Sexism may be in the eye of the beholder

The February 2012 issue of PHYSICS TODAY held a certain irony for me in its juxtaposition of Robert March’s review of Leon Lederman and Christopher Hill’s book Quantum Physics for Poets (page 51 ) with the article by Rachel Ivie and Casey Langer Tesfaye on women in physics (page 47 ). I had recently read Lederman and Hill’s book because I sought an up-to-date and accessible text for the quantum section of my course on modern physics for nonscience students. Like the reviewer, I also found it a well-written, lively, and contemporary account of quantum physics.

Much as I liked the book, in the end I chose not to adopt it. My reason was the very example the reviewer touts as an instance of Lederman’s engaging writing: the image of a reader peering in the window of Victoria’s Secret while Lederman and Hill enlighten him—and it is clearly a him—about wave–particle duality. Read the cited passage in all its detail and it isn’t hard to draw several conclusions about how the authors, perhaps subconsciously, view their readers as male; as drawn, in a slightly voyeuristic way, to Victoria’s Secret; and as thinking highly of their own sexual allure.

How would a female student react to Lederman and Hill’s example? Would it make her feel included among those interested in physics? Would it make her comfortable in the presence of male physicists or her fellow physics students? I think not. Had this example occurred just once, I might have let it go and adopted the book. But Victoria’s Secret is mentioned every time the wave–particle duality comes up—which is frequently in this book on quantum physics.

If we’re to remedy the underrepresentation of women in physics that Ivie and Tesfaye decry in their article, we’ll need enough sensitivity to come up with more welcoming examples than that of a physics-interested male ogling the Victoria’s Secret window display.