Trans-view of gender bias

[astra_nomer]

This news is a tad old by now, but there's a very interesting article in last week's issue of Nature (requires subscription to read full text) written by Ben Barres, a scientist who used be known as Barbara Barres, about how sexism in the scientific community keeps women from succeeding. He cites a number of studies documenting gender bias in addition to his own anecdotes. A particularly choice one:

Shortly after I changed sex, a faculty member was heard to say, "Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's."

The NY Times had an interview with him. (thanks to fredrickegerman for the tip.)

Comments

[desireearmfeldt]

...except in English schools (possibly not any more), when children *are* referred to by last name. I have some reason to think this is true for girls as well as boys, but my evidence is rather tenuous. :) Not sure how much those customs still hold.

But yes, the traditional convention is that when referring to women by last name, the title is never dropped, whereas doing so for a man is...familiar, in either a positive or negative way. First name is even more familiar, for either gender, but traditionally familiarity gets invoked on women sooner than on men.

Don't think so, old bean...

[fredrickegerman.livejournal.com]

I think use of last names is a boy's thing there, too. I've never run into an example of women doing that.

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

My choir teacher used to call all the students by their last name. Except me, because the cognitive dissonance apparently made his brain hurt. (Recall my pre-marriage last name.)