my riveting rosie

so a couple of weeks ago I attended this conference at the NIH for all one year research fellows from various schools and programs. most of it was meant to inspire us to stick with it, as there is a shortage of physicians who want to go into academia. not surprising, since there is NO incentive after having racked up just about 200Gs in loans.

Then of course we had a number of women physician scientists lament the difficulties of being a woman in the field. One particularly negative woman (a researcher at Brigham, of course) commented that of the 40 people who had interviewed her for the position, two were women. And let's not forget that while 50% of medical graduates are women, only 8% of those in academic medicine are women. Most of these women hold associate professorships or less...don't even ask about tenured positions.

That said, there were a number of female physicians who were trying their best to rally the troops. We can do it! says Rosie the riveter/psychiatrist/associate professor at this and that university.

At one point there was a panel consisting of a white woman, a black woman, a white man and a black man...in that order. A forcible representation of the underrepresented.

Sure we can do it. My brown, ball-less battle is significantly less than that of Rosie's or even my mother's. Mrs. Sunshine was surprisingly bitter the other day when she lamented her lack of a job offer at a prestigious institution as an academic faculty member. She even went as far as to say that if her name were Joel Cohen, or something to that effect, she would have gotten the job. She redeemed herself slightly by mentioning that she probably wouldn't have gotten the job if her name was Jane Cohen.

Black face, White mask? White face, black mask?

and I'm still waiting for my vagina to speak.