Read on Twitter
This #InternationalDayOfWomenInScience my feed is full of lovely scientists shouting out their women colleagues, mentors, and students. It’s really nice, and I’m usually thrilled to get in on it. But this year I can’t see past how frustrated, exhausted, and sad I’m feeling. 
I try to be optimistic. I work with amazing students who give me hope for the future of science. But I’m not an idiot. I know I’m sending them out into a world that's often unkind to women scientists. I know I can’t always protect them from the sorts of bad experiences I've had.
I feel like I’ve spent a lot of my career trying to force open a door so young women in science can make their way through it. But it can be disheartening and exhausting to fight to hold that door knowing what some of them will find on the other side.
I’m not talking about omitted credentials or being spoken to dismissively. I’m talking about events that end women’s careers, or damage them deeply. That still make distinguished women scientists cry, a decade later. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-dark-side-of-being-a-female-shark-researcher/
We talk about imposter syndrome as if it originates in the person who feels it. But I know what it does to someone to be told often and in many ways that they are less valued or valuable than their abuser. That speaking up about abuse, not the abuse itself, is the real problem.
Why do we demand that the youngest and least powerful members of our scientific community also have to be the most courageous? Why are we looking to them to take responsibility for fixing long-standing problems in how we treat scientists from historically excluded groups?
I want students to always be able to come to me. I want students not to need to come to me. I wouldn’t mind being relatively powerless if I wasn’t also furious and sad and scared. I want to have something more to offer the young people I believe in than that heartfelt belief.
Every time I’ve hit the mat in my career, the thing that’s gotten me up and back in the fight is my students. When I’ve succeeded, it’s because I’ve had them cheering me on. But I know I’m not enough, and I’m so tired. They deserve more champions. They deserve better champions.
I don’t want to join mannerly gatherings celebrating women in STEM. I want to join a revolt. I want to find others to fight back-to-back with as we toss insults into the teeth of misogyny. I want to believe in a different future.
I need to believe it's coming through that door.
I need to believe it's coming through that door.
