Not All Women are Awesome, and That’s OK
I find that the majority of women I meet in Academic Science are awesome. They do good science, they raise children, they get funding, they are fantastic mentors, and they are very reliable. I think the reason why is because the bar is so much higher for us, as I have said. But, every now and then, you meet a woman who is not awesome in some way. Usually their science is still good. The competency bar is too high for a crappy woman scientist to get through, but they have some other major flaw. I could spend the whole post telling you horror stories of terrible WomenOfScience, but instead I want to say, “IT’S OK THAT THERE ARE SOME CRAPPY WOMEN IN SCIENCE.” In fact, if we are to expect equality with men, there should be the same percentage of crappy women as there are crappy men. And there are a lot of crappy men. Again, I could go on and on…
Now, a lot of academics don’t like this argument, because Academia is a meritocracy, and they want to believe that everyone who has made it to a certain level is great. But, there is always a distribution. That means that, although the average may be very good, there still must be some who are excellent and some who are just so-so. If all the women are above average, than that is not fair. There should be the same percentage of crappy women as men. As a corollary, it should be as OK for a woman to be crappy as it is for a man. That is true equality.
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