Have you heard of Emmanuelle Charpentier? Last year (2020) she was the Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry, together with Jennifer Doudna, for the discovery of the gene scissor CRISPR/Cas9. In this blog Eva Silfver explores the gendered portrayal of Professor Charpentier in the local newspaper in Umeå, Sweden.
Women as role models
A few weeks ago, a strand on Twitter reminded me of the idea that women in science are important role models for promoting girls into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). @teknikpedagog tweeted her concerns that ‘underrepresented groups should not [have to] solve the problem with underrepresentation’.
Women scientists being role models is a well discussed topic among researchers (see Christine Middleton and Cara Gormally & Rachel Inghram). They argue that representation of women is not enough. It matters how women are represented. The video below produced by the European Union: Science: It’s a girl thing! is one example of when the (probably good) intention to attract women into science went wrong.
So, what about the representation of Nobel Prize winner Charpentier at Umeå university where she worked when she discovered the gene scissor? How was she portrayed in Västerbottens-Kuriren (VK) on 8th October 2020? I went back to the paper and read the four articles, reviewing the photos, headlines, and the text. Here is my reading
‘Touching and so very emotional’
‘Touching and so very emotional’ is the headline on the front page that is accompanied by a close-up picture showing a beautiful and smiling Charpentier holding a small Swedish flag and folk costume doll in her hand. The photo takes up almost the whole page, and the text lets us know that after several years of speculation she has now been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The photo, headline, and text position Emmanuelle Charpentier with stereotypical feminine attributes. Her curly hair adds to the impression of a young girl, as does the doll and the flag, although these symbols are probably meant primarily to highlight Sweden as an important place for Charpentier.
‘Nice, helpful and humble’
Turning to one of the articles inside the newspaper, I find one of Charpentier’s male Umeå professor colleagues testifying in line with the earlier feminised descriptions – she is not only constructed as emotional, but described as ‘nice, helpful and humble’, and ‘a person that does not emphasise herself’. She is also ‘unobtrusive, quiet and inclusive’. Although she has received several prizes for her research during the years, that has not changed her as a person, the colleague says in the interview.
Although all these are positive attributes, I think something is missing here. Nowhere is the Nobel Prize laureate associated with words like: brilliant, smart, intelligent or genius. Instead, the article goes on describing her as hardworking: ‘I rarely came to the work and Emmanuelle was not there’. The hardworking attribute attached to girls and women in science is well known in research: boys and men who succeed are seen as naturally able, often as geniuses or brilliant, while women who succeed do so because they work really hard.
At the end of the article the journalist tells us that Charpentier has no children. This note about childlessness, which was not further commented upon, can be read as representing Charpentier as an ‘appropriate’ researcher – doing as many men do. It also positions natural science research as extremely difficult, requiring all one’s time and attention to succeed. However, it also led me to think of many of my international female research colleagues who experience the need to choose between a research career and a family life.
As a geek
Charpentier is also positioned as a geek. Her male colleague, interviewed in VK says he first met her through an EU-network of ‘bacterial geeks’ (admitting that he is also a geek). Her desk, he says, looked like a ‘normal’ researcher’s: ‘quite messy on the outside but full of ideas’. This notion of researchers as on the one hand confused about everyday things, such as keeping things in order, but on the other hand fully capable of thinking deep thoughts, adds to the representation of the Nobel Prize winner as being geeky.
The geek theme also produces some kind of ‘sameness’ between the male researcher and Charpentier, as both are geeks. In that sense the text can be understood as producing scientific researchers in general as geeky, and/or suggestising that you need to be geeky, or become geeky, if you go into STEM research.
So, going back to the question of role models: is now the Nobel Prize winner a (good) role model? The framing of article by the political editor of the newspaper describes Charpentier ‘as a role model and inspiration for young people’. What do you think?