On Wed, 16 Jul 1997, Michael Marc Levy wrote:
> I wonder how much of Ellie's isolation from female co-workers is simply the
> usual male-authored cliche on Sagan's part and how much of it is the way
> things still are (or were when Sagan wrote the book in the late 1980s)
> for women working in the hard sciences. Anyone here have the kind of
> background to comment on this from first hand experience?
Well, Sagan co-authored the book (and movie) with his wife, who I
believe has first-hand experience in the field. So the isolation is
not just a male-author cliche.
Also, while I can't speak to what it's like at NASA, I do know that
women are still very much isolated in a lot of sciences. One of my
housemates is in a computer-science research group, and their
advisor/leader is a woman, but she's the only one on the team and
doesn't have any female colleagues outside of the research team. A
friend of mine is doing physics research and if there are any other
women in her building, she's unaware of their existence.
<shrug> Maybe the situation is better when you get out of academia?
-- Susan
susan@apocalypse.org
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"Using lynx is like wearing jeans without underwear--nothing is supported,
and it chafes."
--The Boys
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