate people in their lab. How do you make sure people stay enthusiastic about doing experiments and if they’re not, how do you try to help them? Personally, I find that it helps to associate with people that are working hard and are trying to be productive rather than to hang with the people that seem to have given up hope to get experiments done and papers written. But other than that, when I am in the position to mentor someone (like an undergrad, summer student or tech) I find it hard to find a balance between giving someone the freedom to schedule their experiments and plan their time for them for example. How do you go about motivating the people in your lab? Or do you feel that’s not necessary as people should come with enough intrinsic motivation?

When role models are super models

This week, Nature has a special section about women in science. Wait, aren’t we all just scientists? And is Nature going to have a special issue about left handed scientists next week and about Greek orthodox scientists the week after? Just kidding, I think it’s great that Nature explores how women are doing in science, in terms of salary, funding and getting tenure. Also, they have an article featuring four successful scientist, who are not only women but also have children. Awesome, you would think, to see role models that we can all look at for inspiration.

One of the women featured in this article is @kaymtye. She is an amazing kick-ass scientist who has her name on 6 (six!!) Nature papers, and now holds a position as assistant professor at MIT. Also, I learned in this article in Nature, she’s expecting her first baby. I don’t want to say anything bad about Kay, because she does great research and made an awesome career for herself (and is a break-dancer too apparently!), but what is Nature doing here?? Are they showing that sure, you can be a woman scientist and have a baby, but only after you had a decent amount of Nature papers and a TT position at a top institute? I like to look at role models around me, especially when they are female and have children, to see how they have done things, but this story makes me feel kind of incompetent and it makes me wonder whether I’ll ever get to be a kick-ass scientist without all those Nature papers before I had a baby. Am I just being jealous you might wonder? Yes, a little bit.

Spending your emotions wisely

Recently, it seemed like every conversation I had was about how hard it is to get grants and how little money there is for science. At SfN this year it was all I talked about. But the awesome conference that I’m at now is completely shifting that. It is great to be here in so many ways:

First, I get to sleep and relax. Last night I decided not to go out and drink, but to go back to my hotel room at 11 and sleep. I slept in a whole stretch to the next morning. That hadn’t happened in 2 years and it was great. Also, there is some time to relax and I just spend an hour and a half at the pool reading a book. Anyone who has a kid realizes that that too is something that only happens every 2 years or less. 

Also scientifically this meeting is great. There are many good speakers and sessions, but what this conference also makes me realize is that I am someone who works in a certain field and knows things. For example, I know who the people in my field are and what they do. I realize what the questions are that the field has at the moment and I’m starting to think of ways to answer those. But also, other people are starting to know who I am. Yesterday, the most awesome science-thing ever happened, where I was talking to someone I hadn’t met before and at some point this person realized that ze was familiar with my graduate work. But not only that, my graduate work had “inspired the work that ze was doing now” (hir words). OMG this still makes me so excited and happy!

This meeting is also really interesting because there are so many senior scientists who show genuine interest and share advice. Not only did I get assigned two mentors because I won a travel award but I have also been talking to numerous other senior scientists. Talking to them does sometimes make me wonder if I’ll be able to pull it off to be a rock-star scientist when I grow up. The morning I left for this meeting I kind of broke down under the pressure of writing a paper and a grant in the same month, and worrying about funding situations and about Dr. BrownEyes’ paper and grant and on top of that trying to clean the house and do laundry in the 2 hours I had before leaving for this conference after a pretty crappy night of sleep. I cried and said I couldn’t take it anymore. And then I heard all these stories about women whose kids got sick or who went through the trouble of adopting a child from a far-away country. Would I be able to take anymore load on top of this? I don’t even dare to think about what would happen when BlueEyes would get sick in times like these when it is so busy. 

And that brings me to the title of this post. Because at the women’s lunch at this meeting the speaker was talking about how you can only use your emotional capacity once in a day. There is only so much energy you can spend on emotions, that you’d better spend it wisely, she said. So her advice was to use your analytical scientific brain to determine whether something is word worrying about, and if not, stop worrying about it immediately. 

So I am going to walk in the sun and spend my emotional capacity on being happy about all this exciting science, instead of on worrying about funding rates of such and such percentage!! And did I mention how glad I am again to spend time with people I met on twitter?!

You could have given me that money for real science, EU!

The whole day the internet has been shaking with lots of outrage over the EU’s video to attract girls to doing science. To be honest, I don’t really mind that these are young girls that aren’t even doing science while being observed by a guy. I don’t mind that they’re wearing skirts and heels and I don’t mind that the background is pink. I look like that sometimes and if it even persuades one girl that science is fun and for girls too, then that’s fine. I don’t think it will though, and what pisses me off about it is that the EU probably spent a whole bunch of money on this.

 

And last year I applied for a grant that was funded by the EU. This grant (for post-docs going abroad) had a pretty stable success rate of about 20%. However, last year all of a sudden there was a lot of talk about that year being the last year that they would fund this grant because of money shortage. And since you can only apply once, twice the amount of people applied than normally. And even though I scored within the top 20% I didn’t get the grant because they only had a set amount of money.

So instead of wasting that money on that video that pisses everybody off, you could have given me that money, EU! And I would have done real science with it. You could even have come and filmed me, and for some extra money I would wear heels, a skirt and even lipstick.

Is it okay to have a relationship in the lab?

When I say relationship I’m not talking about your average mentor-mentee relationship here, but I’m talking about intimate-living together-type of relationships. Let me start by saying that I met Dr. BrownEyes in the lab where we both did our PhD work, so maybe you would think that I would answer this question with ‘YES’, but I don’t. Because at that same university there was more than one PI that had a relationship with his grad student and I surely think that that is not okay.

There are three types of relationships between people in the lab, with in my opinion various stages of acceptability.

First, let’s talk about two people at the same ‘level’ (so two grad students, two technicians or two post-docs) having a relationship. As I said before, I’ve been there, because Dr. BrownEyes and I started dating when we met in our PhD lab. I think this is okay, as long as it doesn’t bother other people. We made sure not to be annoyingly close in the lab, and we also made sure not to be talking about work too much when we were at home. Luckily, our graduate advisor worked on a whole bunch of different topics, so we had different daily advisors, and we made sure to both go our own way by moving on to post-doc positions in different labs and work on different topics. Even though I think it is okay to have a relationship with someone from the same ‘level’, I wouldn’t necessarily advice it to other people. In my current lab, a rotation student had a relationship with a grad student, and I actually advised him to go to a different lab, because I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to spend the next 4-5 years in the same lab as your significant other. (He didn’t follow that advice though, so now they are both working in our lab).

The second option is when a PI has a relationship with one of the people in his or her lab. This is what happened in my PhD University; the PI started dating his graduate student, and to make matters even worse, she stuck around and to this day still works in his lab as an associate professor (the system in Europe is different, and one full professor will head a lab with multiple assistant/associate professors). Yes, it is weird that this is even allowed and it happens more than once at that university. I think this is just wrong on many levels, because even if the PI will not favor his significant other, people will think that that happens, and that the significant other did not get her position because of merit.

The third option is when two PIs have a relationship and run both of their labs together or have one lab together. Even though Dr. BrownEyes and I like to talk about work every now and then, and ask each other’s opinions about ideas, papers and grants, I cannot imagine running a lab together on a daily basis (running a household together sometimes already stretches our ability to not become too annoyed by the other person). However, there are examples of people who successfully run a lab together, and during my Master’s I’ve worked in one of those labs. I think this is okay, although when 2 people that live together argue during labmeeting, it does make the rest of the lab feel like kids in the back seat when their parents are having an argument…

So what do you think: is it okay to have a relationship in the lab?