Women of Color Working in STEM Fields Are Frequently Mistaken for Janitors
bitchmagazine.org
bitchmagazine.org
> 48% of Black women and 46.9% of Latinas report having been mistaken for administrative or custodial staff.
But obviously, the assumption still reflects really poorly! :/
Some might call it a publicity stunt, but I call it bad taste.
And I don't see this statistic as anything more than insignificant. As an Indian, I've been mistaken as a worker at hardware stores a couple of times.
So what?
This is nothing more than a phony attempt at intensifying race-based bigotry.
That's perhaps even more tasteless than the name of the publication.
I note that the article doesn't compare the experience of women of color versus any other demographic.
As Lord Kelvin said: "“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.”
It's obviously a far more hurtful experience when it happens somewhere you actually work, and when you're already a minority in a white male dominated environment. But I don't really think the point of this is to suggest we get better at identifying janitors. It's to point out a symptom that suggests a larger problem.
The report does compare the same figures to white and Asian-American women, which reported the same experience at 32.4% and 22.3% respectively. I'll leave it to you to find figures for men (they may not exist, for a reason).
If you're interested, you should read the full report. It's based on a survey of 500 female scientists. It's not just anecdotal evidence. http://www.toolsforchangeinstem.org/double-jeopardy-report-v...