#YesAllWomen tweets reveal persistent sexism in science By Fiona MacDonald via ScienceAlert. | Image Credit: First three images via ScienceAlert via Twitter, fourth image via Twitter.
Reading through the tweets on the #yesallwomen hashtag is heartbreaking, illuminating and frustrating all at the same time.
And if you’re a woman, you’ll be nodding along to nine out of 10 of them.
The hashtag started after it was revealed that 22-year-old Elliot Rodger, lead suspect in the Isla Vista shooting, had shared extremely disturbing and misogynistic views in a video posted shortly before the attack.
Instead of flooding the internet with Rodger-specific fury, Twitter took the discussion to the next level and remind the world that sexism is still very much present across society, and #YesAllWomen experience it.
Among those tweets were many honest and confronting admissions of sexism from female scientists, students and communicators.
This isn’t the first time the issue of misogyny in science has been brought up, but it’s always sad and shocking to see certain opinions persist when females have come such a long way in the field.
As ScienceAlert is staffed almost entirely by women, we though we’d add a few of our own:
Because only 44 out of 835 Nobel Prize laureates are women.
Because senior scientists would still rather hire males, and pay them more.
Because people are still shocked when we tell them ScienceAlert is run by women.
Because that last tweet I screenshotted, via Hannah Hart, really hits home for myself and so many women I’ve talked to over the last few days [much less ever] when it comes to pointing out sexism in general, especially within the STEM world.
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Because over five years on, most of the men still don’t think it was a big deal for them to run off the woman they elected president of the local 2600 using sexual slander #yesallwomen