Chatting with Marlene Zuk

- It is always a pleasure to be here, says Marlene Zuk, Professor of biology at the University of California, Riverside, who joined the Centre’s researchers for a “fika” on Wednesday before leaving Uppsala.

She has been in Uppsala for a week to lecture a Ph.D. course on gender and biology, organized by the Centre’s researcher Malin Ah-King and Professor Ingrid Ahnesjö from the Department of Ecology and Genetics. The participating students came from mainly the natural sciences, most of them from biology.

- I’ve been trained as a biologist and my lectures focused on two perspectives. One of them was to emphasize women in science, their conditions, representations and the biases encountered by women doing science. Secondly, I wanted to highlight how attitudes about gender in science affect what questions we pose. But I’m always surprised when I hold courses like this. I feel I have a quite conservative approach but the students often think that my ideas are radical, Marlene Zuk says.

How to deal with criticism

When talking about the current debate regarding the financial situation for gender studies in Norway, and the critical voices raised in Sweden, Marlene Zuk can see similar things happening in the USA.

- This debate is part of a much bigger discussion, the sciences versus the humanities and social sciences. For example in the US, as a consequence of the economic situation, the discussion of the role of the humanities and social sciences is very present. People question why students should get a degree in a field where they won’t get a practical job.

She gets frustrated by the fact that people are trying to decide for others what they should study, based on ideas about what counts as "real" or "important" science. But most science could be seen as unnecessary or unimportant if we don't bother to get the whole picture.

- You can take a quotation from anywhere, for example a text about DNA-structure, and without its context it would sound like nonsense. But obviously this kind of research has changed the world.

Therefore, it is important to be respectful towards other scientists and their fields. The same goes for serious critics, who can in fact be of help in the striving for better knowledge-making. Her tip for dealing with critics or uninformed groups is to start from the basics. For example, when presenting a gender perspective to a new audience, it is helpful to start up with discussing gender bias and women in the workplace.

- Generally, people want to be fair. To present empirical data and numbers is a really good starting-point. With such a ground it is easier for people to go further in their thoughts: if this is true, and we know we have these biases, where else can we see this?

Popular author

At home, in the USA, she is currently praised for her new popular science book "Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love, and Language From the Insect World" in which she covers a variety of insect behavior, including homosexuality, gender differences, personality, decision-making, and mind-control. As a writer of this book, she is commended not only for her expertise on the matter, but also for her witty, engaging and humoristic language.

Her earlier popular science books, “Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can’t Learn about Sex from Animals”, and “Riddled With Life: Friendly Worms, Ladybug Sex and the Parasites That Make us Who We Are”, have been equally prized and she has been described as “one of the most talented scientists writing for the general public today”.

- I write popular science mainly because of two things. On a basic level, I’m being paid by the taxes of American people to do what I do and therefore it seems fair and important to share my findings to the society. At another level, it’s because I like it. It's more creative than writing academic texts and I get to meet people I would never talk to otherwise. For example, one child book author asked me to help him with the facts around a book about a bug detective. Another example is the famous actress Isabella Rosselini who contacted me to work together on a film about bugs, she says.

Recurrent visitor at the Centre

This is Marlene Zuk’s fourth time in Uppsala. Her first visit was in 2007 when she participated in a conference on gender and animals, organized by the Centre. Her collaboration with the Centre’s researcher Malin Ah-King and Professor Ingrid Ahnesjö from the Department of Ecology and Genetics started in 2009 when she lectured the first Ph.D. course on gender and biology in Uppsala, now being held for the second time. In 2010 she returned to receive an award as Honorary Doctorate at the Faculty of Science and Technology of Uppsala University.

The hope is for the Ph.D. course on gender and biology to continue and if that would be the case, Marlene Zuk will gladly return.

Visit Professor Marlene Zuk’s website at the University of California, Riverside

Read more about her new book “Sex on Six Legs”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

Read her article “Can Bugs Improve Your Sex Life?” in The Wall Street Journal August 1, 2011