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A couple of weeks ago, Isis emailed asking if I would participate in the Letters To Our Daughters Project–which she has also described on her terrific blog:
It’s not a secret that the largest attrition among female scientists happens in the transition between trainee and faculty. I also think that, for better or worse, there are things that are unique to being a female scientist that affect the ability/willingness of women to pursue careers in science. I know from my time at ScienceBlogs that there is a large group of women who are eager for the perspectives of successful women scientists as they consider their own careers in science.
In short:
The inspiration for my Letters to Our Daughters Project comes from my hope that we can recreate our family tree here, creating a forum where the mothers and aunts in our fields (which I hope to not limit to physiology, but that’s where I’ll start because that’s who I know) can share their wisdom with us. I think there is a wealth of information among these successful women and I hope to use this forum to share it with young scientists who are yearning for that knowledge.
I have written to a number of successful and well-known female scientists and asked them to write letters to you, their scientific daughters…I have offered these women no guidance, except to say that they have an open forum to tell you whatever important thing they think you should know.
Of course, I agreed immediately! What a wonderful way to bring women in science together to share our experiences, ideas, and perspectives. Back when I was considering my own path, I had very few female mentors to turn to and my hope is that eventually, this collection of letters will serve as a resource–perhaps even an anthology–for young women coursing through academia and beyond. I often discuss the need to break the mold of what we’ve come to expect of a ‘female in science‘ and hope the initiative may advance us one step closer toward overcoming the chicken and egg problem. I’m tremendously pleased to be a part of it.
Isis has already shared excellent contributions from Pascale Lane and Barbara E. Goodman . It should come as no surprise that I will have plenty to say and am looking forward composing my letter shortly after returning to Durham later this month. I’ll cross-post it here so stay tuned…
In the mean time, I’m curious to hear from readers (women and men!): What would you include?
May 8th, 2009 at 8:46 am
One observation is that for any fields near mine, the project is overly focused on academia. You at least mention ‘and beyond’. But irrespective of gender, over 2/3rds of the doctoral graduates in fields near mine do not wind up working in academia. This is one thing I’ve mentioned to my daughter.
The notion of letter to my daughter is not figurative. I have an actual daughter in college who has decided to pursue science. Both my nieces are thinking of science careers, though they’ve got quite a few more years to go before hitting the leaky parts of the pipeline. I also mentor a woman who is a doctoral candidate in science.
On another hand, my own ‘genealogy’ shows women pursuing science degrees and careers. That includes the grandmother who earned a science PhD, the great-grandmother who started in mathematics but changed to music because of the hostility to women in math then, and the raft of Real Teachers. I have to capitalize that to distinguish from what most people think of in thinking of teachers these days. Scientists are passionate about learning about the universe (and then sharing what they find), Real Teachers are passionate about sharing knowledge (and learning more to share). The distance is small. That includes at least 5 consecutive generations and both my sisters, one of whom is a science teacher.
Professionally, my post-doc advisor was a woman. Maybe I’ll send her a note about this project. After finishing that, my first center director was a woman.
Given my personal and professional genealogy, one thing I say to my daughters (literal and figurative) is: Things are enormously better. Second is: They still have to improve. But, because of the changes that have been occurring, comments like Pascale’s, based on experiences 1-2 generations back, have to be taken with some grains of salt. My daughter’s pursuit of physics degree has been vastly different (better!) at all stages than my friends’ from when I was pursuing my degree.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:51 am
Dude. I started where I startred because that’s who I know and that’s where the idea came from. How can it be “focused” when we’ve only had two letters? Did you see from her post that I’ve asked Sheril?
Dude.
May 8th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
“It’s not a secret that the largest attrition among female scientists happens in the transition between trainee and faculty. ”
You might suggest to the author of that line introducing the project that there are scientists who are not faculty, and that the attrition between trainee and permanent position in those other areas is neither impressively lower nor for especially different reasons than in trainee -> faculty.
And when the comment itself is gender neutral, you might lay off the ‘dude’ nonsense. Leads one to think that the problem is the gender of the commenter (noting that Sheril did invite comments from men as well) rather than the content.