Tamar Schlick on women's issues in science

I'm a member of a women scientist group, made up of mostly biologists, some chemists, and me -- the lone physicist. The group recently hosted Professor Tamar Schlick of NYU for a discussion about women's issues in science. Schlick studies computational biology and holds a PhD in applied mathematics. The discussion was actually quite general and not really so much about women's issues.

One point I remember was about politics. There is a lot of politics in academia, but that's true of almost any job. Some departments cross-list female professors from other departments so they can claim to have more women professors. There might be the crazy department head who gives assistant professors the worst teaching assignments. And as an assistant professor, you can't say no to anyone senior until you get tenure.

There was also an interesting discussion about interdisciplinary science. While it's exciting to speculate about the possibilities for interdisciplinary work, it's quite difficult to organize the people and resources to make it happen. Being an outstanding interdisciplinary scientist is different from being an outstanding one-discipline scientist. You only have to be, say, the 90th percentile in several fields rather than the 99th percentile in one field.

I asked Prof. Schlick what she thought good mentoring was. She said that the best mentors give you advice about the big picture (which I assume is career related guidance and ideas about what research problems to pursue). Technical advice is easy to get; sometimes you can even buy it (e.g. software administrators).

In general, Prof. Schlick appeared to have a balanced view about the obstacles women face in academic science. I got the impression that there are obstacles, but you just have to deal with it and roll with the punches. There are definitely unique problems that women face, but we can have a rational discussion without resorting to the kind of hysterics raised by Nancy Hopkins (the MIT scientist who told reporters that she left Larry Summer's talk because she was feeling ill).