Women’s Bodies and Field Geoscience: Thoughts of a Zaftig Geologist

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If you’re shaped like a woman it’s really freaking hard to be a field scientist.

Science has a leaky pipeline; it loses women at every step of the education and career ladder, so that at the top there are very few left.  In the US, efforts to encourage more women into STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) include programs like “Expanding Your Horizons”, which targets girls in middle school and shows them what it’s like to work in STEM fields.  In high school and college there are now more and more resources dedicated to supporting women in underrepresented majors like Physics, Chemistry, Integrative Biology, and Earth and Planetary sciences.

But what happens when you graduate and actually go into the workforce?

I graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014 with an Honors degree in Geology. I worked at a National Laboratory (where US government research happens) right out of uni and found the culture to be stubborn, set in its ways and very old-fashioned. I came back to California and pivoted out of the “Ivory Tower¹” of academic research, journeying down into the weeds with environmental consulting. I became a field geologist.

I quickly found that field sciences are about bodies. The baseline job description requires the ability to lift 50lb or more, and to readily walk 10 miles a day. Environmental consulting is part construction work, part professional Tetris player, part truck driver and part customer service, tossed in with a healthy helping of Excel wizardry. No one told me when I graduated as a scientist that my uniform would be a high-vis vest and a hard hat, not a lab coat. I understood that my career would be more challenging because of my gender, but I didn’t initially get how much of that challenge would be around my body.

Many of the challenges I’ve experienced as a scientist relate to sexism and fatphobia. Shame and isolation around these topics prevent them from being broadly discussed and addressed. Being a fat woman in America, my relationship with my body has never been a comfortable one. I’ve always been curvy- or as my husband affectionately calls me, “zaftig” (Yiddish for “pleasantly plump”). I’ve always been active and strong, but more pack mule than thoroughbred. I inherited generations of internalized fat shame and self-loathing from a family of zaftig women. I absorbed an unhealthy ideal of self-esteem from a media that hates fat people, particularly fat women. This all isn’t helped by the fact that in my industry, the way society sees women cause real problems. For example, adequate clothing is challenging to obtain, and assumptions around ability do not match the reality of what is required to be good at the job.

Clothing

For an industry based on bodies and physical work, environmental geoscience and other field sciences are horrendously lacking in adequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for women. This has been noted in other fields, like astronomy, when America failed to send an all-women crew of astronauts because they didn’t make enough spacesuits for women. Most of the time our plight isn’t that dramatic: it’s two pockets in your pants instead of the six that come as standard in men’s work pants. It’s needing to pack three tyvek suits for a job that requires hazmat² Level C PPE  job because you know the first two will break whenever you bend over…which is inevitable to do at least twice.

I have directed much of my ire and resources towards finding adequate pants. Fast fashion is not designed for those of us with a badonkadonk³. My current record on field pants is four weeks. Four weeks: from purchasing a pair of pants at Target brand new, to when they ripped at the crotch during a drill job with a crew of all men with no private area to change. I alternate between super cheap threads from Target and high-end designer brands like Naked and Famous. I’m trying to pivot into field brands like Dovetail but honestly I had to put together a GoFundMe to afford them. Most of my colleagues who are men don’t even know this is a problem; they regularly buy $15 thrift store jeans that last them years.

So now that we’re dressed for work, let’s go into the field!

Assumptions:

Every job in environmental consulting and most corollary industries like rental equipment and drilling have stated requirements in job descriptions that applicants must be able to comfortably lift 50 lbs, minimum. In the words of a weightlifting trainer I once knew, in order to lift heavy you need to “have the body of a refrigerator”. Regularly lifting 50-100 pounds safely requires a complimentary amount of fat to one’s muscle. Women are generally penalized for having a figure other than soft-stomached hourglass. Having fat on one’s thighs and core to protect frequently used musculature pushes a woman into the “unfeminine” “ungainly” and sometimes straight-up “ugly” category. Being physically strong is immediately at odds with the Western mainstream concept of beauty, and this takes a toll on us strong, large women.

Field geology, as an industry, focuses a lot on skills like physical strength because it is easy to measure. Early career success relies on allocating energy throughout the day matched with endurance to perform the work. Newcomers need to prove their physical abilities. But you cannot advance your career on fieldwork alone. Being good at logistics and maintaining complex relationships are also part of success. Most of a typical field event’s success is measured in how much work can be done beforehand and how smoothly a field staff’s actions correlate to plan. Basing long-term assumptions only on physical strength misses key aspects of being a consultant.

Then there is the cherry on top: the double standard to be strong and active enough to do the work, but also to be attractive enough that you look good representing your company. This double standard can quickly devolve into victim blaming when a woman colleague is too pretty and gets harassed⁴.

Isolation vs Solutions

Fatphobia-based shame lies at the core of many negative experiences I’ve navigated in this industry. As a fat woman, I was taught to make myself small and not draw attention to myself, especially to my body. Being overweight is falsely linked to a lack of morality. Brené Brown writes about ‘shame shrivelling’, and how shame loses its grip on our psyche when we shine a light upon it. Though it’s been a challenge, I’ve started discussing body-based issues I have more regularly in my workplace. I haven’t let my shame around my body overpower getting my needs met. I’ve had outstanding mentors who have supported me and helped me break through my own stigma around my body.

When we are bullied or marginalized in our place of work we become more and more isolated in our experience. If we are never able to share our pain, we can talk ourselves into thinking it’s in our head. Or worse, we can be gaslit into thinking it’s our fault that we have problems. It’s not our fault. We exist in a society that is not built for us, and it’s normal that we experience pain trying to fit in where we do not fit. Being strong enough to do our job is a feature, not a bug.

Instead of using shame as a motivator, let’s instead use this opportunity to create community. Focus on developing the full skillset of each junior level employee instead of physical abilities alone. Create standardization around industry processes and not just product quality. When discussing work/life balance, let’s plan around an employee’s ability to access healthy food and get enough sleep. And most importantly: let’s treat junior staff like they will run the firm some day, because they will.

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Some useful terms!

¹Ivory Tower : a term used to describe academics who hold themselves in a state of privilege above others, often with a highly specialised focus

²Hazmat refers to any job that involves hazardous materials. In the US this type of work is regulated by Title 29 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 1910.120, also known as OSHA’s Hazwoper. Training on this code teaches users how to act with hazardous materials ranging from biohazards to nuclear waste.

³Slang for large booty!

⁴Geoscience as well as many other field sciences have been studied for various types of harassment and it has shown to be a major concern across the industry.