Recently a sentence in one of the best books by Katie Couric doesn't leave my mind. It is with me in the dark and light days.It says:

The surest way to lose something is to quit. 

The first lesson learned : No matter what the ups and downs of your road are, be persistent in walking in the road.

How we should really dress for the first day of work?

For those women scientists who wish to

My guest Posting in GWAMIT about "the Fashiontist"

http://gwamit.blogspot.com/2011/08/fashiontist-blog-for-woman-scientist.html

Can Fashion in the lab be a game changer?

According to 2008 report by Center for Work-Life Policy:

Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) are marginalized by hostile macho cultures. Being the sole woman on a team or at a site can create isolation. Many women report mysterious career paths: fully 40% feel stalled. Systems of risk and reward in SET cultures can disadvantage women, who tend to be risk averse. Finally, SET jobs include extreme work pressures: they are unusually time intensive. Moreover, female attrition rates spike 10 years into a career. Women experience a perfect storm in their mid- to late thirties: They hit serious career hurdles precisely when family pressures intensify.

http://www.worklifepolicy.org/index.php/section/research_pubs

So, if we start a movement to celebrate our feminine self in the lab, can we gradually and slowly change the game in this masculine environment?

Fashion among women scientists survey

I have created a survey which aims to collect some basic ideas of the scientific community from the whole topic of women scientists and fashion. I appreciate it if you take a moment and answer the six short questions in the survey. Here is the link:

Click here to take survey

http://www.marieclaire.com/world-reports/news/female-scientists

An interview with Professor Hazel Sive , Associate Dean of School of science in MIT ,by MarieClaire, includes a question in which she was asked whether female scientists in MIT are being stereotyped as being teva-wearing eggheads and need to down play their looks in order to be taken seriously.

The truth is, as Professor Sive also admits, female in hardcore scientific environments really need to forget about their feminine sides in order to be taken seriously. It is not a matter of "I don't care" , "I dress as I wish", "If I feel like wearing my dress in lab I do it and I don't give a damn to what others think"; in long term, in the course of a year or two, those people whom we don't care about their opinions , really decide for us based on the impression we make on them.

The sad thing is that, in the 21st century, the era of synthetic biology , robotics and post human genome projects, female scientists are still judged by what they wear in the lab sometimes even more than their intellect.

My question is that, should we accept this and down play our looks to be taken seriously for the rest of this century and the centuries to come, or stand up for ourselves and start a movement by which we can put an end to this unfair stereotyping truth....

The idea of adoption of fashion by women scientist is more complicated than what appears. Searching through the web, I came across an article in NY Times in 2008. The article was addressing the issue of diversity in the workplace specially in the fields of science and engineering and was referring to discriminations that still exist in these sectors against women. The main point was the fact that women in science and engineerings are still affected by the negative side effects of this testosterone rich corner of world including a battle against a tendency for dismissal by male colleagues.

I am encountered by many questions. Questions for which I may not find any answer. Questions for which I can not even put the blame on my male colleagues. They are not really to blame. It is the culture. It is a sort of social evolution. It is may be some sort of instinct. But is it true that we are battling against an unspoken , unwritten, even hidden yet widespread belief that " men are for science , women for fashion"?

If that's true, and we are trying to what I call "Man-ize" ourselves to become part of this league and accepted as science geniuses ,then adopting fashion at work is giving in to this established belief and moving backward, right?!!!

To me, it appeared like that at the first glance. But I realized that years and years of social evolution, has separated science and fashion. First, because women tend to avoid science due to its harsh nature. More women were attracted to Fashion because of its harmonious nature to their character. Those who were attracted to science, were forced to put aside their fashion. I guess however, if we wanna end this belief and prove to our future generations that these two (science and fashion) can really join together in one place, we should start the movement now, from here, each one of us...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/15/fashion/15WORK.html?pagewanted=1