Weighing the need to accommodate women in physics

I fear that the discussion of women in physics is turning away from one of the most important points—the women in physics. As a female PhD candidate in nuclear physics, I have been waist deep in this issue for almost my entire scholastic career, and I disapprove of many of the methods being used to bring more women into physics or to help retain them in the field. How easily we can advocate the use of preferential treatment to help the women “catch up,” but we can just as easily forget what that action does to the very people we are trying to help.

I do not want to be treated preferentially. I do not want to be the token woman, the one who receives attention in the form of stares, heads nodded knowingly, and whispers about “why she was really hired.” I want to work hard, and struggle through difficulties, and earn every single thing I get.

Coercing an increase in diversity through preferential treatment of the minority in question—women, in this case—directly subverts the goal by introducing the idea that we suffer some handicap that must be accounted for. Thus, my value as a student, teacher, researcher, or job applicant will seem lower if I am a member of that minority. Either I will end up being forced to accept the underlying argument that I am worth less than my “obviously” more successful male counterparts, or I will have to work much harder to stand out, effectively making extra effort just to be equal. Either way, preferential treatment, even with the noblest intentions, is destructive and detrimental to my career and my own self-worth.

We cannot continue to argue about what is best for the women and minorities in physics if we do not acknowledge that each individual has the most important opinion on the issue of her own future.