25 abril 2013

ser mujer en la academia


Last night I attended and spoke a dinner reception put on by the Cosmos Club Foundation as one of the invited Cosmos Scholars, whose work had been supported by the foundation in 2012. It was a fancy affair in the club’s headquarters near Dupont Circle, and as I entered the building with Dr. B I whispered “I feel like I’m sneaking into a fancy hotel to use the bathroom.”



On the second floor of the building we checked in, put on our name tags, and went to our assigned table to leave our bags. As I was putting my coat on the back of my chair, a member of the club—Mr. HB, as I shall call him—introduced himself first to Dr. B, and to myself only to offer to take my coat to the coat check.

Fair enough, I thought. This is what I get for bringing as my guest a faculty member who is young enough to appear to be a student as well. My advisor, usually referred to as Leapfrog in these posts, was otherwise engaged, receiving an award for outstanding teaching and mentoring at the university.

Dr. B and I quickly found the open bar (this is precisely why I asked him to be my guest), and the Georgetown professor ahead of us in line began chatting us up. Again, he assumed that Dr. B was the honoree, and asked about my research after B indicated that it was worthy of conversation. The three of us moved to a room I would describe as something of a conservatory. There he told us a bit about the history of the club, noting that it was not until 1988 that women were allowed to enter via the front door or go above the first floor. Well, then….congratulations to me for getting to the second floor I suppose...

Right about this time, Mr. HB returned with a ticket for the coat check, which he handed to Dr. B. “I believe this is for your wife’s coat,” he said. Oh my. And now congratulations to me for being downgraded to attendance as someone’s wife.    

Ok, so maybe I set myself up for this. I attended a swanky, bougie, white event, in which there were plenty of female award recipients, but only 4 people of color in a room of about 100. I’m wondering how they were feeling. And further, rather than attending with my grandfatherly 70 year old white male advisor, I asked a faculty member who is more friend than colleague to put on a tie (accounting for ½ his yearly tie quota) and have some free cocktails with me.

Fair enough.

But in a world where the glass ceiling is sometimes said to not exist, I can’t help that notice in the two weeks that I’ve been a doctor, it seems more and more apparent.

The other instance(s) in which this felt apparent was during and shortly after my defense itself. I stood at the front of the room talking for over an hour and the most common compliment I received after officially being welcomed into “the realm of the anointed” (in Leapfrog’s terms) was that I looked beautiful or that my dress was very pretty. “I sounded smart, right?” I asked my mother afterwards. “Oh, yes. And you looked beautiful too.”



Perhaps that’s a mother’s place. But friends, colleagues, they said the same thing. This was right around the time Obama made inappropriate comments about California Attorney General Kamala Harris (as recapped on Jezebel). Sure, I’m not the first to point to this larger trend, it just struck me as surprising, because I come from a department that is so conscious of gender issues. That is so committed to social justice. Because in general, we try to be so overly cautious and respectful of our colleagues. And sure, I like being told I look nice in certain situations (though, as I’ve mentioned before the true way to my heart is to comment on my intelligence), but not at the event that was a culmination of six years of academic work. I think Brett was the only one that got it right. Though apparently she commented on how she liked my dress to my mother, on facebook she wrote: And she was brilliant--thoughtful, poised, riveting.