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From: apak@oddjob.UUCP (Adrian Kent)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.singles
Subject: Re: Prejudice in graduate school
Message-ID: <1220@oddjob.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Mar-86 00:29:01 EST
Article-I.D.: oddjob.1220
Posted: Sat Mar  1 00:29:01 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Mar-86 23:14:48 EST
References: <125@ttidcc.UUCP> <215@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Reply-To: apak@oddjob.UUCP (Adrian Kent)
Organization: U. Chicago: Physics
Lines: 37
Xref: watmath net.women:9431 net.singles:10568

In article <64@randvax.UUCP> karen@rand-unix.UUCP (Karen Isaacson) writes:
>In article <684@rti-sel.UUCP> wfi@rti-sel.UUCP (William Ingogly) writes:
>>In article <251@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU> cheryl@batcomputer.UUCP () writes:
>>>      No it is not.  I've seen male graduate students say
>>>      of a fellow female graduate student, "she should be
>>>      having kids by now."
>>Jeez, Cheryl, I've been in graduate school in two disciplines
>>(environmental sciences and computer science) and I've NEVER heard a
>>male grad student say anything like that of a female student. And a
>>grad student who did make a comment like that would have been shouted
>>down by his fellow students, male and female alike. Maybe these people
>Well, when I was in graduate school a couple of the guys decided I must be
>sleeping with the TA, my grades were so high!  (God forbid I might have
>been doing the homework & learning the material better than they...)
>And no one shouted them down when they spread the rumor, either.
>Perhaps they thought it was funny???   Actually, these guys were quite
>mature and if I were paranoid, I might think they did this deliberately.
     I've seen the phenomenenon Karen and Cheryl describe so often I'd almost
say it's the norm. There's a world-famous theoretical physicist (you've 
probably heard of him) who won't take women in his group because he believes
they shouldn't do physics. I know others who say they find women 'distracting'
in an academic environment, talk about their female students purely in terms
their appearance, or simply refuse to take women in the subject seriously.
I've seen a thoroughly competent woman physicist teased and ridiculed by men
who didn't think she 'fitted in' and didn't want her to stay in the subject.
Another man talked about a colleague's "personality, if women have a
personality". In other subjects, several of my women friends have had great
difficulty being taken seriously by their (mostly male) departments. They are
typically brighter and more determined than their colleagues, who don't like
this. And the strategy works: two or three of my friends are concluding that
the game may not be worth the candle, and considering abandoning their
subjects. 
     Don't *necessarily* dismiss (your or others') suspicions as paranoia.
In my experience, men are more prone to use this sort of tactic behind
womens' backs than directly. 
     NOTE: none of the situations above were at the University of Chicago.
					 Adrian Kent