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society and physics and gender issues and other concerns: was ( How To Recruit Women to Tech and IT Classes )



Several replies to aspects of several posts by Hugh:

Is this a problem peculiar to women? Or would men who would
take time out
from their academic career to start a family also have great deal of
difficulty getting back into the field? My guess is that
they would, and
perhaps would even have larger difficulties.


I don't have any direct evidence, but I have heard some stories that
indicate that they have less trouble. I know several men who, after
military careers move directly from military service to academic
appointments, many of them in physics. Although this isn't quite the
same thing, it seems to me to be similar and I know of no women who
have had the same experience, although I'm sure there are some.


I have no other direct evidence than living in the culture where I live and
seeing the huge diparity in the willingness of men to do such things
compared to women. There is some hard data coming from Sweden, where the
laws are rather liberal regarding maternity and paternity leaves (more
generous for the maternity leave) and its been found that the men do not
take advantage of their legal options to anywhere near the same degree as
the men. I can only guess at the reasons, that is make unsubstantiated
gneraliziations which may or may not be true for individual situations, but
I think one likely one is that the men view doing so as being damaging to
their career in ways that they aren't willing sacrifice. It may be the same
for the women. But I'm offering evidence that taking time out for child
rearing is significantly damaging to the career for both sexes. I don't
think the military example is apropos, as it isn't taking time out from a
career as much as changing careers and sometimes not even that, but
changing
employers.

Its the subtle stuff that is still around and just as effective as the
louts used to be.

Actually, since the percentage of women physics majors, faculty etc. is
increasing (perhaps not fast enough), the subtle stuff isn't as effective
has the louts used to be.

Have you read David Goodstein's Richtmeyer Lecture in a recent AJP?
He asserts that we need to start thinking of physics as the "liberal
education for the 21st century." He argues that a good grounding in
physics is an excellent basis for a huge number of activities,
including many in the humanities. I won't try to reproduce his
arguments. Read his article. It's much more eloquent than I could
ever be.

Yes, I've read it and it is elequent. But asserting, perhaps correctly,
that physics should be the liberal education of the 21st century is quite
different from what society says it needs by virtue of what it is willing
to
hire.

It may well be that society has decided that we don't need physics
any more. There seems to be some evidence that you are correct. But
that would be a great tragedy if it should come to pass, and I think
that it is in humanity's best interest, even if humanity doesn't
understand that, for physicists to do their utmost to convince
society otherwise.

Here I agree completely, but more for Goodstein's reasons, then the believe
that we need to significantly increase our output of physicists for the
good
of the technological developement of humanity, or other "atom bomb" type
reasons.

The rules governing such arrangements vary from school to school, but more
and
more schools are realizing that they get a good bargain because for
slightly more than one salary (benefits often can't be split) they
often get considerably more than one person's work.

I'm troubled by some aspects of this. One arguement for doing these things
is basically that the couple can be exploited by the employer (it may be
willing exploitation, but much exploitation is willing as the exploited
often see it as the best of a bunch of lousy options, why else do you sign
contracts with clauses you don't really agree to or think are fair; my
mortgage for example).

Joel Rauber
Joel_Rauber@sdstate.edu