Talk 2 of 2 this week at IAA-CSIC: SO colloquium
Seminarios IAA
SO colloquium
Speaker: Prajval Shastri, The International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), Australia
Date: Thursday, 23 July, 12:30 CEST
Place: Salón de Actos
Degendering Physics: Why So Slow?
Among the STEM disciplines, physics has been long-known to exhibit the most skewed of gender gaps. It has been over a quarter of a century since attention has been drawn to the evidence that the over-representation of men at multiple levels in the physics enterprise is significant and global, though to varying degrees. The evidence also has pointed to the cause being societal patriarchy leaching into academia and causing gender-based discrimination within, a trend that is not tempered by the "objectivity" that is attributed to the physics discipline. Progress towards a more equitable and inclusive physics enterprise has been slow, however. While the astrophysics sub-discipline could justifiably claim better progress, I will argue that the slowness is because several mitigative interventions seek to address only the symptoms, besides also being moulded by patriarchy. Clearly root causes need to be addressed instead, which requires explicitly stepping away from the all-too-common “Fixing-the-women” approach, and taking cognisance of the insights from social science scholarship. Interventions need to be interrogated on whether they will bring about long-term cultural transformation, whether they exclude anyone and whether they could cause harm, and whether as physicists we have really constructed "merit" in a way that actually promotes understanding our universe. Specific examples from across the globe will be discussed.