| What I said |
How what I said was perceived |
What I really meant |
| They must be interested in hiring you because you are a woman |
That she wasn't qualified |
There are few women in this field |
| When approached by a man and a woman at a meeting, I assume the woman was the student and the man the adviser - and opened my mouth too soon and got it wrong, the woman was the adviser! Worse, the woman wanted to talk to me about being a woman in our field. |
She took it well on the face of it, and I apologized profusely, and hold it with me always as a reminder that women do this too. |
To be congenial and introduce myself. |
| I said to my boss thta I did not want to work more hours replacing my pregnant colleagues, just because I have no kids or because I am single |
very baddddddddddddddddddddddddddd |
I was trying to say that is unfair that pregnant colleagues work less than I .They are all the time leaving work, an specially shared tasks because they have to deal with home stuff, children, school, etc. I think they use children as excuse to avoid hard work in the field |
| I commented how great it was that X and X were young, beautiful women because we so rarely see this portrayal of female scientists. |
I shudder to think... |
Successful scientists come in all flavors-- here are two great role models for young women (and everybody else). |
| I was teaching a science project for school children a few years back. For some reason (I do not remember what happened exactly) two girls said 'Well, they are just boys' towards some boys who were not following and kidding around. Instead of ignoring the remark or connecting with the boys I agreed with the two girls. |
Some people are less able because of their gender |
It was ment to be a joke but this was not funny at all. |
| My (female) PI informed me she was raising my postdoctoral salary and that she was also raising her male postdoc's salary (I am female). I protested, knowing the lab was short on cash, saying that I knew he had a family (I didn't), that he was valuable as a bioinformatician, and that I felt like my salary was already generous. She responded that she would always pay her postdocs equally and that it was important that women negotiate for salary. |
I did not think I was as valuable as a man. |
I did not think I was as valuable as a man. |
| Scheduled a dinner for a female faculty candidate to include only male faculty members. |
That could be uncomfortable for the candidate, and with 50% female faculty members, would seem possibly intentional. |
I wasn't paying attention to gender and just trying to get as many people involved as I could. |
| It was actually the lack of saying something. Before signing a post-doc contract, I wanted to know about holidays and maternity leave. I was simply curious and I felt I should have the right to know. However, I didn't want to come across as if I was planning to have kids during my 2 year stint, and abandon the research project. I felt it might be seen negatively and my employer may have inferred that because I was asking, I was planning to start a family. So I still don't know about maternity leave (I assume it would be unpaid leave), because I didn't feel comfortable asking without being judged. I think I would have asked that question if my advisor were female, as she may have been more sympathetic. |
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| At a national conference an all male panel was selected to discuss "navigating career challenges". I asked "how did this all male panel navigate maternity leave, and did they find that part of navigating their career challenging, particularly given that we are faced with mainly 12 month contracts as post-docs". |
Their response was all their wives took time off work, and we all have one year contracts so what was the problem specific to women? |
Australian post-docs are mainly on 12 month contracts. This does not provide opportunity for maternity leave. I am writing my PhD dissertation and I am 32 years old. I do not want children, but the system of employment should not make that decision on any persons' behalf. |
| A new researcher was recruited at my university, and everyone knew that she was in a relationship with one of the higher ups. I actively participated in gossiping about this, questioning the hire, until I heard her speak in a meeting for the first time, realized she was brilliant and deserved every ounce of her new position. |
Completely normal, everyone I spoke to said similar things. Many *women* also made similar comments to me about the situation. |
It's hard to get a job in academia, and any perceived nepotism is a threat, one that I think I took personally; the difference here was that it's "ok" to question a woman who is in a relationship with a well-respected man. I realized very quickly that this was completely unwarranted, unfair, and unprofessional. |
| I said to a female colleague: "I saw you with a senior female in the office. Was that your mother?" |
She answered: "no, she was my PhD adviser." She took it well, but I felt horrible, specially because I am a scientist woman myself. |
exactly what i asked... |
| My socks (which had pictures of brains and eggs) kinda represent my mentor and his wife (also a professor) |
My mentor's job is to be "the brains" and his wife's job is reproduction |
My mentor is interested in the brain (neuroscience lab) and his wife is interested in early egg development (developmental biology lab that studies egg & early embryo patterning) |
| "Why not a three-way?" |
As an invitation to make a joke about a menage-a-tois. The response: "Hear! Hear!" |
The professor had just explained that there was a three-way interaction between organisms and they were working on a two-way phylogeny. I asked why they were not working on a three-way phylogeny. |