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IZOLDA TAKÁCS: THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
of social gender presents a disadvantage to women who intend to create some¬
thing substantial and impactful as researchers:
I attended a conference where the topic was women, and all the speakers were women.
I don’t wish to be stuck in this ghetto which we seal around ourselves. Because we are
then the ones creating the glass ceiling. So I’ve stood beside the aspects of classical
equality. It might be old-fashioned, but Iam no friend of positive discrimination, the
feminist philosophy stressing or underpinning womanhood. But this is of course one
approach among many. I don’t want anyone to prioritise me as a woman: neither
as an academician nor as a conference speaker. (Subject no. 25, social sciences)
Their opinion is that there is no need to differentiate between male and
female scholars in science. Their experience does not reflect any disadvantag¬
es they have suffered due to their gender, because they have always been judged
by their publications and other achievements. If, let us say, a Hungarian name
appears on a Scientific paper abroad, it will not suggest anything about the
gender of the author to the audience:
Because if one is not well known, it virtually doesn’t matter what their name is,
meaning their gender won’t matter either. And this proves that the only important
thing is what the scholar writes down, and what formulae, abstractions, results they
have come up with. (Subject no. 31, natural sciences).
The experience of the members — being mostly representatives of natural
sciences — shows that after they had entered their particular departments and
received their degree, gender was less of an influencing factor for them as
opposed to other scientific fields.?*
It absolutely doesn’t matter who came up with a theorem or a mathematical theorem.
I had proven a certain problem, deduced it, it was published internationally and
is being quoted, they did not check who it comes from, it worked. (Subject no. 28,
natural sciences)
There is ample degree of meritocracy in our scientific field. Meaning that if someone
shows sufficient performance, it is difficult to — that is, nobody even does — raise an
argument against them. (Subject no. 22, natural sciences)
This statement is exponentially valid in the case of natural sciences, where¬
as in the authorship of literary and philosophical papers the authors themselves
283 All other female scholars agree mostly with this latter statement, as they have never experi¬
enced any gender-based disadvantages with regards to their scientific performance.
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