on being a woman in science

an awakening

10/17/12

The last six months of my life have been the most transformative months in recent memory, and I intend to share my highly-personal, highly-emotional internal experience with a public audience in the hopes that my insights may have a positive impact on the experiences of other individuals from any or all walks of life.

Here is the gist of my message: over the last six months, I have developed a more accurate understanding of my intellect, creativity, and self-worth. The purpose of this post is to illustrate the reasons why, until several months ago, I suffered from a severe lack of confidence — specifically related to being a women, especially a woman in science — and why I frequently under evaluated my intelligence.

But most importantly, I would like to share the ways by which I arrived at my current state because, 1 — endowed with a sense of confidence, I feel unstoppable; and 2 — I’m 100% convinced that majoring in physics was the best career and life decision that I’ve made in my twenty-three years. I recognize that I am extremely fortunate, as a woman, to exist at a time and place whereby I have had both the opportunity to study physics and the opportunity to discover that I excel at math and science. It is this sense of privilege, combined with the knowledge that thousands of years of humans have been silenced by low self-esteem, that compels me to articulate the ideas contained herein. My hope is that these words may help other women or men or minorities or majorities achieve a similar awakening.

Before I go too far, I would like to emphasize that the purpose of this post is not to showcase my achievements or boast about my intellectual prowess. I would also like to apologize if I come off as conceited or over-confident. I’ve spent a significant portion of my life doing the opposite, and at this phase of life, I would prefer to fall to the former rather than the latter. I would also like to emphasize that my intention is not to point fingers or request pity, but rather to open eyes and minds.

And now my back story, beginning with my family. I was born to a pair of doctors, each an accomplished, successful, respected individual in her or his respective field. It’s important to note that my family, specifically my mother’s side, is rife with strong women. My grandmother, “Dot the Jot,” is, of all twenty-something Moutons (huge Catholic family), unequivocally the most powerful and feared member of the family, but it’s a fear founded in respect. My mother, a doctor whose current role is the Director of the Board of Medical Examiners in Lousiana, is just one of five extremely strong-willed, skilled, intelligent, confident, ambitious, and assertive Mouton women.

In addition to a set of strong female role models, my natural athleticism fostered an early sense of confidence. By excelling at sports I earned the respect of my male peers and younger male relatives. I also spent most of my formative years surrounded by boys in the neighborhood, shaping my development into a tomboy.

And finally, throughout elementary and secondary education, I excelled at many subjects, especially math and science. My high school physics teacher (praise be to Mr. Ferris) let me know that I was the only student to get a perfect score the final physics test.

For all of these reasons — strong female relatives, athletic skill, tomboy mentality, and positive classroom experiences in math and science — I was dealt a better hand than most women. Nevertheless, when I entered college, I strongly doubted the idea that I might be smart enough to major in a subject like physics. I initially focused on Environmental Analysis, but the desire to leave college with a toolbox of skills is the reason that I decided to take a chance.

Despite the body of evidence suggesting that I might be a top physics student, there is a barrage of reasons, identified retrospectively, that impacted my self-esteem. Perhaps the most profound was my family’s constant affirmation of my brother’s intelligence and simultaneous inability to recognize or comment upon my academic and mental strengths,despite the lack of evidence suggesting that my brother was any smarter than I was. Everyone that I’m related to — on my mother’s side, father’s side, and step-side, — has frequently, over the course of my childhood, and as recently as Thanksgiving, commented upon my brother’s intelligence, epecially his knack for math and science. I distinctly remember my mother saying the following at our senior goodbye physics brunch: “Jenna is smart, but Ian has always been the math genius.”

There are several other events that stick out in my mind, reinforcing the idea that women were less smart than men, especially in the sciences (forcing me to wonder how many events lie dormant in my subconscious). In high school a male peer asked our history teacher, a man who I respected more than any other teacher that I had previously encountered, if men were smarter than women. His response? “Well,” he said, “science shows that men’s brains are larger than women’s.” That comment had a profoundly upsetting impact on my psyche, and it wasn’t the only comment in the same vein made during my high school career.

I am sad to admit that the feeling of inferiority persisted throughout my college career. Registering for and attending physics classes were terrifying experiences, and I truly believe that if grade inflation weren’t so rampant at Pomona, I probably would have ended my physics career with Mechanics. Throughout college, I believed that every one of my physics peers was smarter than I, especially the boys. Sophomore year in Mudd Blaisdell I distinctly remember telling two female friends that men were better than women at science.

I had reached a stasis founded in the idea that evolution had no conscience, no drive for equality, the physical differences between men and women serving as an obvious, palpable example. I reasoned that over the course of history, evolution may have dictated that one gender’s mental aptitude fall short of the other, the need to support and raise offspring taking precedence over intellectual pursuits. And while the thought was painful, I learned to accept this unfair reality and to make the most of the hand I was given.

I would now like to share some psychology research, most of which comes from “Whistling Vivaldi,” a great book written by Claude M. Steele and recommended by Dwight that explores the idea of stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is a documented phenomenon whereby the belief of inferiority (such as the idea that women are less logically minded) is, in effect, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Steele, an African-American psychologist and professor, opens the book by sharing research examining the performance of black and white golfers subjected to stereotype threat. White students who were told that golfing “measured natural athletic ability” golfed measurably worse than white students who were told nothing before the test. When intelligence entered the picture, the results drastically changed:

They told groups of black and white Princeton students that the golf task they were about to begin was a measure of ‘sports strategic intelligence.’ This simple change of phrase had a powerful effect. It now put black students at risk, through their golfing, of confirming or being seen to confirm the ancient and very bad stereotype of blacks as less intelligent.

Steele goes on to describe his own research studying the effects of stereotype threat on women’s math test scores. He devised a simple plan: before the test, the girls were told the following: “You may have heard that women don’t do as well as men on difficult standardized math tests, but that’s not true for the particular standardized math test; on this particular test, women always do as well as men.” Amazingly, a few words of encouragement had dramatic results.

Among participants who were told the test did show gender differences, where the women could still feel the threat of stigma confirmation, women did worse than equally skilled men, just as in the earlier experiment. But among participants who were told the test did not show gender differences, where the women were free of confirming anything about being a woman, woman performed at the same high level as equally skilled men. Their underperformance was gone.

I’ve always been terrified of standardized tests, and over the course of my education, my lackluster performance reinforced feelings of inferior innate abilities. Despite the fact that I got one of the highest grades in my BC Calc class, I got a 3 on the AP test, my only non-5 out of 7 AP tests. I got a 730 on the math portion of the SAT, my lowest section. I was scheduled to take the AP Physics test, but by the time the exam rolled around, I had already been accepted to Pomona, and fear of failure provoked me to play hooky that morning. I’m glad that I did, because I’m not sure if I would have the confidence needed to major in physics with an AP score less than 5.

Perhaps the most detrimental test of all: the Physics GRE. I have never feared a test as greatly as I feared the Physics GRE. And my score, a lousy 30%, barely scraping by the department’s minimum requirement for the major, was a mental torment for several months after college.

This is the point of the story where I would like to share the ways by which I opened my eyes, because my self discovery couldn’t have occurred alone, and it didn’t come easily. The number one reason why, today, I am fully convinced that men and women are equally intelligent, and the reason why I strongly believe in the need to encourage women to pursue degrees in the hard sciences, is because of Physics Senior Seminar. And for that reason, I owe a lot of people — perhaps most importantly, Amanda and Taylor — for encouraging the department to address issues of women in science.

I will honestly admit that although I saw and lamented the gender gap in science, I was scared that the gender gap existed as a result of innate aptitude. As such, I would not have have been the student to suggest the topic of women in science. But I couldn’t be more grateful someone else had more foresight than I. Of all conversations spawned by Senior Seminar, I think one comment in particular flipped a mental switch, perhaps not immediately, but even in the moment it held significance. To the question, “why is it important to encourage women to pursue careers in science?” Amanda said, because “the next Einstein could be a woman.”

That comment hit me pretty hard. It was new idea for me. Up to that point, I was struggling to answer the question, “are women as smart as men?” I had never considered the possibility that I, or any other female, might be smarter than men.

This event marked a major step in the right direction, but this new understanding didn’t sink in immediately. Here are the things, after graduating, that I believed:

1. I wasn’t competent/intelligent enough to be a physics professor.
2. I wasn’t smart enough to go to physics grad school.
3. Despite the fact that I received the Richard Edmund’s Physics Award, I felt the award was granted out of respect, rather than academic achievements or intelligence (this, by the way, is an idea I still hold, not as a result of low self-esteem, but only because I had the honor to graduate with a group of highly intelligent, highly competent peers, all of whom, in my mind, deserve an honor of equivalent weight)
4. I thought I was terrible at presenting.

Evidence from the workplace is the reason that I now believe that I was wrong on all counts, and the lack of confidence is the reason that I didn’t perform as highly as I could have. The first piece of evidence came through Skillshare reviews. I’ve taught a handful of Arduino / electronics classes to software engineers from companies like Google. My classes have been wildly successful, and I have received outstanding reviews from students. As for presenting — (not to blow my horn) at my last job I gave a handful of seriously kick-ass, highly technical presentations to very large audiences.

My job experience in tech comes second to Senior Seminar in terms of importance in this evolution, and I think for the following reason: without a CS degree, I felt as though my colleagues and manager had low expectations. No one could fault or judge me for my failure to understand advanced topics because I didn’t have a formal training in computer science. It was an environment where I was free to learn without any pressure, without any competition. And I thrived. I frequently described my brain as being of fire. I mastered the product in six months, I answered handfuls of very difficult questions faster than many of my male counterparts, and I surprised the shit out of myself.

As I came to understand my intelligence and reflect on my upbringing, I started to think out loud. I pitched an idea to my brother, the idea that no one in the family had ever commented on my intelligence but had frequently mentioned his. Ian got a little bit defensive and said, “what, you think you’re the smartest kid?” That was a question whose power held equal weight to Amanda’s Einstein comment. I had only ever considered the possibility of equality, never superiority. And at that moment, for the first time, I considered the possibility that I might be smarter than my brother, and even more unbelievable was the idea that I might possibly be smarter than my father.

Just to be clear, I don’t believe that I am smarter than any member of my family; for one thing, intelligence has many flavors, and putting a box around “smartness” is a pointless and impossible endeavor. Even if intelligence could be quantified, I don’t think there’s any evidence to support the idea that one family member is smarter than another. The important point of this story is the following: for the first time in my life, I considered the possibility that, as a woman, there was no reason I couldn’t be smarter than my male relatives.

These are the ways by which I found myself, and now that I’m awake, I am acutely aware of the ways in which societal prejudice is perpetuated. Just to share a few examples — in the workplace, more than one of my male coworkers defaulted to assuming that every one of my solutions was incorrect, despite the fact that 98% of the time my solutions were rapid, detailed, lucid, and perfectly accurate. I feel confident that if I had been a man, these colleagues wouldn’t have been so skeptical of my work. I’ve lost count of the number of subtly sexist comments made in the last year, from, “you don’t look like a physicist,” to, “best I’ve seen for a girl.” At a conference where I gave a tech presentation, three men confronted me after the event to say, “we don’t really believe it’s possible. A hot woman in computer science?” They proceeded to test my intelligence by asking me to report the speed of light as well as the weight of a liter of water. Fortunately for my sanity, my skin had grown thick by the time of their interrogation.

Another difference in my workplace experience relative to that of a man— neither men nor women fear my intelligence before or after meeting me, despite my manifold accomplishments and sharp wit. I strongly believe, however, that the lack of fear when communicating with other humans encourages rapid, fluid, and expedient information exchange, which is a goal for which I think all humans — male or female — should strive. Unfortunately, the fact that I my intelligence isn’t perceived as a threat by my coworkers makes it harder to command respect from and easier to get stepped on by overly-confident, highly-assertive individuals, of which there are many. Far too many in my experience.

My experiences in the workplace have been confirmed by copious amounts of research. I’d like to share an excerpt from a Scientific American article describing gender bias:

On Wednesday, Sean Carroll blogged about and brought to light the research from Yale that had scientists presented with application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position and who intended to go on to graduate school. Half the scientists were given the application with a male name attached, and half were given the exact same application with a female name attached. Results found that the “female” applicants were rated significantly lower than the “males” in competence, hireability, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student.

Another very important point that I would like to make is that I hold no ill-will, no blame for anyone who perpetuates false ideas of inferiority because I find myself making the same false judgments. They are ideas transmitted subconsciously, ideas continually engrained by our society. As a woman who has had the rare fortune to escape the cycle, I think it should be our goal to actively identify and circumvent long-running methods of thought that keep groups of individuals from achieveing their highest potential. We’ve already made significant progress; women and minorities are entering engineering and science, but progress is slow, and occasionally regresses, and so there’s still a long way to go.

Although societal change may feel impossible, I would like to offer the following words of encouragement: I made it out, and I don’t think that my experience has to be unique. I now walk into a room with my head held high, making no assumptions about my intelligence relative to the other individuals in the room. I give great presentations, and my confidence is palpable. And most importantly, I am not afraid to apply to physics grad school, to start company, to communicate with top executives, to teach at a university level, or to pursue any of my other dreams.

But I also think it’s important to emphasize that, despite my new perspective, I’m not perfect; I continue to make sexist assumptions. Even after my transformation, I’ve caught myself, on more than one occasion, judging a female counterpart more harshly than an equally talented man, or having lower expectations of a female colleague for no other reason than the fact that she was born with two X chromosomes.

I will conclude with a the bottom line: interacting with other humans without prejudice is a learning process, but for the sake of untapped potential, I think it’s a lesson worth learning, and it’s a lesson I’m committed to teaching.

I wish you all the best in the journey of self discovery, and I implore you raise a hand in the event that I may help you reach new understandings.

Sincerely,

Jenna