The lost women

As a female working in science, it's sometimes discouraging to see how little women have contributed historically. Admittedly, there are very few people who make it through the filter of history to begin with, but the erosion of names that leaves behind only a few pillars makes it seem like the only people who have been involved in science were those male pillars. Here is a summary/review of a book that details the lives and contributions of the women the Royal Society refused to admit to its hallowed halls but who nevertheless were important contributors to science in their day.

One quote, from Maria Mitchell, struck me especially. She said,

"The laws of nature are not discovered by accident; theories do not come by chance, even to the greatest minds, they are not born in the hurry and worry of daily toil, they are diligently sought… and until able women have given their lives to investigation, it is idle to discuss their capacity for original work."

The discussion below the article contains the typical, 'men are more accomplished because the distribution of intelligence is flattened, leading to more smarter--and more dumber--men' (debunked--entertainingly--here and here. Personally, I think Mitchell comes much closer to the mark. My experiences tell me cultural factors, especially expectations regarding women's roles, are far more important. Women are responsible for so much, especially for children. Having a small child prevents one from giving their lives to investigation completely, so as I'm struggling to finish my dissertation the tension between my two lives--my life of the mind and of investigation, and my life of the home--is quite stark. I've been extraordinarily lucky to have people supporting me through my graduate career, especially post-Sylvia, but it's much, much harder. In the end, there is nobody who can (or, perhaps more accurately, is willing to) do the job a mother can for her own children.

Derrick and I both had to take the GRE to get into grad school. We both took it once, he with no preparation beforehand, me with a short course and a few practice tests under my belt. I outscored Derrick by quite a lot. Part of it, I am sure, resulted from my greater preparation, but part of it, I am also sure, resulted from me just being better at the test. In some sense, smarter.

As I type that last sentence, I feel my heart palpitating like I'm saying something wrong, or illicit; like I'm lying. Objectively (as far as a test is an objective measurement of intelligence), I do appear to have a higher IQ (though I must add fudge words like "appear" to my statement--I must have an out). What's so bad about saying it? Why are my palms sweaty and my chest tight, my head ringing and my body brimming with that sense of stillness and nausea I associate with bad things about to happen (like an imminent talk, or a poor grade, or a rejection)? Smarter doesn't mean better, just better at one thing. I have no problem saying I sing better, or I make better pie crust and bread and cookies; no problem admitting I write better (though he is closing the gap as my mind is sucked further into Mommying and away from writing).

Apparently, my inability to consider myself smarter than my husband isn't unique. We do it all the time. All of us do it all the time. To our friends, parents, children, spouses, and to ourselves. It's no wonder our world is still dominated by men when we consider them better, even when evidence suggests there is no discernible difference between genders. It's no wonder we women are more comfortable with men in charge of us--we trust them to be more intelligent, even when the evidence suggests otherwise. I wonder if this difference in perception is part of why we women are so hard on each other (and on ourselves) and so much easier on the men around us.

Transient art

Thursday is the day Derrick and Sylvia come to work with me. Derrick attends a lab meeting here on campus, and then hangs out with Sylvia in my office until I'm done teaching. Usually I take Sylvia in the morning before his lab meeting so he can get a little bit done before his meeting. Today Sylvia and I wandered down to the main office (something that is not at all unusual--the office ladies LOVE Sylvia), where one of them told me about the cupcake portraits of Abe Lincoln and Barack Obama. I'd heard the story earlier, and it got me thinking about art that is transient--specifically, meant to be consumed in one way or another--and gender.

A long time ago I read a book called The Mating Mind, which is about how sexual selection could have acted on humans to produce our large brains and complex culture. Briefly, the claim is that a big brain requires a lot of energy, and if an individual has access to a lot of energy, especially during childhood, chances are the genes that individual possess are high quality. Behaviors that prove individuals have a big brain include art, language, music, politics, and many other very human behaviors that are, in one way or another, attractive to at least some members of the opposite sex.

One of the observations made in the book is that even in a very egalitarian creative situation, typically one sees a 60/40 split between men and women. Almost always there are more male writers than women, even though women have (on average) larger vocabularies; there are more male fashion designers (by far!) even though women buy and wear most clothing; and even though women are far more likely to attend religious services, men are far more likely to head religious organizations. Any number of possible reasons have been posited for this discrepancy, some suggesting women are less interested in accomplishments that drive men, others that women are given less credit for what they do, or seek for less acclaim than men for what they've done. I myself have no real thoughts on the topic (I really have only myself as a data point), but in myself I do see a tendency to put a lot of effort into projects that are transient in nature--a tasty meal, a plate of cookies, a smiling baby. While Derrick enjoys the transient arts as well, he puts quite a bit more effort into projects that produce more lasting results. I realize the microcosm of our relationship has no real statistical significance, but if my experience, where I expend most of my energy in projects that leave no permanent record while my husband's efforts do, are similar to those of most women, it's really no wonder history doesn't record many of us--we simply haven't left enough durable evidence of our lives in the past. I wonder if the explosion of blogs, particularly of "Mommy blogs," will change that trend in the future. I may consume my artisan bread, leaving nary a crumb to the generations that follow, but the pictures I post will be there to see as long as the servers maintain my blog!