The Rosetta Project was a huge deal. The multinational team that built and operated Rosetta – which travelled across space, passed planets and asteroids to reach Comet 67P and then land Philae on the comet’s surface – has received praise and plaudits from around the globe.
But there’s a problem. We have been distracted from this success by a shirt, or, a #shirtstorm as thousands have called it.
The Rosetta Project Scientist, Dr Matt Taylor, gave a media conference wearing a shirt featuring cartoons of scantily-clad women.
He then said: “Rosetta is the sexiest mission that’s ever been. She is sexy, but I never said she was easy.”
Science, like many professions, has a history of sexism and many professional scientists (myself included) took offence at Taylor’s comment and the sexualised images on his shirt. It reminded us of an era, not that long ago, when women were less than welcome in the sciences.
Critical posts immediately appeared on social media and several newspaper articles were written: Taylor tearfully apologised at a media conference soon after.
Big science organisations became part of the conversation: the American Astronomical Society, the Astronomical Society of Australia, the Royal Astronomical Society; and the American Geophysical Union. To a telescope, they decried the kind of sexism that excludes women from science.
There’s no reason to doubt the sincerity of the apology, and we have no reason to believe Dr Taylor deliberately intended to offend women by wearing the shirt. After all, the shirt was a gift from a female friend. Taylor and I have mutual friends, and maybe he and I will enjoy a chat over a beer one day.
He almost certainly didn’t mean to do it but it doesn’t change the fact Dr Taylor propagated sexism.
Sexism in science isn’t as overt as it was decades ago. Then you could find lecturers who refused to look female students in the eye and simply ignored women’s questions.
Today sexism in science is often more subtle, it’s in a series of careless or unconscious acts. Casual sexism is everywhere and it’s certainly still embedded in science.
Here are a few instances.
*Scientists may thoughtlessly assume that men in a science team are the leaders, instead of equally (or more) qualified women.
*Scientists may have unconscious biases when evaluating applications for scholarships, research funding or use of facilities.
*Take the applications to use the Hubble Space Telescope – research revealed that women’s applications to use the Telescope were inexplicably getting lower evaluations than applications by men.
*These actions accumulate, contributing to the “leaky pipe”, where too few female students go on to reach the most senior positions in science.
Many male scientists, with the benefit of hindsight, can sheepishly identify thoughtlessly sexist incidents and biases from their careers. Dr Taylor’s added misfortune is his careless sexism took place in the glare of the media spotlight.
Focus on the damn comet
In response to Taylor’s tearful apology, some newspapers have reacted with headlines of “political correctness gone mad” and instructions that we should “focus on the damn comet”. Much of that criticism comes from journalists who have little to do with science, including (predictably) Tim Blair in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and (more bizarrely) London mayor Boris Johnson in the London Telegraph.
This media reaction minimises the history and nature of sexism in science, which makes this sexist act in the media spotlight far more important than just a shirt.
In decades past, blokey scientists posted pictures of scantily clad women on their office walls and dismissed criticism with “they are only pictures”.
But those pictures helped exclude women from science. Now such explicit images and attitudes are, fortunately, rare in science.
The desire of some media to make the story about activist feminism also overlooks the fact that men and women who were offended were astrophysicists, bloggers and science journalists, all of whom are keenly following the Rosetta mission’s progress. These aficionados of science weren’t looking for a fight; they were just trying to look at “the damn comet”.
That said, you can find activists from outside the science community spoiling for a vicious fight, but they aren’t feminists. They are online trolls who are sending messages laced with profanity and threatening language to those who took offence at the shirt (particularly women). A number of the trolls are associated with “Gamer Gate”, a misguided crusade against feminists in the computer gaming community.
These trolls aren’t part of the modern science community, and the Australian, American and British astronomical societies have condemned the abuse directed at scientists who made fair and legitimate comments.
Scientists, universities and professional organisations are endeavouring to include women in science. Members of these communities stumble, trip, and (sincerely) apologise as they go down this road. But we cannot doubt that the scientific community aspires for all its members to feel accepted within its ranks.