I'm sure a decent proportion of scientists, mathematicians, physicists, and folks in fields that tend to be dominated by men that couldn't give a toss for the gender of their fellow researchers. They couldn't care in the least who's publishing and who else inhabits their labs. They care about the truth.
Unfortunately, it only takes a few extremely chauvinistic individuals to sour an entire field towards women. If you look through James D. Watson's book The Double Helix, you'll see dozens of disparaging references to Rosalind Franklin[1], inditing her for such crimes as not wearing enough makeup, and being a woman running a chem lab.
I think the flavor of a field can be tinted strongly by edge cases. Although it is a form of confirmation bias, I believe people can't help applying extreme behaviors by individuals to their understanding of the group. I'm sure if I heard the president of some college spouting racial epithets, I'd look a little more sternly on the college as a whole and question how it treats its students. I would make the association that if someone with these views was allowed to become an authority, if it had taken a number of people who shared these views to allow them to get there.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin Rosalind Franklin had an incredibly fascinating life, and most likely would have been credited with a Nobel prize for the discovery of the DNA helix if she hadn't died before it was awarded. She actually died of ovarian cancer, caused by the xray machinery she operated in investigating the composition of the DNA crystal.
Unfortunately, it only takes a few extremely chauvinistic individuals to sour an entire field towards women. If you look through James D. Watson's book The Double Helix, you'll see dozens of disparaging references to Rosalind Franklin[1], inditing her for such crimes as not wearing enough makeup, and being a woman running a chem lab.
I think the flavor of a field can be tinted strongly by edge cases. Although it is a form of confirmation bias, I believe people can't help applying extreme behaviors by individuals to their understanding of the group. I'm sure if I heard the president of some college spouting racial epithets, I'd look a little more sternly on the college as a whole and question how it treats its students. I would make the association that if someone with these views was allowed to become an authority, if it had taken a number of people who shared these views to allow them to get there.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin Rosalind Franklin had an incredibly fascinating life, and most likely would have been credited with a Nobel prize for the discovery of the DNA helix if she hadn't died before it was awarded. She actually died of ovarian cancer, caused by the xray machinery she operated in investigating the composition of the DNA crystal.