At the first show in September 2016, I bumped into a friend. She looked around, gestured at the stands and stalls, before saying: 鈥淭his is still really for the boys, 颈蝉苍鈥檛 it?鈥�
I was gutted. The show was full of young girls and women, all having a wonderful time. Yet behind the scenes she was right: just look at the low figures of girls and women studying and working in all STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects, the pay gaps, the public appeals for improvement 鈥� .
Brilliant fireworks
The trouble is that in any year there are positives, lighting up the sky like brilliant fireworks, but with the same degree of evanescence.
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Take Testosterone Rex, by psychologist and writer Cordelia Fine. She added to work demolishing claims about important differences in male and female brains, thinking and behaviour and won the last year for her efforts. Her book should be essential reading, especially for educators charged with the difficult task of ensuring future generations of children are exposed to solid evidence about sex differences rather than the evidentially challenged beliefs that create gender stereotypes.
Then there was . A professor of ethics and culture of robots and AI at De Montfort University, UK, she has taken the high ground in the high-octane fight over sex robots.
Her argues that they should be banned because they will only reinforce gender inequality by further objectifying women and children. Stuff the tired old trope about sex robots helping lonely or disabled people, or offering therapy for paedophiles; sex robots fit far more easily into the pre-existing hardcore sex industry.
She and Fine were both headline speakers at the feminist conference in October. This is an excellent forum and one of many struggling to use intellectual leverage against the economic forces of sexism.
Talking of which, here鈥檚 a new, dark thread that had been emerging for some time, but only hit the streets last year: the algorithms running our world turn out to be as sexist as the people writing them. Who鈥檇 have thought it!
#MeToo for science
Towards the end of 2017, the #MeToo campaign appeared, seemingly from nowhere. This threw a spotlight on the sexism and sexual assaults rife in the film industry. Desperate stories emerged, careers were ruined and the campaign grew and grew.
That got me wondering. From what I鈥檝e heard (and it鈥檚 almost always, and to my immense frustration, been 鈥渙ff the record鈥�) I think science鈥檚 #MeToo movement is just around the corner.
First off, let鈥檚 drive a silver stake through any lingering notion that science is separate from society, value free and objective. It is vanishingly unlikely 鈥� indeed, it is absurd 鈥� to suppose that scientific聽institutions are immune from the ills of society in general. That being so, the fact there 颈蝉苍鈥檛 already a #MeToo movement among scientists feels like a bad sign.
If we are serious about girls taking up all STEM subjects and building successful careers in equal numbers as boys, we need to know in forensic detail just how bad lab culture can still be for women. And we鈥檒l need more online platforms like the , where girls and women document the challenges they face every day at school and at work, ranging from obviously sexist comments to having their research described as 鈥渃ute鈥�.
Big-name female scientists must speak out openly rather than among themselves. In her book , Angela Saini describes how primatologist had her research treated differently from that of her male colleagues, with some refusing to acknowledge her work, let alone incorporate its results. And at least one influential scientist said she should concentrate on being a mother rather than on her own work.
Apologies to Beatrix Potter
Of course, this treatment is hardly new. In 1997, the , the oldest biological society in the world, for its sexism in the handling of her research on fungi reproduction, submitted to them a century earlier.
For a long time, women have campaigned for science, as a sector, to better reflect and remain open to societal change but, frankly, it may take a #MeToo moment for it to gain any traction.
But here鈥檚 the good news. The result would be a more honest, representative science, one that鈥檚 better placed to think about a host of complex, tricky issues 鈥� and to contemplate what the left-field areas of study, such as the kind of essays you find in a book like , have to offer the mainstream.
Holding on to the gains
Many extraordinary female scientists, doctors and engineers tasted independence during the first world war. In her imminent book (a borrow from Virginia Woolf鈥檚 essay 鈥淎 room of one鈥檚 own鈥�) , a lecturer in history of science at the University of Cambridge, reveals how suffragists such as chemist Martha Whiteley, mental health pioneer Isabel Emslie Hutton and botanist Helen Gwynne-Vaughan carried out vital research and mobilised other women to enter the male worlds of medicine and science.
The end of the first world war pulled the plug on their liberation as men returned to their traditional roles in science and other disciplines.
Can we really stand another 100 years of all these gains and reverses? I know that I don鈥檛 want my friend to be able to make a similar comment at 快猫短视频 Live 2020 鈥� and still have the figures to back her statement up.
