Experience 1
Courage Campaign: Women's Stories of Survival and Speaking Out Against Oppression
CW: mention of sexual discrimination, harassment, and violence.
The following is a story from a member of the WIS PDX community:
I am told that Older White Man (OWM) may have trouble believing that gender-based harassment is real, so I want to share a few very brief stories from academia to help with identifying and naming it.
1. OWM tells a joke at an international conference (virtual platform in 2020) where men are doctor, scientist, lawyer and women are either wife or mistress. This is gender-based harassment. It foments the belief that women have limited roles and they are not professional.
2. I (female pain scientist) am invited to be primary reviewer on a grant proposal in my area of expertise. OWM secondary reviewer begins his comments with “Well, I am a real pain scientist…” This is gender-based harassment.
3. I win a large university-wide collaborative grant from NIH, making me the only female on my campus to hold such a prestigious award. Within a few months, senior OWM leaders are developing a plan to remove me as PI and transfer control of the budget to an OWM. This is gender-based harassment.
4. At a retirement party for 3 faculty in our department (2 female, 1 male), OWM chairman says a few words about each retiree. In his speech, both women are called by their first names while the man is referred to as DR. A. Lack of respect comes shining through, don't get me started on how he summarized each of the three careers!
5. I have almost lost count of how many times I have been excluded from scientific publications where I should have been included. It started when I was an undergrad in a lab with 4 student workers (3 female, 1 male) - only the male was offered authorship. Authorship exclusion has happened with both male and female collaborators; it seems that the more strongly I challenge, the harder they push back. Once, I got a 5 paragraph email explaining why none of my skills or contributions (including securing funding for the work and training/supervising staff who collected the primary data) did not justify authorship.
6. I have not been sexually assaulted at work, but I was raped in college and also experienced domestic violence at home and this certainly impacts my comfort level interacting with male colleagues. I have had male colleagues yell at me, in very close proximity - and when they were standing up and I was sitting down (I am 5 feet tall). I have had male colleagues stand at my office door blocking the exit while arguing with me - which is quite traumatic.
7. One male colleague mentioned that he knew someone who would "give their left nut" for an opportunity to work in our department. This was said in a search committee meeting - professional context (supposedly). Same person would vote for/against candidates based on their eating and drinking habits (if they thought they would be fun at poker night) - which was also verbalized during search committee meetings.
8. Too many times to count: women are underpaid or not recruited at all based on the assumption that they will decide to "quit" and have a family and thus the investment in the recruitment will be completely lost. [I raised 2 children while running an NIH-funded lab the entire time].
If you would like to participate by submitting your experience to WIS-PDX anonymously, please click the button below. With each submitter’s consent, WIS-PDX will compile these stories to share with the community and any other party to make sure they are heard. We recognize that recounting these events can be traumatic. We want to offer support to any individual who needs it through this process. You are not alone and you do not have to traverse this alone.