I find it interesting that the comparison people are making is between men and women pursuing their careers. To bring home the cultural bias for everyone I think that it might be useful to compare how stay at home fathers (those who are primary child care providers for a family) are dealt with and perceived in a society with how women pursuing careers are perceived. I think that women have made more progress in bucking the cultural norms than men. However, as I'm sure many of you can imagine the disdain and exclusion experienced by stay at home fathers, we should recognize that ambitious, career driven women started out from that same point and that, as a culture, we still have a very long way to go before we completely overcome that bias. Having lived on several other continents during my life I have to say that this holds true across many cultures (although perhaps not all) and so it should not be taken as culture = U.S. culture.
In both cases a supportive spouse is very necessary for a person to buck the cultural norms and I think it's about time men realize that they are not fighting for their own rights to be treated equally and have the same opportunities as women. When men value the option of being a primary child care giver enough to fight the discrimination men experience who pursue that path, women will find that they also benefit from greater equality. Until then, men and women will not be treated equally regardless of their chosen field and we all lose as a result. By and large I find that ecologists are more aware of the bias than the average person but many comments made to this list recently have shown me that, even within our field, we suffer from sexism as individuals, as institutions, and as cultures. Working on the problem at only one scale does little to remove the problems of bias if they are still operating quite effectively at the other scales. -Erin -- Erin O'Brien Post-Doc EEMB-Biological Sciences UC Santa Barbara 805.893.2975 [EMAIL PROTECTED] c/o Bruce Mahall Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology Univ. of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 On Campus: 103 Bldg 539
