It is 2018, so why are we still debating whether women can do physics?

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A talk by a physicist at CERN suggesting that women aren’t as good as men at physics has sparked outrage. I was there, and people are right to be offended, says 

 

Last Friday, I spoke at a workshop on gender and high energy physics being held at the CERN particle physics laboratory, in Geneva. I was invited to the conference to talk about the UK’s gender equality programmes in physics. I am very proud to be involved in these schemes, such as those run by my university, Imperial College London, which is committed to improving equality and diversity.

 

I knew that I would face people who appreciate data and evidence, and spent a while putting together a talk that showed the rationale behind certain initiatives and their impact on the broader scientific community.

 

The organisers had worked hard to make this a great conference – it was full of early career researchers working in string theory who were given the opportunity to present their exciting work at CERN, a world-renowned institution. Even for a non-high-energy physicist (I work in experimental solid state physics), this was a big honour.

 

Throughout the day, there were opportunities to discuss the challenges that these young scientists might face throughout their career because of their gender – a ridiculous but unfortunate reality even in 2018.

 

Sadly, the event was overshadowed by a talk given by Alessandro Strumia at the University of Pisa, Italy, a long-standing member of the CERN collaboration. He had told organisers he would present a historical look at women’s representation in academic publishing. Instead, he insulted the professors coordinating the meeting, the audience of young women and, now, women scientists all over the world.

 

In a nutshell; he claimed that women weren’t as good at physics, were promoted too early and received disproportionate funding given their ability. Unlike my talk, backed by evidence, he cited a bunch of poorly thought out gender science from right-wing thinkers. These included James Damore, who was fired from Google last year for holding similar views.

 

What is especially awful is the number of people who say that this isn’t news – his opinions are well known and commonplace within the string theory community.

 

We shouldn’t be putting up with this. His remarks were offensive, but also damaging. When people in positions of power spread such ideas, they teach the next generation of scientists that such behaviour is okay. Obviously, it isn’t.

 

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