The Finkbeiner Test: A Tool for Writing About Women in their Professions
lastwordonnothing.comWhere this discussion gets confused is that it fails to recognize that there are actually two different issues and two different kinds of articles at issue. To make the discussion neutral, instead of women in science let's talk about startups. There are many (but at least two) kinds of articles about startups. Ones that focus on the technology, and ones that focus on the "human interest" angle. There are articles about Tesla that focus on the limitations of cameras-only versus LIDAR. And there are articles about how Tesla is racing against much bigger and established competitors like Toyota and Volkswagen. The latter kind of article is not a diminution of Tesla's technology, but rather one that focuses on an entirely different sort of topic that might interest readers for different reasons.
There is nothing illegitimate about these human interest articles. Succeeding as a women in a male-dominated profession in fact presents real and unique challenges that merit writing about, just as succeeding as a startup in a field dominated by entrenched incumbents presents challenges worth writing about. Where articles about "X in science" get in trouble is that (1) people care a lot more about the human interest angle than about the science; and (2) journalists aren't up front about what kind of article they are writing, or are themselves confused about what kind of article they are writing.
I agree, and I think there is definitely space and a need for "women in science" articles, because there are topics that are of particular interest for women in science. The issue that the author is pointing out is that it seems like when it comes to female scientists, it seems like every article about female scientists is written from this "women in science" perspective.
And I think that is a valid issue. But I think the real answer is, unfortunately, that people don't really care about science articles. The human interest angle is the only thing that sells ads.
> Take the things that are said about a female subject and flip them around as if they were said about a male. If they sound ridiculous, then chances are good they have no business in the story.
Exactly. Every time I read something that fails this test, I can't help but dismiss it as identity politics. If somebody does great work, let's praise the performance. All this focus on male/female, black/white, rich/poor, etc. only creates an environment where people can't think straight about the issue at hand.
The article isn't saying that we shouldn't focus on women in science or that we shouldn't be writing articles about them. It says we shouldn't emphasise stereotypes about their femininity, but it still talks about how we have to address the inherent sexism that exists.
> The issue, she says, is that when you emphasize a woman’s sex, you inevitably end up dismissing her science.
That's the point. Write about women. We need to hear about more women. Just don't emphasise how exceptional their sex is. That's how you normalise women in science.
Why write about women specifically unless your intention is to emphasize the accomplishments of their sex in the field? This sounds a lot like "write about women more, but don't say you're writing about someone because she's a woman."
That's exactly the point.
If you take it out of the context of gender issues, it makes sense.
Want to destigmatize homosexuality? Write about people going about their lives normally, who happen to be homosexual. Make TV shows of "two dads" or "two moms" where they're just like any other TV couple. Do it for a few years and people become more comfortable with the idea, as if the new default was always the case.
With gender stuff, in my experience no matter how you do it someone will always have a beef with any active effort to correct subtle gendered dynamics in a field. If you believe that correction is needed, then what's left is choosing which potentially objectionable (to certain people) way you're going to do it. If you don't, then the debate isn't about how to do it, the debate is about whether there's a problem that needs a solution.
If you say "hey look she's a woman and she did this amazing thing!" someone will complain that you should be celebrating that a person did it, rather than pushing a woman-specific agenda. So instead, another way to do it is to not call out the woman part, crank up the frequency, and get people accustomed to "Oh, yeah, she's a woman too." Someone who knows that's what you're doing might accuse you of intentionally skewing representation. That's a valid objection, but that's a tradeoff. The benefit is that this method is more more likely to work in the long term on people who already have their guards up.
Over time, the hope is that turns into "What do you mean? Of course women are capable of that, what's the big deal?" Pretty sure that's an end state most people would want.
I thought about this when Elena Kagan was nominated for the Supreme Court. I think that there's a four-step process society goes through:
1. She's female and hispanic. She can't serve on the Supreme Court.
2. She's female and hispanic, but she's nominated for the Supreme Court anyway! (See how enlightened we are?)
3. She's nominated for the Supreme Court. Nobody bothers to mention that she's female and hispanic.
4. People mention that she's female and hispanic, but only in the same way that they'd mention that she once did ballet or that she's an amateur fencer - as personal interest, not as a statement about her qualification to serve on the Supreme Court.
When Kagan was nominated, we were at step 2. (Which is progress - a generation earlier, we were at step 1). But we should be moving on to step 3, where nobody talks about such stuff because it's irrelevant. Ideally we should wind up at step 4, but I'm not sure that we can without going through step 3 first. And when we do start going to step 4, people are going to get uptight, because mentioning gender and race are going to raise fears that we're going back to step 2...
If I were reading that article, I would want to read that she is female and Hispanic because the personal story of a Hispanic woman (probably) overcoming unique challenges to reach that position in the country is very interesting and notable.
If you crank up the frequency of mentioning women, you are still pushing a woman-specific agenda and tacitly admitting that women still need your help to succeed.
Yes, I'm saying what it sounds like. The reason you should do that is because there's a sexism problem, and by talking about women without talking about them being women, we can normalise their presence.
Let me add: there's no point in saying "I didn't do it!" or "don't blame me!" or "don't blame men!" or whatever. Blame and guilt are pointless and sexism exists no matter whose fault it is. Fix the problem of sexism, forget the blame.
we have to address the inherent sexism
If it's inherent, then what can we do about it?
To me, this sounds like an excuse to pretend that systematic inequality doesn't exist, and thereby imply that not being able to rise above it is a personal failing.
It isn't that it doesn't exist. No one is saying not to write about inequalities and stuff like that - it happens, and there should be articles about it.
But tone matters, and after a while, tone has an effect on people's attitudes. If you are writing about a scientist's breakthrough technology, just write about that. There isn't a need to write about the scientist being female any more than it is to write about them being male. This way, both sexes are treated more similarly. The article about their personal passions, disadvantages, and so on can be another story altogether, but not the one pretending to be about the discovery.
If you'd give a little background about a straight, white male, it might list some interesting things about the person. Surely the most interesting thing about being female isn't being female. Same for sexual orientation. I know these are true for me. I'm female and bisexual, but these don't tell you anything about me, really. I'm vastly more interesting if folks write about me being an immigrant, that I met my spouse online, or that I'm an artist.
The outcome is that the tone is that x person did y, and treats being female (or whatever) as just a thing that is, a completely normal thing. It rubs off on readers.
Women are twice as likely to get a tenure position in STEM when compared to equally qualified men http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/04/women-best-men-stem-f...
I don't really see why it would imply that. That problem only really shows up if you start treating successful people as gods or somehow fundamentally superior people, which is not really required when writing a scientist bio.
Sometimes not bringing something up is powerful. If you achieved something, would you really want people talking about your relationship status in your bio?
To me it sounds like you don't like anyone who dares challenge your personal orthodoxy.
Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else may be, so please don't post like this to Hacker News.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(Incidentally, no one likes anyone who challenges their personal orthodoxy, and we all have one.)
Writing off folks opinions as "just an excuse" is rather insulting, impolite, and antagonistic.
That I had the audacity to directly call out that behavior instead of coaching attacks in vague language is the only difference here.
By your own, cited guidelines
> Please don't use Hacker News primarily for political or ideological battle. This destroys intellectual curiosity, so we ban accounts that do it.
This whole conversation is off-base. Consistency in the application of rule would be great. This seems like the exact kind of situation that calls for a detach / remove.
Systematic inequality is a subject of statistical science, not personal orthodoxy.
A simple example are the various studies that show that "white" resumes get more attention that minority resumes: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes...
> Systematic inequality is a subject of statistical science, not personal orthodoxy.
The comment you replied to had nothing to do with whether or not inequality exists, only that articles that unnecessarily bring up race, gender, etc. are pandering to the identity-politics crowd.
Reminds me of the presidential debate gender swap experiment at NYU
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2017/march/...
That assumes neither side is in a disadvantage when it remains unmentioned. Which isn't the case.
Does it? Or does it just mean it isn't relevant to this scientific article? I think the latter.
I grew up very poor, got my degrees on academic scholarships, and have published scientific findings. I'd hate it if my work attracted media attention, only to have the bulk of it focus on my impoverished childhood. What about my work? Why doesn't that merit a focused discussion?
Whether the subject hates it is one factor among many. There's also: personal ethics, professional ethics, what the reader wants, political agendas, etc.
Another thing I’ve noticed is articles using large headshots of women for companies where they could use product photos. With men it’s much rarer... they even prefer to run cheesy graphics of “AI” instead of headshots.
That's true, but now your pushing into the territory of marketing.
When you are making compelling images to attract attention its more about creating an effective advertisement than a political agenda.
I'm not talking about the companies themselves... but media outlets who don't have a responsibility to market the companies they're covering.
As a male scientist with a family, I wouldn't mind if someone wrote news articles about my work and mentioned I'm "a loving father of two" or whatever. Just as long as it doesn't dominate the whole article and distract from the actual science. A family is something to be proud of!
Interesting. It's notable that you read the exact same type of statements emphasizing masculinity when an article mentions a male who is a nurse, teacher, veterinarian, yoga instructor, social worker, or any of the other professions that are dominated by women.
Perhaps it's that, when someone does something slightly outside of the norm or expectation, that becomes a notable storyline or contextual reference.
True, but it's still worth asking whether that practice is harmful to the goal of increasing gender diversity in these fields.
This could even be discussed without ratholing on whether or not this is a worthy goal.
Worth looking at this article that includes embedded tweets of mock bios for men written in the fashion bios tend to be written about women:
https://www.sciencealert.com/someone-on-twitter-is-writing-a...
“Jill makes a fantastic role model…because she is married, has two children and has been able to keep up with her research.” It’s hard to imagine anyone saying this about a scientist named Bill.
I'm actually cool with the Finkbeiner Test being a thing. But I will note that there are reasons such things get talked about.
I was one of the top ranked students of my graduating high school class. With having also been State Alternate for The Governor's Honors Program -- a live in summer enrichment program for the gifted -- I was one of the best students in my entire state. And I turned down a National Merit Scholarship, attended the local college for a bit, quit school and spent a couple of decades as a full-time mom and homemaker.
I spent a lot of years trying to figure out why I failed to get the two career couple lifestyle I fully expected when I first got married. There were a lot of factors there, but a lot of it is rooted in old fashioned gender roles.
I'm handicapped. This is a contributing factor to my lack of a real career. But Stephen Hawking was also seriously handicapped. He had a real career.
I have two special needs kids. So do lots of men with serious careers. When there are special needs in the family, it is typically some woman who ends up with the task of dealing with it.
I was a military wife and the entire military structure is rooted in a historical expectation that men are soldiers, they are heterosexual and have a wife at home and she is largely doing the homemaker thing and supporting his career. This actually works fairly well in many ways -- until you get divorced and find you have no references for a resume because you have little work experience, you moved around, you didn't keep in touch, etc. Meanwhile, the ex still works for the government doing similar work to what he did when he was active duty military and his finances are just fine, judging by the big house, new wife, nice vehicles, etc.
So part of why we mention those things is because a lot of women -- me included -- sit around wondering "What the hell do I need to do different? Is it just not possible to be married and also have a serious career as a woman? How does this work?" So it's valuable information to know that, yes, there are married women with actual careers. And then the next question is "So, okay, what is different about their marriage compared to mine? What do I need to change here if I am ever going to stop being a second class citizen?"
And that's not something you really want to ask personal acquaintances. That's a good way to find yourself blacklisted, so to speak. So we go searching articles and hoping for crumbs of clues.
> For instance, in a profile of biologist Jill Bargonetti, The New York Times quotes one of Bargonetti’s colleagues saying that, “Jill makes a fantastic role model... because she is married, has two children and has been able to keep up with her research.” It’s hard to imagine anyone saying this about a scientist named Bill. The story’s subtitle piles on, reinforcing the stereotype that women are nurturing and selfless with “A Biologist’s Choice Gives Priority to Students.”
The paragraph hits on so many ways in which the popular (press) conception of science and academia is toxic, and sexism is only one part of that toxicity.
Yes, the disparity in how female scientists are described in a problem. But that fact that these attributes are absent from descriptions of male academics is also troubling. How are there so many profiles of Professors that don't mention teaching or mentoring even once?!
When new phd students ask for advice on choosing a Ph.D. advisor, I give them three strictly ordered criteria:
1. Is this person a good mentor? (Where are their former students? Do those students speak positively and also candidly about their advisor?)
2. Does this person have a work-life balance? (Family? Intense hobby? Good friendships outside of the department? Encyclopedic knowledge of their favorite TV series? An inappropriate percentage of their net worth invested in cars/wines/whatever? Literally, any non-trivial time invested in something other than work most weeks.)
3. Are you excited about the research agendas that they currently have (relatively fresh) money to explore, and do you think this person has the expertise needed to help you push those agendas in the way you want?
Those three questions, in that order. If you can't find someone who meets some minimum reasonable threshold for all three, maybe consider expanding your research interests or finding a new department.
Profiles of male academic scientists should go beyond individual contributions to discuss teaching/mentoring and work/life balance. After all, it's a profile of a person who is a professor! Teaching/mentoring is a huge chunk of the job, and the person is more than their work.
If there's nothing to say about the person other than some brilliant results? If their former students resent them and their family life is in shambles? That's a tragic personal interest story. If the person has a normal relationship with their students and a normal personal life? Then there's no personal interest story at all and the article should maybe just talk about the results instead of profiling the person.
And yet, anyone assuming this position might be wise to ask themselves whether, if the suggestions were actually implemented, many women would be up in arms about a _lack_ of special recognition of their gender-distinctive qualities, "doing it all" and the rest.
I'm sure I'll be downvoted, but I'm coming from a place of sincere intellectual commitment to this concern. There is a rift among the feminist-minded about whether women should be "neutered" in this way in our observational language. The way this polemic shakes out overall seems to be opportunistic; sometimes women receive distinctive treatment, when it's convenient, and other times not, when it's (reputedly) oppressive.
Many ambitious women want recognition, period, not to be asked about their clothes, husband, etc. Articles that focus on those things might get more views, which I think is the more interesting thing to discuss.
Speaking as a woman, I'm pretty sure you're wrong that other women would be up in arms if there were more straight-up articles about womens' achievements.
I can only speak from anecdote, but, being of academic social background, I've known many women — some of impeccable "culturally liberal" credentials — who would and do say things like:
"But all they did was talk about her work, and left out the obstacles she's had to overcome to achieve it!"
There are even those who would, from a more niche women's studies angle, critique a strictly work-substantive biography for the "masculinised" psychological priorities it reflects and that it fails to capture the "unique female experience" or what have you. These are usually allied to the folks who bemoan the "medicalisation" of pregnancy by male technocrats, and with it the suppression of ineffable qualitative experiences of femininity that come with pregnancy and giving birth.
These are real things. The matter of a reasonably universal and inter-subjective conception of gender equality is unwieldy.
Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents.
Sorry, that really wasn't my intent. I thought it to be germane to the issue at hand, though of course, the issues raised by the article participate in a larger ideological nexus.
I believe you. It's just that we have a lot of experience with these tangents where discussions become both more generic and more ideological. If you imagine a 2x2 matrix of those variables, that's the flamewar quadrant.
That's hard to argue with, because it's undeniably true. :) I'll be more careful.
I would think this author is on the fringe, as current society wants gender-equality, not gender-blindness.
This is why I hate identity politics and why I believe all jobs for a given role should pay identically. Men/women are created equal but different. Praise people for their merit, not their sex. I know women who can run circles around men in coding and sysadmin work. I sometimes have to remind myself that I'm working with a woman when we're sat together working on something. I just tend to notice that this person is smart, often smarter than me in a given area, and I can learn. One of my favorite team leads is a woman from Ethiopia. Smart, pretty, funny, able to handle the BS some of the guys give her. The guys quickly realize she's better than most of them and they defer to her where her knowledge exceeds their own. Let's be honest, it's refreshing to see women excel in an area where men are usually dominant, and let's not forget, programming in the beginning years was mostly women.
I'm attempting to teach my own teenage daughter some programming basics, not to get her into the industry, but to show her cause and effect, abstract thinking, building something from nothing, critical thinking, etc.
Why do you say "attempting to teach my daughter programming" and not "I am teaching my daughter programming"? You make it seem like she's not interested.
This article is about how professional women are described, and it takes as a premise the fact that women are equals with respect to merit.
Given that, your comment seems off topic. No one is talking about whether women can hang in our industry. Is it necessary to derail this discussion by opening up that can of worms?
> Men/women are created equal but different.
Identity politics is a reaction to people who say stuff like that.
It's not society and nurture stopping a woman from deadlifting 800lbs, or a man from breastfeeding. Humans are a sexually dimorphic species.
My girlfriend and I were just talking about how it's pretty unfortunate that there are basically no top level female smash players, but the fact is that reaction time is such a huge advantage that only a fraction of a percent of men can perform at the top level, and the female bell curve just doesn't stretch that far. The opposite is true for some traits as well, like top percentile flexibility.
Well, what's stopping men from deadlifting 800lbs? Because only a tiny fraction of men can deadlift 600lbs (the women's deadlift record), let alone 800lbs.
Will a man hold the deadlift record? Most assuredly. Does this in any way matter? It sure doesn't seem like it does.
>Well, what's stopping men from deadlifting 800lbs?
In a lot of cases, time and value. My brother has a squat of 500 and some change, and a 405 DL, but it's not worth it to him to improve those much further. He's foremost a football player and second a wrestler, and lifting is a means to those ends. He could likely hit an 800 DL if he focused on it, and heck, I might even be able to bump my shoddy 315x5 to 800 if I really worked at it, but that's flat out not an option for any woman.
The main reason I get so annoyed by this argument that "women can do basically anything a man does, if they weren't held back by socialization etc" is because I used to be a huge proponent of it, myself. Engaging in almost any type of sport or competitive activity quickly dispels you of that notion. While a female comp black belt could delete me from the face of the earth, I'd be very surprised if there's a female black belt alive who could beat even the best black belt in Columbus Ohio, and it's not like Cbus is a jiu jitsu mecca. We split sports by sex for a lot of reasons.
It matters when the 800lb deadlifting community is accused of rampant sexism, and counter-productive policies are put in place to correct this perceived injustice.
People's lives literally depend on whether or not you believe in physical and mental differences between men and women.
https://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/blog/2012/07/05/get-over...
https://www.mca-marines.org/gazette/2014/09/why-women-do-not...
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-special-...
Oh come off it. If it mattered to the actual discussion, women serve along men in the IDF infantry. But it doesn't matter; it simply begs the question. Nobody is debating whether peak male lifting performance is better than peak female lifting performance. Women are also much better at giving birth than men! The issue is: why does that matter?
I'm not sure if you're intentionally being dense or we're talking past each other about different things.
1. Progressive and liberal-minded individuals think that promoting the idea that there is no functional difference between men and women will help fight gender inequality but this is not only untrue, it is dangerous. See the linked articles in my comment; people absolutely are debating this, these people are driving real policy changes, and you misrepresent them saying they are not.
2. Part of this agenda is shaming people for treating men and women differently, like in the OP. In this case they're right to do this, it's not productive or fair to write science articles about women differently than ones about men. But in other ways there is definitely a culture being created where it is taboo to treat men and women differently in any capacity and maybe that's not entirely a good idea. That's why it 'matters'.
You're pretending to address what I wrote without actually engaging with anything I wrote. But that's OK, right: lives are at risk!
So you are being intentionally dense. I'm sorry I tried.
Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this again.
Also, please avoid name-calling like "intentionally dense", even when you're not attacking someone specific. It lowers discussion quality and points the vector downward for others.
Hardly. God created men and women different, but equal. There is equal value in both. We should never attempt to dismantle the differences, but embrace them within the roles both sexes play. My wife is smarter than I am by far, gorgeous, and is a doctor. I'm a nerdy guy with glasses and a buzz cut. We compliment each other, but we are at the same time equal and different.
Women are more nurturing, more patient, better at handling conflict. Men are stronger, better at ending conflict should it arise (soldiers, police due to size and strength), and better at protecting families. There are exceptions. Neither sex is smarter. There are physical limitations for both. When I served in the military, for example, men had to do 20 dead hang pull ups. Women had to do a 70-second dead hang from the same pull up bar. Very few men could do the dead hang because women's muscles are different in their core. Maybe 1 out of 100 women could do the pull ups. It takes tremendous upper body strength to do 20 dead hang pull ups.
The desire to wipe away the differences between the sexes is wrong. I see beauty in the feminine and embrace it in its proper context. My wife cannot do some of the things I can do, and I certainly cannot perform as a doctor for women's health care in the same way she can. I'm at a loss, hence my wife and I both agree that men and women are better than the other in certain roles, but certainly equal.
I think it stems from a world view that presumes any difference in outcomes must be the result of oppression, and that no other contributor could be notably relevant.
> Men/women are created equal but different. Praise people for their merit, not their sex.
Many people will find those mere statements to be offensive and inflammatory. You must know that we have reached a point where large segments of society find acknowledging achievement and/or biology to be a cultural faux pas and highly controversial.
I can appreciate your comment, but I respectfully disagree. So many high-profile people and groups want to completely eradicate any differences between the sexes. This is wrong. Women should be praised for who and what they are. Being smart,feminine, caring, and nurturing are virtues for women, much as strength and physical performance is for men. Notice I didn't mention fashion, physical possessions, or the ability to acquire them.
I appreciate the everyday woman and man far more than those who exist to toot their own horns. There is something to be said for the woman that can juggle a coding job and then be a mom at 5 PM. Kudos to her. Ditto, men should be praised for their abilities to hold down a good job, provide for and protect their wives and children should they have them. Yes, I am a social conservative, but I'm not misogynist or blind to the modern world. Every family has a different dynamic. Everyone has to work things out for their own situation. I'm old school enough to realize what identity politics is, can spot it a mile off, and reject it. But... we can never erase the differences as they are innate. Women should be celebrated as feminine and men as masculine. To do anything else is disingenuous. This is not to say women are sex objects, for example. They are not. Nor are men to be idolized for their prowess on the field. This crap can be taken too far and injures both sexes and compartmentalizes them.
In a nutshell, I tend to embrace sci-fi author, Robert Heinlein's, famous quote in life:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."