Three Books that Changed my Life as a Female Professor in Academia
It’s an unfortunate but well-documented fact that bias against women is rampant in the professional world (not just academia). Although I have been more fortunate than many of my female peers in this regard, I have certainly experienced this, mostly in little ways, though occasionally in jaw-droppingly big ones. Two examples will suffice. As a grad student in the early 1990s, a PI of a neighboring lab told me, “Women shouldn’t try to do science because to be successful, you need a wife.” Sadly, this type of thinking is not ancient history. A few years ago, I was slated to give a major talk at a prestigious conference alongside two men. Upon seeing the program, a senior individual at my institution said, “I see that you are the X-chromosome invitation.” Importantly, men are not the only perpetrators of such bias; women are just as likely to negatively judge other women and unconsciously reward or favor men.
