coldhearted scientist وداد

Pamela Daniels’ piece, like many others in the book of which it is a part focuses on the effects of internalized gender roles and broad societal pressures which, together, have particular, constraining, and often unseen (or difficult to discern) influence on the attitudes of women toward themselves as workers and thus, their work.

Several pieces do not discuss overt discrimination, partly because so many of the writers are academics discussing self doubt that arose for them at the dissertation phase. In my experience that is before the truly blatant discrimination, or the dissertation-with-harrassment (although for some of my friends in science, of course, it started freshman year).

My brief notes on this contribution to Working it Out 55-70:

♦ This is another very privileged person (as privileged as it was hoped I could be) who actually did as it was hoped I would do, namely: use a good college education to marry well, and have a vocation and activities, but —

♦ Not associate work and money, and not be too original; work well, but do so under the paternal gaze — which takes on many forms.

The question for Daniels: how to make her work her own? (65)  … considering “the fragility of initiative in women” (69) … she ultimately escapes block by deciding her childhood and her conscience are not “proprietors but … guests in [her] inner world.” (70)

Coda: I wish my students could have heard, from one of our graduates, a commencement speech as hopeful as this.

Axé.