• Question: Have you faced any prejudice as a woman in the field of science such as sexism/misogyny?

    Asked by 449prtb42 to Vicky, Jackie on 13 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Jaclyn Bell

      Jaclyn Bell answered on 13 Mar 2015:

      I will be honest. Sometimes I feel like people look down on me a bit… but I don’t know if its because of where I am from or because I am female. I find it’s really common with elderly men who have been in physics a long long time… they still seem to treat me as if I am not as smart as the boys, but I guess its just what was seen to be acceptable in the old days and its hard for them to break the habit. I do notice that there is still not many women in physics and when I go to conferences I have a habit of counting us all to see if numbers increase each year – thats why I really want to start up coding clubs, especially for girls – to give them confidence. I’ve gotten pretty tough over the last few years and I have learnt to stand up for myself, but at first it was hard, especially coming from a poor background – but don’t let this put you off a career in physics! It’s important that we don’t give up and work together to bring about change 🙂

    • Photo: Vicky Bayliss

      Vicky Bayliss answered on 16 Mar 2015:

      I work with a range of people and I think Jackie has had a worse experience than me! sometimes I think people treat me differently because I’m female, but not always in a bad way. Like everyone else in my group at work is male, and there are some things – like they won’t swear in front of my even though I hear them swearing in conversation with each other in the corridor, but that’s not exactly a bad thing!
      There has only been one time that I told someone that I was an engineer, and they said ‘women can’t be engineers’ and I was so shocked, but I was actually stood in a whole group of people (all men actually) who were also all shocked and went on to kind of say why not, women have important skills in teams etc etc etc. so I felt like even though that one man thought women shouldn’t be engineers, he was defintly 60+ and close to retirement so in a way it doesn’t matter what he thinks because he was definitely in a minority and also about to leave the workplace.
      I hope that answers your question – if I had to choose a career again, I definitely wouldn’t let my gender hold me back from working in a physics or engineering environment.

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