Absinthe

Title IX and nursing (and everything else, for that matter)

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:04:35 GMT

I've been thinking a lot this week about Title IX. As I mentioned before, I was already recently thinking about Title IX and Title IX non-compliance at our national laboratories, and then the NYT article came out.

Some detractors to Title IX compliance in the sciences point to nursing as a field that obviously needs to be "title nined" more than the sciences. I think the main reason that males normally don't pursue it as a career is because of the low pay. But I know from personal experience that there are other reasons too. Would Title IX help bring more males into nursing? Maybe.

My personal experience with males in nursing comes from my masters degree in statistics; during my first year pursuing the degree I worked as a research assistant for a professor in the nursing department performing statistical studies of post-surgical cognitive decline in the elderly (as an aside, if you can avoid orthopedic or spinal surgery for an elderly dependent like a parent, do so at all costs...the incidence of dramatic cognitive decline after such surgeries is very high). To put me close to the professor with whom I worked, I had my office in the nursing building rather than the statistics building. For some reason I was put in an office shared between myself and two male fourth year nursing students. They were the only two males in their entire (large) class. Statistically speaking, it was a little odd that they had been relegated to an office by themselves until I, a non-nursing student, came along and was plopped in there with them. Anyway, they were very nice, and as one does when one shares an office for months on end with people, we chatted a lot. It came up at one point that I had a PhD in physics but wasn't working in the field anymore. We commiserated our shared experiences of being an under-represented gender in a field that almost over-whelmingly consisted of the opposite gender.

They weren't worried about getting jobs post-graduation. Both had already gotten job offers. They did mention though that they had members of their family who openly questioned why they were pursuing nursing as a career. Some of their family members thought it was just plain odd. One said his mum worried he was gay.

They liked their classmates, but they said there had been a real problem the semester before when they were learning how to do gynecological exams. Traditionally, the university had the members of the class practice on each other. None of their female classmates wanted them practicing on them, and they said they were frankly not happy about it either.

Now there is an example of a practice that just needs to stop. What an idiotic policy. If, by statistical aberration, the university was suddenly to get an all male nursing class, how would it teach that section? Why, they would have to hire a pelvic educator, which is what they should be doing now.

It seems to me that so many instances of blatant sexism and/or chilly climate could be avoided (either in the sciences, or other fields, like nursing) with just an iota of thought from the people within the power structure of the field. It is stupid that too many female physicist are under-employed and/or under-paid (or not paid at all) after having kids, for no other reason than they chose to have kids. It is stupid that the administrative infrastructure of our national laboratories is set up in a way that absolutely invites gender and race discrimination to run rampant and unchecked. And it is stupid that males who want to pursue a nursing career, already perhaps facing opposition from family members in their choice of career, have to be made to feel like unwanted participants in the classroom.

But the solution is not to say that Title IX compliance needs to be ignored in the sciences because some males in nursing are having a hard time of it. What kind of screwed up logic is that? Instead, we all need to be talking about gender discrimination where we see it, and listening to people who have experiences and problems unique from our own. Can males suffer gender discrimination or hostile climate? At times, yes. Does that mean Title IX is a crappy law? Absolutely not.

An interesting life

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:46:22 GMT

In a few days I am leaving on a two week trip to Vancouver Island, the place where I spent most of my childhood. It has been surprising to me how many of our American friends have no idea where Vancouver Island is...even many of our highly educated friends give me a blank look when I say I'm going to Vancouver Island for vacation, and I get an even blanker look when I ask them if they've noticed on their globe the huge island off the west coast of Canada, just north of Seattle.

I've only been to the island twice in the past decade, and the last time was 6 years ago. Every time I go back these days I am somewhat saddened to see how much it has changed there from the unique way it was when I was growing up. It is becoming much more modern and homogenous with the rest of the world. Especially the north end of the island, where I was raised...when I was in my teens the north end of the island was finally connected to the southern half by a paved road, but previous to that you could only get there via logging road, boat, or sea plane. And the logging roads weren't plowed in the winter, so it was kind of a death wish to travel them when it was snowy. It was also in my early teens that the north end of the island finally got cable TV. Before that you could always get the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) with just an antenna, but for some reason the CBC decided that Vancouver Island classified as "northern Canada", and thus a good chunk of the programming was in Inuit. So you could, in theory, watch television when I was a kid, but what was the point.

So I spent most of my childhood outdoors. We lived in the middle of nowhere, with our property 1/8 of a mile to the north and south of two streams, and a 1/4 mile from a rocky beach on the north-eastern side of the island. Immediately to the west of us (ie; across the road), the forest started and it didn't end until you got to the west coast of the island (a mountain range and 100 miles further on). There was a path by my house that went west a couple of miles to a small logging road. More on that path and road in a minute.

As a kid I used to go down to the beach all the time between April and October. In fourth grade my father bought me snorkeling gear because I had gotten straight A's in school. I became an accomplished skin diver off of the reef just off the beach, and I could effortlessly hold my breath for more than a minute and a half and dive up to 20 feet down. In fact, my body appears to have permanently adapted to this...when a regular person holds their breath, their pulse rate rises, but when I hold my breath my pulse plummets to 40 beats or less per minute. As a kid I was constantly dragging marine flora and fauna back from the beach for identification using books I got out from the library. I remember once bringing back grape sized jellyfish and putting them on a piece of glass in the sun to see what a dried jellyfish would look like (the answer: to the naked eye, nothing...they completely evaporated).

As a young kid I often mucked about in the two streams near our house. I would also go there to pick salmon berries, huckleberries, or salal.

I was left alone a lot as a young kid. I was raised by my father, and I was what is known today as a latch-key-kid (although back in those days we never locked our doors...it was always a stressful event on the occasions we would go someplace for a few weeks and we would tear the house apart trying to find the house keys). Being left alone a lot meant that I had absolute freedom to do whatever I wanted. And my father didn't much care what I did when I was alone...he knew I could swim like a fish so I was allowed to go swimming by myself as much as I wanted from a very young age.

However, I pushed the "go swimming whenever you want" credo to the limit by taking my bike up the path to the logging road on a frequent basis in the summer time, then biking up the logging road to a major river a few miles away. There I would put on my snorkeling mask, and shoot the rapids in the river, holding my body as straight as an arrow. I thought this was the greatest fun, and I used to do it for hours. My father never knew I did that, not because I tried to hide it from him, but because I never thought it important enough to mention. I look back on it now and I think it is no small wonder I didn't kill myself. Excellent swimmer or not, you can't swim if you've been knocked unconcious by a rock, and I used to often finish the sessions in the rapids with some pretty good bruises to show for my fun.

On the logging roads I would frequently run into black bears. I never had any problems with them, but they used to scare the bejeezus out of me and I would quickly turn my bike around and pedal in the opposite direction as fast as I could thinking the bear must be fast on my heels (it never was). There are no grizzlies on the island, and black bears pretty much leave you alone unless provoked, but I didn't know that when I was a kid. I never saw a cougar on my expeditions, but I would regularly come across cougar scat. And, of course, being Vancouver Island in the middle of nowhere, I used to come across lots of deer. I was scared to death at twighlight in the woods of coming across a sasquatch, the boogy-man of my childhood.

Charming stories of growing up in the woods by the ocean aside, there were more unseemly aspects of my childhood. When I was in the second grade my father (an electrician) took a job rebuilding an elementary school in Port Hardy, at the far northern end of the island. The entire school had burned down except for the gym, and so while the rest of the school was rebuilt the classes all met in the gym for several months. I went to the school during that time, and it was very, very crowded and noisy. Not having a cloakroom, all the kids put their jackets in a big pile every morning. As a result, lice were rampant in the school.

There were many native children in the school. My school bus used to go through the reservation to pick up the native kids, and I recall one blustery winter morning looking at an old man sitting in a chair in a shack staring at the wall. The windows on the shack used to be sheets of plastic stapled up, but the plastic had torn, so the wind was blowing freely through the house. I remember thinking, sitting on my warm bus, that someone should put up new plastic windows for that grandpa.

At school my best friend was a native girl named Naomi. She was really nice. Naomi had raspy cough from the first time I met her. After a few months there was a stretch of several weeks where Naomi wasn't at school. Finally the teacher asked one of the other native kids where Naomi was, and the child replied that Naomi had died of "namonia". Later that day I watched as the teacher set us to a reading task, and then went to Naomi's desk and unceremoniously cleared the contents out into the garbage can.

My observations and experiences in Port Hardy left a deep impression on me. As an adult looking back on it, particularly Naomi's death, I can't believe the callous way native indians were treated. If a white kid were to die of pneumonia either back then or today, mourning that child would be a school-wide event. But a native kid dying of pneumonia at the north end of Vancouver Island back in the 1970's didn't even deserve comment. I hope that aspect of life on the island has changed. But, in a two week vacation visit, I will have no way of knowing.

The rest of her classmates may have long forgotten Naomi (I don't know), but I know her mum and dad will always remember her. And I will always remember her. A little epitaph for her is memorialized within me...and now also in this blog, I guess.

The day I became a scientist...

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 01:02:55 GMT

I was talking to one of my aunties on the phone today and we were discussing how kids don't play in the mud much anymore (making mud pies and whatnot). She and I spent many happy childhood days mucking about in various gardens, streams, and sandboxes. I don't think too many kids are allowed to play in streams unattended these days (or dig mud pits in the back yard to drop barbies and toy cars into in a re-creation of a catastrophic mud slide).

Talking with her, I recalled the time when I was four years old and I was playing in our vegetable garden. I remember sitting between the rows of beets and carrots and thinking "The carrots and beets grow from the dirt. So the dirt must be made out of the same stuff that carrots and beets are made of. So I guess dirt must taste like carrots and beets".

Whereupon I crammed a fistful of dirt into my mouth and discovered that, No, in fact dirt does not taste like carrots and beets.

That seminal moment marks my first formation of a scientific hypothesis followed by an empirical test of the hypothesis. I learned a lot from that first experiment (note to self: dirt tastes really bad, and it is really hard to get a handful of it completely out of your mouth...don't do that again). Do other kids do this too, or was this my first step where I started branching off from other kids to follow the path that led to becoming a scientist? I don't know. But I do know that society views kids who eat dirt as being a bit "different" (Father, to four year old me: what is that all over your face...have you been eating dirt???)

As an aside, to this day it still amazes me that all the stuff that carrots and beets are made of (minus epsilon) is in the dirt. But the seeds have this wonderous genetic code that converts the inedible dirt into tasty carrots and beets. Pretty damn cool, in my opinion.

A friend in need

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 01:19:44 GMT

I have a friend named L. who met last year. We both have daughters who are the same age, and our daughters are best friends.

L. is a great person...warm and funny, and we always have a good time together. She was in a workplace accident a few years ago and her left leg was mangled. She sued her former employer and late last fall the case finally settled and she got a lump settlement.

After she got the settlement, our relationship changed a bit...every time we went places together she spent money conspicuously and lavishly, and if we took our girls out to someplace she had planned, it invariably turned out to be a bit of a financial hardship for us to afford it (we would have to subsequently cut back on something else for the rest of the month). I still always enjoy her company though, but I was more comfortable hanging around with her before she got the settlement.

After receiving the settlement she took her girls on two recent trips to Disneyworld, bought big screen TV's for all of them and all new furniture, and they lived a lavish and glittery lifestyle over the past 9 months that has (very unfortunately) been the envy of our eldest daughter. I've had to have a couple of conversations with our eldest daughter about the fact that we simply can't afford to join L. on trips to Disneyworld, and we can't afford things like constantly buying her new clothes and toys and tchotchkes all the time, or buying things like even one big screen TV, let alone one in the living room and others in every single bedroom (we don't even have regular TV's in our bedrooms).

Anyway, today I got a phone call from L...she is distraught because she is in severe financial hardship. The lump settlement (that was meant to last her the rest of her life) has now all been spent. She told me the only food she currently has in the house is half a gallon of milk and half a loaf of bread, and she doesn't know where next month's rent is coming from.

Mr.Absinthe and I had a long talk about it. We simply do not have money right now in the amounts needed to feed three people and house them for what is likely to end up being an indefinite period. Besides which, we don't think that kind of monetary help would really fix the underlying situation.

L thinks she may end up homeless again (she told me that several years ago right after the accident she and her daughters spent several months living in her car until family members finally took them in....up until she told me that, I had no idea she had once been homeless, but I did know she was living with her family when I first met her and only moved out to her own place after she got the settlement).

Ay yi yi...this is another WWBD? day. I'm not coming up with any answers though. I don't even know how to begin to help someone who is so financially clueless that they ended up putting themselves (and their kids...their poor kids) in such a situation.

And what am I going to tell my eldest daughter if her best friend ends up homeless?

Crap.

Comments

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:34:18 GMT

Comments are currently still in the "on" state. People who regularly read this blog know that I have a policy of turning comments off when I start seeing a lot of traffic coming from right-wing blog sites. I am currently seeing a lot of such traffic in response to the recent Title IX posts.

For now I will keep the comments on, but will turn them off for a while if I start seeing commentary from people who think this blog is meant to be a debating site. It isn't, and I won't let it turn into that. I delete commentary that I feel might be hurtful to women who come to this blog for information about the EEOC, finding a lawyer, Title IX, Title VII, the FLSA, the FMLA, etc. Women who have been discriminated against in their academic workplace don't need to be reading commentary that essentially belittles their situation. And it doesn't matter if the comments don't contain profanity...a woman who comes to this blog for information because Title IX may be her only option to address the discrimination she is dealing with in her academic workplace does not need to read commentary making snide commentary about Title IX.

Flashbacks

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:04:17 GMT

It strikes me that my two posts below about the NYT article about Title IX don't at all resemble the bulk of my postings of recent months, but resemble very well the original kinds of postings I made on this blog. I've moved on with my life, and statistical studies of gender equity issues in the sciences aren't really a part of my life these days (they formed the core of many of the flagship postings on this blog). For the most part I happily putter through life these days, doing historic house rehab, knitting, walking my dogs, doing baseball statistical data analysis, and working on getting my teaching license.

The one issue that still gets me fired up though is Title IX compliance in the sciences. Why? Because my complaint under Title IX to the Department of Energy regarding egregious discriminatory crap going on at Fermilab is still "pending" after over two years (read: still being "ignored"). The complaint is easily the single most statistically well documented complaint the Department of Energy has ever received. And yet they still refuse to investigate.

Just this past week, before I heard about the NYT article, I was sitting having a good think about what I was going to do about the brazen non-compliance of the Department of Energy with even the most basic aspects of Title IX (they told me back in March that they would get back to me in April with a decision as to whether or not they would deign to investigate my complaint...I haven't heard a word since then with a decision). What options are left to me to force them to investigate? Well, I can try kicking the complaint back up to the Department of Justice (I tried this last year, and the Department of Justice kicked it back down to the Department of Energy Office of Civil Rights, who have continued to ignore it ever since despite being repeatedly contacted by me). If I complain back up to the Department of Justice, I will contact some friends I have in Washington to see if they have some thoughts as to exactly to whom I should complain for best results.

So, while I was pondering this week over the frustrating logistics that must be overcome to see the complaint to the DoE successfully dealt with, suddenly the NYT article came out poo-poo'ing Title IX compliance in the sciences as some kind evil that is being forced on society. And then right-wing nut jobs took my words in response to that article and used them as an example of how dangerous someone like me can be towards their publicity effort to make sure that science academia remains Title IX non-compliant.

This unfortunate confluence in timing (or serendipitous confluence?) has me revisiting the old Absinthe this week...

Update to the post about the NYT Title IX in the sciences article

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 00:13:25 GMT

This is an update to the New York Times article on Title IX and the sciences post. For some reason, out of the dozens of comments left on PhysioProf's post, a member of the privileged patriarchy felt my comments (and my subsequent blog piece) were dangerous enough to warrant special consideration. Why is a downtrodden female ex-physicist dangerous to his privileged status? Well, I guess because I am a downtrodden female ex-physicist...and I talk about it. If women like me would just shut up about our experiences, and how Title IX compliance at our national labs likely would have made our working lives less nightmare-ish, it would be so much easier to pretend we don't exist and then all their "truths" about why there are so few women in the sciences, and why Title IX is a "bad law" might seem plausible.

I note in his commentary on my post, he described me as someone that members of his ilk are "up against", as if I have some kind of amazing supernatural power to rock their little world. Oh my god! run for the hills guys, it is a woman who is actually talking! Women aren't supposed to do that, unless they agree with us! And sometimes she doesn't even talk nice! It is so scary! Make her go away! What are we going to do???

Their stance is on pretty shaky ground if it is threatened by my mere existence.