As a high school student, Eileen Pollack taught herself calculus because, as a girl, she was forbidden to enroll in the school’s advanced science and math courses. A member of Yale’s Class of 1978, she was one of the university’s first two women to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in physics. A professor of creative writing at the University of Michigan, Pollack is also an author of fiction and nonfiction, including “The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is Still a Boys’ Club.”
You write that a lack of encouragement from your Yale professors influenced your decision against pursuing graduate studies in physics. In observing other female students, how important is receiving such feedback as they navigate decisions today to pursue academia or careers in STEM?
I think that was the main finding that I came up with. I didn’t know that going in, even in regards to my own experience. The first thing I figured out was that that was the main factor in why I hadn’t gone on so, of course, I was curious as to whether that applied to anybody else and certainly whether it was still a factor so many years after I had gone to school. I was really shocked at how many people said that had been their experience, too. When the [New York] Times article [“Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?”] came out [in October 2013], it went viral and I heard from literally thousands of people and that was the chord … that resonated the loudest.
So many people wrote back to say that that’s why they hadn’t gone on and that they were really surprised thinking about their own experience to figure that out. And then even among women who had gone on, telling me how much now they realized the lack of encouragement had really hindered them. It was certainly the biggest factor for why otherwise very talented, competent, even confident women really hadn’t gone on.
Has this been addressed?
I think the other shocking discovery was that when I would say to my former professors, [and] people in classrooms today, even young science professors, “What do you feel about this idea that so many women are not going on because they feel they are not being encouraged?” how strongly they came back with, “We don’t encourage anyone, male or female, black, white, anything. We just don’t believe in encouraging anyone because what we do is so hard, that if you need encouragement, that’s a sign that you should not go on in the field.” That confidence is the key, some great key requisite to being a great scientist.
People who were saying this didn’t realize, first of all, that everything in this society was actually discouraging women and minorities from going on and that unconscious gender bias meant that in fact they were encouraging some people and not others. They didn’t even realize in how many ways they encourage their white male students in ways that they don’t encourage and often, in fact, discourage their female students, and students of color and how many studies have borne this out. All the new gender bias studies bear this out that even in terms of how professors reply to emails, based on the perceived gender of the person, the perceived race, and that this fact is pronounced even for female faculty.
Why do you find that white male students are going forward despite this lack of encouragement?
First of all, if you’re a white male growing up in this society, you’re constantly receiving encouragement to go on in science in the form of all the images that you’re receiving. When you look at “The Big Bang Theory” and see that the scientists are [white] men except for Raj, who is Indian, ... [and] Penny, the white female that’s next door, is a science illiterate, you’re picking up those messages all the time.
It’s not surprising that by second grade, if you ask students of both genders to draw scientists, they almost always draw a white male with [Albert] Einstein flyaway hair. The fact that, when a girl wants to drop an advanced calculus class, her parents and teachers are more likely to say, “OK, yeah, it was too hard for you anyway.” Whereas [with] a boy, they say, “What do you mean you’re going to drop it? Just study harder.” All the societal pressures that make girls feel as if they’re too smart especially in the sciences – “No one will date them. They won’t be popular.” – don’t apply to boys. The boys are being encouraged. They’re also being raised, still, even today, to exude confidence, to never admit vulnerabilities.
I’ve heard from some young women at a really fancy private school … who said they joined the robotics club. There were three girls in the robotics club and when it came time to host the competition, the adviser said to the three girls, “You can be in charge of refreshments.” So they quit. That’s a form of discouragement that the guys are not experiencing. That teacher didn’t even realize what he was doing.
In your 2015 New York Times op-ed, “What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech,” you write about a study led by Sapna Cheryan, a psychology professor at the University of Washington, that indicates classroom decor contributes to whether female students sign up for a computer science class. Could you talk about this?
Some people said, “Oh, women must be really shallow to make such an important decision based on what is in the room.” But everybody does that. We all decide whether we fit in or not when we want to join somebody at lunch or move to a new town. [Cheryan] gave a really interesting example. She said, “When you’re thinking of whether you want to move somewhere, you look at, ‘Are there the kind of coffee shops I like? Or are you more a bar person? Do people have ski racks on the top of their cars? …’” We all want to fit in and we are very adept at processing cues about whether we’re going to feel comfortable in an environment.
If there are “Star Wars” pictures on the wall, and you, male or female, are really into “Star Wars” – it sounds like a stereotype, but … they are indicative of normal human behavior – you’re going to feel comfortable and say, “Yeah, I’ll take a class here.” If you walk in and it’s not the kind of movie you would watch, or you object to how messy and disgusting everything is in the room – six-week-old pizza lying around – you’re going to say, “This isn’t where I’m going to fit in.” Especially at the age at which girls and boys are making these kinds of decisions, are you sitting down and rationally figuring out the rest of your life? No, you’re thinking, “Do I want to take this class or not?”
They found that, even if it was an online class or a virtual classroom, they can get the people to want to take the online class more if the virtual class was neutral. So, it’s not making it all girlie, it’s just not making it so clearly a stereotypically techie environment.
At what age do you feel these gender biases start becoming entrenched in mindsets?
I think that girls are picking up these images even in elementary school. I think if parents notice the images, they can talk to girls … just to make the girl aware of what’s going on because I think awareness, it inoculates your child against picking up a lot of this stuff unaware. Junior high school is where really I think it’s critical because that’s where girls are picking up a lot of these attitudes. They’re not yet, many of them, critical enough to know how screwed up these attitudes are and to realize how much at that age of what they’re deciding could affect the whole rest of their lives. And, right through high school. Again, more girls maybe are taking advanced science and math classes than they did in my day, but are they taking the advanced placement exam at the end or saying, “I don’t want to take the exam. It’s too hard?” Are they going on to the next level? Are they signing up for a computer science class?
I think really if the girls themselves are aware, if their parents and their teachers and guidance counselors are made more aware of what’s going on at this less conscious level – junior high and high school are really important – then you won’t have girls getting to college as unprepared as I was or as many women still are.
The next phase is just in those first and second year courses in college. The professors not to think of them as weed-out courses where they’re going to get rid of anybody who’s not completely confident by then or completely well-prepared, who didn’t go to a great high school, who wasn’t encouraged to take these advanced classes. That can be a time of catching people up rather than weeding them out.
And then, finally, obviously the transition from when you get your degree to what you’re going to do after college. Are you going to go on to grad school? Are you going to get a job or are you just going to say, “You know, that was hard. I didn’t get any encouragement. Nobody is telling me I’m good at this.” and just find a different career path. That other phase of encouragement I think is crucial.
I think for people who do go on to grad school, … there are huge reforms that need to be made in making grad school … more humane for everybody involved, but at least we can get people that far.
Source: usnews.com
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