Women on the ‘Problem with Science’

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2015

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Earlier in the year, the reported remarks about 'the problem with girls' by British biologist and Nobel Laureate Professor Tim Hunt' brought the issues facing women scientists into public spotlight. Although there have been questions about the reports of what exactly happened and what was said during Hunt's talk in South Korea, the story has given female researchers the rare opportunity to air the problems of gender bias in science to a much wider audience.

What are the factors holding back women in science? What can be done to improve gender equality in the lab? Claudia Hammond talks to women scientists in India, Nigeria, Bolivia, the US and the UK about their experiences and views.

The programme features: ecologist Monica Moraes at the Universidad Mayor de San Andres in Bolivia; neuroscientist Jennifer Raymond in Stanford, California; psychologist Uta Frith at UCL in London; chemist Paul Walton of the University of York; and physicists Rabia Salihu Sa'id at Bayero University in northern Nigeria and Shobhana Narasimhan of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore.

Professor Narasimhan also organises career development workshops for women physicists in low-income countries at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics.

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:03.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use,
0:07.0	go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts.
0:23.0	Hello, I'm Claudia Hammond. broadcasts. a global perspective on women in science. They're almost always in the minority
0:25.0	and as a rule don't advance in their careers like the male scientists.
0:29.0	There's bias, condescension, and sometimes outright hostility.
0:33.0	One of the women scientists told us that her philosophy of life
0:38.0	is that one should be like a snail.
0:41.0	When danger threatens, you retreat into your shell and then when the danger
0:45.4	retreats you crawl forward a little bit a little bit a little bit and then when
0:50.2	danger approaches again you quickly retreat back into your shell, and this is how you move forward in your desire to be a scientist.
0:58.0	People being asked to take minutes when they're not the most junior person in the room but the most junior person is
1:03.2	male. People being told not to wear their hair in a ponytail because they won't
1:07.4	be taken seriously. There's lots of campaigning for women in science which is
1:12.1	great, but there's not much advice out
1:14.6	there about how you challenge it when you're called girl or young lady is one of
1:20.3	the things I heard and missy I heard.
1:22.6	Earlier in the year, the reported remarks about the problem with girls by British biologist
1:27.6	and Nobel Laureate Tim Hunt brought the issues facing women scientists into the public spotlight like never before.
1:35.3	There's disagreement about what exactly happened during Professor Hunt's talk at a conference
1:39.7	in South Korea, but whatever was or wasn't said, there's no doubt that the story has given
1:45.6	women researchers the rare opportunity to air the problems of gender bias in science to a much
	...

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