Ecology online

One of the enjoyable things about having been involved in this blog, is that it makes me more aware of discussions about gender equality in science.

It makes me appreciate the success of the women around me even more.

And it has also made me more attentive to the way in which female academics in general are treated.

It surprises me a little (although it shouldn't!) that as a result I've observed many more positive things than negative ones.  One experience in the last week was particularly interesting.

Over the weekend I attended a coding workshop, designed exclusively for female students interested in programming languages and creating websites.

Whilst this may not seem directly relevant to the practice of ecology, it is the many many hours spent writing code in the statistical software R which has made this area more interesting and accessible to me. In addition, as I work on the impact of oil palm management on the biodiversity of Borneo, I also consider it pretty essential to use the internet to disseminate my results where-ever I can. Unless the conclusions are accessible, they remain irrelevant to real-life conservation efforts. I may well end up finding that writing a website has far more impact than writing a PhD thesis.

And so, I found myself at a coding workshop, in a room full of enthusiastic young ladies, an inordinate number of laptops, and an exciting range of complimentary teas.

There was a brief introduction from the organisers, thanking everyone for attending, and explaining the structure of the day. And then we set about playing around in text editors, trying out new bits of script, and solving the inevitable problems that prop up in nearly every line but without which the whole enterprise wouldn't be nearly as satisfying.

Whilst everyone attending the course was female, both of the formal instructors were male. This could potentially have reinforced the gender stereotypes that put off women who might otherwise be interested in computer programming.

However,  absolutely no mention of these stereotypes was made.  In fact, there was no reference to the fact that all the students were women. There was no discussion of why women might find it harder to get involved in coding and building websites. If you hadn't looked around the room, you might have completely missed the fact that there were no men amongst the students.

And instead of this meaning that the course was less well tailored to the needs of women, I think it made it a whole deal more successful. Having signed up to a workshop which stressed the lack of women gaining that particular set of skills, I had sort of assumed that some time would be spent on discussing gender issues. But it was actually very refreshing that on the day, this did not happen. The whole session was just about delivering the tuition everyone had gone there to receive. Completely ignoring the fact that women might be at a disadvantage in the computer programming world made the whole day a lot more empowering. It was implicitly assumed that everyone was highly motivated and perfectly capable, and so that issue seemingly did not need to be addressed.

So it made me think - some of the issues around gender stereotyping and inequality are best resolved by being completely ignored. Whilst it is essential to have high-profile discussions, and to ensure that special treatment is given to female employees where necessary, there will be some occasions in which gender inequality is surmounted by completely forgetting that it is an issue in the first place.