The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
GROWING A CONVERSATION
‘The Bearded Lady Project’ at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, related events, aim to get people talking about women and science
Denise Su has seen it, guests at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History doing a double-take as they walk through the Fawick Gallery. ¶ That space, which sits not far from where you enter the institution on Wade Oval Drive and doubles as a passageway to other areas, is home to “The Bearded Lady Project: Challenging the Face of Science.” The touring exhibit features female paleontologists — among them Su, the museum’s curator of paleobotany and paleoecology — in a series of black-and-white portrait photographs in which the women have donned facial hair.
Su, whose recent fieldwork has been in Tanzania, is sporting a thick beard and what could be described as a fairly serious handlebar mustache. She was captured in the museum’s Human Origins Gallery.
“It was not in their budget to go to Tanzania with me,” she says with a laugh, standing in front of her portrait recently.
She is referring to a trio of women: Ellen D. Currano, lead subject and project scientific consultant and a paleontologist at the University of Wyoming; Lexi Jamieson Marsh, a film director and founder and director of On Your Feet Entertainment; and Kelsey Vance, a fine-art photographer who took the portraits.
“It (started as) a conversation among friends, talking about how difficult it is to work as a woman in a man’s field,” Su says, referring to the women’s respective areas of profession. “These are all male-dominated fields.
“Paleontology, especially, is a very masculine field,” she continues. “Most of the project leaders are men.
There are women — very few.”
That is largely, she says, because field work can be tough physically. The researchers are required to do a great deal of walking and climbing, and they must go for stretches without electricity and running water as they camp near work sites.
“From a personal side of things … there’s very much a sense of, ‘I cannot show any weakness. I have to carry what my male colleagues can plus more, because otherwise I will be seen as weak and that I can’t really handle it,’” she says. “You especially feel that when you’re just beginning your career.”
Su tells a story of being part of a group that was exploring
an area of Ethiopia that added an aspect to the situation she hadn’t considered.
“I was the only woman out there, and one of the locals offered to carry my backpack for me. And I said, ‘Oh, no, I’m fine.’ — because that was always my response,” she says, noting it had 5 liters of water in it and likely weighed about 30 pounds. “He then turns around to my male colleague and says, ‘Do you want me to carry your backpack?’ And my male colleague’s answer is, ‘Oh, yeah, sure.’ And he handed it off to him. And that was a revelation to me, the way I internalize the kind of judgements that might be passed on to me.”
The two-fold mission of “The Bearded Lady Project,” which also included a 20-minute documentary by Marsh that is being shown at various points during the run that started in November and runs through Feb. 18, is to shine a light on inequities and prejudices existing in the world of science and to celebrate “the inspirational and adventurous women who choose to dedicate their lives in the search of clues to the history of life on earth,” according to its website, thebeardedladyproject.com.
At CMNH, it is a component of a larger effort called “Celebrating Women in Science,” which also includes lectures and other events.
A smaller companion exhibit also existing in the Fawick Gallery is “I Am a Woman in Science,” which spotlights women who work in science and science education at CMNH, Su among them, of course.
There is a rich history and culture of brilliant women working at CMNH, says Harvey Webster, chief wildlife officer and museum ambassador.
“We’re really proud of the fact we have been celebrating women in science for the better part of our almost hundred years of existence,” says Webster, who has been with the museum for more than four decades, before giving a number of examples that include past directors J. Mary Taylor and Evalyn Gates, who left the museum in December.
In fact, the museum this month named Sonia Winner, who joined the museum 12 months earlier as chief advancement officer, as acting CEO and executive director.
Asked if the museum prioritizes hiring women, he says simply that a candidate being female has “never been a barrier.”
“The contributions of women to science and to this institution has been vital,” he says, “almost since day one.”
For her part, Su last year copublished a paper last year in The Journal of Systematic Paleontology about a discovery by a team of which she was a part that discovered evidence one of the largest species of otter to be found. Evidence of Siamogale melilutra — about the size of a wolf at roughly 110 pounds — was discovered in the Yunnan Province, Southwestern China, according to a 2016 news
release from CMNH.
Another key component of “Celebrating Women in Science” is right around the corner: International Women and Girls in Science Day takes place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Feb. 10, at the museum.
“This is really meant to excite kids and encourage them and show the passional all these women scientists have,” Su says.
The day will include a familyfriendly panel discussion in the morning about the contributions of women to various scientific fields, several tables offering hands-on activities and staffed by scientists and science educators from multiple Northeast Ohio institutions, Su says, and in the afternoon a live stream from two female researchers from CMNH working in Australia. There will be a live questionand-answer session with them, as well as a film about the work they are doing.
“It should be a lot of fun,” she says of the day. “There will be a lot of things for kids to do and for
adults, too.”
And she uses the word “kids” because she doesn’t want parents to bring only their daughters.
“Boys are a really important part of the conversation,” she says. “Men are a really important part of the conversation.”
It is impossible not to notice “The Bearded Lady Project” and the greater “Celebrating Women in Science” at CMNH is happening at the same time as the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements are bringing a great deal of attention to issues including inequality for women in the workplace.
“It seems like everyone’s thinking about this and how it’s this idea that’s arrived at this moment in time,” she says.
Su says she is concerned about the “leaky pipeline” problem — a name given to the fact that more women drop out of higher-end educational tracts for careers in science or science education. There likely are several reasons for this, but one thing she feels she and her contemporaries can offer is guidance and support.
“I’m very lucky I’ve had mentors who’ve helped me throughout the years — both men and women — and they’ve shown me how to stay on this path. There were several points where I could have fallen off very easily,” she says. “Now I’m in a position where I can do that for the next generation, and I think it’s really important that we provide that mentorship.”
And while situations in the field have improved over time — with women such as Su being more comfortable that sometimes women do need certain accommodations associated with their gender when it comes to, say, bathroom stops and safety during hotel stays and men being more understanding of that — it remains a work in progress.
“I still run into issues when we’re out there in the field and men we’re talking to won’t talk to me,” she says. “They’ll take to my male grad student, which is fine if they want nothing to be done. It’s just this assumption I cannot be in charge because I’m a woman. Even though (the grad student) looks very young, he must be in charge because he’s a man.”
She hopes that something like “The Bearded Lady Project,” which its generally rugged portraits, isn’t seen as controversial but does open some eyes.
“This is a step. This gets people talking,” she says.
“Who is a scientist? Who is a paleontologist? It’s kind of funny, right? It’s a bunch of women with facial hair,” she says with a laugh. “Why? Why do they feel the need to put on facial hair.? Is it that they feel like they have to be men to succeed in the field?
“Those are the questions we really want people to start thinking about.”