this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

One observation I made is that when women get to comprise a significant part of workforce in science, those things seem to be flattened out.

Working in the place and field (Russia, food technology) where women are about 50% of the workforce, I've never witnessed anything talked about here. Women are taken just as seriously on the position, they are promoted on par with men, they are in charge of many high-profile projects, and actively taking male and female students under scientific supervision. Any sort of workplace harassment will not just contribute to your potential termination, but will earn you very bad reputation - you'll be seen as a dangerous weirdo no one wants to deal with.

One other observation I made is that international scientists often come from the position of entitlement, which is also weird to me. Male scientists tend to flaunt their position any time they can, and many of the female scientists tend to sort of mimic this behavior, but it feels different, like if they try to claw the attention they were consistently denied.

For me, it is weird and unnatural. Where I live and work, some baseline respect towards your more experienced superiors, male or female, is to be expected, is taught since school, and doesn't require such performances. Since most school teachers are female, the role of woman as a potential superior to be respected is clearly defined and doesn't cause questions. Students are not afraid to contact their superiors, but do it respectfully and with full understanding they take valuable time of a high-profile scientist. Why do people have to constantly fight for attention and respect in many other cultures is beyond me.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (9 children)

Is this unique to women? Do men experience anything similar in women-dominated fields? I'm not actually sure what these may be; teaching, childcare, hair stylists? I realise this may make me sound misogynist, but I'm really clueless.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago

Men in fem dominated fields get the glass escalator to promotion.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Escalator

Propublica has some useful peices, but it might take an ebsco search or three to pry loose that dangerous and embarassing level of ignorance about what living is like.

Watching sociology videos can be a bit of a grind, but tastes better than foot-in-the-mouth.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 1 day ago (16 children)

As a man, it is insane to me that this is real.

I have a difficult time imagining malicious intent towards women by all these people. But given how common these stories are, there is something true about it. I just don't understand why.

Is it really an unconscious cultural thing? Or am I naive about how my fellow men (I guess maybe women too) feel towards women?

Something in me refuses to believe that these people knowingly and intentionally harm women. But it sure as hell looks intentional.

I am not defending them. I am expressing my struggle with the reality of this shit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I've heard in my university that a lab manger/ head was trying to always get with the female students, and would ignore male ones, or would not allow male to volunteer in his labs. It's very close to bordering SH. Most other labs with male PIs don't really care about either gender

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

You're simply not paying attention, because you don't have to. Not to be harsh. I went from male to female and how I'm treated is night and day. You've never tried to see how the other side lives, and when you heard stories that went against your experiences you dismissed them like your mind is trying to do right now.

Why does it happen? Nurture. History. Patriarchy. I could blame a lot of things. It's mostly that men never get treated the way they treat women.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Selection bias, the people who don't discriminate aren't causing harm so you don't notice them but since they don't speak up they aren't helping either, so the jerks are still setting the tone. The solution is to not just do the right thing but actively call people out the jerks.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

I think you're naive but in fairness, it is shocking and hard to believe.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 day ago

Not in stem but the same thing happened to me. I used to be able to speak to a room and be heard. Now I need to raise my voice, sound a little whiney or bitchy or nobody hears me. Only my closest friend still asks me for advice or to share my knowledge. Used to happen all the time.

At least I pass. I got that going for me.

[–] [email protected] 95 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Yuuup. Woman in engineering here. I once had a supervisor whose behaviour I thought of as normal, but two guys I worked with separately reported him to HR for bullying after seeing how he treated me.

It's funny, I had many years with almost no career progression, now my boss is a woman and I'm having to get used to the idea that bonuses and promotions are things that actually happen when I work hard.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 day ago (3 children)

My wife was marked down on her PhD because she "wasn't nice enough" to her supervisor. All the assessors gave her top marks, but her supervisor vetoed them.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Glad to hear you at least had some decent colleagues!

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Stem is still heavily dominated by Men, biology might be different as more woman are in bio than men are, and becoming more common in other stems. engineer and programming sitll gear towards men.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I was actually joining the chat to write that things are not that different in biology. I have a PhD and 7 years of postdocs behind me. Over the years I have :

  • been denied a management position because "the team was only men, who wouldn't listen to me" (spoiler alert, they put an incompetent guy in charge who screwed up massively and I ended up taking over, successfully).
  • had a boss who systematically doubted my opinion (while he was not a specialist of the topic) but listened to the very same argument from a male colleague
  • had male Masters students who could speak uninterrupted during meetings when I couldn't
  • got denied a tenure position for a guy with the same profile (literally the same topic and same labs) but much less experience than mine (like 5 years younger) This last one broke me, I ended up quitting academia
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

When I was a freshman before transition, I had a guy save my number and call me like 2 years after we had an intro engineering class (we spoke maybe once?) to ask me out on a date.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I had that with a contractor who had had my number for work purposes. He kept trying for 5 years.

I'm a butch lesbian, my mistake was being polite and chatty with him.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

My sister has a similar issue with a former classmate but for some reason she refuses to block/mark him as spam. it's been years now and he's persistent

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Is that ... a bad thing? I am missing something, did he take the number from somewhere or you gave it to him? But otherwise calling someone and asking out is a pretty harmless thing to do.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Not when it was a number used once to arrange a group project meeting and that we had not connected otherwise? Two years later - I had dropped out?

One thing I noticed as in my progress through as STEM major was the decline in number of female classmates. Calc 3 might have a reasonable number, but the drop off was exponential. The college run that got me through was done as a man, so I didn’t experience the stuff but I heard rumors. Worse than rumors from post docs in the lab I worked in.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yep, if the number was not given specifically to connect that is what makes it inappropriate for me. But overall, an invite to a date besides being old fashioned is not necessarily creepy, even after long time. Of course, I don't know if there were additional clues that made the whole thing creepy (tone of voice, phrasing etc.).

I studied computer engineering in Italy, and I can relate with the number of women being very low. I think there were maybe <10 women in the whole class on a ~60 people total after the first semester (starting with 250 people). Most of them were top of the class, which to me always suggested that while many men signed up and then "see how it goes", only women who knew exactly what they wanted signed up.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (13 children)

It's how women have to be excellent to make a male dominated thing a part of their life. It starts long before uni so you're seeing it after other women have been knocked down and out of it.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 day ago (1 children)

here's a related video from Angela Collier, if you want to read more about how women are treated in STEM

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

I discovered her channel a few months ago and binged almost all of it. She’s great!

[–] [email protected] 208 points 1 day ago (4 children)

The experiences trans men and women have with misogyny will never not be fascinating to me. Like, for the first time ever we have this huge sample size of people who have experienced how their gender presentation affects how people interact with them, giving tangible proof of misogyny in action. And it can't just be swept aside with 'MaYbE tHe wOmEn JuSt miSuNDerStOoD' or 'mAYbe tHe mAN diDN't MeAn iT LiKE tHaT'. I mean idiots will still make idiot arguments but at least it chips away at them a little bit.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm female presenting. I've known people who thought I was a cis woman for months, and I don't keep being nonbinary or trans a secret.

When I read actual cis women's accounts of misogyny, and also trans women's accounts, I can't relate. I don't get shut down the same way. Somehow, despite others perceiving me as female, I kept the tiny part of gender presentation that tells people to sit down and shut up when I'm talking as if I were a man. I don't understand what it is, but I still have it the same as before I transitioned.

I would love to know what it is so I can share it, but I can't tell why people respect me as much as they would respect a man. It's bewildering.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 day ago

You could be lucky too or maybe you don't notice the microaggressions.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

Confidence goes a long way, but maybe that is simplifying the experience too much.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Religon is probably what initially does this to people's brains

Indoctrinating children into religious systems of arbitrary hierarchy gives little boys god complexes and makes little girls into property.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Depends on where you are from, but the sort of thinking that gets people into religion gets people into misogyny even without religion in my experience.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

Misogyny is a religion. Religion isn't just myths and worship, it's also social orders and value systems.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago

Oh my goodness yes! Not to mention the whole if you don’t dress “modestly” it’s your fault if you get unwanted attention thing. It’s a grooming ground.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I told one of my friends that I'm being looked at differently in crowds now, and he just said "no you're imagining it".

Many people just do not believe what trans people tell them. At all.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Women aren't believed, are you a trans woman? If so it could be either that you're a woman or that you're trans.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

(I hope not to misgender either but) bro, she knows. No need to mansplain it, read it again:

Many people just do not believe what trans people tell them. At all.

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[–] [email protected] 93 points 1 day ago

Hello it's me a trans woman. I knew before transition about some of it but never really understood. When I was masc I didn't realize how much of it was basically hidden in plain sight because of how I learned to socialize. After transitioning though omg it's everywhere. I'm in Seattle right now where I don't have to try too hard to pass and still get treated at least base line okay. Even then I still use my masc voice more than my femme voice because people take me more seriously when I do. Like there's a cultural acceptance of trans people here but if I behave more masc I get the privilege of being "one of the boys" even if I'm visually in full femme mode. It's all so weird

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