Dangerous Ideas

Stanford neurobiologist Ben Barres has an article in Nature about how women scientists face additional pressure. His article relies in part on personal experience (from the Washington Post:

After he underwent a sex change nine years ago at the age of 42, Barres recalled, another scientist who was unaware of it was heard to say, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister’s.”

And as a female undergraduate at MIT, Barres once solved a difficult math problem that stumped many male classmates, only to be told by a professor: “Your boyfriend must have solved it for you.”

“By far,” Barres wrote, “the main difference I have noticed is that people who don’t know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect” than when he was a woman. “I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.”

The examples that Barres gives of his treatment before and after his transition from a woman to a man are great to read – there’s no better apples to apples comparison than comparing your own skills to your own skills.

Barres wrote his article in response to the controversy that started with former Harvard President Larry Summer’s comments that women have a different “intrinsically aptitude” than men, which Summers thought was the cause of differences in representation. Barres thinks that more good could come out of continuing the discussion than thinking of it as resolved by Summers’ departure from Harvard.