To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet) [LWN.net]

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 29, 2007 16:52 UTC (Sat) by rknop (guest, #66)
In reply to: To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet) by bluss
Parent article: To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Check this out. It's a story of a woman mathematician who became a man later in her career. What happened? Suddenly other people, who didn't realize that he was a transsexual, started responding more positively to his work. The money quote: "After he began living as a man in 1997, Prof Barres overheard another scientist say: 'Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but his work is much better than his sister's work.'"

To hell with any intrinsic genetic or natural difference. It's blatantly clear that the reception and recognition of your work is tremendously affected by how others perceive your gender.

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To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 29, 2007 20:42 UTC (Sat) by MattPerry (guest, #46341) [Link] (6 responses)

To play devil's advocate, it could be that he was more experienced as a mathematician at that later point in time than when he was a woman. The example you gave is too anecdotal to draw conclusions from. I'd be curious if there have been any formal studies on how people perceive work done by women versus men.

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 29, 2007 22:26 UTC (Sat) by evgeny (subscriber, #774) [Link]

> I'd be curious if there have been any formal studies on how people perceive work done by women versus men.

C'mon, you shouldn't expect feminists to use any formal studies to prove their vague points. Personal experience, perhaps unbiased in a few cases, is the best you can find. Just have a look at the epigraph to this O'Reilly's series: "When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change"...

PS. In most cases, even when one is interested in the gender of an author of a scientific paper, it's impossible since often the first names are given abbreviated.

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Sep 30, 2007 22:04 UTC (Sun) by mepr (guest, #4819) [Link] (3 responses)

To be more specific, the mathematician in question submitted several papers under both his old female name and new male name, after the operation, and found that the papers were being accepted under the male name and rejected under the female name. Mark

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Oct 1, 2007 13:07 UTC (Mon) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (2 responses)

Which indicates that with these works, attaching a specific female label to them was detrimental to their acceptance. Do we also have any comments from the reviewers as to why they thought the work was not so valuable, when it came with that label?

I'm just wondering what the process that happened inside reviewers' heads were. What the hell could they be thinking? If the work is the same, then a purely objective process ought to have given them the same exposure. As that wasn't the case, I'd love to hear some analysis for why the female name affected them as it did.

The following tests to the result should also be checked:

The study had to be competently enough carried: for instance, I hope the publishers for which the work was submitted under male name were chosen in random, experiment repeated with different papers to reduce effects of chance, the signal clearly visible (for instance, very different percentages for accepting the work could be established) etc.

There's also the other problem that scientific publishing is generally highly conservative. For instance, if there is some tarnishment of reputation such as previous fringe research, association to kooky theories, etc. reviewers might be skeptical because of the *name* itself. (Since this is mathematics, I'm not sure if fringe/kooky research really exists. I guess working with unproved assumptions might get you such an impression, or something.)

For best results, each probe work should be published under two random names, which are by database searches not associated to any previous work, to rule out reviewers confusing the author for someone else. A positive result would prove that fresh female mathematicians face additional hurdles not encountered by their male colleagues; their work would seem to be measured by some harsher criteria.

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Oct 2, 2007 8:12 UTC (Tue) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link] (1 responses)

I guess working with unproved assumptions might get you such an impression

Oh no, not in math. People work with unproved assumptions all the time, since most important assumptions happen to be very difficult to prove. However, your unproven assumption should be well established.

What's more likely the case is that a new name ("his sister") triggers some more sceptical view. Mathematicians don't treat newbies lightly, as well. If you have an established reputation, and people of the same field probably know you in person, it's easier to get a paper passed.

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Oct 14, 2007 13:55 UTC (Sun) by kreutzm (guest, #4700) [Link]

Strange, but the "sister" was there first in this case, so her name should be established, not his.

To Sir, with Love: How To Get More Women Involved in Open Source (O'ReillyNet)

Posted Oct 1, 2007 12:23 UTC (Mon) by tbrkic (guest, #9186) [Link]

Actually nowadays in US most concert musician tests are made
so that the judges can see who is playing. So that gener/race bias dont affect their judgement. After that was introduced, suddenly alot more women
got hired.

This is according to the book Blink anyway. You could probably google the
result.