by Elsa Garmire, edited by Jane Phillips
Elsa Garmire, Director of the Center for Laser Studies at the University of Southern California and President of the Optical Society of America, recently visited Australia. She talked to audiences in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney about her life as a woman in science and engineer-ing and about the importance of learning and playing the politics of a culture dominated by men. This article is based on her Sydney talk, arranged by WISENET.
I am very proud of the fact that I am the second woman president of the Optical Society of America. Why am I proud to be the second woman? Because I could have been the first woman if I had wanted to but I chose to play the politics to get a woman elected as soon as possible.
I was on the Board of Directors at the time, about 10 years ago, when the nominating committee put forward three names. One was that of a woman who was well respected in the field of optics and I knew that if she were nominated she would win. Another was that of a very well known white male and I knew that he would not get elected by the members over her. The Board would have gone with just the white male who was friends with members of the board, but I immediately moved that we go with all three names and, having made that motion, how could anybody then say 'we really don't need all those names, we want just one'?
On the other hand, if they had nominated one - if someone had said, 'Let's go with him, he's probably the most qualified' - then how could you have said, 'Let's let these other people run too'? By getting there first, by getting all three names to go forward, sure enough she was elected. And she was a very good president and I got to be the second woman president. Had I been determined to be first I probably could have kept her from becoming president. So the politics of things is very important.
You don't just sit politely until someone invites you to give a paper. I happened to overhear a well known professor who gives invited talks at all conferences. He was on the telephone to the conference organiser asking to be invited. That is the way it's done. Why am I telling you this? Because if you want to work in a culture, you need to know the politics of that culture and how that culture works. Science and engineering has always been a male dominated culture. I can give you examples of my life so you will understand how male dominated.
What I have described are the reactions of individuals within the majority culture to the fact that you are a minority. They call attention to the minority in inappropriate ways, and make it impossible for members of the minority culture to feel where they fit in the majority culture.
We're talking about manwoman here; we could be talking in America about blacks, or Hispanics or other such cultures. The point is that minorities have different needs. Their socialisation is different and they are often systematically excluded. However, minorities also bring a new perspective, they bring different skills and a new way of looking at things. We need minorities in everything we do because they offer diversity.
The majority culture says 'men will not make as good parents as women, there's something inherent in women that makes them better parents'. Now clearly that's prejudice. Any number of men can make better parents than their wives although this may not be common. We should not generalise about minorities because of majority attitudes. Because most women don't do physics we can't assume that women do not make good physicists.
Women have equal rights. What else do they want? They want equal opportunity. And they want equal opportunity without sacrificing family. So what do we mean by equal opportunity? We mean the same chance at job opportunities. This requires women who are members of a minority culture within a majority, male-dominated, scientific community to understand the politics of the majority culture. Learning the system doesn't mean you're condoning it but you play in it. That's what we mean by being political.
What can we do about it? Well the most important thing to begin with is to know about it. As part of the women's movement in the seventies I got very involved in consciousness-raising. Women got together in small groups and talked about issues that were concerning them - there were six or eight of us at CalTech that did that and it was very important to me to feel a 'oneness' with the other women. If you don't make these contacts and it's you and thirty males it's very hard to feel comfortable. You will have different reactions to things and you need to test yourself against others of your culture.
The other thing I believe in is affirmative action. I don't like the phrase 'affirmative action'. The word I like is 'proaction'. What do we mean by 'proaction'? It's the opposite of reaction. You get there first.
I mentioned getting my friend this position as President of the Optical Society. I got there first to get her that job. I'm leaving my job as professor at USC and going to become Dean of Engineering at Dartmouth College. It's a big deal. How did I get that job? One of the women at Dartmouth called me up and said, 'Please apply'. She was proactive.
I came on the Board of the Lasers and Electro-optics Society because a woman went to the Board meeting and nominated me from the floor. She decided there should be a woman on the Board and I was the most qualified woman.
A woman student from Berkeley called me and said, 'We have a Faculty position, please apply, there are no women. Students want women role models'. And other places have come after me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Dartmouth succeeded. I can tell you how not to do it. Back in the seventies, a university professor called me up and said they were in court on a lawsuit because they were discriminating against women so would I please come and be a member of their faculty. He wasn't interested in what I was doing technically, they just wanted the slot filled with a woman!
Affirmative action does not mean making it easier for women compared to men. It does not mean lowering standards. What it means is lowering barriers by making people aware that jobs are available, maybe helping with setting up childcare situations, and so on.
Make lists of women that you know of and present them to those in power. So they'll be thinking of women when it comes time to invite them to positions or whatever or just to come and talk. They don't have to just be in Australia, they can be anywhere in the world. Write to women, call them up, send them e-mail, ask them to apply.
Politics works. Get whoever you know all behind one woman and go to the Dean and say 'you've got two candidates, there's twenty of us that want this situation'. You get that political action going, it really does work. In the US recently, a very well respected woman surgeon from Stanford quit. She was forty-seven years old and after being tenured, on the standing faculty, for ten or twenty years, she decided she just couldn't take it any more because the department chair was treating her like a sexual object. It made the news, it made the politics, everybody got up in arms and she got her job back and he lost his. That kind of action can work.
Accept reality: if your career gets stopped at point A then look for ways around it. There may be an individual or group within your university that can help you, but don't beat your head against the wall when it doesn't work any more. I strongly advised a woman friend of mine who didn't get tenure at the University of Michigan not to fight it. I said, 'You don't want to get tenure where they don't want you, go where you are wanted', and so she looked for a job. She's got a fabulous job, they love her where she is, she's won all kinds of awards. She was primarily an excellent teacher, the University of Michigan didn't care about teaching so she went to where they love teaching. And every time she sees me in a conference, she comes up to tell me how happy she is that she followed my advice and how miserable she would have been had she stayed where she was. There are lots of options out there if you look for them.
You have got to be better. As long as you are a member of a minority, whatever that minority is, and you want to play in a majority culture, you have to be better than the average of the majority. That's just the way it is, they won't accept you otherwise.
Ask the men for help, particularly the powerful ones. I could give you lots of stories on how I've been able to get research money from people by asking them for help. What I have found very helpful in my life - now, I'm older than you and life is maybe quite different now - but what I had were some older men who were really not liberated at all, whom I was able to convince of the rightness of my cause, and who then took me as a sort of daughter. I was helped tremendously by some of these.
A lot of men absolutely do care and understand and they will help you if you ask. There's nothing wrong with asking. Make as many friends as you can. Raise the consciousness of the women as well as of the men. A lot of women aren't conscious of these issues and they can really get in the way.
Science and engineering are changing very rapidly and becoming more and more socio-political. This is why we need women in there. After the nuclear devastation at Chernobyl and the Three Mile Island accident, society will no longer let engineers do just whatever they want. So we really need more women and their characteristics in science and engineering and I think we should be proud of that.
Join groups like WISENET and Women in Physics. Be aware that there are equivalent groups in the US, get onto e-mail with them. When you go to conferences in the US, get together with some of the women. Discuss the fundamental issues. How are you going to possibly work while you have children? I happened to work part-time for ten years, it was fabulous. Academic part-time is what everybody should have. Is your institution willing to do it for you? I started a childcare centre at CalTech - there was none and I needed a place to put my kids, so I started one. You know, that's what you do, you go out and do what you have to.
So, what have I said? What I've said is that it's very important to be aware that we are a minority culture within a majority culture in science and engineering. On the outside world, of course, we're the majority but that's another issue. And the majority culture has politics. We need to learn the politics; we need to play the politics. For equal opportunity we cannot depend on the law. There are cultural differences and these biases make the jobs harder to do.
I've given you examples of things you can do; nonetheless, it isn't easy. You must publish as much as you can and with quality work. You must be assertive. The culture biases mean without a doubt it will be harder for you. Is it fair? No, but it's the way it is. Is it fair that men can't have babies? No, but it's the way it is. There-fore, play the political system to be the best that you can be.
Editors' note:
These are the experiences of an important American who has succeeded in science and engineering in her country,despite the glass ceiling.
What are Australian experiences? Readers are invited to comment.