
Sexism plagues major chemistry conference: Boycott emerges amid growing outrage - donretag
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/20/sexism_plagues_major_chemistry_conference_boycott_emerges_amid_growing_outrage/
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streptomycin
_Notably, there are only four female scientists among the 110 living members
of IAQMS, which elects new candidates by internal vote. Ten out of 102 talks
during the previous three conference were given by women, and only two female
chemists have been awarded medals over the past decade, according to the
instigators of the boycott._

 _“These numbers do not reflect the proportion of women active in the field,”
said Gagliardi, who is a professor at the University of Minnesota. “Some 50
years ago the gender distribution in Quantum Molecular Sciences may have been
so skewed, but nowadays things have changed.”_

 _To illustrate the point, Krylov maintains the Women in Theoretical Chemistry
web-directory, listing “more than 300 female scientists holding tenured and
tenure track academic positions or equivalent positions in industry and other
research establishments pursuing research in theoretical and computational
chemistry, biochemistry, material science, as well as theoretical molecular
/atomic physics and biophysics.”_

That doesn't illustrate the point unless you compare that 300 against the
number of male scientists. If there are 3000+ male scientists in the field,
then it's not crazy that only 5-10% of the members/talks are given by women.

300 women is undoubtedly just a drop in the bucket compared to everyone
working in "theoretical and computational chemistry, biochemistry, material
science, as well as theoretical molecular/atomic physics and biophysics", a
ridiculously broad set of topics spanning multiple large departments at every
major university (most of which have little business at a quantum chemistry
conference, of course).

~~~
Argorak
I like the statistics based approach to this.

But it answers less questions than it poses: e.g. given that statistics says
that there are always outliers, how come that the outlier "a lot more women
than expected by statistics on this conference" is almost never found, while
the other outlier is often?

(chemistry, by the way, is a field that has an equal gender ratio at start in
some countries:
[http://www.rsc.org/Education/EiC/issues/2012May/Yellowlees-w...](http://www.rsc.org/Education/EiC/issues/2012May/Yellowlees-
women-chemistry-students.asp))

~~~
streptomycin
_But it answers less questions than it poses: e.g. given that statistics says
that there are always outliers, how come that the outlier "a lot more women
than expected by statistics on this conference" is almost never found, while
the other outlier is often?_

That just poses another question: how do you know your premise is true?

 _chemistry, by the way, is a field that has an equal gender ratio at start in
some countries_

FWIW, this isn't a general chemistry conference, it's a rather mathy one.

~~~
Argorak
Sure, but that is neither answered by the OP nor any of the numbers that are
usually thrown around. Still, some events claim that they are outliers if they
have no or almost no women on the roster.

My point is more that there is not sufficient hard data in the discussion to
support anything.

(the first sentence in my post was half in jest)

------
worksaf
I'm not convinced there is a problem. It sounds like some women seized upon
this conference as an opportunity to point out a perceived bias.

The article is clearly written to suggest that you are either with us or
against us and I take issue with that. The academic content of that kind of
conference should not be limited by a speaker's gender, even if that means
there are no women speakers. Just to be clear, I would feel the same if there
were no male speakers

~~~
BrandonRead
"Perceived bias"

You are ignoring a larger history and the institutionalized sexism that
currently exists in all sects of government, industry, and society as a whole.

Of course you would feel the same if there were no male speakers, because men
haven't had to suffer through centuries of exclusion, therefore it would not
threaten the position of men. When you take a deeper look at the issue and
realize that we have the utility to create a gender-balanced (and gender-fluid
if you want to trim some more ignorance) society, it is upsetting that yet
another conference has no female speakers. The comment by the dunce about
race/body-type/ablism etc completely undermines the position of those speaking
out. The people pointing out that women are underrepresented are the same
people that will also point out those other imbalances. They are working on
their own fight--and yes, there is still largely internalized ignorance of
race/gender-identity/ablism and beyond within the movement, but that does not
mean they should completely abandon progress just to appease someone that
thinks it is only 'perceived bias'. Thoughts?

~~~
worksaf
I am not ignoring anything. This particular conference was not called to
address historical issues with gender favoritism. This is a scientific /
academic conference dealing with actual ongoing research not related to gender
studies. If there is a woman in this group that has something relevant to
speak about she should definitely be considered but I don't think that the
controlling board should be required to select a woman just to make the
speaker list look statistically better to activists.

They are free to boycott the conference though I do not think they are doing
themselves any favors. They will only cause those not involved in this gender
conspiracy to lose patience and empathy with them.

Are there biased men AND women out there? Yes. Are they in complete control of
all current events? No.

~~~
BrandonRead
So sorry to interrupt 'actual ongoing research'! Oh no! How dare progress be
stopped!? There is an actual ongoing struggle for women to feel just as
appreciated as men and not feel like they have to fly to the moon in order to
be taken just as seriously as their male counterparts. Sure, they don't NEED
to be required to select women--exactly the point! This article is useful in
that it points out the disadvantaged position women still face. If a board
does not intervene to try and create a gender balance, then there will be no
gender balance, precisely because the issue is unregulated and ignored.
Hmmm... sounds a lot like ignoring regulation on economics--clearly there are
actual ongoing issues that can be solved by the private sector and so we
should just ignore the potential solutions of the people so that the private
sector can really get things done. Your argument is underdeveloped. It seems
to make logical sense, yes, I credit you that, but the logic is baseless if
you ignore the larger picture.

~~~
worksaf
Just curious, do you have any evidence at all to back up your assumptions that
without forceful intervention this particular organization will have a gender
imbalance from now until the end of time?

------
vezzy-fnord
Salon articles are always to be taken with a grain of salt.

Once again though, this appears to be an issue of equal representation. The
classic dilemma is that if you have no speakers belonging to X group, you'll
appear to be exclusive. Yet if you hire a few speakers of X group just for the
sake of having them, then that becomes tokenism and is hardly beneficial in
the long term.

Treating the symptoms is only a band-aid. The condition will exacerbate,
unless the root cause (which is a sociological one, in many cases) is examined
and treated. One must also evaluate whether it is worth doing so.

------
VLM
One interesting observation is a conference is "major" despite forbidding /
excluding (in theory) half the worlds chemists. And more important than
excluding mere flesh and blood, they're excluding half the worlds ideas and
research, right?

Some google work provides:

[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-
science/chem...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-
science/chemists-and-materials-scientists.htm)

which claims 96200 chemists employed (just in the USA).

The "little boys club no girls allowed" has 100 all male members worldwide.
Lets assume there are 10 chemists worldwide for each chemist in the USA. So
this is a major conference because 0.011% of chemists are in the "boys only
clubhouse". The other 99.989% of chemists might or might not be sexist, but
definitely don't care about the conference.

This might be a partial explanation for the apathy about the issue.

------
sp332
Wow that Kress guy is really missing the point. He keeps yelling true things
without realizing that they're irrelevant.

------
jimbokun
There may very well be systematic bias against women by the organizers of this
conference, but this article does a terrible job making such an argument.

Even anecdotally, citing specific women who have done good work in this very
specialized field, submitted a quality paper, and were rejected would go a
long way towards corroborating the claim this conference is excluding women.
Without knowing how many women submitted papers, and some (even subjective)
indication of the quality of those papers, there is no way to judge whatever
bias towards women this conference may have.

Also, are all identifying data stripped from the papers before consideration?
If there is no way for the judges to even know whether the paper was submitted
by a woman, how could they discriminate against her? If this is not the
process, it may merit consideration for future conferences.

------
jellicle
So this post has been deleted by the mods (or flagged out of the top few
hundred posts), in less than a hour.

Honestly the best thing HN could do for its community today would be to remove
permanently remove flagging privileges from every single user that flagged
this article.

~~~
BrandonRead
Seriously. A lot of these comments are along the lines of 'Hey, me and my
awesome smart hacker brain have all of the evidence, so I don't need to
acknowledge this serious issue,' and then the argument dies. It's alright,
maybe in another few thousand years or so people will start to use those big
hacker brains to take a minute to contextualize the issue instead of brushing
it off...

------
canistr
Would have been to nice to see some quotes from a woman who was also a
minority. But clearly ethnic/racial diversity isn't a problem for this
conference. </sarcasm>

~~~
afternooner
What are you going on about?

~~~
canistr
Consider the fact that of the quotes from female chemists in the article, none
of them were minorities. They were white women.

~~~
BrandonRead
So disheartening that you would immediately receive negative feedback on your
witty (and important) comment. Better luck next time when you try and say
something socially progressive around here. Nice comment +1

