Latest from the Nature Careers podcast - Sexual harassment in science: tackling abusers, protecting targets, changing cultures
One of those women, Sarah Batterman, has agreed to share her account with us. Sarah is an ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist based at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, New York, and the University of Leeds, UK.
I got to meet some of the scientists whose papers I'd been reading. And I got to start doing research that has really launched me in my career and helped me get to where I am today.But I understand that some of your experiences at the institute were less positive?Yes. So definitely there’s been a lot of negative things that have happened to me, that have also impacted my career, which mainly involve sexual harassment and sexual assault.
And this carried on back to Panama, where I later went that year to do research. And he began showing me all this unwanted sexual attention that I felt super uncomfortable with. But then, you know, the negative side with that was that then I felt like I had to go along with the things that he wanted to do, that were couched as professional things, you know, “Oh, let’s go on this trip to Arizona, to this other conference. And we’ll take several days to tour around Arizona, and we’ll do research during the time, you’ll get a publication out of it. And we’ll also get to talk about that postdoc fellowship.
It was incredibly difficult. I felt very just torn up about what was happening. I felt so uncomfortable. And it ended after I was…I went to a conference, I went to AGU, the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco, and Dr. Turner was also there, and wanted me to go out drinking with him.
And I didn’t understand that, like I didn’t know why, like it was so hard to get myself to work on research from Panama, which I beat myself up about, you know, like, “Oh, you’re procrastinating on this thing, on this project.” It was almost 10 years of a lot of pain after what happened, which made a lot of my research really difficult. I estimate that I lost three of the 10 years in productivity because of what happened to me. And that, you know, that’s a lot. That, like, has a huge impact on a career.I understand that in 2020 you made the decision to file a formal complaint. How did you decide to make this step?I didn’t seek to address what had happened to me for almost a decade.
And the pattern was the same over and over and over and over again. It helped me to realize like what had fully, what had happened to me, and just, it was totally wrong. They ended up taking it very seriously. So they hired an external investigator, and they did what appeared to be a very thorough investigation.
I felt like I needed to go public with what had happened to me and, and another reason for going public was that I began to talk to more and more women who had worked at STRI, most as visiting researchers. And almost all, like over 75% of the women that I talked to, I spoke to over 30 women, and over 75% of them had had experiences of sexual harassment or sexual assault at STRI.
That was gratifying because I was mostly terrified of haters and of people threatening, and things like that. But I didn’t actually receive any negative feedbackHas reporting both to the Smithsonian, and then then more publicly had an emotional or a career cost for you?Yes, I basically spent two years reporting the sexual harassment at STRI, and then going public with the BuzzFeed story.
There were, you know, I think this gatekeeper model of power is really empowering for harassers, and so harmful for their targets. We also need to make sure we have safety standards and protocols for people who are travelling to research sites and also to conferences. Given the structural issues that Sarah mentioned, we wanted to see what has changed at STRI since the story broke.
And so it was pretty clear within a month after joining that the first 18 months, or maybe significantly longer of my tenure as director, would be devoted to and focused on these issues.Do you have a sense of why so many of these issues had gone unchecked for so long at STRI?These issues tend to stick in unfortunate places, unless you have fairly clear transparency and accounting mechanisms in place.
And so that if I receive any complaints, it can’t sit on my desk, I immediately talk to them. In addition, like, transparency is all about multiple lines of communication, and making sure we meet people where they are, right. We have clean, clear policies on how we protect individuals within our institution, how we support them.
And we desperately needed to re-establish that trust. I came in with the advantage of not being associated with the behaviours that we were really trying to combat. That, plus the BuzzFeed article, give me a remit for doing fairly large scale change, because no one could say that the old system was working.
You know, we’re not conducting a criminal investigation where we make a decision to that someone should be removed from their position or should no longer work at the Smithsonian, We’re not, you know, in the business of saying someone is innocent or guilty, That’s for a criminal case, right? That said, what we can do and what we have done in the past and say, as an institution, we are no longer associated with this individual.
And we have to make sure that doesn’t happen. It’s up to institutions to think creatively together about how we support each other to ensure that that doesn't take place. And it’s up to directors in my position and other directors around the world to ensure individually, we’re doing everything in our power within the rules and laws we are given, to ensure the safety of individuals within our institutions and far beyond them as well, to stop that from happening.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Jeff Bezos donates $12M research grant to Smithsonian museumAmazon founder Jeff Bezos donated $12 million to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute this month, funding the GEO-TREES database project at their Panama facility.
Read more »
Barbie pair that went to space now on display at the SmithsonianAfter spending a few months in low Earth orbit, two astronaut Barbies join a rare collection of the iconic space doll.
Read more »
1st Barbie dolls to fly into space make their debut at Smithsonian Air and Space MuseumRobert Pearlman is a space historian, journalist and the founder and editor of collectSPACE.com, an online publication and community devoted to space history with a particular focus on how and where space exploration intersects with pop culture. Pearlman is also a contributing writer for Space.com and co-author of 'Space Stations: The Art, Science, and Reality of Working in Space” published by Smithsonian Books in 2018. He previously developed online content for the National Space Society and Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, helped establish the space tourism company Space Adventures and currently serves on the History Committee of the American Astronautical Society, the advisory committee for The Mars Generation and leadership board of For All Moonkind. In 2009, he was inducted into the U.S. Space Camp Hall of Fame in Huntsville, Alabama. In 2021, he was honored by the American Astronautical Society with the Ordway Award for Sustained Excellence in Spaceflight History.
Read more »
Sarah Brady says she 'feels bad' for Jonah Hill after exposing textsSurf instructor and model Brady has continued to publicly discuss her relationship with actor Hill.
Read more »
Sarah Hyland Was Told She Was 'Too Old' To Audition For Haley On 'Modern Family''What people don't know is when Haley was pregnant, they made a fake prosthetic belly for when we did an ultrasound scene. I was like, 'Do I get to keep this?' And they're like, 'No.''
Read more »
Sarah Ferguson Says Princess Beatrice’s Marriage to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi Is a “Fairytale”In a post honoring the third anniversary of the couple’s pandemic appropriate wedding, the duchess also praised their abilities as parents to children Sienna and Wolfie.
Read more »