Transcripts For CSPAN2 Interview With Eileen Pollack 20151221

Being the only woman in any room i think im trying to address but in my case its any room in which science is going on, physics in particular in my case. So i was one of the first two women to get a bachelor of science degree from yale so i was often the only woman in the classroom. So really looking at why theres still come in my day, we understood why there were so few women in the room. Really yale itself it only opened up to women a few years before but what interested me was Larry Summers, then president of harvard, asking them looking around his own university at the time and saying or other women physicists on my faculty . Where are the women in other scientists . I was trying to answer that question is what happened between the time i was a College Student at the time in 25 when Larry Summers was asking why are there still so few women in the science rims on his campus. Host why did you major in science . Guest its interesting. Initially it happened because when i was in seventh grade, my high school didnt really have any advanced courses in science and math, but they decided to go to skip the tickets ahead so that when they were seniors they could take courses at the local community college, and two or three boys in my class were allowed to skip ahead that i wasnt skipped ahead and i was already very bored in school. So i was hurt, upset. I asked my mother to ask on. Teachers night why i had not been about. The principal told it was because i was a girl and girls were not going to go on in science and math anyway so i would just be wasting a secret of course if you dont let them take the courses, theyre not going to go one. He said would be ruining my social life if i wasnt skipped ahead in science and math. And, of course, if you are a girl who loves science and math at that age you dont have much of a social life anyway so you need not worry. But it may be so angry i decided i was going to be a scientist. And i started reading a lot about science and math and teaching myself how to make up for not being in those classes. I really fell in love with this extent i just, i really was reading about physics more but i loved just thinking about space and time and how the universe got started and how many dimensions there were, you know, could you ever travel faster than light. My parents took me to the worlds there in 1964 which i was just enthralled by everything. I really, that was what started it on this path to loving science. Host you write in the only woman in the room, you write my entire four years at the unit i saw myself as handicapped or behind. Guest yet, because i came in behind, right . Thats an experience still of a lot of women today and certainly a lot of minorities. So if you dont get to go to really good school when youre in high school, and, of course, it probably starts an Elementary School because you have to beat the prayer to you have to be prepared for the good high school. The problem with size, its too late by the time to get to college. If you discover a loud for history or art or something when you get to college you can make up for lost time. But if you get your freshman year in college and you havent had a calculus or really collegebased physics, its too late. Data leakage of so many courses duty to make up but theres an ethos in science that doesnt exist in the humanities. This is one thing i discovered when writing the book. They are trying to weed you out, trying to weed out anybody who they think by the time you are 18, isnt serious enoug enough t also is an prepared enough. So basically the idea of who should be a scientist is white male who since birth has had access to really great education. And so i came in. I taught myself calculus. I have had only a very general course in physics. I was one of, there were two women in a room with 118 men in my first physics class. I was so far behind, i panicked. I got a very low score on my very first midterm and is actually to drop the major. Which is what happens to most women and minorities but i had an exceptional teacher for the course and he would not sign my drops lupica gave me some great advice about not looking at how other people were doing and just gave you some other books to read. And i ended up scoring third highest on the final out of those 120 people. And as often happens if you come from behind, you over exert and end up going for past the crowd. So i ended up top of my class, but i still always felt as if i were behind him as if i didnt know what i was doing, as if there was Something Different or wrong about me pig in a python thats a very common experience. Host back to your book on in Elementary School, youre right, girls and boys perform equally well in math and science. Only in Junior High School when in those subjects begin to see more difficult and girls become more conscious of boys come of their social status that their numbers diverge. Guest that is still true. You would be surprised how i think we lose most of the women, most of the girls who might become scientists or computer engineers or what have you in seventh grade, eighth grade, when they really feel the pressure not to be doing well in the sciences, or really much of anything in school. It is considered nerdy and theyre making decisions at that age that affect the entire rest of their lives because they are not taking the advanced science, math, computer courses that they would need. And their parents often, without even realizing it, let them take the sort of easy of course, the less rigorous science and math course were as their brothers, the parents say, of course youre going to take advanced physics. You cant drop that course because its hard. But the girls are sort of like of course, honey, you dont need that course. And Guidance Counselors and teachers. I was shocked how even today so many girls told me that their science and math teachers in high school would say things, you know, youre too pretty to be good in math, or i will grade you on a girl curve because i could expect you to do as well on the boy curve. This is going on even today, not in all schools. This isnt what all the girls encounter but he would be really shocked at how prevalent it still lives. Host speaking of the day you said you were of two women out of 118 in your class. Has that changed . Have those proportions changed . Guest a half and i should say that was an introductory class. The actual class of physics major, there were 12 of us and i was actually the only woman. There was somebody a year older. So there were a few more women now. So maybe there would be three. So women are now more likely to go through and get an undergraduate degree in physics or math. But that now we are losing them, they are not going on to the ph. D, or they start a ph. D and draw. Often for the same reasons that i walk away from. You know, i got my undergraduate degree but didnt want to grad school because no one encouraged me. Talented youre really good at this. No one seemed to care. And so there are a few more women in those fields and we are losing them at a slightly later stage in the process, but we are still losing them. And, of course, for minoritys its much more dire. Host today you write only onefifth of all physics ph. Ds in this country are awarded to women. Only about half of those degrees to nativeborn americans, and only about 14 of all physics professors in the u. S. Are female . Guest that drew. Host what did you do after four years of science at yale traffic first i had a breakdown because i had been working so hard, almost literally every waking minute of my life to do the problems and my research. So once i walked away from it i had to really change everything about my life. But i take is a really wonderful writing, creative writing courses, and i was encouraged in those. I dont think i was more talented as divided as a scientist but if anything its the opposite, but i had a professors telling me you are really good at this, after writing, and four years of physics i didnt do that. I became a writer. Hosting and what are you doing today . Guest im a novelist and a short story writer and im a professor at university of michigan. I teach on the faculty in greater programming. Host have utilized your science degree at all . Guest yes. In a, certainly early in my career some of my science, some of my writing with sciencebased website or the living but many of my characters are scientists in my fiction. Its a Science Fiction but its about scientists. And coming back to it after all these years to write this nonfiction book, then nine, about what i thought of the only woman in the room about, my principal had said women never go on in math and science and i felt i proved him right because i didnt go to graduate school. To come back to it in this way and have it be something so much more, to really look at what had been going on and to stop blaming myself for not having continued has really been remarkable for me. Host you talk about characters in your book but one of the more popular shows on tv today is the big bang theory. What is your take . Guest most female scientist cant bear to watch it because it gives them such pernicious stereotypes. I said in the book at the very funny, well acted, we show and assemblies it makes scientist can even sheldon, who is so nerdy seen entering the look at the stereotypes. Penny was the neighbor from next door who is the woman you really want to be if you were a young woman watching the show, shes pretty and bouncy and happy and normal. Shes totally math and science illiterate. And then the real scientist who is portrayed as brilliant are all portrayed as brilliant are all male. And, of course, you wouldnt want to be one of those if you were a young man. You would want to grow up to be sheldon. Its perpetuating stereotypes that scientists are just these horrible nerds who are barely human. When they were forced to put womens scientist on the show they came up with sheldons girlfriend who is incredibly, and realize the actress who portrays her is a an attractive woman and she has a ph. D in neuroscience, but to make her credible they have to make her look incredible david. Shes very strange. She has no affect. Because thats peoples perception of a female scientist. Well, what woman would really want to be her . Bernadette is better but she has that awful squeaky voice and she marries howard. But amy in particular is just, and i think especially now the images of women that girls are raised with, are much more hyper sexualized, hyper romanticized than they were when i was growing up in the 60s or 70s. So for women today that gap between how they are led to imagination look and act, and how somebody like amy who still bestow type of a woman scientist, is even wider than it was in my day. Its even harder to think of yourself as being sort of feminine in a traditional way and feeding in come into the world of either hightech or physics life or Something Like that. Host you think Gloria Steinem in your book. Why . Guest because every woman should. I mean, theres no direct link, but i think when i was growing up, strange enough in the 60s and 70s without the battle had been fought and won. So when i go rented campuses today and young women say to me, everything is fine now, it was awful in your day. Know, in our day we thought it was fine, too. If youd asked me when i was in college i wouldve said im not a feminist. That they guess wrong, its not different for me. You were kind of in denial. But women like Gloria Steinem were really fighting for the privileges that i got, and i think young women today really, they sort of still need a wakeup call. I think thats what we are witnessing now. Host who is the only woman in the room written for . Is it written for high school students, College Students . Is a written for your generation . Guest i like to think it is written for all of the above and also comfortable i would hope a lot of men would read it. Anybody who is interested in their daughters, their wives, their mothers, what theyve been through. But its the only for women in science. It is basically for any women in any field that is typically not enough archiver for women in business, certainly in hightech, law, finance, that they really feel they experienced this. A lot of this is a quote at the end of the book are trying to address that. An excerpt of the book came out in the New York Times magazine two years ago, and i heard from literally thousands of women and men in response to a. So the epilogue is really im trying to bring a lot of other voices. So not only the studies have been done on gender bias in science, but the experiences of other women and men who wrote this either agree with me or fill in the gaps, or in some cases disagree. So i think its for anyone who is interested, i hope its just a good read, you know. I think some of it is even pretty funny, but really for anybody who is interested in women in environments that were not traditionally open to them. Host the only woman in the room why science is still a boys club is happening of the the book. Eileen pollack who splits her time between ann arbor and new york city is the author. Tanks for being on booktv. Guest thanks so much for having me