International Women in Science: Trailblazing Scientists Share Their Journey

International Women in Science: Trailblazing Scientists Share Their Journey

            I attended this event at the Chicago Cultural Center on February 11^th. There were seven women from, Botswana, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Mexico, and Poland. They were scientists, researchers and ministers who all had incredible stories. I mistakenly assumed their names would be online, and as a result, didn’t record them as they were long and difficult to spell! It’s a shame because I would love to learn more about what they did.

Overview:

Mexico: She was inspired to study because it was the only way she would be able to travel the world, as her family could never economically support that. She achieved a PHD, studying all over the world, in Denmark, and 5 years in Edinburgh. She heads 140 researchers, of which only 15 are women. She says that in the cities, where people have money, children study science, but very few children study science in rural areas. In Mexico there is a stigma around science, “science women are seen as weird women.”

Hong Kong: She said there were very few girls at university studying science with her, which made it extra hard, though it was already a stressful environment. Her interest lies in environmental protection, but due to lack of jobs, works in infrastructure and city planning with a focus on environmentalism. Hong Kong is apparently very modern and unique, with special bamboo technology to build high rises.

Botswana: She is interested in plants, having patented a special technique to extract chemicals from plant matter using high temperatures and pressures to mimic natural solvents. Below is a short documentary on the Moringa tree (also called “miracle tree”), which is the main plant the Botswanian woman worked with. She said that sadly, women don’t enroll in science in Botswana because they are told that science is “not for ladies!” and that much more needs to be done to encourage women.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqwk9KFLTI0 

Poland: If I heard her correctly she was the director of higher education and science ministry, working especially with Poland’s integration with the EU. She has been the R and D directorate general, working in securing funds. Right now, she controls 80 people, mainly men over 50, (she is young and beautiful and obviously a woman which doesn’t match the people who work under her, so I got the sense that she has to fight to be heard, though she clearly manages it. She’s very charismatic and assertive.) She is pleased to have noticed that more and more women have been working in her field. There aren’t nearly enough programs targeted specifically at women in science in Poland, in her opinion. But there are two new measures, “Baby at University” which promotes daycare for student parents, so that they can go to university with a child, as well as a new type of grant financing scientists, which can be prolonged so that the scientist can have a child during research, and or take a break.

Indonesia UNESCO: This woman works in disaster management, awareness, building infrastructure, helping rural people access and use computers, GPS etc.

Israel: She directs the science education for one district in Israel, focusing on education inequality due to gender and socioeconomic differences. She worries that immigrants are taking STEM jobs due to lack of Israeli interest, and so she has her school district begin to offer advanced sciences in year 7. This has made it so that 45% of students in her district are studying advanced sciences, 15% more than the national average.

The event was difficult to understand because the women all had such strong accents, and the cultural differences made it so that each women was used to trying to get across a different sort of thing, be it their personal value, the value of their country, the value of women, or the issues immigrants create. Regardless, they all had incredible experiences to share and were clearly insanely intelligent. I wish that the woman who moderated it wasn’t so condescending toward them, interrupting and trying to finish their sentences.

Women aren’t highly represented in STEM fields in America either. While women hold close to 50% of jobs, they only hold 25% of STEM jobs. I believe this is mainly due to stigma around science and math being things only men can succeed at. Perhaps what is more worrying is that women with STEM degrees are less likely to pursue STEM careers, usually switching over to education or healthcare, potentially due to such a low concentration of female peers.

“One of the things that I really strongly believe in is that we need to have more girls interested in math, science, and engineering. We’ve got half the population that is way underrepresented in those fields and that means that we’ve got a whole bunch of talent…not being encouraged the way they need to.”

-- President Barack Obama, February 2013

Civic Engagement Fieldwork day Reflection

Today we talked about inquiry strands. I chose the feminism one because I've always been interested in women's rights. I looked at the websites Shanti posted. Some of them bothered me because I felt they were a little trivial and almost diminished women’s rights as an issue by focusing on the media when women are still forced into arranged marriages and have yet to gain the right to drive in some countries. An article about lack of actual lesbianism in Katy Perry's halftime show made me recoil at first. but when I really thought about it, the Super Bowl was viewed by 114.4 million people this year, so the ideas that are put across influence a significant number of people. I read a great article about taking beauty out of body positivity. Beauty is not a value, and you can be body positive without thinking you're beautiful. The truth is that not everyone is beautiful, but it shouldn’t matter because beauty should not equate to worth.

The other strand I considered was immigration. The Times had a really fascinating map with green bubbles on the countries that had people coming in and orange bubbles on the countries that had net people leaving. The bubbles were sized according to the population change. War torn countries have lots of people leaving, same with large poor countries with huge populations.

Ultimately, I'm more passionate about feminism.

"On The Possibility of Revolution - Could We Really Win?"

So. I attended this event at Revolution Books believing it was a very theoretical discussion about past revolutions and what has made them effective. This was not at all what the event was about.

My mother and I walked into the bookstore and were immediately met by an older man, who’s first words were, “So, how do you feel about communism? Do you have a gut reaction that it’s awful?” I was taken by surprise and my mother took the lead saying that she thinks the concept is pretty good, but it’s practice in Russia and China has been very problematic. He quickly followed up with, “What if I was to tell you that the practice has been much refined and the problems solved, and though Mao made some mistakes, communism, if implemented today would be great!” (I cannot promise this is what he said word for word, though I believe it’s quite close.) My mother and I smiled and nodded while the man carried on about the need for a revolution and the evils of capitalism.

The afternoon proceeded to follow a formula of: introduction by woman, video of Bob Avakian (Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party of America, not to be confused, with the Communist Party of America. The RCP supports an extreme Maoist version of communism,) followed by interpretation of Bob Avakian’s writings and speech by woman, followed by a reading of Bob Avakian by another man. There were three video segments of this guy speaking, mostly very repetitive with little to no content disguised with large words.

The main idea of the event was how to prepare for, and win a revolution to overthrow the US government, end oppression, and instate communism, BUT in the future because the conditions are not right for a revolution currently. They were very clear with the future element as it’s actually illegal to conspire to overthrow the government.

Stated necessary conditions for successful revolution:

1.     Conflicts among ruling class

2.    Legitimacy of ruling class heavily questioned

3.    Masses in agreement and beyond “individualistic expressions of frustration” moving towards an objective truth (I personally don’t believe there is such a thing as an objective truth, and if there was, it certainly should not be decided by Bob Avakian)

4.    Forces of reform are rejected by masses

5.    The middle classes must be neutral on revolution if not in support of, so that they may switch over to the side of the revolution, or at least let it happen.

Their next point was, “If conditions are met – Can we win?” (“we” being the RCP, who, when asked if they were trying to create a “cult of personality” around Bob Avakian, replied, “I certainly hope so. We’ve been working very hard to create one.”)

1.     Only win if “premature decisive encounters” are avoided. Which I think means, avoid inciting specific battles, that government forces could engage in and probably win with their superior force.  Rather commit small acts by small groups who could then merge back into the population.  (They quoted Mao here – revolutionaries should be “fishes in the sea of the people”)

2.    The government needs to be faced with a choice to either allow a revolution, or destroy the country.

This is where everything began to become absurd, if not frightening.

They gave out pamphlets, which were horribly written with no sense of grammar. One was titled, “Some Crucial Points of Revolutionary Orientation – in Opposition to Infantile Posturing and Distortions of Revolution”.

The words: scientific understanding, goal, reactionary institutions, qualitative change, the masses, objective situation, hypothetical, future, decisive, blood, and communism were used repeatedly. But it was never explained why capitalism is so evil, and communism would be so much less oppressive.

They were very excited that I was there – the only person under 40 and a representative of a generation they think is very important to their cause. At the end the older man cornered me and brought out “The Red Book” in Russian, and told me how everyone read it in the 70’s, it sold more than the Bible, it started this movement while flipping through it like a sacred artifact. He said his generation failed to start a revolution in the 60’s, when the conditions were right because they didn’t have the foresight on what was needed for a revolution to be effective, so my generation needs to know the strategy behind revolutions.

It was a very strange experience.

Vespers

Parker School's Vespers

I attended Vespers this year mainly because my sister is in Grape Jam and it's her first year. But what I had expected to be the tiresome sort of event I remembered from middle school, proved to be an incredible performance with an attentive and supportive audience. The students were professional in their behavior and their dress, but not overly formal or cold. They danced and moved to the music when appropriate and were clearly all happy to be there, sharing their talents with the community.
It began with a rousing middle school and high school rendition of Bonse Aba, a Zambian children's song whose main line is "all who sing have the right to be called the children of God." The audience clapped along, and the choirs all danced, it was very lively and really created a community environment. Vespers also ended with an all grade number: Let the River Run. Having Vespers bookended by all grade performances was fantastic because you could see kids from all different ages and grades come together as a family and create music.
There was a great mixture of popular music, like 21 Guns by Green Day, feel good songs like Bonse Aba, Let the River Run, and the Circle of Life, old carols, and fun songs from the middle school choirs like Ding-a-Dong.
I also enjoyed seeing Parker extend the community to the drummers, who are not members of the school, but added joy to the performance.
I want to say a big thank you to the music teachers for what was clearly the product of hours upon hours of hard work and enthusiasm. Their love and commitment for the school and the students shone through.
It was a heartwarming event.

My favorite performance from vespers Oh the Cuckoo, by New Chorale

First Civic Engagement Field Day: Poverty Tourism

            Today for civic engagement we visited communities that Parker students would not usually come upon. We spoke to community advocacy leaders about what they were trying to fix within their community, and they lectured us about getting involved with our alderman and state senator. To culminate the conversation about the incredibly impressive lengths community organizations are taking to turn the area around (which appear to be really effective and well thought out, and generally awesome), we took a tour of a couple blocks of the neighborhood, where we were shown the bungalow housing that the community was proud of, and the gorgeous 1933 St. Sabina church. But, surrounding these highlights, were signs of a not-so-idyllic neighborhood, strange graffiti, abandoned stores, boarded up buildings etc. that weren’t really mentioned.

            Partway through the tour, we had a rather strange man point out that the neighborhood was all black, to unclear purpose. He claimed to be Smoky Robinson, and said some things about the neighborhood that our guide was quick to hush. The strange man followed us for the duration of the tour, nodding, and talking repeatedly about masonry. I doubt he meant any harm, but he did serve to further point out that as a group of white, well-off, schoolchildren, we may not be in the best position to appreciate the complexity of the issues his neighborhood faces. I felt like an unwanted presence, stealing the dignity of the inhabitants of Auburn Gresham by coming and intellectualizing their struggles and successes like they were something to be studied instead of actual human beings “so I can better understand the Chicago area”. While I agree that we definitely need to understand the Chicago area better, I don’t think its fair to treat a neighborhood like an exhibit. If I was an inhabitant of Auburn Gresham, I wouldn’t want children worlds away from me to believe that they understand my plights, and pity me, especially because I might be perfectly happy there, and it would be rude to deem my life less full and happy and worthy of pity because I wasn’t rich. We were not invited.

            So I did some research. Starting by searching “cultural tourism”, google gave me Indian tour companies. My next idea was “poverty tourism”, and immediately I found countless articles and papers debating whether going to Africa and talking to a rural village, or driving through the slums of India for the purpose of self-betterment was morally acceptable. I found an excellent but lengthy report from BU School of Law. Generally, I found that poverty tourism is viewed as acceptable if the community is benefitting from it. Our tourism of Auburn Gresham was purely for our benefit, making it morally debatable.

Here’s an excerpt that gives a brief idea about the larger debate:

Poverty tourists are drawn to a variety of places, from squatter settlements in India to garbage dumps in Mexico and to urban centers in the United States. Some philosophers, journalists, and writers condemn all such tours as harmful cases of voyeurism. Others disagree, insisting that some tours are not harmful at all, and actually generate important human interactions, including education and economic assistance. These mutually beneficial cases are invoked as counterexamples that deflate critics' claims that all cases of poverty tourism are impermissible. The counterexamples also include 'Pareto superior' cases where the tourists gain but the residents are made no worse off.

And here’s the link to the full paper:

http://www.bu.edu/law/faculty/scholarship/workingpapers/documents/SelingerE-OuttersonK-WhyteK052411a.pdf

Engaging through the Chicago Social Change Film Festival

I attended the Chicago Social Change Film Festival at Icon Theater to watch a film called SOLD from India. It was adapted from a novel by Patricia McCormick. It was very much a movie, not a documentary, which I think was valuable because documentaries can give viewers an intellectualized distance instead of an emotional response. The movie begins with a 12-year-old girl named Lakshmi from Nepal. She truly lives in the mountains, not even a village. Her family is very poor, and though they are already surviving on the bare minimum, they need a roof that will shelter them from the heavy rains. Lakshmi’s drunken father accepts money from a woman who wants to take Lakshmi to be a maid. Unfortunately, this woman is actually recruiting Lakshmi to be a sex slave. There are awful scenes of Lakshmi being beaten, drugged, raped, starved, but the film manages to keep you interested instead of crippled with depression. Lakshmi ultimately becomes a hero, escaping and rescuing all the other girls as well as guiding the police to the dead bodies of other young slaves.

While it wasn’t a true story, the film really forced me to understand the plights of being in a situation so horrible and distant from any experience of my own.

People, myself included, often subconsciously put an intellectualized distance between themselves and a particularly horrendous cause. It almost functions as a defense mechanism because some atrocities are so unpleasant to understand and empathize with.

We were reminded by members of an organization in Chicago, called TraffickFree, that sexual exploitation and human trafficking is not only an overseas issue. They estimate that over 24,000 woman are CURRENTLY being trafficked in Chicago. It was interesting for me because I actually knew that number was feasible, I knew that human slavery is an issue in America, but I more or less forgot about it. To me, slavery going on nearby was so hard to imagine that my brain hadn’t even incorporated it into my worldview.

SOLD, was a fantastic start to the year of Civic Engagement because I could actually engage. I’m really glad I saw it, and hope to learn more about human trafficking in the Chicago area.