There are many ways to protest. I prefer the ways that let me be heard directly by the people I want to influence. Whether they listen or not is another matter, but I will take the route that lets me speak directly to a person in power. If I’m going to go to the trouble to throw spaghetti at a wall to see if it sticks, I’m going to choose my wall carefully.

What follows is a recycled post from April 2008.

I told you about my plan to attend the Citi annual shareholders
meeting awhile back here in New York. It was all the spectacle I
hoped it would
be and more. I have to say, I never, ever
imagined myself attending one of these meetings. It just had never
crossed my mind, and until I moved to Manhattan, most meetings
would never have been within striking distance anyway.

The place was packed. The meeting was in the Grand Ballroom of
the Hilton. When I got off the escalator I realized I was standing
in the same room where the final scene of Michael Clayton was
filmed. Kind of eerie.

My world is changed, let me tell you. This was amazing. The
shareholders were angry, the executives were holding their own, but
I do think I saw beads of sweat on the forehead of Sir Winfried
Bischoff, the chairman. Vikram Pandit, the new CEO seemed to be
trying to strike a balance between a positive outlook for the
future, an apologetic stance for catastrophes that occurred before
he took the wheel, and some sort of stretch for humility over
the...wait, let me check the numbers...1,094,098 shares of common
stock excluding options, $2,500,000 retention equity award, and the
gajillion bazillion dollar rest of the package that has been
reported elsewhere.
The total package is in excess of $200 million.

I hate to say it, but at times he came off as rather flippant,
for example when he was confronted by personal stories of long time
Citi employees facing layoffs, and was asked to return some of his
salary to save their jobs. "These are hard decisions," didn't quite
play. He could take some lessons from Win Bischoff on appearing
sympathetic while dodging the issue. That's only partly tongue in
cheek, because in truth there were no answers to some of the
questions in the blame game, and Bischoff did bring an air of grace
to the otherwise ugly, and sometimes comical proceedings.

He also impressed me by appearing genuinely sympathetic to the
corporate responsibility concerns that were put before him. I would
very much like to think that having human rights and environmental
issues presented by shareholders at an annual meeting can sway
corporate behavior in the long term. I have no illusions about
immediate action, but bringing it to the table seems like a great
first step.

And bring it, they did. In a room full of angry shareholders
asking for the heads of the directors on silver platters, the
voices that stood out with calm, eloquence, and forceful courtesy
were those of people like Amy O'Meara, speaking for Amnesty
International, and Maria Gunnoe, talking about the destruction of her
hometown by mountain top removal coal mining.

Being totally new to this, I had no idea that by owning a single
share, you buy the right to stand face to face with the chairman
and the CEO of a company like Citi and speak your mind. Indeed,
that is exactly how it works.

Any shareholder can put forth a resolution, which the company
responds to in print in the proxy statement. The deadline to submit
a proposal for the next annual meeting is November 18, 2008. Any
shareholder holding stock on the date of record, which this year
was February 25th, receives a ticket to attend the meeting in
person, or vote their shares by mail, telephone, or over the
Internet. As I understand it, resolutions are not binding, but they
can send a strong message. There are plenty of examples of
shareholder resolutions that have been proposed year after year and
eventually adopted.

In the meeting, someone takes the floor and presents the
resolution in a prepared statement. Anyone can comment on that
resolution. Everyone votes, and then there is a question and answer
session. Microphones are set up in the hall, and if you have
something to say, all you have to do is get in line and say it. You
have the floor.

I listened to a lot of calls for change in executive
compensation, stories of long time employees who are being laid
off, an elderly man in retirement who has seen the income from his
stock cut in half. There were stories of devastated pension
plans--and of course a lot of blame being passed around over the
subprime losses. The general feeling was that those loans never
should have been made in the first place, and everyone should have
seen it coming.

About halfway through the Q&A, I realized I had something that
needed to be said. I'm not exactly a wall flower, but my knees were
shaking nonetheless. Here's what I told them:

I offered a different perspective on the subprime situation. I
told them that there was a moral hazard that should have been recognized across the industry, but it was
missed. Most of the people who signed on for these
loans were people who had been completely disenfranchised from the
wealth building system, people who had been renting and never had a
hope of owning their own homes. When they qualified for a loan, they
were buying a lottery ticket, in hopes of being able to build a
better future. In a foreclosure, the burden is in stress and in
transaction costs, but in the end, they go back to renting, albeit worse off than before.

I told them that it is humane to help someone live in a house that
they own, but what is not humane are the predatory lending practices
that went along with these loans. Subprime may be dead, they may
not be issuing any more of these loans, but there are still loans
that are held, and now we are hearing about predatory foreclosure
practices. I suggested that they need to act now to stop the
bleeding.

But more than that, there are lessons to be learned from this.
These loans were high margin instruments, that is why everyone is
holding them. There was a lot of money to be made. I said that the profit
was being made on the backs of the most disenfrachised part of
society. What I didn't say, but what is true, is that many of these
loans were made to women and single parents trying to raise a
family. I told them that I support the people who spoke on issues related
to human rights and the environment, and I commended them on the
commitment they expressed toward those issues. I suggested
that social justice and social equity can be profitable--and that
when social justice is ignored, it can lead to the kind of
catastrophe that we are now experiencing.

I asked them to keep these lessons in mind in the future, and to
dedicate themselves to making Citi a leader as a company that holds
itself to the principles that profitability is not only financial,
but also reflects the principles of environmental protection and
social justice.

Win Bischoff responded very graciously, and acknowledged that indeed
lessons do need be learned for the future. Not all comments were
responded to, and I respected him taking a moment to do so.

The angry mob in the room clamoring for profits gave me a very
warm round of applause. 

So, I didn’t receive a shipment of ponies and unicorns, but at least I had my say directly. I didn’t attend the 2009 meeting, because really, that seemed like one of the least safe places on the planet to be on that day.

In case you are (ahem) curious here are the current stock prices for a few randomly selected companies:

Bank of America (BAC)             $6.12

Citi (C)                                         $25.62

Goldman Sachs (GS)                  $94.55

Morgan Stanley (MS)                $13.51

JP Morgan Chase (JPM)            $30.18

And so on. You know how to do the google thing. Ironically, I checked my brokerage account this morning and found my 1.87 shares of Citi missing. It turns out there was a 1 for 10 reverse split on Citi shares on May 9^th of 2011, which explains why Citi is trading at $25.62, and also explains why I am no longer holding a ticket to the shareholder’s meeting. Oh, and I was charged a $20 mandatory reorganization fee on my $8.25 share, which was kindly sold for me to offset the fee. So there’s that.

I am not one of the "1%" in a financial sense, but I have other privileges that I'm sure put me in the 1% globally. I have running water. I have electricity that stays on continuously. I have an education. I don't worry about bombs being dropped on my house. My life, all told, is pretty good.

That said, I have been screwed a time or two by the economy. I set out to learn more about how things work. I paid attention to my own observations as a few recessions unfolded. In the summer of 2007, I saw some things that I had seen before—and I started paying a hell of a lot of attention. In the summer of 2007, I was seriously considering leaving graduate school. I looked around at the big picture, made my own predictions about what was coming, and decided to stay put. Multiple factors went into this decision, but a huge one was the notion that I saw a bloodbath coming, and I did not want to be a new hire, in a new field, when the employment market unraveled. I made a decision on November 1^st, 2007 to seek safe harbor. On that day, the Dow closed at 13,567. Just a smidge below its all time high. So maybe I know some things, and maybe I don’t, but the headlines at the time said a lot of things that included the phrase “will be contained to sub-prime.” I think it’s clear now that those statements were wrong.

Much of my trepidation about the protests currently unfolding stems from the fact that this is a scenario I was talking about in 2007. When fuel prices were high, driving food prices high, and the market was losing hundreds of points several times a week, I imagined a scenario where milk couldn’t be had for less than ten dollars per gallon, and society as we know it would come apart at the seams in a matter of days. Having made several correct predictions to my analyst friends, some of them were starting to ask me what was coming next. (I’m not trained in finance. I am trained in data analysis.) I advised, only half jokingly, to hoard topsoil.

Thankfully, that scenario was averted. As much as everyone hates it, it was probably averted because the banks that are too big to fail were not allowed to fail. We see fewer stories now about suburbanites plowing under their yards to plant crops. Though that may be because those who weathered the storm are currently employed, and those who didn’t no longer have yards at all. In a hamfisted way, the fall was arrested. It doesn’t mean we’re in good shape.

Much of the talk recently that I have been hearing seems to suggest that there are stakeholders in the markets, and then there is the “99%.” I believe this is incorrect. When the markets fail, many, many people are hurt, because this is the system we live in, and there are very few people who are not stakeholders. When the market is unstable, companies cut back on hiring. Everyone has skin in the game.

When I hear talk about the protests being modeled on Tahir Square, my interpretation of that statement is that there is an intent to overthrow a regime. It is unclear to me which regime is in the crosshairs, but my reading is that it could be the market economy that has been barely limping along as it is.

I know that when the Dow is high, I have more employment options, so when I hear talk about a revolution…well, I’d love to hear the plan. I support a regulated market economy. Trade makes us less likely to blow each other up. We do need healthy companies for which people can work and collect a salary. Having rejected socialized medicine, these companies are providing access to modern medicine for nearly everyone who has such access. I reject the romanticized notion of a revolution. We live in a place where we can take running water and continuous electricity for granted. We know nothing of revolution.

We are talking about a system that is complex at a level that I doubt any one person can fully grasp. It needs reform. It was predictable that we would arrive at a point where people are in the street. Things can go well, or they can go badly from this point. We need to be careful. If things go badly, my best advice will be—hoard topsoil.

I am conflicted about nearly every aspect of the Occupy Wall Street protests, which does not mean I am conflicted about the underlying issues, but rather about the best course of action to achieve equitable solutions that will work.

Nothing about this surprises me, except that it has taken this long to begin. I expect that this will be the first in a series of posts, and I expect that at some point I will go downtown and see what is going on for myself. As an observer.

I am not opposed to what is happening, as long as it is non-violent. I am concerned about how it will play out. I have been tracking the issues that are now coming to the forefront for a very long time. No aspect of this is simple. The guiding principle that I keep in mind is sustainability. The economy has been operating in a fashion that is unsustainable for “the 99%” and so here we are. I’m surprised it has taken this long.

I am likely to play the contrarian. These protests didn’t start when it was the “45%” or the “75%” who were disenfranchised. It’s probably a good time to get a good discussion going, because frankly, as a society, no one wants to identify as anything less than upper middle class. The underlying numbers have been saying for a long time that the majority of people in the US were not trending in a good direction, economically. Austerity has only been in fashion since 2008. So now there seems to be a critical mass. That is good news for people who were in a world of hurt long before 2008.

Healthcare became a middle class issue in 2001 when professionals were laid off en masse and lost employer sponsored healthcare insurance. Prior to that, access to healthcare was largely looked upon as an issue that affected only the poverty class—the group that almost no one self identified as belonging to, regardless of income level. Until now, there has been no coalition willing to self identify as disenfranchised and work for a solution. This has led to many, many years of discourse in which it was fair game to marginalize those who were already struggling.

In 1996, I was in a position to not worry about money. I had more than I needed. Financial situations, good or bad, are often not permanent. I was standing in a checkout line at a grocery store. Ahead of me was a young woman, obviously distraught, buying groceries with food stamps, likely for the first time. She was confused about what she could and couldn’t buy, and she generally looked like she was having a very bad day. Maybe a very bad year. The cashier gave her a hard time. The other customers in line were impatient, and taking no pains to hide it. When she left, the cashier engaged the other customers in a conversation the goal of which was to further humiliate this young woman in her absence. I put a stop to that, shamed the cashier, went home and called her manger. I remember telling him that no one knows what could befall them. “That could be you.”

Apparently, we’re finally awake. It took long enough. Discontent has been brewing for a long time, but it took massive numbers of people who were previously employed being shut out of the system to get there. When things get better—which I hope they do—it might be worth remembering that there is a critical number of people who have to suffer before the suffering becomes an issue. It’s worth asking what that number is. Or should be.

Hi friends, do you have a moment? I’d like to make an introduction, and give you a chance to help bring some smiles to some people I care about.

A few years back, I reconnected with Cecily, a friend of mine going way back to freshman year in college. Through the wonders of the Internet, I saw the joy as she and her husband welcomed their son, Oliver, and the light he brought into their lives.

 Then one day, this…

Oliver was diagnosed with hepatoblastoma, which later metastasized to multiple locations.

More than a year later, after many rounds of chemotherapy, multiple surgeries, harrowing days and nights, but most of all, unwavering love and courage, there is some good news. Oliver’s dad, Bill, has been chronicling Oliver’s story here.

The Make-a-Wish Foundation is a wonderful group that works to bring some fun to kids and families going through cancer treatment…but they can only do so much. Oliver’s wish was to swim in the ocean. San Francisco does have ocean, but it’s not exactly swimmable (brrrr), so his parents wisely revised that wish to specify a warm ocean. Kids undergoing cancer treatment also typically have a central line inserted surgically to administer chemotherapy and for the many (many) blood draws that are necessary. Along with this comes a risk of infection, so Oliver needs a custom drysuit to keep the insertion site dry.

This was all beyond what the Make-a-Wish foundation could do, so someone else stepped in and decided to raise funds to send them all to Hawaii. Cecily and Bill asked that any additional donations go to the Hepatoblastoma Foundation and Children’s Hospital Oakland Foundation.

The website for donations is here.

One of the wonderful things about this time we’re living in is the ability to crowd source goodwill, so if you can share a bit, please do.

Just look at this face!

In the rush, and the stress of the holidays, and all the madness that can bring…if you and your loved ones have good health, please take a moment to be thankful for that. If that isn’t something you can take for granted, cherish the people close to you and love each other well. And if the season is tough, as it sometimes can be, give a shout out, because I guarantee there are people who care.

Be well, and be thankful for all the things we can take for granted, no matter how big or how small.

I’m getting killed here. In a good way. Emotional sucker punches, from out of the blue. It might be time to write a bit.

Someone asked me earlier this week why I don’t just delete my Facebook account, given the level of annoying it has managed to embrace. I found one good reason to keep it when an old friend posted a picture I had never seen before of my sister in 1988. Another friend just posted another picture. I’m a complete mess. But in a good way.

Here they are.

This was my sister, Linda Parmalee. She was amazing. I miss her constantly. I feel far more alone in this world because she’s not in it. She was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia when she had just turned 15. She made it through chemotherapy, septicemia, and pneumonia. Seven months into treatment, after several chemotherapy regimens, she went into a partial remission. A bone marrow transplant would have been an option at that point, but I wasn’t a match. Two months later, the chemotherapy stopped working, we ran out of drugs to try, and her white blood cell counts skyrocketed. We lost her six weeks before her sixteenth birthday.

Sometimes I forget why research seemed like a good idea. Often—very often—it feels like it’s just about careers, checking off boxes, moving forward to secure a position, status, tenure, security. You know. A career. A thing that is focused around individuals, not around passion for something larger and more important.

What kept me going when everything was hard and other people around me were dropping out, at every stage, was the absolute knowledge that it is about something more important than me.

It's a privilege to be able to do something that stands a chance of making the world a better place.

Don’t wait. Do something extraordinary. Change the world.

And also—don’t waste a chance to tell the people who are most important to you how much you love them. Ever.

Find me on twitter @nparmalee

Where does it come from? And where does it go?

In a past life, I taught writing. Prior to that, I had a significant reserve of disdain for the shelf space in bookstores devoted to writing reference books of the “This is How to Write,” variety. I was of the mind that if one had to read about how to do it, the fire wasn’t there to begin with and it was a pointless exercise. I still believe there is a kernel of truth in that (the saying is “A writer writes,” not “A writer reads about writing and twiddles their thumbs.”) Then I was given the task of teaching non-writers how to write.

I confess, my library of writing reference books can now be measured in shelf feet. Maybe the definition of a writer should be that the ratio of the volume of their published work to the volume of their reference materials should be, if not positive, at least a real number. There’s an easy fix for that, but I’m going to say for my own purposes that giving away all the reference materials would be a cheat.

I let go of the idea that writing can’t be taught. It can be taught. I started plowing through books about writing, looking for solid techniques I could use. The most common, agonizing, complaint I heard from students was that they didn’t know how to start. I empathize. That feeling comes and goes, but the intimidation of the blank page is something that every writer has faced.

I started collecting books on writing by authors I had read and appreciated. I was surprised at how many well-known, successful writers had written about writing. Nearly every author wrote about the experience of being stuck, blocked, abandoned by the muse. I began to suspect a pattern. A theme emerged. Faced with a blank page, the advice was stunningly simple, in every case. Write. Fill it up. Mar the void, kill the emptiness. Just write. Worry later about what was there, because at that point, the page will no longer be blank. That problem will be in the past, one hurdle overcome. What do working writers write about when they don’t know what to write? Apparently, they write about writing. Then they publish those books. And move on. Nice trick. Despite feeling somewhat hoodwinked at being summoned unwittingly into the pages of someone’s therapy session, I’m perfectly willing to steal that.

What about focus?

I read this article this morning about the Yankee’s pitcher, Mariano Rivera. Dead calm. Control. Unfazed by pressure. Focus. His teammate, Alex Rodriguez, said of him “I don’t think he knows what pressure means.” I suspect that’s an oversimplification.

Watch athletes who are at the top of their game. Olympic gold medalists, champion players in any field. Look at their faces going into battle. They are somewhere else, and at the same time, fully present in the moment. They can already see the win. Where does it come from? One could say it comes from confidence, from the knowledge that they can deliver, but that doesn’t work, because the logic is circular. They knew before. That’s how they got there to begin with. Before there was evidence, before the outcome was certain, the certainty was there. Supreme effort looks effortless.

The Rivera article mentioned what the pitcher lacks: A soul “divided against itself.” I would argue that supreme focus comes from unity of purpose. Outcomes are never certain. Winners sometimes lose. Winners shake it off.

I once had the pleasure of knowing an award winning cameraman on an award winning show. They shot two episodes daily during the season. The show aired mostly unedited. The place and time where I took breaks from my job was on a rooftop where the crew from that show would hang out before taping and in between shows. This cameraman would sit apart, by himself, staring out over the vista. People who know how to win, tend to share. One piece of advice he shared with me was to let the mistakes go. Mistakes happen. He told me that was why he was sitting there. To let go of anything that happened in the previous taping that he wasn’t pleased with. To not carry it into the next round. What’s done is done. Be at the top of your game, every minute of every game. Be present. One task only, the task at hand. He was rehearsing in his mind, visualizing the outcome. He was looking at the view, but he was seeing something else.

Watch the eyes. The eyes tell the story. Action follows. There’s a wonderful book called Zen in the Art of Archery. It talks about how to hit a target. It’s only tangentially related to bows and arrows. It’s about the arrow landing before it is ever released from the bow. It’s about seeing the outcome before it happens. It was recommended to me by a photography teacher, who taught as much about life as about photography. The lesson was particularly relevant in making images. If you don’t see the image before you press the shutter, the outcome will be random. Without intention, without visualizing the final image before making it, firing the shot, pressing the shuttle release, will be as effective as releasing an arrow without knowing where you want it to go. I found that to be true. I stopped making images without knowing what the image was going to look like. Technique followed. Over time, I learned to see first what I wanted to be in the final image. Then I learned how to put it there. The distance between me and my subject collapsed. The arrow was in the target before it left the bow. And my photography also improved.

Unity of purpose is vision. The soul undivided. Watch the athlete, or if you have a chance, the actor, or musician, or dancer, before a performance. You can watch them, but they won’t see you. You are not in their final image—unless that is, you happen to be a competitor, a rival, or a teammate.

Where does it come from? The certainty, the vision, the unity of thought and purpose? That’s the question, isn’t it? A photographer walks the same streets, the same landscapes as everyone else—but they see something that no one else sees. Something that is already there, waiting to be revealed. That’s the difference. They see it, and then they make it. The certainty is there before the event, the outcome is written before it happens. The arrow is in the target before it is released from the bow.

Mark Twain said: “You can’t depend on your judgment when your imagination is out of focus.”

If a writer, stuck, writes about writing to return to writing, what does one do when their focus is out of focus?

Focus. On focusing.

Just a quick note to share with you a special evening. Rebecca Skloot’s book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks goes on sale tomorrow, and judging from the impact it has already made on those who have read advance copies, it can’t be denied that this is an important book.

Rebecca tells the story of the cells that became known as HeLa, the woman they came from, the family that survived that woman, and her own journey with that family in telling their story.

Tonight I had a chance to meet Rebecca, and also to meet Sonny, Henrietta’s son, and his two daughters, Henrietta's granddaughters. Their family has touched us all in ways most of us never knew.

I almost didn’t go. I was in lab, deadlines are upon me, science needs to be done, and science needs to be written up and communicated. I am under pressure. This is my life. I lose touch with friends, family, and not infrequently these days, I lose touch with why I’m doing this in the first place.

HeLa cells are cells that were taken from a cancerous cervical tumor in the early 1950s. It’s probably safe to say that nearly every scientist working in the life sciences today has interacted with these cells at some point in their career or in their education. The first time I saw them was in a lab course early in my college career. If I remember correctly, we used them to study cell division. The instructor told us that the name of the cells came from the name of the woman they came from: Henrietta Lacks, and that she died from her cancer, but her cells lived on.

My own sister had died from leukemia five years earlier, when she was 15. I felt a sense of awe that something of this woman had survived, and nearly half a century later, was contributing to the quest to understand more about how things go wrong in the first place, and hopefully how to set them right. I was able to tell the Lacks family tonight that I felt respect and gratitude that this had been shared. I didn’t know at the time that they weren’t included in this decision. It was humbling to be able to thank them in person, many years after the fact.

I’ve always been touched that the cell line kept part of Henrietta’s name—enough to allow her story to be told. Enough to maintain a connection to the human being who was more than cells. I work with a cell line called ARPE-19. RPE is for retinal pigment epithelium—the cells that line the back of the retina and support the photoreceptors that let us see the world. Nineteen is for the age of the young man who died in a motorcycle accident before his RPE was harvested. These cells are helping to cure many forms of blindness.

I wondered about Henrietta Lacks, as I’m sure many others have. Rebecca Skloot wondered too—but she didn’t stop wondering, and now we have a story that will make Henrietta Lacks immortal in a way that her cells alone never could.

It’s easy to forget that science is a human endeavor. Death is a part of life, but it’s never an easy one. Everyone who passes through this world changes it, no matter how brief their stay.

I’m glad I put off two hours of work tonight to put the connections back together. Science starts with people, our common problems, hopes, tragedies, aspirations. Each one is a story, with a face, a family, a name. We work, we struggle, and we strive as humans.

Somewhere, on any given day, there is a story that doesn’t happen. A child, a mother, a father, a sister, goes home to their family after a successful treatment and carries on their life. For those of us who have stories we tell—or don’t tell—about someone who left us too soon—I like to think about the people we will never know for whom science intervened. I like to think about the stories of loss and sadness that didn’t happen.

It’s a human thing we do. It’s too easy to forget sometimes. Thankfully, to remind us, we have writers like Rebecca Skloot.

http://rebeccaskloot.com/

http://rebeccaskloot.com/book-special-features/henrietta-lacks-foundation/

Find me on twitter @nparmalee

I’m responding to a news article about a new book promoting the idea that innate differences in ability account for the difference in the number of women and men in science.

 I’m not going to link to it. I’m not going to name it. I’m not going to promote it in any other tangential way. The idea is already out there, and I don’t think it needs elaboration.

 I am going to begin by reframing the premise. “Innate differences in ability between women and men in regard to science” is another way of saying “women are not as good at science as men.” Let’s begin by speaking clearly. Let’s be less euphemistic. Let’s not beat around the bush.

 I’ve spoken and tweeted about these issues many times. I’ve finally been moved to write about my position a bit more fully.

 I don’t believe we will win this war. I don’t believe we will change hearts. We may quiet the sentiment, but that doesn’t make it go away. Words unspoken can’t be challenged. Thoughts and deeds can often do even more harm when they are obscured, because there is nothing tangible to grasp onto to fight against. I’m being realistic here.

What are the issues? The attrition rate of women in science grows as one inspects the ranks from bottom to top. The proportion of women interested in science in high school is not the problem. Women are earning undergraduate degrees at comparable rates to their male counterparts. Women drop out (or are forced out) somewhere between undergraduate graduation and tenure. That is one issue. Another issue is that we don’t know what to do about it.

Many things are discussed—the burden of balancing career and family, bias in professional life, the simultaneous deafening tick of both the tenure clock and the biological clock—but we still don’t know what to do.

I have solutions to propose. I have a perspective that I believe can inform these issues. I would like to share my thoughts with you for your consideration.

A bit about me. I’m a single mother of two in the sixth year of my PhD at a large research university. As a statistical entity in the framework of this conversation—I don’t exist. If women are underrepresented in science, and if (married) women with children are presumably even more underrepresented, I’ll bet the bank that single women raising children (without the benefit of a trust fund) are effectively nonexistent.

What this means is that if there is a “women’s” issue, which is in most (but not all) cases a “family” issue, chances are good that I’ve seen it, felt it, tasted it, chewed on it, and because I’m still here, found a way around it. I am qualified to speak on these issues. I’ve paid my dues.

I was forced out of science once because my family responsibilities could not be accommodated. I clawed my way back. I was fortunate to find an open door.

The essence of my advice is this:

We will not make progress on the issue of women in science until we stop viewing these as women’s issues.

I say that for a number of reasons, but top on my list today is the book that inspired me to write about this.  I can’t solve hatred, bias, and ignorance. I can take a good crack at the mechanics of institutions.

Let’s look at the issues that are easiest to deal with: families… Well, let’s stop there, actually. Tossing aside the idea that women are stupider than men in science, because I won’t justify that, the biologically obvious difference is that women give birth to babies and men don’t. Let’s deal with that.

Families should have the liberty to make reasonable choices without sacrificing career as long as the work gets done. It’s no one else’s business what those choices are.

A demanding and challenging career, well, demands and challenges. By definition, we’re supposed to be smart people, so get creative.

How are women going to figure out how to balance career and family?

Wait. Hold on. Full stop. This is where I get completely confused by this whole thing. I’m a biologist. In genetics, even. Human genetics. Last I checked, biologically, it takes a mother and a father to make a baby. Why are the men not a part of this conversation?

Two points, in no particular order.

1. I know a lot of men who are the primary caregivers for their children. I know a lot more who would like to be, or who are, or would like to be, equally responsible for the upbringing of their children.
2. Mothers (and potential mothers), do you really want to change every last diaper yourself? Do you want to be the only parent considered as we talk about families? Do you always want to be the one who sacrifices when there is a choice to be made about career and family?

Let’s start with the premise that men want to be involved, and let’s include them. I think it’s the right thing on every level, and if we start with that presumption, we just reduced by 50% the amount of burden we’re talking about.

God, that was easy.

So now we’re not talking about women balancing career and family. We’re talking about humans balancing career and family. How does this change things?

A lab is like a small business. A small business perennially in start up mode, because funding is never secure for more than a few years at a time. Small businesses are exempt from several employment mandates, because they are less able to bear the burden of regulation. Everyone has to give their all at all times. We’re not going to change that. A lab manager—a good hearted lab manager who wants to do the right thing (I’ve heard them say it)—feels the impact, or the potential impact of a woman taking maternity leave. It takes about two weeks to recover from delivery, and nursing is a personal choice that can be accommodated in many ways. The greater fear is loss of productivity through infancy and the toddler years. That’s not a biological question. If one assumes (mandates, legislates, accepts) that men will assume an equal responsibility, then there is no reason to see women and men differently over the course of years in this regard. Families can choose what works best for them. My son was kind enough to be born on the first Sunday of spring break and I was back in class the next week. It was important to me. We made our choices.

The institutional accommodations that need to be made to allow families to make their own choices through early childhood and beyond are no longer “women’s issues.” They are universal issues.

A lot of men, in my experience most men, are on the right side of these issues. Building silos where we talk about “women’s needs” shuts them out as allies, and also leaves their human needs unaddressed, and I think that’s a bad plan for both humanistic and tactical reasons, so we gain strength and resources by including them, and conveniently, it’s the right thing to do.

How much of the problem just went away? Institutions need to accommodate the fact that employees and students have babies.

Now we need to look at issues that fall along the lines of employees and students with families, and those without. Not everyone will want to be a parent, but many will, and those that won’t may still have issues related to aging parents that require time off, nursing or other supervised care, financial burdens, and unexpected events.

Have we included everyone in this conversation yet? Pretty close, I’d say. So we can either have institutions that accept the fact that human beings are born, give birth, get sick, age, and die, or we can have institutions in which it’s a bloodthirsty fight to the death, we leave our fallen where they lie, and nothing, absolutely nothing, will stand in the way of work.

Take a moment. Debate this.

Okay, now stop.

It’s been decided. It’s moot. We have laws against gender and family discrimination. The president of my university stated publicly that this institution acknowledges these issues and chooses to accommodate them. We are past that question. We’re not going back.

The mechanics are easy in comparison. Many people say it’s difficult because it comes down to money. Money helps, to be sure. The lack of money hurts, to be sure. But we’re no longer talking about giving or taking money to or from women. We’re talking about creating professional and educational spaces that are good places to work. There’s a list every year of the 100 Best Places to Work. Some of the solutions they implement require money. I argue that most of the issues are problems that come from attitude.

So it comes back to where I started. We can’t change hearts. But we can change behaviors. We can let women know that they are not a problem. We can institutionally mandate a position of acceptance. Some women choose to leave, some are forced out, but I’ll bet the majority give up out of a sense of futility and find other ways to live.

I was balancing a tedious family issue sometime after Lawrence Summers said that women might not be intellectually equipped for science. After the time the president of my university said that this institution does not take that stance, that women are supported fully here. I went to my administration and said, “this issue does not accommodate my needs, and the president said I have a place here…so you figure it out.” And you know what? They did. Give people a chance and good people will come through, even when it’s hard.

Thanks, Larry.

Remove the confounding issues and then we can talk about the differences in innate ability. But really—we won’t care anymore. Give me one tenth of the money that is being spent to study these issues, and I will solve the issues. Give me the other ninety percent, and I will give you science.

Then, can we please just shut up about it?

Find me on twitter @nparmalee.