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Women in Science Now - Lisa Munoz ***

This is not the first book to be published on women in science - a few months ago we had Athene Donald's excellent Not Just for the Boys, which put across across the picture of gender inequality in STEM, and how to address it, very clearly and effectively. This book attempts to do a similar thing, but does so in a way that will appeal to a different kind of audience - unfortunately I'm not part of that audience.

What Lisa Munoz does is give us a series of portraits (including literal sketches) of female scientists, grouped in nine sections all titled Fixing X, where X ranges from representation, signals and recruitment to environments and visibility. We get a strong feeling for the experiences of individual scientists, the struggles they have had, and the opposition they have faced. As often is the case, the book is far stronger on experiences than it is on solutions. 

The whole thing is pulled together in four pages of 'key takeaways' at the back - the suggestions for ways of realistically fixing things, apart from the positive direction we've already seen seem very limited. There are, as mentioned in the subtitle, strategies introduced along the way, but this is very centred on the individual, rather than giving a big picture fix, where the problem itself is more in the hands of the academic establishment than individual scientists.

The book made me think of the way that the marketing of charities has changed over the years. It used to primarily take an intellectual view, giving us the overview picture and statistics. Now it has shifted to the emotive view, giving us photographs and details of individual sufferers and what they have gone through. I've always found this approach uncomfortably manipulative - and to an extent I felt this about the style of Women in Science Now too. I preferred Donald's straightforward viewpoint. 

There is, of course, a reason that charity marketing has changed. Personalising stories does work in terms of getting people on side. But in a charity appeal, you will be told the story of one or two individuals.  Here there are far too many to engage with. Even if I liked this approach, I would be overwhelmed by the number of different characters that are introduced.

It's an important cause, and there are some very effective stories here. But I'm not sure the format of the book does the topic justice.

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Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here
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