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| The trouble with Tim Hunt's 'trouble with girls in science' comment | The trouble with Tim Hunt's 'trouble with girls in science' comment |
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| A handful of days ago, Tim Hunt was hardly well known outside the world of science. He won the Nobel prize for his work on cell division. He is a fellow of the Royal Society. He was knighted by the Queen. He is not one to flaunt the honour. | A handful of days ago, Tim Hunt was hardly well known outside the world of science. He won the Nobel prize for his work on cell division. He is a fellow of the Royal Society. He was knighted by the Queen. He is not one to flaunt the honour. |
| Until Tuesday, those were the impressive facts that defined the septuagenarian. Then came “the trouble with girls”. Or rather, Hunt’s contention at a conference in Seoul, delivered at a lunch held for women science journalists, that there was such a thing. The problem, he proposed, was that men and women fall in love in the lab and that this was disruptive to science. Moreover, he said, women cry when their work is criticised. For the good of science, he suggested, labs might be sexually segregated. | |
| Related: The unseen women scientists behind Tim Hunt’s Nobel prize | Related: The unseen women scientists behind Tim Hunt’s Nobel prize |
| And so Tim Hunt is better known today. The comments broke swiftly on Twitter and provoked a furore. Hunt told the BBC he was sorry for causing offence, but went on to say he was being honest. Days later, he had resigned from an honorary post at University College London – the first university to admit women on equal terms as men – and from a Royal Society awards committee. Institutions have begun to cancel his invited lectures, the Guardian understands. | And so Tim Hunt is better known today. The comments broke swiftly on Twitter and provoked a furore. Hunt told the BBC he was sorry for causing offence, but went on to say he was being honest. Days later, he had resigned from an honorary post at University College London – the first university to admit women on equal terms as men – and from a Royal Society awards committee. Institutions have begun to cancel his invited lectures, the Guardian understands. |
| Hunt is not the first older man, nor the first Nobel laureate, to offend on the public stage. The 87-year-old James Watson, who with Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, questioned the intelligence of black people in the Sunday Times and duly stepped down as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory in Long Island. Intelligence in science does not always transfer to other avenues of life. | |
| But Hunt’s comments cannot be dismissed as the ramblings of the older generation. Sexism is alive and well in science today. Three young women scientists who shared their stories with the Guardian are not exceptional cases. As an undergraduate at Cambridge, one had a male PhD student tell her that he would sabotage the career of any woman in science whom he decided had enjoyed positive discrimination. Another, a PhD student at Imperial College, was told by her male supervisor that she had won a conference talk prize because of her sexy voice (she had laryngitis). | But Hunt’s comments cannot be dismissed as the ramblings of the older generation. Sexism is alive and well in science today. Three young women scientists who shared their stories with the Guardian are not exceptional cases. As an undergraduate at Cambridge, one had a male PhD student tell her that he would sabotage the career of any woman in science whom he decided had enjoyed positive discrimination. Another, a PhD student at Imperial College, was told by her male supervisor that she had won a conference talk prize because of her sexy voice (she had laryngitis). |
| Another woman, a postdoc in London, said that sexism had become a regular fight over the past 13 years. The offences ranged from the small, everyday slights, to the major: she was asked to take notes when more junior males were present; was told to make coffee for visitors; was asked to babysit children brought into work. She had a manuscript described as “unpublishable” by a senior, only for the identical paper to win praise when submitted by a male co-author. | Another woman, a postdoc in London, said that sexism had become a regular fight over the past 13 years. The offences ranged from the small, everyday slights, to the major: she was asked to take notes when more junior males were present; was told to make coffee for visitors; was asked to babysit children brought into work. She had a manuscript described as “unpublishable” by a senior, only for the identical paper to win praise when submitted by a male co-author. |
| Related: Nobel scientist Tim Hunt: female scientists cause trouble for men in labs | Related: Nobel scientist Tim Hunt: female scientists cause trouble for men in labs |
| One of her senior colleagues was “notorious” for his sexism, she said. “Everyone knew about it, and kind of accepted it with a ‘that’s just the way he is, nothing we can do’ kind of attitude.” The defeated stance is not rare, it seems. In an extraordinary post this month on the careers website of the prestigious US journal Science, a female scientist was advised to “put up with” her boss staring down her shirt. The post was later removed. | |
| Connie St Louis, director of the MA in science journalism at City University in London, heard Hunt’s comments first hand and broke the story on Twitter. Asked why the reaction was so explosive, she said: “I think people have had enough. There is a problem with sexism in science. It’s about the everyday little statements, the little rebuff, the slights that women get, that eventually they think no! They think, no, enough.” | Connie St Louis, director of the MA in science journalism at City University in London, heard Hunt’s comments first hand and broke the story on Twitter. Asked why the reaction was so explosive, she said: “I think people have had enough. There is a problem with sexism in science. It’s about the everyday little statements, the little rebuff, the slights that women get, that eventually they think no! They think, no, enough.” |
| Emily Grossman, a science teacher and broadcaster, said Hunt’s comments were potentially harmful. In the sciences, there is already a striking lack of women in top positions, she says. “We desperately need to encourage more girls into science careers, and the concern is this might put them off.” When she made the same point on outlets including Sky News this week, she received an onslaught of sexist comments on YouTube and on Twitter. | |
| Even in the life sciences, where men and women start careers in fairly equal numbers, the number of women drops off rapidly at professorial level. | |
| On average, fewer than one in five science professors are female. Science punishes career breaks, and women who take time off to have children are immediately disadvantaged. “The flashpoint is when you’re about 35 and trying to get tenure. That can be when you’re trying to have kids, and it can play a major role in why you see so much attrition at that stage,” said Jennifer Rohn, a cell biologist at University College London. A grant may give a woman a year’s grace if she has a baby, but it takes longer to get back into research projects than that. | |
| Related: Tim Hunt, where’s the science in your prejudice against women? | Anne Perkins | Related: Tim Hunt, where’s the science in your prejudice against women? | Anne Perkins |
| The impostor syndrome might also take its toll, says Rohn. A job advert that calls for a trail-blazing scientist with world-beating skills might be more off-putting to women, while men may throw their hat in the ring regardless. | The impostor syndrome might also take its toll, says Rohn. A job advert that calls for a trail-blazing scientist with world-beating skills might be more off-putting to women, while men may throw their hat in the ring regardless. |
| Hunt’s most prominent defender has been Dame Valerie Beral, director of the cancer epidemiology unit at Oxford, who worked with him at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. On BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday, she said that women take criticism too personally – a remark for which she was criticised later. | |
| She told the Guardian she had not meant that: “I’m not blaming women. I think women get put off. I think in that hothouse environment, when you get these youngish, bright people working really hard, they are more likely than men to take criticism personally, and to get hurt in relationships. Then, they decide that after all this experience, I’m not going to do this any more. | |
| “I knew before I went on I was expressing a view that no man could express. He made me think, and I thought, damn it, he’s on to something. People fall in love and it’s disruptive. People crying is disruptive.” | |
| But Rohn counters that scientists should be emotional. “This idea that there’s no room for passion, or for crying, I’d argue the opposite. You need to have people like that. Scientists tend to be creative and emotional, the men and the women. You need passionate people.” | But Rohn counters that scientists should be emotional. “This idea that there’s no room for passion, or for crying, I’d argue the opposite. You need to have people like that. Scientists tend to be creative and emotional, the men and the women. You need passionate people.” |
| There are no winners in all of this. Hunt has paid a hefty price for his comments. For all his excellence in science, his name will be known for reasons no one would be proud of. “He deserves to be saved, but I don’t think he can be,” said Beral. “I think he was trying to be funny. That’s the way he is. But he’s had to resign and this is the way he’ll be seen … I don’t think that is reversible now.” |