I Truly Hope All's Not Well In the Boys' Club

When it comes to gender relations, I’m thinking out loud this morning. Four news events have caught my eye: two for the guys and two for the ladies.

The Men: Tiger Woods

I’ve learned this week to Google “Tiger Woods” before writing a word. In fact, there’s another middle of the night crisis in play, with a blond, SUVs and life support apparatus. It seems that Elin, Tiger’s wife is OK but digital data bits are flying fast and furious.

My focus is ESPN who’s not alone in saying that Tiger’s private life won’t damage his sponsor relationships. I agree with Chevron and Gatorade, to name two. Nike’s another matter in my playbook.

Nike stands for women as much as men.

ESPN correctly writes that upscale men who travel, will admire Tiger even more, with the public disclosure of his brass balls private escapdes.

The Men: Climategate

While I have no real sympathy for Tiger Woods, I don’t like the Climategate scientists receiving death threats.

Personally, I know this terror, having been in police protection for a year because a man stalked me with death threats. He didn’t like my views on women’s rights.

A committed environmentalist, I do have a hard on for the Climategate ‘scientists’ who seem to act like mini gods thinking they can save the world, knocking out the rules of scientific debate. The emails alone demand some kind of censure. I believe that going forward their work can feed higher authorities but they do not deserve scientific recognition, given their openly-stated willingness to shut off public discussion around their research findings.

Frankly, a major flaw in climate change analysis is emerging in several new studies, one that reflects how the male mind works.

Existing scientific models aren’t holistic in many cases. A CO2 model doesn’t factor in deforestation trends, for example, or glacial melting. It appears that much of the scientific modeling is based on silo thinking … but that’s not my beef.

My question mark is understanding why these guys think they deserve little more than a slap on the risk, when a much less-aggregious academic faux pas reminds us of how women are treated by a prestigious institution like MIT.

The Women: Marilee Jones

I don’t expect you to remember Marilee Jones, the highly regarded dean of admissions at MIT who was forced to resign in April 2007 after it was discovered that she lied about her academic credentials 30 years ealier.

Jones was superbly regarded in academia, among parents and students, but she was forced to step down immediately, once her deception came to light. Her indefensible actions would taint the reputation of MIT — a concern that’s not aired for one moment when talking about the Climategate scientists, who are on record proposing some pretty ghastly strategies against scientists who don’t agree with them.

Reading the Climategate emails is a trip back into the Middle Ages.

The Women: Lady Greenfield

Honestly, I don’t even know Lady Greenfield, but tracking the death threats against the Climategate guys, I met up with Lady G, a brilliant neuroscientists, according to The Guardian, who is being forced out of her role at the Royal Institution because of her forthright style.

It seems that Lady Greenfield doesn’t fit in so well with the boys club. Greenfield is regarded as a forthright and colourful character whose love of neuroscience, entrepreneurial drive and determination not to conform to the stereotype of dull scientist secured her position as a role model for female scientists.

Lady Greenfield has the audacity to be photographed in Vogue and is ranked the 14th most influential woman in Britain. She was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 and made a “people’s peer” in 2001.

Headlines have dogged Lady Greenfield for years.

Her nomination but subsequent failure to be named a fellow of the Royal Society – the highest honour for any scientist, short of winning the Nobel prize – was leaked in 2004, prompting allegations that she had been blackballed. She made news again when in 2005 she ended her marriage to the Oxford chemist Peter Atkins. More recently, she courted controversy by suggesting Twitter, Facebook and Second Life “alter the way our minds work”. via The Guardian

Isn’t the latter scientific premise actually proven fact?

If not, scientists are hard at work proving that Twitter, Facebook and Second Life alter brain structures, and Lady Greenfield’s claims will be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Boys and Girls

I feel qualified to write about gender bias because I’ve enjoyed superb working relations with men most of my life. In truth, I’ve gladly saved more than one male butt in corporate America, but I don’t sweep ethics controversies under the rug.

via Flickr’s Jerry LindholmThe Tiger Woods affair and Climategate are ethics controversies. In the latter case, the future of the world’s involved.

Reading the de facto defenses of both Tiger and the Climategate researchers, I don’t like the presumptive men’s club support that says they haven’t done anything very bad. And yet, we have two examples of women who are booted out of the world’s most prestigious academia and learning institutions, for much less grievous offenses.

As a woman on the sidelines, I’d hate to say that the boys club remains staunchly in charge, especially in England where matters are theoretically better for women than in the US.

What gives here, my friends? A woman in Tiger Woods shoes would be burned at the stake in Times Square by the Pope himself, regardless of his views on the sanctity of life. Anne