Physics and the feminine: 2010

Extracts from a student's journal

In Chemistry, we get a lot of time to really digest a topic...Chemistry leaves me in awe, and feeling humble and so grateful. Physics leaves me feeling rushed and slightly insecure, as though I can’t possibly learn it fast enough. The laws of physics rule the universe, and learning about the universe usually makes me feel small, but in a good way, like I can do anything, and like I’m part of something. I feel like I should be experiencing more of that learning physics, but instead I’m feeling insecure and somewhat inadequate. In Chemistry it’s like “here are all the rules you’ve been playing by that you never knew about, isn’t that amazing, aren’t we fortunate?” In physics it’s more like “These are the rules. Bow down.” It makes me feel underappreciated. I’m doing all I can to learn this subject, but it’s almost as though physics in general thinks it’s doing me a favour...

Nature as a model, measure and mentor

In complete opposition to Francis Bacon's views of Nature as a thing to be subdued, here comes biomimicry: Nature as the supreme engineer! If so many girls are attracted to biology, this might be a way to attract them to physics.

I cannot wait to introduce elements of biomimicry into my physics teaching! Many students are overexcited by the subject.

TEd talk by the founder, Janine Benyus:
http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_shares_nature_s_designs.html

See also the biomimicry website

and the biomimicry institute

Among my favorite projects: the wind turbine that imitates whales' flippers, natural air cooling system borrowed from the termites and how a shell can teach us how to build a windshield.

Application to space technology: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FYMRH3XVlo&feature=related

Those who are inspired by a model other than Nature, a mistress above all masters, are laboring in vain... (Leonardo DaVinci)

The chilly work climate

In "Gender and physics: feminist philosophy and science
education", Sci & Educ (2008) 17:1111–1125, Kristina Rolin explores several dimensions of the physics sub-culture.

She reviews Margaret Wertheim’s analysis of ‘the physicist as the priest’ (1995) . Here are some interesting extracts:

"In this section, I argue that Wertheim’s and Hasse’s studies of gender ideology in the culture of physics contribute to our understanding of ‘chilly climate’ phenomena.These studies suggest that gender ideologies in the culture of physics concern what I call ‘styles of doing science’. By a ‘style of doing science’ I mean a cluster of emotion, imagination, and experience which is invested in scientific activities. Insofar as certain styles of doing science prevail in the culture of physics and these styles are understood to be masculine, it is possible to do masculine gender by doing physics."

A number of prominent and inﬂuential twentieth century physicists have understood physics as a ‘quasi-religious’ quest for truth (or if not understood, at least used ‘quasi-religious’ rhetoric to advertise their research programs). She uses the term ‘quasi-religious’ to suggest that these physicists express a structure of emotion, imagination, and experience similar to that of Judaism and Christianity even though many of them do not express a belief in god as it is represented in the major Western religions. Second, Wertheim claims that the goal of seeking religious experiences by means of intellectual transcendence is not gender neutral; it is the kind of non-scientiﬁc goal which is more likely to appeal to a person with a masculine gender identity than to a person with a feminine gender identity. In summary, Wertheim suggests that gender ideologies inﬂuence the culture of physics by establishing a symbolic connection between the non-scientiﬁc goal of seeking religious experiences and the scientiﬁc goal of developing a uniﬁed theory of the four elementary forces(gravitational, electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces).

Wertheim argues also that contemporary physicists have appropriated the saintly image of Einstein for the purpose of constructing a public image of physics: ‘The myth of the saint scientiﬁc is not simply a literary ﬁction but a powerful cultural image that continues to perpetuate a view of physics as a divine or holy pursuit' (1995, p 188). The saintly image of the physicist is perpetuated, for instance, in press releases given by contemporary physicists, such as in George Smoot’s statement that discovering echoes of the big bang was like ‘seeing the face of God’ . Einstein’s legacy lives on in the quasi-religious imagination associated with a ‘theory of everything’. In popular physics literature the history of the universe is cast as a decline from a state of original unity (‘symmetry’) and a ‘theory of everything’ as the mathematical Eden where the physicist longs to return. ‘The idea that there must be one force ultimately responsible for all action and form in the universe can be considered as a scientiﬁc parallel of monotheism’,Wertheim suggests (1995, p 209).

Wertheim’s argument for her second claim, the claim that the non-scientiﬁc goal of seeking religious experiences by means of intellectual transcendence is widely understood to be masculine, is based on her understanding of ancient philosophy and Judeo-Christian tradition. Wertheim claims that ‘In the Christian West, the radition of intellectual transcendence has always been associated with a male priesthood’(1995, p 237). ‘Ever since the Homeric era, women have been cast on the side of the material, the bodily, and the ‘‘earthly,’’ while men have been cast on the side of the spiritual, the intellectual, and the ‘‘heavenly’’‘ (Wertheim 1995, p 236). ‘For most of the Greeks, particularly Aristotle and his followers, it was men alone who could aspire to psychic transcendence, whereas women with their upposedly defective souls were said to be forever trapped in the material prisons of their bodies’(Wertheim 1995, p 236). Wertheim suggests also that ‘The ancient association of maleness with psychic transcendence continues to underpin the male dominance of mathematically based science today’ (1995, p 236). Therefore, she argues, ‘It is not just a matter of helping women to change so they will be comfortable with the culture of physics, we also need to consciously work on hanging that culture itself’(1995, pp 246–247). Obviously, more empirical studies would have to be made in order to ﬁnd out whether the association of maleness with transcendence continues to inﬂuence the culture of contemporary physics.

AIP women physicists speak

American Institute of Physics survey

# Although a majority of the responding women physicists said they would choose physics again, a majority also reported being discouraged about physics. Many spoke about negative interaction with colleagues, including many stories about discriminatory attitudes (Table 17). Eighty percent said that attitudes about women in science need improvement (Table 18).

# In the first international survey of women in physics, women spoke a great deal about the effects of children and childcare demands on their careers. However, in this study, women were careful to point out that the main problem is that women in physics continue to face discrimination and negative attitudes.

The main reason [I’ve felt discouraged] is so often you are just made to feel like you shouldn’t be there. You have to work twice as hard, do twice as much just to be considered half as qualified. ~Australia

A beautiful and moving testimony

Here is a beautiful testimony by a female physics instructor. She allowed me to share some of her quotes.

Feminism revisited

[...]

I've lived most of my life trying to be tough. Trying to handle everything emotionally and physically. Not that I acted butch on the surface (though it bordered on that too at times), but tough in any other way I could manage. I took a degree in what I thought was the hardest subject, in large part because it was hard. Physics is probably one of the most heavily male dominated fields. Throughout my years studying it and working in it, I never felt any prejudice against me, or encountered any sexism.

But the prejudice against what some call "the feminine" is so deep, and such an integral part of our society. In effect, I am not talking about prejudice against women, but about prejudice held by both men and women, against what are traditionally known as feminine characteristics, that either sex may manifest. I believe this prejudice against certain ways of being, is what causes actual prejudice towards the female gender and in turn, discrimination, even violence against women.

I had long gotten used to the idea that the deepest parts of me are uncomfortable with my work and had become resigned to live with that disconnect. Uncomfortable with a manufactured need for rigour and mind numbing attention to detail, in recreating ancient experiments with dumbed-down equipment. Requiring students to be confined to a desk either listening or following (obeying) a set of detailed instructions to find a pre-determined outcome. An attempt to mimic real conditions, but in such a simplified and forced way, it requires "buying in", rather than real curiosity. The worst for me was having to herd them through this in a two hour time limit, while demanding that they obtain results and recorded data to an exacting standard, with picky rules about exactly how their work should be presented.

Creativity? We expect them to think creatively and critically, within these limits, along with piles of work and sometimes extreme parental pressure. We are continually annoyed that they don't.

Listening to one's body... where does such an utterly flaky idea fit into a scenario like this? I can tell you where - it happens when your body gives you signs you can no longer ignore, brought about by years of pushing yourself past what both body and mind can comfortably deal with, driven by the "way it has always been done".

Community and connection to others...

Compassion

Mental space to breathe, to create, to question

Lack of compulsion to comply with a status quo

These things have no place in science education as it is traditionally done. The purpose of our schools is to create employees. Employees who can sit in a chair for a certain amount of time that some company has bought them for, each day. In fact, schools and in particular science education, and my job in particular, are indicators of the state of this society and its values:

Competition. Weeding out the weak. Lack of genuine connection between people; a lack of community. Rushing to cram in as much as possible.

I am not saying these ugly things completely define the society I live in. Nothing can totally numb the side of us that goes beyond logic, that craves beauty. What I am talking about is the status quo and the elements of this society that create the structure in it, that we are all required to fit into in various ways.

The first words that come to my mind to describe "the feminine" are gentleness and vulnerability. More recently, I've been hearing the word receptivity. Acceptance of what is. Nurturing is the stereotypical one, which seems to have so much baggage attached.

At a certain point in my life, I would have been very uncomfortable with any of those. It seems to me that feminism for a long time was brainwashed by patriarchy, and sought to invalidate the feminine by arguing that women are not any more nurturing or gentle or receptive than men, as if these qualities were somehow inferior. (My point has little to do with whether or not we are).

We have been so brainwashed and so damaged for so long (both men and women) that we no longer see these archetypal feminine qualities as strengths, and seek to diminish or destroy them. Our work lives I think are particularly guilty of that: what will make us able to sit in a square cubicle made of cheap and unattractive synthetic material, in discomfort for a fair amount of time, surrounded by concrete instead of nature, in disregard for the natural need of the brain for periods of concentration and periods of relaxation, making money for someone else who sits at the top of a pyramid?
We will more willingly do this if we believe feelings are not important, that our bodies are secondary to our minds, (and indeed, that mind and body are completely separate), that weakness is despicable and those who don't "make it" are losers because they don't try hard enough - they don't force themselves through physical discomfort and spiritual wilderness as they should, in order to be "productive".

Does anyone really enjoy a world like this?

Where has this competition and this fighting to take a bigger piece of the pie (or just to get along) gotten us? This should be abundantly clear by now - to hell on Earth: pollution to the point of planetary destruction and a diminishing of resources needed for basic survival. Not to mention injustice and inequity.

I am not saying everything is bad about the "masculine" characteristics that have been predominant for so long, during the time that we have been colonising and plundering. It is just that they have been so completely unbalanced, and the "feminine" has been despised. There is nothing wrong with logic, there is nothing wrong with competition - it is part of nature. Toughness is important at times, as is the ability to be objective and un-swayed by emotions. Gregariousness and outward moving, exploring and conquering types of actions are necessary and have a beauty of their own.

I have recently been shocked by my introduction to ideas from the pre-patriarchal world. Of symbolism and myth that existed before Christianity and other patriarchal religions or world views.
The following information should not be such a surprise. But it was subverted and systematic attempts were made to eradicate it. They almost completely succeeded.
There once existed societies in which "the feminine" was revered. In which human beings of both sexes viewed the fact that the female body was capable of bringing forth life, as being as incredibly significant as it is. [...] The symbolism of what the female body was capable of, was of major importance in some of these ancient societies. The mystery and miracle of it were revered; and thus, even that part of the body was not considered too dirty and disgusting to create into a written symbol. The feminine and its incredible power and importance to life was so honoured that the nature of the womb and genital parts were symbolic of creativity, of protection, of prosperity. To think that these aspects of who I am were held in high esteem floors me.[...]

Historical context

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) is often referred as the inventor of the inductive method. In Francis Bacon's imagery, science is disconnected from the female realm and from politics. Science is a mean of power and the sub-culture of scientists is inspired by priesthood. Bacon lived in a time when male scientists were studying alchemy while witches were burnt by the inquisition. Merchant (2001) studied Bacon's language and imagery: “Bacon developed the power of language as a political instrument in reducing female nature to a resource for economic production.” Merchant claims that language from witches trials and torture methods permeated Bacon's literary style: “nature was a female to be tortured through mechanical inventions.” “Bacon transformed the magus from nature's servant to it exploiter, and nature from a teacher to a slave.” He “frequently described matter in female imagery” and used some “bold sexual imagery” for the experimental method. In the New Atlantis, Bacon proposed an utopian society lead by male scientists, “for they alone possessed the secrets of nature” and “had the power to absolve all human misery through science”.

René Descartes

By claiming “cogito ergo sum,” Descartes negated the embodied component of the mind and expelled the feminine from thoughts. According to Bordo (2001), Descartes underwent “a masculinization of thoughts.” She argues that Descartes exhibited a need to escape the anxiety

over the separation from the organic female universe of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.... The more intuitive, emphatic, and associational elements were exorcised from science and philosophy. The result is a supermasculinized model of knowledge in which detachment, clarity, and transcendence of the body are all key elements. ...The scientific mind must be cleansed of all sympathies toward the objects it tries to understand. (Bordo, 2001, p. 93)

Whitehead (1933) claims that seventeenth century scientists saw “Nature as a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly.” Bordo (2001) cites Merchant : “In the seventeenth century, the female world-soul was murdered by the mechanist re-visioning of nature.” The scientific community has a well known history of discriminatory practices against women but authors like Hardin (2001a), Stern (1965) and Hillman (1972) claim that modern science also crystallizes masculinist modes of thinking. Cartesian objectivity is also blind to the connections between scientific knowledge and society. However, Harding (2001) challenges that view:

Modern science has again and again been reconstructed by a set of interests and values – distinctively Western, bourgeois, and patriarchal …. Nature-as-the-object- of- human knowledge never comes to us “naked.” … The ideal of the disinterested rational scientist advances the self-interest of both social elites and, ironically, scientists who seek status and power. (Harding, 2001)

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton's mechanics is extensively studied in grade 11, grade 12 and first year physics courses. Newton was as much a physicists as a mathematician, an alchemist and an exegete. Some argue Newton was a virgin homosexual. The popular narratives about this scientific genius are silent about those traits: they rather reinforce the stereotypes of the white-middle-class-straight-solitary-laboratory-oriented man. As early as the time of Voltaire, Newton was pictured as a rationalist. However, his universal law of gravitation was based on the belief in action at a distance, which was more rooted in magic than in rationality and was therefore challenged in continental Europe by Newton's contemporaries (and later by Albert Einstein). Some assimilate Newton with the beginning of mechanism, but he was a devout Arianist who thought God's intervention necessary to “wind up” the solar system. His chastity evokes priesthood, a recurrent theme in the imagery of the physics community. Leiss (2008) quotes: “the Large Hardron Collider is a secular cathedral where physicists wait in meditation and prayer to detect the God particle (the Higgs boson).” Wertheim (1997) asserts that physics is particular among the sciences has being a religiously inspired activity, which could explain the exclusion of women in the physics world: “Women were cast on the side of the material, the bodily, the 'earthly', while men were cast on the side of the spiritual, the intellectual, and the ‘heavenly.'”

Pierre Simon de Laplace

Pierre Simon de Laplace (1749 -1827), the “French Newton,” is the one who developed a complete mechanistic and deterministic view of the universe: An intellect which at any given moment knew all of the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the beings that compose it ... could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes. (Laplace, 1814). This omniscient intellectual is sometimes referred to as “Laplace's Daemon.” Even if this daemon was killed by Boltzmann's statistical mechanics in the 1880s, it can be seen in the background of all introductory physics textbooks.

The twentieth century

In the 1900s, modern physics marked a rupture with classical ways of thinking, in particular with Newton and Laplace's mechanistic views. Some milestones worth mentioning are: statistical mechanics (1880s), chaos theory (Henri Poincaré in 1880s, Edward Norton Lorenz in 1961) and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (1926). Surprisingly, modern physics is never taught to the vast majority of students: grade 11, 12 and first year physics focuses primarily on Newtonian mechanics. Theoretical physicist Lee Smolin notices that:

despite the fact that quantum mechanics superseded Newtonian mechanics eighty years ago, most colleges and universities in North America still postpone quantum mechanics until the third year level of study, and even then it is offered only to physical science majors. (Smolin, 2006, p. 265).

Before criticizing physics textbooks, we must acknowledge the recent efforts made by publishers to move toward illustrations and word problems that are less gender and minorities biased. We must also recognize that the scientific community is aware of the limitations of objectivity, as shown in the following extract from a statement by the National Academy of Science:

Many of the intangible influences on scientific discovery – curiosity, intuition, creativity – largely defy rational analysis, yet they are among the tools that scientists bring to work... Historians, sociologists , and other students of science have shown that social and personal beliefs – including philosophical, thematic, religious, cultural, political, and economic beliefs – can shape scientific judgment in fundamental ways. (National Academy of Science, 2001)

Athena Unbound

"The advancement of women in science and technology"
A book by H. Etzkowitz, C. Kemelgor and . Uzzi.
Some quotes:
While some of their male contemporaries view female scientists as 'honorary men', others see them as 'flawed women' for attempting to particiapte in a traditional male realm. (page 2)

Earned Doctorates, USA, 1990s: % of female students.
Mathematics: 19 Physics: 12% All engineering: 11% (page 11)

Graduate female students encounter an opaque competitive system that depletes their self-confidence.... (page 15) Women are often excluded from information and informal channels in graduate school, they have less access to 'social capital.' (page 16) They develop a tendency for self-blame and fear of risk taking and role confusion at the highest faculty level (page 16).

Just a century ago women were barred from seeking degrees and advanced training in the sciences in most universities in Europe (page 17).

Academic practices, presumed to be meritocratic and gender-free, often work against women's professional success. These effects are sometimes hidden behind a neutralor even positive facade erected on the publicized achievements of a few exceptional women, some of whom deny the existence of obstacles in their path. Other women are unaware that they have been singled out for negative treatment while still others are al too cognisant but are also wary of challenging unfair practices for fear of reprisal. (page 22)

When they enter U.S. universities young women are disproportionately removed from science and engineering majors by a harsh "weed-out" system designed to test the mettle of young males, well socialized in the norms of competition. (page 26) Challenge is a central theme in many rites of passage into manhood (page 54). Some women adopt the competitive imperative, and learn how to compete in male terms. Men oare often not comfortable with this. (page 55)

It would be illogical to say that being male or female would, in itself, make someone a good or a bad scientist. Yet this kind of statement is often made.Negative stereotypes persist. (page 31)

In Western culture, science, like the Church, has been viewed as a 'world without women' (Noble, 1992) (page 32)

Young women, who worked hard in high school and used their teacher's praise and encouragement as the basis for their self-esteem, become disoriented in college. (page 53)

Many aspects of science and engineering majors force women into conflict with their gender socialization .. Adjustments tend to be psychologically uncomfortable, and some coping strategies provoke disapproval from other women, male peers, or both.(page 56).Women are concerned that male acceptance of their academic worth would detract from their sense of who they were as women (page 58)

Women are forced to make a cultural choice between being attractive and being smart (page 58)

Women can be set up to fail, unless they are helped to see how existing male-dominant power structure can play upon their anxieties about their self-image. (page 59)

The gender and science reader

The Gender and Science Reader brings together key writings by leading scholars to provide a comprehensive feminist analysis of the nature and practice of science. Challenging the self-proclaimed objectivity of scientific practice, the contributors uncover the gender, class and racial prejudices of modern science. The Reader draws from a range of media, including feminist criticism, scientific literature, writings about scientific education, and the popular press.

The Gender and Science Reader. Lederman and Bartsch Ed.,London and New York: Routledge

Teaching boys and girls

An excellent overview of the differences in teaching physics to boys and girls:
http://www.physik.uni-bremen.de/physics.education/schwedes/text/girlboys.htm

For today I will put my focus to physics instruction, and I want to argue that teachers, she or he, should be very aware of their own gender-like behavior and to that of their boys and girls. We have to realise that we act and react differently to a male or female partner, and that´s allright.

Purpose of this blog

I did a PhD in astrophysics, then taught physics for 15 years, and always thought I was enjoying what I was doing. I then started a degree in science education. In my sociology class, I reflected on the low number of female physicists, which led me to explore issues of science and gender, and history of science. I became aware that for 25 years I had been conforming to a persona that wasn't me, a persona that never dared to be fully feminine. I became more aware of the hidden messages in textbooks and of the features of the physics sub-culture. It has been a liberating experience. It has open new areas of exploration in my work. I have met women who have a lot of fascinating stories to tell about their journey in physics.

This is a place to share thoughts, emotions and references. It is not meant to be a feminist platform, however feminists are welcome. This is a blog for any one, man, woman and transgender, who feels physics could be more welcoming to the feminine.

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