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This week, from every week, should have triumphed for women in physics. Canadian physicist Donna Strickland became, after age 55, the first female Nobel laureate in this field. She finally joined a short list composed of only two other women, Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert-Mayer.
But Seyda Ipek barely has time to party. The University of California, Irvine's physicist, was concerned: a garbage dump fire had just tripped in a nearby corner of the culture of physics.
A few days before the Nobels, physicist Alessandro Strumia of the University of Pisa gave a talk on the discrimination of physics towards men at a workshop on gender issues in physics in Geneva. (According to a study by the American Physical Society, women represent 18% of doctoral degrees in physics in the world.) A special case: a recruitment committee has already chosen a woman to replace it, did it? he declares. In front of an audience of young physicists, many of them women, he explained how men like to work with things and women like to work with people. He proposed an experiment to support his belief that physics had biological roots: measure the ratio between the second and fourth fingers in the hands of female physicists, indicative of exposure to testosterone in the uterus .
Ipek, who was not at the workshop herself, heard about Strumia's presentation through her Facebook community. "I immediately got mad and started tweeting about it," she says. "He told a group of young women physicists that they were inferior to their male colleagues. It was staggering. I could not believe Strumia did that – that he uses his platform that way, that he uses his title that way. I was like, no. I will not sit idly by while you do that.
His outrage spread quickly on Twitter. She and 17 other physicists decided that they should publicly denounce Strumia's presentation. Last weekend, they created a Slack channel to coordinate their response. Through this channel, the group, which has about as many men and women at different stages of their careers, explained how to refute Strumia's arguments, exchanging thousands of messages in a few days to debate the choice of words. and syntax. "I do not think any of us have slept more than 4 or 5 hours a day last week," says Ipek.
According to physicist Djuna Croon, it was important to respond so that younger women physicists know explicitly that established members of the community do not endorse Strumia's ideas. "I know from experience how hard it is to deal with the impostor syndrome," says Croon, who works for TRIUMF, a particle accelerator in Canada, who earned his PhD in 2017. "I think to me a few years ago. If these statements had not been opposed, it would have been a huge success for me. As a student, Croon remembers that a fun physics teacher saying that women belong "to the kitchen" and that people would encourage her to go to medicine, even though she has excelled in physics.
In an online letter, which they call Particles for Justice, they reject arguments, point by point, in Strumia's presentation. Strumia's personal anecdote is that there was an opportunity for a woman. His publications had been cited more often than his, he said. "It reduces the quality of a single-digit scientist, his quotes," says Croon. "There is so much more to a scientist and the recruitment process than a single digit." Quotations can be particularly misleading as a physicist's capabilities metrics: about a third of Strumia's publications are articles written by gigantic collaborations a thousand people. In these articles, "we can safely conclude his contribution […] was modest, "they write in the letter.
They released the document Thursday night after recruiting signatures from about 200 physicists. They have also created a form so that physicists can continue to sign the letter after publication. One day after publication, 1,400 additional academics submitted signatures. "I do not remember the last time. As a community, we really jumped, "says physicist Brian Nord of Fermilab, who signed the letter.
The Strumia conference is just the latest example of a long list of recent sexist controversies in physics. In 2014, British astronomer Matt Taylor appeared on television with a button-down shirt covered with half-clad women's designs, later dubbed #Shirtgate. In 2016, 2017 Nobel laureate Barry Barish, Nobel laureate for his help to discover gravitational waves, presented a slide showing a man writing on the back of a woman. A YouTube video featuring one of this year's Nobel laureates, Gérard Mourou, shows him dancing in a lab surrounded by light-duty students.
Despite these highly publicized controversies, some scientists still do not believe that sexism or systemic racism exists in their field, says North. "Human beings in this world suffer all kinds of discrimination," he says. "It is not because we are a scientific community that we are separated from this larger conversation. It is important for the world to understand this, that scientists understand it. "
But in response to these cultural mistakes, scientists tend to keep their heads low and tell themselves to focus on science. But that's a mistake, Ipek says. "I really do not like people saying," You are a scientist. Why do you care about these things? ", She says. "I work here – it's a first in the workplace – workplaces need respectful relationships."
They are optimistic about the lasting impact of the letter. CERN, which organized the workshop, issued a statement calling Strumia's presentation "very offensive" and suspended its relations with Strumia on Monday. "I'm tired, frustrated and ready to make big changes," says Nord.
"I had to put an end to the research," says Ipek. "I could not work on anything this week. It's bad. Research is not the only activity that requires work today, so is the culture of physics.
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