International Day of Women and Girls in Science, is A Thing. This year it was marked [but not by Blob] on 11 February 2025. Wexford Science Café came to the party exactly a week too late . . . because we're on the 3rd Tuesday of the month, not the second. I posted about IDWGS on the correct day [Darwinday - 1] in 2018. WxScCa organized their event by having Amy Hassett a just-starting scientist (chatting with / interviewing) Mary Kelly a just-finishing one. They were about the same age as Dau.II and me, so there was a bit of one generation passing the chalice to the next. Gotta say it started off same-old, same-old with statistics about which areas of science had the most appallingly unequal sex-ratio in the 21stC - geology apparently. Of course we all agreed this was A Bad Thing and that things were getting better than 1925; but nobody in the room had a coherent strategy for how to chip away at the patriarchal monolith. It's pretty clear that having an inspiring female science teacher or auntie makes a difference . . . but quotas don't.
Older scientist has interviewed A Lot of people during her career. Her sense is that blokes present themselves as confident even if they are collywobbling inside; whereas women are more diffident and tend to qualify their abilities with a touch of realism. Interview committees [in my experience on both sides of the table] are cobbled together from available bodies and are kinda crap at sorting wheat from chaff: unwilling to puncture specious confidence or draw out shy competence. So Mr Know-it-Some gets ranked #1.
I've been gunning for a job in a formal interview only twice in my science career: for my first job and my last. The first time, I was shortlisted one of three for the post of sub-assistant lecturer in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1983. We three spent the whole day together being shown around, lunched, giving job seminars in turn. At the end of a long day we were sent to wait in one room while the committee made their deliberations across the hall. The other chap was getting antsy because, with luck and a following wind, he might just make a convenient train home; rather than kicking his heels for several hours after dark in a strange town. When the Head of Department burst open the door and beckoned to me to follow him, I demurred. Wouldn't they much rather take Other Chap first so he could get through and catch his train? Nope! They wanted me, and now . . . because my sketchy creds were deemed #1. Only if (on reflection and taking account of one day's lived experience on that campus) I refused the job offer would they move on to the next best candidate. I really was green when I was Dau.II's age. But here I be a few months later:
Almost exactly 30 years later, I was shorted listed for my final job at The Institute [which event spawned The Blob]. Again, I didn't play any cards because I didn't even know what cards to play. Someone asked why I wanted the job. Instead of outlining why I was the bee's knees and the cat's whiskers, I confessed that I didn't want it much but if they looked at my CV, they might decide that I could be a useful member of their team. If they didn't, I was happy-out that something else would turn up. After decades of nepotism and fixing, HR at The Institute was trying to codify the hiring process into a series of check-boxes and attribute scores that would objectively rise the cream to the top. I guess it didn't matter what I said, so long as I was clocking [5] on most of the several desirable qualities.
Despite trying valiantly to shoot myself in the foot, I was offered, and took, both of those jobs . . . and that made all the difference. It wasn't that I lacked blokey confidence; it was just that my ambition genes were shot off in the war.
Meanwhile back at Wexford IDWGS 2025, Younger Scientist made an interesting point: whatever about hiring and promoting more women in Science, could we not just/also hire more different personality types. Earlier it had been suggested that some women had developed successful science careers by behaving like success men: ambitious, focused, selfish, single. Well, heck, we don't need anymore of those personality types - they make everyone else miserable! Caitlin Moran maintains that if you only hire/promote a limited range of people / types then your enterprise finishes up stupider, less agile, less creative, less profitable . . . and less fun!
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