Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Scientific 'Happy New Year' Greeting Cards

Well, probably all scientists send and get some Christmas and New Year greeting cards from their colleagues. I also got some recently and this has inspired me. This cartoon is not really a joke, just the description of some facts or things I observed. Often men (who are in the position and have a lab) send a card with their group (lab) members on it. This is normal and quite understandable, especially in the US or in other countries/institutions with well-developed lab homepages including such photos each year, etc. What I wanted to show in comparison here is what I observed about Women in Science... 1) Scientific spinsters prefer to send some cutie animal containing greeting card (having often nothing more to show related to science or their lives or their non-existing lab, because they cannot cooperate with most people in the world)... 2) Scientific moms have tendency to send cards with their family on it. Either because they want to underline that besides their carreer they do have a happy family life as well (even if they may also have a lab if they are lucky), or because their chances to (ever) have a lab are quite low since they chose to have a family (so they cannot send any lab photo). And definitely family means a lot more to them than anything else, and they WANT or LIKE to share this fact with the scientific world as well, because it is an integral and important part of their personality, and/or because they do not want to be categorized as 'scientific spinsters' or 'escorts'...

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