Hi, I have been away from the discussion, but thought I'd comment.
S L Forsburg wrote:
> What annoys me is the
> patently biased reviews that clearly have another agenda--and/or
> haven't read the paper.
>> ususally I attribute these to personal bias, rather than gender
> discrimination. Still, I find it difficult to think that
> I've offended THAT many people. I'm really very mild mannered. :-)
Until rather recently I have been working for a male supervisor. He is
well established and respected in the field but he still has to put up a
fight to get published in the higher ranked journals. It is almost
standard procedure for him to be rather agressive when speaking for
himself, and I have learned a lot from him about how to write snappy and
convincing cover letters :-).
> One thing I've learned is that if you want the editor
> to know something, you ahve to tell him--you can't wait
> for the work to speak for itself.
This is what I've learned as well. The gender issue here is probably the
fact that women are taught to be nice and friendly, and that it's
unladylike and generally not nice to fight. Boys are taught to stand up
for themselves and fight back, and that fighting is a normal way to get
what you want (much too early in life as it seems). Women are then taken
by surprise when they dicover that being nice doesn't help in getting
published, and even if we're prepared to change, we just don't have
enough experience in fighting so we get pushed back because we don't
understand the "rules". I'm not saying it's a good system, I just think
this can be an important contributing factor when women get rejected,
rather than pure gender bias.
> But we still ahve to fight. :-(
Yeah...
Take it easy,
Ann Magnuson
