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theHandpuppet

(19,964 posts)
Mon Aug 11, 2014, 11:08 PM Aug 2014

Harassment in Science, Replicated

Really interesting article, if not a bit depressing.

The New York Times
Science | First Person
Harassment in Science, Replicated
By CHRISTIE ASCHWANDEN
AUG. 11, 2014

As an undergraduate student in biology, I spent several weeks in Costa Rica one summer with an older graduate student on a research project deep in the cloud forest. It was just the two of us, and upon arriving at our site, I discovered that he had arranged a single room for us, one bed.

Mortified but afraid of being labeled prudish or difficult, I made no fuss. I took the lodge owner aside the next day and requested my own bed. The problem ended there, and my graduate student boss never made any physical advances.

Reflecting back, I’m struck by how ill equipped I was to deal with this kind of situation, especially at 19. My university undoubtedly had a harassment policy, but such resources were thousands of miles away. I was alone in a foreign country and had never received any training on my rights and resources in the field.

I’d forgotten about this experience from two decades ago until I read a report published July 16 in the journal PLOS One. Kathryn Clancy, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and three colleagues used email and social media to invite scientists to fill out an online questionnaire about their experiences with harassment and assault at field sites; they received 666 responses, three quarters of them from women, from 32 disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, biology and geology....

MORE at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/12/science/harassment-in-science-replicated.html?_r=0

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Harassment in Science, Replicated (Original Post) theHandpuppet Aug 2014 OP
Love you. littlemissmartypants Aug 2014 #1
I know a nurse who switched her profession ismnotwasm Aug 2014 #2
My daughter started out as a Chemistry major when she went off to college. CTyankee Aug 2014 #3

littlemissmartypants

(22,832 posts)
1. Love you.
Mon Aug 11, 2014, 11:31 PM
Aug 2014
Very few respondents said their field site had a code of conduct or sexual harassment policy, and of the 78 who had dared to report incidents, fewer than 20 percent were satisfied with the outcome.


ismnotwasm

(42,014 posts)
2. I know a nurse who switched her profession
Mon Aug 11, 2014, 11:53 PM
Aug 2014

She's has a bachelors in Biology but was sexually assaulted. It's fun talking to her about biologigy-- she clearly loves it. I haven't pried into the sexual assault. She just blurted it out one day and then was quiet-/and I didn't want her to feel uncomfortable, so I don't know the whole story, but Its sounds as though it happened doing field work.

CTyankee

(63,912 posts)
3. My daughter started out as a Chemistry major when she went off to college.
Tue Aug 12, 2014, 03:34 PM
Aug 2014

She was very shy and very pretty. We had encouraged her to go to her aunt's college, a Seven Sisters School that was still all female and still is today). I think she was relieved and happy being accepted there and loved her undergrad years. It gave her intellectual and social breathing space, even tho I had people comment "Why is she going to a girls school? She so pretty!" That really ticked me off...

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