Women In Technology - Friday Links - 01/12/2023
Hello everyone,
Friday is here! Curl up with a hot drink and read about our latest lab visit, an upcoming event for those interested in climate and data science, and some new reading material. We also feature some stories about life for women at CERN in the 70s and 80s, as well as the consequences of sexism at school and at work.
But first, a correction: A couple of links were accidentally omitted from our story about the CERN library’s collection of books about women in STEM in last week’s Friday Links. We apologise for the mistake! Please see below for the corrected links:
“The CERN Library offer biographies, books on women history, empowerment, feminism, gender studies, management and much more. You can browse all the physical copies of the books in the CERN Library Catalogue. We also provide access to a large selection of e-books that are accessible to everyone at CERN. Borrowing books is free!”
Cheers,
Kate, for WIT SC
WIT visit to the FAIR magnet testing facility
On Wednesday, we enjoyed a visit to the very impressive FAIR magnet testing facility. Thank you to Maryline and Pawel for the tour!
Would you like to show us your lab and network with our community? We’re always happy to hear from volunteers interested in leading lab tours! Get in touch with us!
Upcoming event: Using satellite data to understand climate change (Saturday, Dec. 9)
Technical coaches from CERN Micro Club and CERN Women in Technology will introduce participants to how they can apply pictures of Earth taken from space to understand climate change in their local area and around the world. This event is open to women and girls aged 14+. Registration is mandatory. For more information and to register, visit https://indico.cern.ch/event/1337803/.
In the news
This dev conference organizer seems addicted to making up women (The Verge). Our WIT events are guaranteed to feature 100% real volunteer speakers and organisers! Unfortunately it seems that this is not always the case elsewhere in the tech world...
- "Something seems to be amiss with the diverse speaker list of the Devternity and JDKon developer conferences. The women, some of whom allegedly work for the parent company of both conferences, Dev.events, do not appear to exist. Devternity founder Eduards Sizovs has come under fire for creating fake women guest speakers for the events — and possibly creating a popular “tech influencer” that’s amassed over 115,000 real-world followers on Instagram.”
On the shelf
If you’re looking for something to read this weekend, our colleagues at the CERN Library have just received a new book, which is now available for loan: “Her Space, Her Time” by Shohini Ghose.
- “Women physicists and astronomers from around the world have transformed science and society, but the critical roles they played in their fields are not always well-sung. Her Space, Her Time, authored by award-winning quantum physicist Shohini Ghose, brings together the stories of these remarkable women to celebrate their indelible scientific contributions.”
The Geneva Event, and the status of women at CERN in 1980
CERN recently held a special screening of the documentary “The Geneva Event”, which focuses on the effort to discover the W and Z bosons in the late 70s and early 80s. The film is absolutely worth watching, for its scientific clarity and its behind the scenes look at experimental physics, but it was clearly made in a different time: most scenes featured only men at work in the control rooms! (Not to mention all the smoking indoors…) This documentary made me wonder how the female physicists *not* portrayed in the film experienced those times...
Mary K. Gaillard published her “Report on women in scientific careers at CERN” (CDS, CERN-DG-11) in 1980, describing in infuriating detail the issues faced by women working in STEM fields. 39% of the women surveyed reported working without pay at some point in their career, and 34% had been refused a position at CERN for a variety of reasons, including “husband is CERN employee” and “priority given to unemployed men”. The following are quotes from respondents to Gaillard’s survey:
- “Fully accepted by the collaboration, but not paid.”
- “I feel a woman has to be constantly on guard against being considered a computer."
- “Without exception I find that men cannot accept the wives of their colleagues as colleagues in their own right.”
- “Men are interested in my work, but not in working with me.”
- “Women have to be more highly qualified to be accepted."
- “It’s a feedback process! If more women were hired, more would be willing to pursue a scientific career.”
- “I have no children, mainly because I did my PhD, the housework, had only temporary work contracts, and had no parents or in-laws to help… I feel more and more tired trying to overcome everyday difficulties which are not connected to physics…”
Plus ça change…!
For a more personal description of those times, you can also read Mary K. Gaillard’s autobiography, “A Singularly Unfeminine Profession”, which is available in the CERN library.
The consequences of a sexist working environment
The women who saw 9/11 coming (The Atlantic). "Many of the CIA analysts who spotted the earliest signs of al-Qaeda’s rise were female. They had trouble getting their warnings heard.”
Remembering the 14: École Polytechnique
On December 6, 1989, 14 women studying engineering at Montréal’s École Polytechnique were murdered, simply because they were women, by a gunman who blamed feminism for his failures in life.
- December 6 is now the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada.
- Remember the 14 (CBC) is a series of short biographies of the 14 women who were killed.
- Hate is infectious: How the 1989 mass shooting of 14 women echoes today (The Guardian). “It’s critical to recognize that misogyny and antifeminism are often not ends in themselves, but rather strings that people can follow to the most extreme, violent forms of hatred.”
Photo: CBC