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....