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The author's experience strongly echoes my mother's experience getting a chemistry masters in the 1960s. One of her professors outright told her at the beginnin

The author's experience strongly echoes my mother's experience getting a chemistry masters in the 1960s. One of her professors outright told her at the beginning of the semester that she would not do well in the sciences because she was a woman. That semester she actually tutored a group of men who were in the class, and all of those men received higher grades than her (she got a C-). These men told my mother they would help her fight the professor to get the grade she deserved, but she let it go. A few years later, my mother met other women who had the same professor and had the same stories to tell about him. One of those women told my mother, "Because no one is fighting him, he thinks he can just keep doing it." For the next forty years, my mother never passed up another fight, excelled in the sciences, and is a respected professor of nursing today in her 70s giving talks around the globe. When I attended the same university in the 90s, I told some friends about my mother's experience. They laughed and said it couldn't be the same guy, but their professor of chemistry announced on the first day that women were inherently incapable of doing well in his class. I'm thankful that today such a statement would get recorded, go viral online, and force dinosaurs like that into early retirement.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago
My mother had almost the same experience getting a math degree in the 50s. "Women don't belong in math" or some such garbage from a professor.
Pigo 9y ago
I'm the first person in my family to even graduate high school, so I don't have any family stories. But I had a female professor that announced to the whole class that she strives to make sure no men get above a C in her classroom. And that was around 2004. It makes me wonder what kind of articles will be written 30 years from now, based on what I read is happening on campuses.
- sbov 9y ago
  I feel like the bad experiences probably stand out more than the average. My wife got her masters around 2012, and one of her teachers would discuss political topics then participate in heckling anyone with stances that weren't completely left leaning. Even defending people with these views made you a target. But all of the other teachers were pretty standard.
  - TJ-14 9y ago
    This is a point I think needs to made more often. Bad things get way more attention and I think people on both the left and the right, both social justice people and free speech people, have a bias to exaggerate the extent that these things are happening. Sometimes people just need to take a breath and relax.
nugget 9y ago
I wonder how your mother's professor reconciled his personal misogyny with the fact that by 1960 Gerti Cory, Marie Curie, and Marie's daughter Irene had all won Nobel Prizes (and Rosalind Franklin would have won one in 1962 had she not died four years earlier).
random3 9y ago
As an opposite interesting story from another part of the world around same time. When I was just a few years old my father (a highschool chemistry teacher with a research background) was telling me stories about how how himself and his colleague which was a female had the best results preparing students for chemistry olympiads although their highschool, an "industrial" was one of the last choices for students, so it was usually the last in everything. Yet they managed to prepare some of the top students. This was during late communist era and just after it. I grew up with nothing close to racism, sexism or anything close.
ozmodiar 9y ago
I've been to two mid-tier universities within the last decade, and each one had a professor who would straight up say on the first day of class that they would fail any women, because women shouldn't be in science. One was a Biology professor (they were a young earth creationist to boot), the other was a computer science prof. I'm sure the laser focused fury of social media makes universities more wary of having people like this on staff, but still most people don't want to get caught up in that sort of fight. They were quite old though, so there's hope for the future.
- CobrastanJorji 9y ago
  Within the last decade, in the United States? And they straight up said they'd fail any woman in the class? That's awful. That's so much worse than I thought things were these days.
- jlarocco 9y ago
  That's so blatant that I have a hard time believing it. If that's really true, it's a jackpot discrimination lawsuit waiting to happen, and I hope it happens sooner rather than later. Completely unacceptable.
  - no897nhtoeui 9y ago
    > That's so blatant that I have a hard time believing it. That's what I thought about those videos of guys following a woman around as she walked down the streets of New York City minding her own business.[0] I had never witnessed that sort of thing and thought, "There's no way this goes on that often or I'd see it." And yet, dozens of female friends confirmed that it happens all the time. I was like, "Why have you never mentioned this?" They just said it happens too often and there's not a lot you can do about it, plus half the time other people don't believe you. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A
- msla 9y ago
  Tenure is a powerful force. It makes professors band together, because they know if the concept is weakened for political reasons, any one of them could be next, especially in this era of universities looking to replace tenured faculty with non-tenured grad students.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

My mother had almost the same experience getting a math degree in the 50s. "Women don't belong in math" or some such garbage from a professor.

Pigo 9y ago

I'm the first person in my family to even graduate high school, so I don't have any family stories. But I had a female professor that announced to the whole class that she strives to make sure no men get above a C in her classroom. And that was around 2004. It makes me wonder what kind of articles will be written 30 years from now, based on what I read is happening on campuses.

sbov 9y ago
I feel like the bad experiences probably stand out more than the average. My wife got her masters around 2012, and one of her teachers would discuss political topics then participate in heckling anyone with stances that weren't completely left leaning. Even defending people with these views made you a target. But all of the other teachers were pretty standard.
- TJ-14 9y ago
  This is a point I think needs to made more often. Bad things get way more attention and I think people on both the left and the right, both social justice people and free speech people, have a bias to exaggerate the extent that these things are happening. Sometimes people just need to take a breath and relax.

nugget 9y ago

I wonder how your mother's professor reconciled his personal misogyny with the fact that by 1960 Gerti Cory, Marie Curie, and Marie's daughter Irene had all won Nobel Prizes (and Rosalind Franklin would have won one in 1962 had she not died four years earlier).

random3 9y ago

As an opposite interesting story from another part of the world around same time. When I was just a few years old my father (a highschool chemistry teacher with a research background) was telling me stories about how how himself and his colleague which was a female had the best results preparing students for chemistry olympiads although their highschool, an "industrial" was one of the last choices for students, so it was usually the last in everything. Yet they managed to prepare some of the top students. This was during late communist era and just after it. I grew up with nothing close to racism, sexism or anything close.

ozmodiar 9y ago

I've been to two mid-tier universities within the last decade, and each one had a professor who would straight up say on the first day of class that they would fail any women, because women shouldn't be in science. One was a Biology professor (they were a young earth creationist to boot), the other was a computer science prof. I'm sure the laser focused fury of social media makes universities more wary of having people like this on staff, but still most people don't want to get caught up in that sort of fight. They were quite old though, so there's hope for the future.

CobrastanJorji 9y ago
Within the last decade, in the United States? And they straight up said they'd fail any woman in the class? That's awful. That's so much worse than I thought things were these days.
jlarocco 9y ago
That's so blatant that I have a hard time believing it. If that's really true, it's a jackpot discrimination lawsuit waiting to happen, and I hope it happens sooner rather than later. Completely unacceptable.
- no897nhtoeui 9y ago
  > That's so blatant that I have a hard time believing it. That's what I thought about those videos of guys following a woman around as she walked down the streets of New York City minding her own business.[0] I had never witnessed that sort of thing and thought, "There's no way this goes on that often or I'd see it." And yet, dozens of female friends confirmed that it happens all the time. I was like, "Why have you never mentioned this?" They just said it happens too often and there's not a lot you can do about it, plus half the time other people don't believe you. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1XGPvbWn0A
msla 9y ago
Tenure is a powerful force. It makes professors band together, because they know if the concept is weakened for political reasons, any one of them could be next, especially in this era of universities looking to replace tenured faculty with non-tenured grad students.