Saw something, said something: the personal and political collide

Not long ago I had the great privilege to be the keynote speaker at the Indiana University Anthropology Graduate Student Association Research Symposium. The theme of this terrific event was "Breaking Down Barriers" so in my address I talked about various barriers researchers face at multiple levels. This included talking some truth about the barrier that gender still is to full inclusion in science. I talked about the unfortunate image Elsevier used of white men to depict "reputable science." I talked about the very public boycott of a major chemistry conference because the list of invited conference speakers contained the names of men only. I talked about the landmark 2012 paper by Isbell et al. on the disturbing persistence of gender disparities in AAPA conference symposia: even though women make up about 60% of attendees at AAPA conferences, when men organize symposia 70% of the speakers are also men. When women and men co-organize symposia, the distribution moves but still overrepresents men. When women organize symposia, the breakdown is representative of the actual membership, i.e. 60% women, 40% men. 

My take-home message for these students - for our future colleagues and future mentors of the next generation of scholars in our field - was if you see this kind of disparity, you need to speak out about it. Because it ain't right, people. You cannot pretend that you don't see women or people of color. You cannot pretend that we are not here doing our science thing RIGHT. NEXT. TO. YOU. You cannot pretend that excluding people is merely an accident. At best, it's just ignoring your privilege and not examining your biases. At worst, well, it really really sucks and I don't have the energy to tell you what you already know what "at worst" means.  


Fast forward to recent days. A good friend and colleague Pablo Nepomnaschy asked me to promote a workshop he organized for this coming June at Simon Fraser University called Evolutionary Aspects of Child Development and Health. I like Pablo, I respect his work, he has been incredibly supportive of my career and of BANDIT, so of course I earmarked that email as something I would get back to and post widely. When I opened it (after my colleague Kate Clancy, whom he also asked to promote it, pointed it out to me and then wrote this great post about it), I could not believe what I was seeing. Out of a list of 14 perfectly respectable, expected, eminently qualified speakers - some of whom are former mentors and current collaborators - only TWO were women. My reaction was like this but with far more nausea and profanity. Just as in the Isbell et al. paper, a symposium organized by men completely overrepresented men, in a field that is rich with major innovations and paradigmatic shifts produced by women. Only now, it's super personal. 


One simply cannot make a compelling argument that women aren't making substantial contributions to the fields of evo-devo and evolutionary medicine. The all-woman edited, largely woman-authored book Building Babies eliminates the argument (yep, I went against type and self-cited). And Pablo and the rest of the men who organized the workshop or agreed to speak in it are NOT explicitly making that argument. But the thing we all have to understand is that there is intent, and there is message. This lineup sends a very strong message to me and my colleagues - women AND men - about the inroads women must NOT be making to not have been invited to speak.  (I checked with Pablo, who knows I am writing this post - this list is very much a reflection of who was invited, not the leftovers after all the polite declinations came in.) Being invited to speak at these kinds of workshops and symposia and working meetings is an honor, a recognition. Not seeing a representative number of women honored this way is a punch to the gut and there really isn't a good way to sugar coat that. And even if there were, I don't think I'd want to. Because I'm tired. So very tired. 


I saw something. It was time to say something, just like I told those grad students at IU. EEEK. Me and my big mouth. So, I wrote Pablo last night and told him how dismayed and disappointed I was, how shocking this was, how I couldn't promote this on my blog without pointing out the jarring disparity. It wasn't an easy email to write because I had no idea how he would respond, what the fallout for either of us might be. And you know what? Pablo took it like a champ, meaning he issued a heartfelt, horrified apology. He manned up: he wasn't defensive, he didn't try to "calm me down", he didn't tell me I was overreacting, he didn't make this my problem. He agreed that he had failed to see his own implicit gender bias. He said he was sorry. He let me know he was supportive of my need to write this post. Had he expressed a lack of support and understanding and deep sorrow, I still would not have kept quiet, but I can't tell you how hopeful it made me feel that men and women can have these conversations and really listen and learn. 

So go to the workshop. It will be great. But if you go to this workshop, or others like it, and you look up at the dais and notice a whopping discrepancy between the faces of the speakers and those of the people sitting in the audience, from the one you see in the mirror, from the one you see sitting across the lab bench from you, contact the organizers. Tell them they missed a fantastic opportunity to set an example and that they can do better next time. Maybe they'll listen. Pablo did. At the very least, they will have to stop pretending they don't see what's going on. We all have to stop pretending. And it's time to say something about it.