The Feminist's Fairy Tale

A scientist friend of mine once told me that I'd had a much better grad school experience than most PhDs she knew. Ever since I discovered the blogosphere, the number of pissed off female scientist bloggers have made me wonder if I've also had an unusually positive experience overall as a woman in science.

I have not felt at any point that my career progression was impeded by my gender. My field has lots of women and my mentors have been supportive of women in science. I have not had to endure sexist comments or behavior from male professors. Even the "old guard" faculty, about whom new female students are warned, have been pleasant and professional in our interactions.

This is not to say that everything is rosy for women scientists in my world. There is still not a single senior tenured female professor in my department and every year, smart women scientists leave academia or science altogether. But for whatever reason, most of the women scientists I've worked with over the years have focused more on being scientists than on being women scientists.

Needless to say, the lack of a raging gender debate in my professional life is making it difficult for me to write about "transcending the debate". Instead, I'll write about a phenomenon which has contributed to the derailment of multiple women scientists' careers, and which has puzzled me for a long time--the unsupportive spouse/partner.

When I first entered grad school, I was surprised by the number of female PhD scientists I knew who did nearly all of the cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and other chores at home. Then, I was stunned to discover that some would actually be berated by their partners for falling behind on the chores, staying late in lab, or working on weekends. And recently, I heard of a woman scientist whose husband told her not to apply for tenure-track faculty positions because they would take up too much of her time outside of home.

This last example may be extreme, but no doubt there have been other women scientists who have given up on their careers in part because their partners did not support them. After all, academic research careers are challenging enough without having to do an unfair share of the work at home or having to continually defend one's work schedule.

What I've never understood is why. Why would talented, educated women choose partners who won't share some of the burden of household chores, who aren't proud of their achievements, and who won't help them succeed in their careers? And why do women with such partners simply resign themselves to their situations rather than demand the respect and consideration one expects from one's partner?

Years ago, I saw a fantastic card which expresses my views on this perfectly:

Once upon a time, a beautiful, independent, self-assured princess happened upon a frog in a pond. The frog said to the princess, "I was once a handsome prince until an evil witch put a spell on me. One kiss from you and I will turn back into a prince and then we can marry, move into the castle with my mom where you can prepare my meals, clean my clothes, bear my children and forever feel lucky for doing so."


That night, the princess had frog legs for dinner.

Note: I've written a follow-up post to this in response to the comments.

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