Rebecca Solnit Tracks, Kills the Myth of Man the (Mammoth) Hunter

@budgie Where have you heard/read about the behaviours you’re describing? Nothing I’ve read about either ancient or modern hunting/gathering societies–this book, for example:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Other-Side-Eden-Hunters/dp/0865476381

suggests that what you describe is typical; in fact it’s often suggested that when we see these kinds of behaviours in non-industrial societies now it’s due to colonial/occupying influence.

Firstly I’d like to say that I’ve really been enjoying this thread and have really liked hearing people talk about science. I was hoping that maybe I could ask people about science.

I want to get into a career in science and I’m at the point in school where I have to start thinking about which field of science I want to go into but I don’t actually have much information about it. My school and parents are being very supportive but they haven’t told me what it’s actually like and are just trying to encourage my enthusiasm which I really like but it also makes me feel scared because I’m just going in blind and I’ve heard lots of bad things too but only second hand. I want to do research but I want to work in a field which is female friendly and which won’t be too mean for me for coming from a religious family. I was hoping that if Scildfreja and EJ are still reading then that would be really great.

Also hi everyone, this is my first real post here. I’ve been reading for ages but have always been a little scared to post but I really like lots of the people here and feel that I know them after reading so much of what they’ve written. I hope that isn’t weird. I really like how safe this site feels. David does a really good job.

Thanks! I’m a fan of yours so this is sort of scary for me. Are you ever going to do more of your drunken game of thrones writings? I found them very funny even though I don’t drink.

I’m girl Dave by the way. The name is a sort of joke.

The women in most HG societies are treated pretty badly by the men. A common occurrence is that when a man comes home from hunting his wife is expected to jump and and get the fire going for cooking. If she doesn’t she gets a walloping.

I mean… Really? The sexual partner of the specific man who made the kill (on his own I guess) is the person who is expected to cook it? That’s kind of weird and arbitrary, and while lots of weird, arbitrary systems exist in human societies it’s hard to argue that natural selection put them in place. There are much more efficient ways of hunting meat and then preparing it for a group of humans.

It’s like a man in our society coming home from work and shouting at his wife to get in the kitchen and make a sandwich.

You say this like that’s a typical behaviour, rather than something that happened in upper middle class households in the 50s and essentially never again.

The women are often treated like domestic slaves and made to carry out labours like fetching firewood, cleaning and carrying stuff when traveling.

Even if the division of labour that you’re describing did/does exist, which I’m not sure about, the tasks you’re describing are just as necessary as hunting food, so I’m not sure why women are “dependent” on men when men handle the one task but women are “treated like domestic slaves” when they handle the other.

Hi Dave–I’m an engineer, not a scientist, so you didn’t ask me, but I’m going to suggest you get in touch with your local Women in STEM group; you’ll probably get some great advice online but it would also be valuable to you to meet people face to face who’d be happy to share information about their jobs, and maybe invite you to have some experience of them.

I’m also going to mention something to you that may seem counterintuitive, but finding work and making a living in science is highly dependent on government policy. This was pointed out to me years ago by someone who works in environmental science–government doesn’t believe in environment, doesn’t fund environmental research, no jobs for environmental scientists. This is true to some degree of every branch of research. I guess your job security would be relatively safe if you’re into research for war stuff, or stuff that will guarantee that someone makes lots of money.

Hi Dave

I’m also a new commenter and have been enjoying reading WHTM scientific discourse for some time now; it’s really the only place on the internet where I feel I actually learn something from the comments. I look forward to talking with you in the future!

Edit: I feel like I didn’t actually address what you said. I love neuroscience, I can’t imagine working in any other field. If you like science I just recommend following your passion, as cheesy as it sounds.

DepressedCNS:
I really like it here even if some of the people terrify me. It took a big act of courage to post for the first time but it’s getting less scary each time now.

My passion isn’t so much for any one field as for being able to discover new things and advance what humans know. When I read books about scientists it’s so exciting to imagine that I was in their shoes and was seeing everything for the first time and trying to work out what it meant. It must be so amazing to realise that you’re the first human being ever to see a particular thing and that nobody can hold your hand and explain it to you, but instead you need to explain it to everyone else, and to know that in a hundred years time other people are going to be learning about it in school. Even if nobody remembers your name it’s still something you can give to everyone that comes after you.

I’m also in the process of trying to work out whether I’m religious or not and while I don’t want to call myself an atheist even online yet, I think science is something that makes a lot more sense to me than a lot of other things that people teach me.

Is neuroscience a woman-friendly field?

@Dave: Being a graphic designer, I have no idea if neuroscience is a woman-friendly field, but I can share one of my favorite books by a woman neuroscientist!

It’s called The Lab Rat Chronicles: A Neuroscientist Reveals Life Lessons from the Planet’s Most Successful Mammals, and it’s by one Kelly Lambert, PhD.

I found it while I was doing a presentation on rats for one of my college-level science courses, and it’s a really interesting read. I learned quite a bit, and it’s one of the books that turned me from a rat-hater to a rat-lover, and I feel like it’s helped me understand myself (and of course the lil’ babby rats) a bit more.

Also, welcome Girl Dave! Did someone link you to your Welcome Package yet?

Viscaria,
I wonder how often that even happened in the fifties? Probably less often than reactionaries think. Neither of grandmothers are/were the type to stand for that. They both did the bulk of the domestic work, but they were definitely not domestic slaves. Neither of my grandfathers were the types to have the slightest inclination to treat their wives like slaves either.

@Dave

There are a couple of options for you. First, the freshman year of university is practically made for you to be able to dip your toes into a variety of fields until you find what most sparks your passion. There’s not any need to declare a major immediately. Unfortunately this makes you kind of dependent upon the quality of the professor – even a great field can be turned into a snorefest by a bad prof.

Your other major option is, if you have a postsecondary school nearby (university or community college), you might try contacting them to see if there is any way you can arrange 30 minute interviews with faculty in different fields. There is unlikely to be a program in place for this (but you never know until you ask) but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it. It just means that you’ll have to set it up yourself. This can be super-intimidating, just cold-calling strangers to ask if you can interview them, but you are extremely unlikely to be turned down for an interview, especially if you approach younger or female scientists.

Something to think about. Welcome to WHTM!

Welcome, Dave!

While I’m naturally extremely fond of my own field, it’s my experience that enthusiasm and talent aren’t fungible: people don’t perform nearly as well if they aren’t doing something they love. For that reason I’m going to recommend that you do as PolicyOfMadness says and behave like a scientific dilettante for a while until you find what you need.

Based on the people I know in science, the two fields that are the most female-dominated are pharmacology and biology, but it really does depend more on what your local community is like than what the global scientific establishment is like. I know less about religion-friendliness; I’m told that geology has large numbers of young Muslims going into it because the Saudis are fed up of relying on foreigners for oil geology, but I would be speaking from ignorance if I said anything definitive about it.

I will give you three pieces of advice:

Firstly, if you want a field which is going to revolutionise itself over the course of our lifetime, do biotech. The next fifty years of biotech are going to be amazing in ways that the last fifty years of computer science were: it’s time really does seem to almost be upon us. If you want to work in a field where exciting research is going to happen during your career, this is my best guess for where to go.

Secondly, if you want a field which allows you to go into other areas and work with them in case you prefer those areas to your own, do physical chemistry. It teaches you skills that can easily be transferred to other fields, gives you the freedom to actually work out what sort of science most interests you, and is actually pretty interesting in its own right.

(Disclaimer: my sister works as a physical chemist.)

Thirdly, you may want to stay away from physics. I say this with sadness: I love physics dearly, but it attracts the Great White Male egos like nothing else does.

I wonder how often that even happened in the fifties? Probably less often than reactionaries think. Neither of grandmothers are/were the type to stand for that. They both did the bulk of the domestic work, but they were definitely not domestic slaves. Neither of my grandfathers were the types to have the slightest inclination to treat their wives like slaves either.

On the subject of reactionary myths around mid-century American women, I’m gonna go ahead and recommend this 2009 article by Ariel Levy:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/16/lift-and-separate

Here’s the third paragraph:

” It’s as if feminism were plagued by a kind of false-memory syndrome. Where we think we’ve been on our great womanly march forward often has less to do with the true coördinates than with our fears and desires. We tend to imagine the fifties and the early sixties, for example, as a time when most American women were housewives. “In reality, however, by 1960 there were as many women working as there had been at the peak of World War II, and the vast majority of them were married,” Collins writes. Forty per cent of wives whose children were old enough to go to school had jobs. This isn’t just about the haze of retrospection: back then, women saw themselves as homemakers, too. Esther Peterson, President Kennedy’s Assistant Secretary of Labor, asked a high-school auditorium full of girls how many of them expected to have a “home and kids and a family.” Hands shot up. Next, Peterson asked how many expected to work, and only a few errant hands were raised. Finally, she asked the girls how many of them had mothers who worked, and “all of those hands went up again,” Peterson wrote in her 1995 memoir, “Restless.” Nine out of ten of the girls would end up having jobs outside the house, she explained, “but each of the girls thought that she would be that tenth girl.” “