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Re:Rocket woman: How to cook curry and get a spacecraft into... by phendrenad2 on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @12:42PM (#17910401)
Is this headline subtly sexist..?
Re:Rocket woman: How to cook curry and get a spacecraft into... by danharaj on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @01:02PM (#17910629)
The subject matter is about a woman managing a high intensity career and taking care of a large family, so perhaps not. It's worth thinking about though.
Re:Rocket woman: How to cook curry and get a spacecraft into... by DoreenMichele on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @01:51PM (#17911171)
It's a headline about sexism.

Sometimes, erring in the direction of political correctness interferes with speaking the truth about the world as it currently exists.

Re:Rocket woman: How to cook curry and get a spacecraft into... by seeyes on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @01:54PM (#17911207)
It is also a bit stereotypical to think that an engineer woman should not be interested in cooking a meal for her family or doing chores at home. In the podcast I pointed to above - Dakshayani mentions her love for cooking and interestingly compares cooking to coding.
Re:Rocket woman: How to cook curry and get a spacecraft into... by djfm on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @02:56PM (#17911770)
I was gonna comment the same, so thanks for getting all the downvotes :)I think it's not that sexist but at first I was shocked. Now I think it is just using way too many stereotypes in one sentence. I think they realized it was sexist but thought "but we're the BBC, they will know we don't mean it like that" (which is probably true).
Re:Rocket woman: How to cook curry and get a spacecraft into... by zem on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @01:54PM (#17911216)
just the opposite - it's highlighting the sexism she has to face, where she is expected to put in a full day's work and also do housework, including cooking for eight people.
Re:Rocket woman: How to cook curry and get a spacecraft into... by pbhjpbhj on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @02:31PM (#17911565)
Presumably she had some control over her fecundity? She could also, partner with someone willing to cook meals?

The whole "demanding to spend your life in work, like men have traditionally had to do" and then complaining that now you've got work and family to manage is bizarre. There's only a certain amount of time -- spend it working or raising a family, you really have to choose.

Re:Rocket woman: How to cook curry and get a spacecraft into... by scottlamb on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @08:06PM (#17913981)
> Presumably she had some control over her fecundity? She could also, partner with someone willing to cook meals?

I wish those things could be taken for granted, but...

Fecundity: Not saying this is true for her in particular, but I suspect the woman sometimes has remarkably little say in birth control (think husbands refusing to wear a condom, doctors and pharmacists refusing to supply birth control pills, etc) or even frequency of sex (from the belief that a wife is not doing her marital duties if she refuses sex, to refusing to prosecute even violent outright rape when she does).

Partner: the article says her marriage was arranged (which I understand to be common), so I wouldn't assume she had much say in it at all:

> A year after she began working at Isro, her parents arranged her marriage to orthopaedic surgeon Dr Manjunath Basavalingappa - which meant that she suddenly had a household to run.

By the way, the article also gives a reason her husband doesn't help out with household duties (besides societal expectations that she'd do it all)...

> Dr Basavalingappa explains that as a doctor, his working day often stretches up to 18 hours, while his wife mostly worked office hours. Dakshayani seems satisfied with this explanation.

...which I find insane by itself, but it's not limited to India. I just googled "medical mistakes long shift" and found a NIH study...which defined an extended-duration shift as at least 24 hours. [1] Unsurprisingly, it found that doctors screw up less when they don't do that, and talk about setting the bar low...I'd expect >12 hours to be considered extended-duration, perhaps even 8.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1705824/

Re:Rocket woman: How to cook curry and get a spacecraft into... by starpilot on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @01:55PM (#17911238)
Is any mentioning of the sex of a person subtly sexist?
Re:Rocket woman: How to cook curry and get a spacecraft into... by iambvk on Tuesday September 04, 2018 @02:21PM (#17911479)
Not just sexist, but also demeaning - as in cooking curry is some kind of pityful/shameful thing or something.