String theory – it’s a girl thing

My first international physics conference was in Turkey. It was memorable not only because smoking was still allowed on the plane. The conference was attended by many of the local students, and almost all of them were women.

I went out one evening with the Turkish students, a group of ten with only one man who sucked away on his waterpipe while one of the women read my future from tea leaves (she read that I was going to fly through the air in the soon future). I asked the guy how come there are so few male students in this group. It’s because theoretical physics isn’t manly, it’s not considered a guy thing in Turkey, he said. Real men work outdoors or with heavy machinery, they drive, they swing tools, they hunt bears, they do men’s stuff. They don’t wipe blackboards or spend their day in the library.

I’m not sure how much of his explanation was sarcasm, but I find it odd indeed that theoretical physics is so man-dominated when it’s mostly scribbling on paper, trying to coordinate collaborations and meetings, and staring out of the window waiting for an insight. It seems mostly a historical accident that the majority of physicists today are male.

From the desk in my home office I have a view onto our downstairs neighbor’s garden. Every couple of weeks a man trims her trees and bushes. He has a key to the gate and normally comes when she is away. He uses the smoking break to tan his tattoos in her recliner and to scratch his breast hair. Then he pees on the roses. The most disturbing thing about his behavior though isn’t the peeing, it’s that he knows I’m watching. He has to cut the bushes from the outside too, facing the house, so he can see me scribbling away on my desk. He’ll stand there on his ladder and swing the chainsaw to greet me. He’s a real man, oh yeah.

After I finished high school, I went to the employment center which offered a skill- and interest-questionnaire, based on which one then was recommended a profession. I came out as landscape architect. It made sense – when asked, I said I would like to do something creative that allows me to spend time outdoors and that wouldn’t require many interpersonal skills. I also really like trees.

Then I went and studied math because what the questionnaire didn’t take into account is that I get bored incredibly quickly. I wanted a job that wouldn’t run out of novelty any time soon. Math and theoretical physics sounded just right. I never spent much time thinking about gender stereotypes, it just wasn’t something I regarded relevant. Yes, I knew the numbers, but I honestly didn’t care. Every once in a while I would realize how oddly my voice stood out, look around and realize I was the only women in the room, or one of a few. I still find it an unnatural and slightly creepy situation. But no, I never thought about gender stereotypes.

Now I’m a mother of two daughters and I realized the other day I’ve gone pink-blind. Before I had children, I’d look at little girls thinking I’d never dress my daughters all in pink. But, needless to say, most of the twin’s wardrobe today is pink because it’s either racing cars and soccer players on blue, or flowers and butterflies on pink. Unless you want to spend a ridiculous amount of money on designer clothes your kids will wear maybe once.

The internet is full with upset about girl’s toys that discourage an interest in engineering, unrealistic female body images, the objectification of women in ads and video games, the lack of strong female characters in books and movies. The internet is full with sites encouraging women to accept their bodies, the bodies of mothers with the floppy bellies and the stretch marks, the bodies of real women with the big breasts and the small breasts and the freckles and the pimples – every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top. It’s full with Emma Watson and He for She. It’s full of high pitched voices.

But it isn’t only women who are confronted with stereotypical gender roles and social pressure. Somebody I think must stand up and tell the boys it’s totally okay to become a string theorist, even though they don’t get to swing a chainsaw - let that somebody be me. Science is neither a boy thing nor a girl thing.

So this one is for the boys. Be what you want to be, rise like a phoenix, and witness me discovering the awesomeness of multiband compression. Happy Halloween :)