Feature: Women in Physics: A High Challenge for a High Reward

Dr Elisabetta Canetta, BSc Physics (Applied) Lecturer at St Mary’s University, Twickenham explores the world of women in physics. Women and Physics, the oddest couple you could think of; or at least this is what the vast majority of people (including women) think and perceive. Let me tell you one thing: This perception is wrong and I am saying this as a professional female physicist. I am a woman who fell in love with physics as a child and who had the stubbornness to stick to her own dream despite all the odds that came into my way. I had gone, I still go, and probably I will go through a lot of hardship, obstacles, self-doubting as a female physicist, but I am still deeply in love with my work and my professional life, and never regretted the choice I made as a young woman. Let us now look at this “odd couple” a bit more closely. First of all, how is physics perceived? Well, the general perception is that “physics is a boy thing” and, consequently, girls can neither compete nor succeed in the physics world. This misconception is the main reason why: 1) A very little number of girls takes up physics at university, and 2) An even smaller number of women have a successful career as professional physicists both in academia and industry (not because they could not make it but because they were not supported and encouraged to go down that route). From a very young age, women are discouraged to study physics, let alone to pursue a career in physics. What I always found very strange and not entirely understandable is that if a young boy takes up physics at university level, he is considered as someone highly gifted and who can achieve a lot in life; but if a young girl takes up the challenge to study physics at university, she is considered as weird who has lost all sense of reality and who “would be better off in searching for a husband who could support her”. These are the exact words spoken to me by a male physicist when I was in my final undergraduate year and expressed the desire to pursue my studies in theoretical physics. Although I was taken aback from such a remark, this incident was not enough to put me off track and to make my dream to be a physicist evaporate as dew on a warm morning. On the contrary, it galvanised me even more and gave me the push I needed to carry on and work as hard as I could to make my dream come true. Looking back to my undergraduate years, I believe that the most upsetting aspect of being a young female physics student was the scorn shown to female physics students by some of the male teachers (well, during my four years of undergraduate physics studies I had only two female teachers!). They did not miss any occasion to tell me and my few female classmates (we were making up about one-third, if not less, of the whole class) that we shouldn’t be there in the first place because the only type of magazines we could understand were the fashion and gossip ones and the only literature we could appreciate were romantic novels! Despite all these odds and upsetting experiences I clung to my dream to become a professional physicists and got my MPhys (Master in Physics) in theoretical nuclear physics and my PhD in experimental nanobiophysics. Since the completion of my PhD, I have always worked in academia and fought my way through a world dominated by male physicists and a lot of prejudices against female physicists. However, it is fair to say that it was not only my stubbornness, ambition (a female physicist must have plenty of it if she wants to succeed), and infinite love for my job and for physics that helped me to build my academic career as a physicists, but also the support of some of my supervisors (all male physicists, mind you) who saw my potential and believed in me as a physicists, i.e. who took me seriously and pulled me through the lowest moments in my career. I will never thank them enough. Another driving force I had, and I still have, was the example of great women physicists who contributed to shape the future of physics despite all the odds they encountered and setbacks they had. I am referring in particular to my two idols: 1) “Marie Curie”: The lady who won two Nobel Prizes – the first one in Physics in 1903 and the second one in Chemistry in 1911 – and also the only scientists to have achieved such a goal so far, and 2) “Rosalind Franklin”: The lady who first discovered the structure of DNA by X-ray crystallography and whose discovery inspired and guided the work of Watson and Crick. The very sad thing about Rosalind Franklin is that she died (in 1958 at the very young age of 38) before the Nobel Prize was awarded to Watson and Crick (in 1962) and so she could not share it with them because the Nobel Prize could not be awarded posthumously. I remember reading over and over again insights into Marie Curie’s life and getting strength and motivation to keep doing my job as best as I possibly could from reading about her total devotion and dedication to her work. I kept repeating to myself: “If she could do it, I can do it”. To be a professional female physicist is probably one of the most challenging professional paths that a woman could take. It is a choice made out of a love for physics, a kind of vocation if you like. But it is worth it. Oh, yes it is worth every effort, delusion.Despite the gender of the physicist, the emotion, thrill, “kick” that a physicist gets when he/she can better understand what is going on in nature or how a natural phenomenon actually works, that moment is pure and boundless joy, probably comparable to giving birth. For a physicist, the scientific work is his or her “child”, something to nourish, to cuddle, and to bring up to “adulthood”; and who better than a female physicist can fully understand and appreciate these almost maternal feelings and emotions?