Debbie Harris

Macedonian Sheep Dogs

November 30, 2005

A month ago there was yet another article in the New York times that got me really angry, but because I"ve been so busy with getting ready for the MINERvA Director's Review (which isn't even until December 13!) I haven't had the energy to write about it.  A wise friend told me this afternoon that these blogs don't have to be life-shattering, perfect, or planned out, so here goes...

The article I would have written about, had I the energy, was by Maureen Dowd (whose OP-Ed columns I usually enjoy), and was called What's a Modern Girl to Do? .  It was a long article which mostly describes trends which to me would signal the death of feminism.  Although many parts of the article made me cringe, the part that somehow stayed with me for the past month was the statement that intelligence in women is a turnoff to men, and that women should really "dumb down" if they want to catch a man.  I remember feeling this vibe when I was in high school, but then finding it blissfully absent when I got to college.  I read this article and thought that either I am really divorced from reality these days, or Maureen Dowd is, and since she's the journalist then maybe I"m the one who is without a clue. 

Luckily there are folks out there who can pull apart Maureen Dowd's work much more effecitvely (and in a much more public forum) than I can, and when I got the Nation a week after the original article by Dowd came out, I felt much better.  True to form, Katha Pollitt offered a scathing rebuttal in The World According to Dowd.  She claims that although things are certainly far from the way they should be in the arena of gender equality, we've come a long way and that Dowd's article tends to reinforce and legitimize the inequities rather than describe the flaws that bring them about.  Furthermore, she points out that women have made great advances and that we are not in fact going backwards.   

"How many young women flash their breasts for the camera or flog themselves academically all the way to the Ivy League merely to snag a rich husband?  More than minor in women's studies, volunteer for rape-crisis hotlines, have black-belts in karate or PhDs in physics or raise Macedonian sheep-dogs?....By many measures young women today are far more independent than we were..."

I'll admit it here: I was proud to be in such fine company, although somehow I'm guessing there are more women getting PhD's in physics than there are raising Macedonian sheepdogs.   

This One's for Sue

November 12, 2005

A year ago today my mother's best friend, Sue Mendelsohn, died at the tender age of 62.  This week there was a memorial tribute at Fermilab in front of the Lederman Center at Fermilab, the science education center where Sue worked for the last several years of her life.  There's no way I could do Sue's spirit, convictions, or energy justice here, but words spoken at this service (by my mom, actually, pictured at left) made me do something small that I hope will end up in big changes in the long run.  My mom said that while most of us sit around and complain about what's wrong with the world, Sue actually got up and did something about it. 

The day before Sue's memorial I received a link to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, because I was quoted in the article.  The story is about the precarious nature of the post-doc position in science, and the specific case of one post-doc who is suing her ex-boss and his university because she was denied maternity leave and had her pay docked after the birth of her second child.  I mentioned this very case "anonymously" in an earlier entry this year, but this article is much more detailed and depressing, and explicit.  Once I read the article I felt terrible all over again about what happened to Sherry, but didn't actually forward it to anyone besides a friend who has sent me Chronicle articles in the past.

However, at Sue's memorial service I realized that it's not enough to read this article and be depressed about it.  We have to get the word out that this is NOT acceptable behavior, and that sooner or later someone as brave as Sherry will come along and blow the whistle on you.

So when I returned to my office after the service I sent the link out to a mailing list that is supposed to target women scientists at Fermilab, and sure enough the discussion started.  Some replied and said I didn't know the whole story...others replied and said that they could relate to much of what Sherry went through but never had the guts to even complain, never mind take legal action.  Still others replied that this article is a terrible thing because it will deter women from physics because it makes us look like we're still in the dark ages on issues of maternity leave. 

The simple fact is that there is a Family Medical Leave Act, which has nothing to do with your analysis style, your physics abilities, or your personality:  it has to do with your employment status and your status as a primary care-giver. 

The Chronicle article itself, while clear and moving, does neglect to make the point that there are faculty in physics departments (and national labs) who grant their post-docs the maternity (or paternity) leave they request, and support them through their next appointment--I worked for one myself at the University of Rochester, and I sent in a comment to the Chronicle telling them that.  (see my response here)

But I think we need to use this article (along with all the positive role models out there) to point out that there is an attitude problem in this field, one that hurts the field as a whole, not just the women in it.  That attitude problem is the assumption that every minute of research counts, and that if you lose 3 months of your post-doc to infant care then your physics (and funding for your physics) grinds to a screeching halt forever.  Every great physicist had outside interests, from Newton to Einstein to Feynman, and people love to point that out yet never make the connection that perhaps what made them great was that they were NOT doing physics every waking moment of their lives. 

So the first thing that I hope happens, perhaps because this article is getting wide circulation, and perhaps because it's just long overdue, is that the Fermilab scientific appointment policy changes.  They are now discussing a written policy that gives people the option of an additional year on the tenure clock if they were the primary care-giver for an infant, as well as an idea that a post-doc's appointment get extended for extra time for the same reason. 

So I'm still learning from Sue:  It's just not enough to complain about these injustices, and set up some pregnancy leave rumor mill where we warn people about bosses who are unsympathetic to maternity/parternity leaves.  We have to change the assumption that a boss can deny someone the right to take off to care for their newborn child in the first place! 

Flying Solo

October 30-November 5, 2005

This past week has been my turn to take care of the kids and the house single-handedly, since Rob (my husband) was out of town (at CERN, no less) for work.  Although Rob and I are both in particle physics, Rob likes travelling much less than I do, so as a result he ends up travelling for work only two or three times a year--and this is someone whose day job is on an experiment that will take place Geneva Switzerland!

Since I am much more involved with the day to day necessities of the kids than Rob is, when Rob goes away the biggest difference in my schedule is that I just end up doing a more clearning and straightening up the house, and overall the house is much less clean.  Conversely, when I go away Rob's whole daily routine changes, from getting breakfast ready to putting the kids to bed at night.  Either way, whomever is taking care of the kids solo ends up going to sleep right after the kids do...the only difference is that I have dishpan hands (which makes me wonder if Rob's been wearing gloves all this time).   

Somehow having to fly solo once in awhile feels like good exercise for me:  I end up prioritizing a lot more than I usually do, and somehow when Rob comes back to town I all of a sudden feel like I have all this freedom and extra time on my hands, even though that can hardly be true.  I used to call this "single Mommin' it", but in fact I imagine that it's really nothing like actually being a single parent.  There is still so much I don't bother with in the house...

The funny thing about this week feeling like taking a dose of my own medicine is that I got the tables turned on me at work too.  I've been doing lots of "taking stock of things" and preparing for a big review of the MINERvA Experiment that will take place on December 13-15 at Fermilab.  We're holding all these internal reviews, and trying to get a bunch of documentation together that says exactly what we're planning to build and how and why we're building it (and how long the whole thing will take!).  One of the things I did this very week was come up with a list of outside experts whom I'd want to invite to review the project.  The funny thing is that the very same week I submitted that list to the organizers, I also received an invitation asking me to serve as an "outisde expert" on a very similar kind of review, only it'll be a review that takes place at a laboratory I've never worked at.  I guess what goes around comes around...