Via Swans on Tea, a great article about Richard Feynman’s days in the 1980’s working for Thinking Machines on their groundbreaking massively-parallel computers. (Reprinted from Physics Today.)
Richard did a remarkable job of focusing on his “assignment,” stopping only occasionally to help wire the computer room, set up the machine shop, shake hands with the investors, install the telephones, and cheerfully remind us of how crazy we all were. When we finally picked the name of the company, Thinking Machines Corporation, Richard was delighted. “That’s good. Now I don’t have to explain to people that I work with a bunch of loonies. I can just tell them the name of the company.”
But then there is this:
The charming side of Richard helped people forgive him for his uncharming characteristics. For example, in many ways Richard was a sexist. Whenever it came time for his daily bowl of soup he would look around for the nearest “girl” and ask if she would fetch it to him. It did not matter if she was the cook, an engineer, or the president of the company. I once asked a female engineer who had just been a victim of this if it bothered her. “Yes, it really annoys me,” she said. “On the other hand, he is the only one who ever explained quantum mechanics to me as if I could understand it.” That was the essence of Richard’s charm.
“Charming” and “sexist” are not actually exclusive properties. We don’t have to say “he is sexist, but very charming, so it’s okay”; nor do we have to say “he is a brilliant and charming man, but incorrigibly sexist, and therefore cannot be admitted to possess any good qualities.” People can be talented and charismatic and warmly human, and yet have a looming blind spot when it comes to gender.
All of which is perfectly obvious, but worth reiterating because the pervasive culture of science is steeped in a sort of geeky pseudo-machismo that is handed down through the generations. Charming it may be, but far from harmless. The latest evidence to add to the teetering pile comes from a new study by the Center for Work-Life Policy, who looked at the career paths of women in science, engineering, and technology.
Based on data from 2,493 workers (1,493 women and 1,000 men) polled from March 2006 through October 2007 and hundreds more interviewed in focus groups, the report paints a portrait of a macho culture where women are very much outsiders, and where those who do enter are likely to eventually leave…
They also do well at the start, with 75 percent of women age 25 to 29 being described as “superb,” “excellent” or “outstanding” on their performance reviews, words used for 61 percent of men in the same age group.
An exodus occurs around age 35 to 40. Fifty-two percent drop out, the report warned, with some leaving for “softer” jobs in the sciences human resources rather than lab bench work, for instance, and others for different work entirely. That is twice the rate of men in the SET industries, and higher than the attrition rate of women in law or investment banking.
The reasons pinpointed in the report are many, but they all have their roots in what the authors describe as a pervasive macho culture.
Engineers have their “hard hat culture,” while biological and chemical scientists find themselves in the “lab coat” culture and computer experts inhabit a “geek culture.” What they all have in common is that they are “at best unsupportive and at worst downright hostile to women,” the study said.
Too many scientists figure that, if someone leaves the field, it must have been because they weren’t good enough. There are other reasons. Providing equal encouragement to everyone entering into science would not only make for happier people, it would make for better science.
It is important not to confuse a sexist culture with a traditionally male culture where women feel less at home. In the former case a negative attitude towards women is actively maintained, while in the latter culture the negativism is completely unintentional. Based on a few conversations with female colleagues, I believe it is traditional male culture rather than sexism that is rife in physics.
Why do we need an equal amount of women in science?
Does this automatically imply that we should work toward equal numbers of men in nursing, teaching, and human resources?
And to reach the equal numbers goal, we would need to force the men to become nurses, kindergarten teachers, and human resources, areas they are not interested in. Would be then not expect the quality of nursing, and teaching to go down?
If fewer women scientists mean lower quality research, then why did the supply and demand dynamics not balance the ratios? I.e. a less sexist department should do better science and attract more funding and brains, and a sexist department would die out?
How come women live longer even though they apparently face discrimination unlike men?
Reactions to Feynman, his physics and his peccadilloes – a shibboleth that picks out the PC practitioners, the macho-nerds and those that could not give a f**k about the whole thing. And as one who sits firmly in this final category, I’ve nothing much to add, save that the bitching and revisiting well trodden ground – yes we know that he was pretty damn smart and a complete sh*t, though he wasn’t a paedophile like Schroedinger or quite as reprehensible as the pre-breakdown John Nash – makes everyone involved look partisan, irrational and slightly pathetic. Come on guys (and gals): get over it. Give it a rest.
“Does this automatically imply that we should work toward equal numbers of men in nursing, teaching, and human resources?”
Actually, yes. Sexism works both ways – by discouraging either sex from participating in activities that are not traditionally encouraged according to gender roles. Men can be as nurturing and empathetic as women, and women can be as assertive and mentally focused as men. The more we strip gender roles down and encourage each other, the more our culture will benefit. In my opinion, of course.
If Feynman was as successful with women as the myths say, he probably understood women better than armchair feminists and anti-feminists. 🙂
With that understanding, he did two things:
1. Explained quantum mechanics to her passionately.
2. Gave her things to do for him.
Many people here think that the latter was a symbol of male-chauvinism. I personally think both have nothing to do with Feynman’s policy statements towards women. He did them because it worked for him! Explaining quantum mechanics with passion is easily enough to attract a woman. People who say otherwise just don’t have enough passion 😉 . But even with a passionate guy, women want HIM to take the blame for what SHE wants. See how Feynman has given her the perfect excuse? He is the bully and she is only going with “it” because, well, ..”… he explained quantum mechanics to me!” 🙂
This is a bit tongue-in-cheek of course, but there is truth there.
But really, how many guys actually have the BALLS to order a woman around? Not wielding power and not having power are not the same at all. In fact, the point is not so much the ordering around, but the balls. And the reason why the woman in question here is defending Feynman (why is no one else paying attention to that?), is because she knew he had them!
There is a world to be said here, and it is nowhere near as male-chauvinistic ultimately as it sounds in the beginning, but I suspect I am going to get lynched by the ivory tower intellectuals of Western culture. 🙂 … Btw, this is not an attack against Western culture in GENERAL – please note that if you decide to nit pick on this point. Also please keep in mind the possibility that I am not necessarily some religious nut from the middle east. I just happen to think that men should be allowed to like women, and should not be forced to apologize for doing something about it. Kids back home where I grew up will recognize whats going on here in the Feynman story – but some educated intellectuals just can’t seem to get enough of the righteous indignation. Pick your fights more wisely, people!!! Sometimes its just about being a li’l chilled back. I realize that knowing when to be chill and when to take up your swords and run screaming into the fight is hard, but this one certainly flies below my radar.
Btw, what exactly was the relevance of the Feynman story to the second part of the post? which incidentally, I agree, is a real issue that might be keeping women out of science?
>> Actually, yes. Sexism works both ways – by discouraging either sex from participating in activities that are not traditionally encouraged according to gender roles. Men can be as nurturing and empathetic as women, and women can be as assertive and mentally focused as men. The more we strip gender roles down and encourage each other, the more our culture will benefit. In my opinion, of course.
But I am not INTERESTED IN and not TURNED ON BY typical female jobs like nursing or teaching small kids, and most men that I know are not INTERESTED either. Most of us would be bored to death. Why do we have to force people to do things they are not interested in in the first place?
>> Men can be as nurturing and empathetic as women, and women can be as assertive and mentally focused as men.
Potential ability does not imply interest. I am good at certain things, but I hate them, and so I do not WANT to do them.
I can understand that we make sure that people who ARE interested in a job have all equal opportunity, but to make people be interested in or force them is non-democratic and totalitarian.
And again, I cannot see how quality goes up if you don’t do things you are interested in?
Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize – so, Sean, where’s yours???
I find it mildly amusing nowadays lesser scientists have discovered a new way to vent their angst. They simply attack great scientists for their lack of political correctness! Never mind the PC mindset ( or lack of mind ) is a fairly recent pseudo-intellectual construct, NO, we must judge all history by our own standards and prove our own moral superiority!!
Blathering about “encouragement” is further nonsense – there is no inherent “right” to be a scientist. People voluntarily choose to enter the field and, if they can’t take the stress, may voluntarily leave. I’m reminded of a story about Hemingway. Someone once asked what was his advice to young writers, to which he replied that he always tried to discourage them – the good ones were the ones who didn’t listen!
One of the responders wrote ” If you point to the corruption involved in the corporate takeover of U.S. universities, you’ll just find yourself barred from getting a job in academics”
There is no “corporate takeover” of universities, that baloney !!
Actually, the truth is if you refuse to fully embrace the PC bull***t being promulgated by leftist professors, you’ll be denied tenure – if you even get hired at all. The TRUTH is American universities are no longer marketplaces of ideas – if you don’t worship at the altars of “diversity” and “sensitivity” then your ideas aren’t welcome. That’s why pathetic “little men” on campus can now freely attack great figures ranging from Columbus to Feynman.
one more thing – when I was in high school, my physical science teacher once remarked that there are 3 types of people in the world – those who respond to the carrot, those who respond to the stick, and those who are self-motivated. Then he asked ” Which one are you?” Well, I got the message !!
If you really want to seek in a career in science ( which is a privilege NOT a right!) you must be self-motivated and you must do science because you love doing science. Great science is done by those who have a passion for science!! It is NOT done by those who are pushed into the field just to meet some gender/race/orientation quota system or who have to be coaxed (excuse me, “encouraged”) constantly. Period, end of story!
Boltzmann’s Reptilian Brain on May 31st, 2008 at 6:59 am
…
Short version: the bad stuff is as relevant as the good.
Even if so, generic chauvinism is a pretty mundane bad thing compared to the good of truly his epic scale contributions to physics and the public view of science. It’s on the order of rejecting a lottery prize because you have to pay taxes on it.
Why not think of it as one more thing to learn from him, except this time as an example of something not to do?
What is this about rejecting his contributions because he was sometimes sexist? Isn’t that basically the opposite of what the post said?
I like “people without Nobel prizes are not permitted to criticize people with Nobel prizes.” That’s the old Feynman spirit!
This topic sure does bring out the stupid.
“But I am not INTERESTED IN and not TURNED ON BY typical female jobs like nursing or teaching small kids, and most men that I know are not INTERESTED either. Most of us would be bored to death. Why do we have to force people to do things they are not interested in in the first place?”
So don’t do them! It’s not about forcing people to do what they don’t want to do. It’s about encouraging people who do want to do things to do them, and ensuring that there aren’t social/cultural obstacles to developing interest in the first place.
Feel free to run about and do your thing! My point is that we all should be given equal opportunity to do that.
PS, I’m a woman, and I’m not interested in or “turned on by” nursing or teaching small kids, either. Go figure.
if someone leaves the field, it must have been because they weren’t good enough
Or the field wasn’t good enough for them. Confusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcome is never a good thing.
#4 – Yeah, I was really hoping Sean could back himself up on this, preferably with something that bespoke some integrity of thought. (sigh)
Frankly, the only time I felt ‘discouraged’ because I was a woman was when my female undergrad advisor (with the curious preference for male research assistants and grad students) wouldn’t hire me as a research assistant despite the fact that I was A/B core gradepoint and had just completed a successful summer internship with a major company. She said the reason was because I was a ‘flake’. (That’s DR. Flake now, honey! Feed that to your bacteria!)
regarding comment 36: that is the sort of attitude that gives political correctness a bad name, ie blaming any professional failure on a perceived cultural bias. If someone thinks you’re a flake it’s not necessarily sexism!
In my experience (in hep phenomenology) there is, at least these days, no bias against women and no macho culture. Of course academia is very competitive, but that’s not the same as macho. The stats say that there is a high dropout rate among women. Well, it’s the same in all professions. It’s still the case that becoming a mother is much more damaging to one’s career than becoming a father (there are many reasons for this).
Another interesting aspect of this is http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/camilla_cavendish/article3889912.ece .
#27. “But I am not INTERESTED IN and not TURNED ON BY typical female jobs like nursing or teaching small kids, and most men that I know are not INTERESTED either. Most of us would be bored to death. Why do we have to force people to do things they are not interested in in the first place?”
1. You assume women do those jobs out of “interest”?
Think again! Some women truly aspire to those jobs, but many have been turned off of more lucrative, exciting, or otherwise “interesting” careers by male (and sadly, sometimes female) hostility, if not outright discrimination.
2. No one except you mentioned “force”.
Come on, that’s sheer hysteria. The key here is to level the playing field so that everyone has an “equal opportunity” – there’s a reason that phrase is used, even if it’s rarely implemented well. It’s not about forcing people to do anything, it’s about allowing them to explore interests that they may have but aren’t currently culturally permissible. Maybe you would never be a stay-at-home dad or first-grade teacher, but some men would if it were socially acceptable. It sounds like your assertion (“most men…”) comes from asking other men, “You would never do a boring fairy job like THAT, would you?” Yeah, what are they supposed to say?
#26. “Based on a few conversations with female colleagues, I believe it is traditional male culture rather than sexism that is rife in physics.”
That sounds like a pretty limited sample technique. You might want to read some of the articles detailing the issues in physics culture. It’s a well known problem.
#38. “Frankly, the only time I felt ‘discouraged’ because I was a woman was when my female undergrad advisor (with the curious preference for male research assistants and grad students) wouldn’t hire me”
Yep, sexism can come from both sexes. There’s a lot of internalized misogyny in science. I know I’m guilty of it at times, as are many women who’ve had to learn to behave like “one of the boys” to succeed. It becomes ingrained.
feynman continues to entertain if only for the fact he can still stir the pot even though hes dead and buried.
Via Swans on Tea, a great article about Richard Feynman’s days in the 1980’s working for Thinking Machines on their groundbreaking massively-parallel computers.
It might be worth pointing out that TMI went bankrupt in 1994. Evidently their groundbreaking computers weren’t good enough for the real world.
Today, I asked my female physicist colleague to go make me a cup of coffee in honor of this post and we both laughed about it.
To Richard!
The issue of Feynman has been hashed and rehashed. He was an excellent scientist, but a deeply flawed human being, and certainly more sexist than the average man at the time (perhaps not more sexist than the average man-in-a-position-of-power, though).
I wish to respond to this, by Jack M.:
There are a lot of intelligent, creative mentors who operate on this principle. There is a problem with this, however.
That is this: women (and, at times, other minority groups) on average tend to rate their own abilities as being lower than they actually are, whereas men tend on average to rate their own abilities as being as high as, or higher than, they actually are. This is well documented.
If a very good writer or scientist discourages younger colleagues from attempting to continue in the field, the discouragement is going to disproportionately affect females regardless of the ability of the younger colleagues.
Indeed, we do see this — men of lesser ability are likelier to continue in various fields than women of higher ability, even after controlling for factors like child-rearing.
There are those who have argued that the female tendency to being more easily discouraged, and to self-underrating of abilities, indicates that most women are not suited to any intellectual pursuits requiring a bit of egotism. (I don’t think anyone would deny that most successful academics have at least a dash of egotism, and a tendency to believe themselves in the right even when others insist that they are wrong.)
Maybe this is true. But by allowing this aspect of Western intellectual culture to persist, we are removing some excellent people from the pool of potential contributors, many females, but males as well. We must reconsider whether we feel that egotism and self-conceit really should be requisites for a young academic who has otherwise strong potential to do good work.
The free-market analogy does not work here because it assumes that the market makes decisions for best benefit in a rational manner. It doesn’t. Humans are not really rational beings, and we very, very often make decisions that are counter to our best interests thanks to our own biases, quirks, and superstitions.
This may change in the future in the sciences, as the sciences have become much more collaborative in the last twenty years or so. We now do much of our best work not by individually locking horns with antagonistic competitors, and thumping our chests, but by working together.
May the trend continue, because I think it can only be for the better that we do not waste precious time trying to knock one another down.
So, Sean, I guess it’s that time of the year again? Haven’t you done posts with the meat of this several times before?
I guess that’s reasonable, what with very little having changed and this being your blog 🙂
Looks like cosmicvariance got hacked…perhaps you need to update wordpress.
Okay, so what happened a few hours ago on Cosmic Variance?
Peter, a “traditionally male culture where women feel less at home” IS a sexist culture. Sexism doesn’t need to be negative or intentional; it can be unconscious, ingrained, or even well-intentioned.
Tom – Funny, I know and have met plenty of men who are interested in “typical female jobs.” Did I just happen to befriend the few exceptions to a hard and fast rule, or is it possible that different men have different interests?
I find it really depressing that attempts to identify and analyze occurrences of sexism (and racism, etc.) are always so quickly dismissed as political correctness. We’re talking about actual lives and careers here, not offending delicate sensibilities. Does your right to treat women however you want trump my right to do my job without being denigrated and dismissed?
… which, perhaps, they were. Recondite cavemen aside, I’m wondering why your moral relativism trumps mine?
A simple thought experiment: do you think that you, had you grown up in early 20-th century America, would have been in a position to criticize Feynman (who would then have been your contemporary)? Think of all the borderline behaviour your present contemporaries engage in… in a generation or two they may be seen as swinish pigs from a bygone era. What would you say if someone from the future popped into your life judging you for not standing up to them…?
It’s funny how women always claim they want a nice,
sensitive, and understanding guy – but the younger
ones especially (such as in college) almost always
seem to go for the big macho jerks.
Then they whine and cry about how cruel and insensitive
all men are – go figure.
Personally I think both genders are two separate
species that happen to have the genetic ability to
mate.