by An interesting fact, I found when browsing online by using the key words such as “scientists + gender”, is that there are many articles and news named by involving “female scientist”, but merely none of them used the term “male scientist”. For the only few of them, there’s a “single” before “male”. Thus, an interesting question merges in my mind: How do public media shape the figure of female scientists (mainly in China)?
“Female scientists” actually can be seen as a subpopulation of “female” or “scientists”. However, describe by using terms of “female scientists”, the public media subconsciously emphasis the aspects of “female”, which is “the other” to “male”. Thus, they usually care more on how these women balance between their work and family. In many news or reports, when mentioning female scientists, editor would add descriptions about how they take their responsibilities as mothers or wives, in order to make the report more “attractive”. The following is some examples I found as how Chinese public media describe female scientists. Some of them includes articles from China Youth: an official website fund by Chinese government.
- In “Ping Chen: The Seeker of Hydrogen Energy Conservation” (http://agzy.youth.cn/qsnag/zt/wjx100/qnkxj/201206/t20120607_2212586.htm), the author spent lines describing her clothing and outer appearance. This is a typical example of how public media emphasize on female scientists’ appearance. Similar example also includes “The first naked actress in the history-a beautiful female scientist!” (https://www.sohu.com/a/218072908_216426). The entire article focused on her experience and beauty, but only a few sentences on how she contributed to wireless communication. Female scientists’ appearances in these articles are usually appealing, or charming and confident if they look ordinary. By describing the “female” aspects, media stress public’s attention on the aspects other than the scientific achievements. However, in most of the cases, this won’t happen if the scientist is a male. Describing a male’s appearance, unless he is very charming, usually has few effects on audience.
- Family is also an important aspect in articles introducing female scientists. In “Jianying Hu: Better Technology, Better Life” (http://agzy.youth.cn/qsnag/zt/wjx100/qnkxj/201206/t20120607_2212493.htm) and “Xiqiu Han: Scientists, As Well As the Mother of Her Kids” (http://agzy.youth.cn/qsnag/zt/wjx100/nkxjsh/201206/t20120608_2213957.htm), editor described how they take part in or sacrifice their families. The family of their parents, or the family with their husbands and kids. Here are some (translated) quotations from these two articles:
- “Kids, interests and family are three motivation which promote me except from scientific research. I love to send time with my daughter drinking coffee, go shopping; while enjoy my work, it is crucial to share joy and happiness with family members…”
- “To be a scientist as well as mother of her kids, Xiqiu Han definitely sacrifice more than other women. How to find balance between work and life is probably still a question that she has to think about.”
Think carefully, how if we change the second quotation into “To be a scientist as well as father of his kids, XXX definitely sacrifice more than other men”? With no doubt that this is strange. When talking about men, media rarely link him with his families, as people usually think family is women’s duty, which makes it difficult for women to be noticed purely due to her achievement in the field of science.
A more explicit example, in “Here female scientist comes! Female workaholics’ secret to success” (https://news.china.com/domesticgd/10000159/20190308/35394766_2.html), author spend more than half of the content making points about how family is important for female scientists.
From these examples, we can see that when public media emphasis the trait of being “female”, the figure of female scientists usually strongly related to a complex group of characters including wife, mother, daughter. I don’t mean by the support from family is unimportant, but without mentioning the support from family seems impossible in most of the cases when Chinese public media mentioning female scientists.
Just like what we’ve mentioned in the lecture, the early female scientists were usually mentioned together with their husbands or other family members, for example, Caroline Herschel and Marie Curie, as two typical cases. Comparing to the previous century, public media nowadays rarely show explicit sexual discrimination toward female scientists, but some implicit one still exists, such as calling them “female scientists” instead of “scientist” as I mentioned. This phenomenon implies a subconscious that “scientists” is unable to stand for “female scientists”, it’s important to point out how these population is sexually different. This gradually becomes a gimmick that media use to attract readers, or in another way of explaining, they believe female scientists who can make achievements are STRANGE.
How can gender discrimination be eliminated in public media when talking about science? It’s really a hard question. What did public media do seem to be good when looking back through decades. By reporting female scientists’ success, it encourages publics to pay close attention on how female can do as good as male did. However, the recessive dualism structure of male and female brings new problems to solve.
How to report news related to female scientists? How to weaken the bond in conventional thinking that constructed between women and family? These need further investigation to take place.