For Female Astronomers, Sexual Harassment Is a Constant Nightmare
I&#x27;ve been a prof:  Academics is awash in non-objective <i>pushing and shoving</i> that, yes, affects careers.  In academics, even high end universities, a lot of the nasty behavior of middle school is still alive and well.  Added to that is grown up politics, professional jealousy, professional competition with sabotage, and, also, no doubt, sexual harassment as in the OP.<p>I can&#x27;t speak first hand about sexual harassment because I&#x27;m a normal male and never knowingly harassed a female.  But, gee, right, there were some times:  (1) I was chair of the college computer committee, and she was in the administration and invited me to her office to talk about computing.  She leaned back in her chair, put her feet up on her desk aimed at me so that I could see under her skirt and said &quot;My husband and I have an open marriage&quot;.  Well, my wife and I don&#x27;t.  (2) I was a consultant, say, an applied statistician, in a computing center, and a new prof on campus in sociology with some survey data came to see me about processing the data.  She started talking about finding things in her data and said that she was &quot;looking for sex&quot;.  Then she kept saying she was &quot;looking for sex&quot;.  Gee, those women were trying to harass me <i>sexually</i>?  No, I didn&#x27;t have any &quot;nightmares&quot;!<p>Similar things can go on in parts of business.<p>My mother used to say that a young woman should carry a six inch long, sharp hat pin and be prepared to insert it into any man who got too <i>fresh</i>.  We&#x27;re talking an old story.  Maybe I should start a Web site to sell long, sharp hat pins with some instructions on usage.<p>If we could get rid of all the sexual harassment, then we will discover that, once have some good work, others afraid of losing out in competition will start to fight back, with whispering campaigns, sabotage, gang behavior, etc.<p>I saw one female prof have a nice little tactic:  She never said anything about her research.  So, she never gave anyone any hint about what she was doing.  Then, suddenly, in one 12 month period, she published five nice papers in one of the best journals in the field.  Presto.  Bingo.  In a baseball analogy, she had hit a home run, or call it a grand slam, had rounded all the bases, and was home free.  Five papers in one of the best journals one year?  Tough to fight with that, i.e., whispering campaigns mostly won&#x27;t work.  BTW, I was the faculty member who proposed hiring her -- her qualifications looked good to me.<p>Is being a prof a nice job?  Not very.<p>For one, it&#x27;s super tough to get paid well enough to buy a nice house and do well supporting a family.  Even if get tenure, that doesn&#x27;t mean that your salary has to keep up with inflation.  It can seem better just to be in business, e.g., start and own a successful business, where actually make some money and can accumulate it for some real financial security.<p>Second, really, to get very far in academics, have to pay close attention to money anyway -- have to get grants.  So, can begin to feel like are in business anyway.<p>Third, in business, it&#x27;s fairly easy to know how to <i>keep score</i> -- the units are dollars.  In academics, we&#x27;re talking numbers of papers, numbers of invited talks, numbers of journal editorships, number of dollars of grant money, prestige, number of citations, etc.  So, it&#x27;s tough to count and&#x2F;or compare.  For a successful business owner, the criteria are simpler to count and compare -- e.g., a bank statement or, if you will, an account&#x27;s report.<p>I have always felt protective of girls and women, and I hate to see them have &quot;nightmares&quot; over anything.  But, honey, and I say this out of 100% affection, caring, and respect, out in the real world, there is lots of pushing and shoving, and there still will be even without men trying to kiss you, knocking on your hotel room door at 3 AM, sending you suggestive messages, etc.<p>Or to borrow from and paraphrase E. Fromm in <i>The Art of Loving</i>, &quot;For humans, the fundamental problem in life is responding to the anxiety from our realization that alone we are vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature and society.  The first recommended solution is love of spouse.&quot;  Well, honey, and, again, I mean this with full affection, caring, and respect, one of the &quot;hostile forces of society&quot; is the nearly eternal force of men pursuing friendship, affection, sex, domination, etc.<p>For such men, part of the solution is a ready supply of clear, loud statements &quot;No.  Stop. Quit.&quot;.  For more, there is that long, sharp hat pin.  For more, be in a public place and scream.  For more, be with some girlfriends.<p>Indeed, one of Fromm&#x27;s other recommended solutions is &quot;membership in a group&quot;.  It&#x27;s easy to remember the TV ads for the TV show <i>The Babysitters Club</i> with six or eight very pretty teenage girls walking on a sidewalk close together with each girl trying harder than all the others to be in the center of the group -- it was <i>herd</i> formation, and the TV people believed that it was credible.  So, right, females tend &quot;form herds&quot;, look like <i>herd animals</i>, and with good reason:  They have more safety in a herd, as a member of a &quot;group&quot;.  So, right, form groups via Twitter, Facebook, fora, one to one e-mail, face to face, etc.<p>E.g., it was totally clear to a girl I knew of 12, and one of her girlfriends of 11, each about 100 pounds, that they would feel much safer with me, 6&#x27; 3&quot; and 14, if they were together and in a public place instead of alone with me in private.  Since those girls of 11 and 12 knew about the safety of being in a public place and not alone instead of in a private place and alone, I&#x27;m sure the women of the OP can understand that.  So, use that tactic.<p>But, still, honey, that&#x27;s not nearly the only problem you will face <i>out in the real world</i>.  And, again, notice Fromm&#x27;s first recommended solution -- &quot;love of spouse&quot;.  That is, have a good marriage with a good husband.<p>Honey, for a lot of the problems you face in <i>the outside world</i>, sexual harassment is one of the easiest to deal with because (A) it is relatively easy to prove (e.g., smartphone and message recordings), (B) in its more serious forms is very definitely seriously illegal, i.e., you can hire a lawyer, and (C) there is the solution of that hat pin, or just your long, sharp fingernails.  But for whispering campaigns, jealousy, sabotage, gang up behavior, etc., defense is more difficult.<p>Honey, definitely you should protect yourself, and you do have some strong means.  But out in <i>the real world</i> some guy trying to get too close to you is not your biggest problem and not what any nightmares, if there are to be any, should be about.  Honey, relax; you are overreacting to the wrong thing.