The Observer have an interview with Susan Greenfield this weekend. There are lots of questions it might prompt. Why, for example, has she still not answered Dorothy Bishop's 2011 question about cause preceding effect when it comes to comments about autism, ADHD and internet use? Is the climate change analogy really all that helpful? Or why are scientists who claim to 'march to the beat of my own drum' always a bit annoying?
But it's hard to get to any of that. Because in the second paragraph we're confronted with an old, clunky cliche of reporting of women in science, as the writer first feels the need to take us on a tour of the Baroness' body:
The professor of synaptic pharmacology at Oxford has long, youthfully blond hair and is dressed in an above-knee pink dress and cream wedges. She tells me she plays squash as often as possible with a 21-year-old squash trainer. A remarkably fit-looking 63-year-old, she is an impressive figure in more ways than the merely professional.
This gets in the way of critically appraising Greenfield's work, just as it has got in the way of a robust critique and celebration of female scientists for decades.
According to an oft-cited paper by Marcel LaFollette, a 1926 magazine once introduced an eminent medical researcher as a woman whose mahogany furniture 'gleams.' From the same study, but a 1950 magazine, a senior figure in the Atomic Energy Commission was praised for sewing her own clothes. Later, as Dorothy Nelkin notes, Maria Mayer (Nobel physics prize, 1963) was described as 'a tiny, shy, touchingly devoted wife and mother, her children were perfectly darling' and Barbara McClintock (Nobel prize in medicine, 1983) introduced as 'well known for baking with black walnuts.'
In today's more enlightened times, no longer do journalists seek to domesticate female scientists and look past the prizes, publications and other achievements to a gleaming kitchen table. No, they look at the woman herself, but they perhaps linger too long on certain other features of her femininity which similarly obscure her work. As a great 2010 paper by media scholars at the University of Cardiff, Mwenya Chimba and Jenny Kitzinger, note descriptions of women scientists in the early 21st Century with lines like 'She looks like an off-duty Bond girl, but she's actually a physicist. Given the chance, plenty of viewers would happily experiment wit her.' Or, more plainly, 'A sparkling intellect doesn't get you in on to the pages of Vogue.' Welcome to the era of scientific totty.
Part of a larger project considering the representation of women scientists in UK media, Chimba and Kitzinger's research was rooted in an analysis of 51 interviews with scientists, complemented by research into female scientists own experiences of working with the the media, as well as journalists and communication professionals.
One clear difference emerged from their study: the attention given to the appearance of women scientists. Half of the profiles of women referred to their clothing, physique and/or hairstyle whereas this was only true for 21% of the profiles of men. Such references might seem fairly innocuous, especially when located within a generally positive article, but Chimba and Kitzinger stress the ways in which references to a man's appearance carry a different tone. For example, while women might be described as having a 'mane of blonde hair', the focus for men is more likely to be on a beard, with rather different connotations: 'His full white beard is worn more in homage to Charles Darwin than the Almighty'. It's not just journalists doing this though, hunting out a line about 'the Nigella of science', they found it was sold to an editor by a television company's PR agency.
References to hair and heels, etc might be welcomed as a way of showing off a generally unseen glamorous side to science. A headline such as 'Blonde hair, short skirt, big brain' could be a mater of a journalist playfully deconstructing the various stereotypes on offer; challenging images of boffin and bimbo at once. At the same time, however, we shouldn't forget the ways a focus on female scientists' appearance may draw attention away from the scientist's professionalism, and there may be the implicit accusation that she is being manipulative and using her sexuality to attract attention.
Perhaps the most important finding of Chimba and Kitzinger's work is the way they draw attention to the difference in places women are used in science coverage. For example, one publicity officer for a major science organization explained that if they were dealing with a 'real heavy-weight current affairs programme' they would go with a white middle-class male, where as BBC breakfast shows would ask specifically for a young, attractive woman (see Boyce & Kitzinger, 2008, pdf). Another of their research subjects reports that she had trouble moving from kids television, where her tomboy image fitted fine, to adult programming, because she couldn't suit an image of 'thinking man's crumpet.' Men may signal an aura of gravitas in science, whilst women are used when the science is being made 'accessible' or 'sexy'; a possible divide between real scientists and scientifically flavoured 'eye-candy.'
Also important, and perhaps key when considering Greenfield, the paper also stresses that women aren't just the objects of media representation, they are active negotiators of their own image too, even if they do not always have control over the context of it. For example, one spoke of it as a matter of 'walking a tightrope' over how much do they use appearance for their advantage, 'or is that getting in bed with the devil?'. One mentioned being personally flattered as well as personally and professional offended. Another said she gave up because of the personal pressure on image.
Men on television get letched over too, of course, and this can make them feel uncomfortable too, but whether it has the same impact on their career is debatable. It's difficult being a scientist-populariser at the best of times, but Chimba and Kitzinger suggest it is especially risky for women, especially as sexuality gets folded into this. Playing with the term 'media whore', they quote Laura Barton in saying 'even in the intellectual world there are slags, and studs.' As the inevitable critique of Greenfield reemerges (as it should) we the publication of her new book, it's worth remembering this.
This post is an updated version of one from 2010. Alice Bell is a freelance science writer. She's bored of reading pieces that stumble over scientists' skirts this, and think journalists and editors who let them through should feel a bit embarrassed. She recommends you spend your time listening to the Life Scientific instead. Entities 0 Name: Chimba Count: 4 1 Name: Kitzinger Count: 4 2 Name: Greenfield Count: 3 3 Name: Dorothy Nelkin Count: 1 4 Name: University of Cardiff Count: 1 5 Name: Charles Darwin Count: 1 6 Name: Baroness Count: 1 7 Name: Boyce & Kitzinger Count: 1 8 Name: Marcel LaFollette Count: 1 9 Name: Oxford Count: 1 10 Name: Maria Mayer Count: 1 11 Name: BBC Count: 1 12 Name: Susan Greenfield Count: 1 13 Name: Mwenya Chimba Count: 1 14 Name: Alice Bell Count: 1 15 Name: Laura Barton Count: 1 16 Name: Barbara McClintock Count: 1 17 Name: Vogue Count: 1 18 Name: Dorothy Bishop Count: 1 19 Name: boffin Count: 1 20 Name: Jenny Kitzinger Count: 1 21 Name: UK Count: 1 22 Name: Atomic Energy Commission Count: 1 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1olCID7 Title: Male scientists, don't harass young female colleagues Description: Happy 107th Birthday, Grace Murray Hopper! The American computer scientist and U.S. Navy Rear Admiral (right) created Common Business-Oriented Language (COBOL.) She also coined the term "debugging" in reference to fixing a computer.
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