Student Researcher

From Carly

I am a senior chemistry major, and I was asked to do summer research part time with the physics and engineering department at my undergrad college. My chemistry professor/mentor told me to look at it like I’m doing them a favor, because I’m already working with her on chemistry research, and I’m not even sure if I’m going to be able to get paid for the engineering research. I am working with physics and engineering students, who are all male. I’m the only woman in the group. I may be imagining this, but I feel like they all talk down to me, and don’t think that I’m very intelligent. It frustrates me so much. It’s like they have their own boys club, and no one tells me anything, like what time group meetings are, so I miss them or I’m late.

From Anonymous 

While making small talk with a man working at the airport, I was asked if when I graduate from my doctoral program I will have people call me “Dr. Blue Eyes”.

From Anonymous 

I’m in a week-long summerschool right now, in which a handful of well-known professors give expository talks about their field to graduate students and post-docs. Each talk is 75minutes long. The last speaker was male and very carefully referenced every figure, equation, numerical technique and result that he showed. Except for one figure. One figure in the whole 75 min talk was taken by a female professor in her physics lab. He did not reference her. On the same slide were references to other (male) researchers along with images of their photos or numerical results. After he talked about her photo, he did a double-take and said, oops, I forgot to reference Sarah …., dang. At least he mentioned her name. But, really, how did he forget? And how does that effect the female grad students here?