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

[astra-nomer.livejournal.com]

I've never been quite sure what to call female college students -- I've found myself using both "girls" and "women." So I try to make up for it by calling the males "boys." :)

Re: early vs. late work -- That depends on how much a length of time "shortly" is. If the incident happened within a year of changing genders, I'd say that's not a long enough time for someone to make significant strides in one's career.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

It's not that I suspect that he'd advanced a lot since his last presentation as a woman, so much as it's possible that he advanced a reasonable amount during his time as a woman. So Barbara's body of work includes some junk and some good stuff, and Ben's body of work includes a small amount of good stuff. If you aren't thinking very hard, it looks like Ben is better than Barbara from that.

I do agree that sexism is a plausible cause; I just compulsively look for alternate explanations for anything.