I guess, as you know, I'm transgender.
And as a result of being transgender, I've lived life as the same person in two different
genders: first female and then male.
And I'm aware in a way that I think few people are, except for other transgender people,
how differently men and women are treated, just based on their gender identity.
And it's made me very aware and frankly very angry about the many barriers that talented
women still face in every profession, not just science.
And I just wanted to mention a few of them very briefly; I don't have time to go through
all of these.
One thing I want to mention is... you know, I'm just reading this amazing book, it's...
it's called Keep the...
Keep the Damned Women Out or something like that, by... where's Nancy Hopkins?
Are you here, Nancy?
Oh, sorry.
Oh, she's not here.
She would have remembered the name of this book and the author.
But ummm... it's a book about how the Ivy League colleges decided to finally allow co-education
and let women in, and this happened in the late 60s.
I was just starting college here at MIT in 1972 and frankly I was so naive at that age
it never even occurred to me that women were ever kept out, but this was all happening
in the late 60s-early 70s.
And I always thought the reason that these colleges went co-ed is that because, you know,
there'd been the Civil Rights Act in 1964, basic fairness, women deserved equal education
as men... that... that is totally not why colleges let women.
It turned out that as soon as some lesser colleges started letting women in, that the...
the Ivy League's top male applicant choices, the very best men, were turning down their
Harvard offers to go to these lesser schools.
And so the... it was essential for Harvard and Princeton and places like that to become
co-ed... co-education so they could get the very best men -- it had nothing to do with
women.
But when they initially changed, they weren’t thinking about the welfare of women or how
could they make the college comfortable for women, and, in fact, the truth is, in academia,
we still have a system designed by men for men.
And nothing better illustrates this than the tenure clock.
The tenure clock...
I think tenure is so important; I would never suggest getting rid of tenure.
But the tenure clock doesn't work for women, to be very frank.
And, you know, I'm seeing now most of the women in my lab often not choose to have babies,
even as postdocs.
And they often start their tenure track years with a baby and then they often have one or
two more babies.
And yet they're in the same tenure clock that the guys are -- maybe some guys somewhere
decided, okay, let's let them have an extra year.
I mean, who decided one baby is equal to one year.
That's crazy.
I think that's crazy.
I've never raised a baby, but even I can tell that's crazy.
And so I don't think it's fair.
I think at the very least we have to start letting women who have postdoc babies have
an extra year for those postdoc babies.
In fact, at Stanford, our provost tells me, for the last 15 years he's been provost, that
every single woman assistant professor who's asked for an extra year for their postdoc
baby has been granted one.
I certainly hope that's true here at MIT.
I have to say, I was just telling Sue Hockfield, when I was here at MIT as an undergrad there
were so few women on the faculty and it was a very different climate for women back then.
It is so exciting to come back today and to see so many fantastic women on the faculty
here, and I think more than half of the people I'm meeting with today are fantastic women
faculty.
So, it's... it's thrilling to see that we are making progress, we're making a lot of
progress.
There's still a lot to go and this tenure year clock, we... it's not a fair barrier.
I have a suggestion.
I just want to make the suggestion.
I like to make the suggestion in front of deans and provosts because usually they pass
out when I make the suggestion.
I think we should give the suggestion a try.
I think, you know, these days, the average young scientist does at least 10 years of
training before they start their own lab as a PhD and then as a postdoc, some of them
even do two postdocs.
To get a job at a place like MIT or Stanford you've been very successful as a graduate
student, you've been amazingly successful again as a postdoc.
Then you apply to this really competitive job and there's hundreds of applicants and
you win.
Let's give that person tenure the day they start their job.
Why not?
And if you think about it, you know, no system is perfect.
Any system you're gonna use is gonna have pros and cons, but I would argue the cons
of doing things this way are much less than the cons of doing them the way we're doing
it now.
It's completely unfair to women to put them on a tenure clock right when they're running
out of time to have their own children biologically.
And I would argue it's bad for everybody, male and female, to be on a tenure clock.
Why, when you're at the peak of your most creative time in your life, should you be
put into a risk-averse mode to get tenure?
I...
I think it's crazy.
Now, you could argue, okay, but what if we tenure the wrong people?
Well, you still have to make promotions and I think most people aren't going to stick
around in a tiny lab as a lowly paid assistant professor very long if they don't make tenure.
So, I... you know, at Stanford everybody gets promoted.
If you hire the very best people and you put them in a supportive environment, they're
going to get tenure.
If they don't get tenure you're doing something wrong; it's not the person's problem.
So, I think we should give it a try.
There's other barriers.
I don't have time to talk to you, but I did want to just briefly, before I go back to
glia, mention one last thing, which is sexual harassment.
I've become very interested in this problem.
Now, let me just do a little experiment.
I've never done this before.
How many women are in the audience -- raise your hand?
Okay.
How many of you women are... have gone to biomedical research conferences like Keystone,
Gordon conference, Cold Spring Harbor... have any of you gone to those meetings?
Raise your hand.
Okay, now by one more set of hands, and this is getting a little personal, so I understand
if you don't want to do it -- I've never asked a crowd to do this before, I'm most curious
-- how many of you, at one or more meetings, when you were trainees, either graduate students
or postdocs... how many of you were asked for sex by, generally it's a man, let's face
it, by... but let's just say it... by a senior... by a faculty member?
Since I'm just asking this question to women let's... let's stick with men.
How many of you have been hit on by a senior male, somebody like a faculty member?
Raise your hand.
One or more times.
Okay, so not everybody but a fair number.
So, I have been asking this question and I've been amazed how many women have told me that
this is a frequent occurrence when they go to meetings.
No matter how much they dress down, they're hit on.
There's a famous neuroscientist...
I'm not allowed to mention his name... at least when I'm sober... who brags about the
fact that he's bedded... he's 60 years old by the way, I'm 62, he's my age... he brags
that he's bedded 200 women trainees over the years at these meetings.
And I don't think most men do...
I don't think most men do this, but, you know, it only takes a small percent of men to do
it repeatedly to start to affect a large percent of women.
I just heard another story where a woman was having this fantastic conversation at her
poster... a postdoc was having this fantastic conversation at her poster with a famous senior
scientist, whose name I won't mention, and she thought it was like the scientific conversation
of her life.
And at the end of the conversation he took her hand and he wrote his hotel room number
on her hand.
Okay, I don't want my students exposed to this.
This is... it's... it's so important to be able to mentor and exchange ideas at a meeting...
look, the older generation is hopeless, I'm addressing this to students.
When you're faculty, please, please don't do this.
It very much undermines... you know, it's sending a message to a woman that she's not
valued for her science, for her ideas, but for sex.
It's just wrong.
It's wrong.
Don't do it.
I don't care if they're your students or somebody else's students.
Keep your hands off the students.
Now, students, what you do with each other, that's on you.