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Today, we are doing our monthly installment of 科学系ポッドキャスト企画です。
This time, the host of this 企画 is れんさん from さんえんトーク, which you conveniently
have the same name, but he spelled his name with an R, so he's technically more like
Ren than Len. But you guys are both Len if you just make it into katakana hyouki, so
basically, you're the host. Well, wait a minute now. I didn't ask for that responsibility.
I will leave it up to Ren for that responsibility.
So for the month of August, he has set 女性の活躍 as the theme of the month. Is that what
you were thinking of for a Japanese translation when I said female empowerment as a theme?
That's a good question. What was the second word again?
女性の活躍
女性の活躍だから
The impressive things that a particular group is doing, that's the vibe I get from that.
I mean, that's sort of the correct quote-unquote translation. But I just took it as female
empowerment. I think it has a nicer ring to it.
Specifically, he has a tagline.
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So we can talk about
I guess this is a pretty broad topic. We could go any which way. So thank you, Ren-san, for
setting this topic. I think, you know, we've done a few installments of 科学系ポッドキャスト.
And I think this might be the first one that we explicitly talk about women in this
sort of monthly installment as a theme, which is interesting. But I don't know. I think
I sadly am conditioned to think more about the problems that we're still facing than sort of
empowerment, positive things. But I think it's safe to say that life for women in general has gone a lot better
in multiple different ways, generally speaking. Wow, we can make credit cards under our names.
That didn't happen until, what, the 60s, 70s? I was surprised how recent that was in America.
Especially within, I think, the generational bubble that you and I sit in, as far as generations go.
It's really recent. It's, like, scarily recent. Yeah, a lot of stuff is, in fact. A lot of stuff we consider normal.
Super recent. So, you know, very grateful to be alive today as a woman, rather than, you know, a few decades ago.
But just so, like, specifically to, you know, since we're technically a kagakukei podcast, I thought, you know,
why the hell not look up some... Some shoutouts. Some shoutouts. And where do I go?
It's the most obvious place to go is the Nobel Prize laureate, you know, sort of like the pinnacle of maximum
high-impact awards that one can get as a scientist, possibly. And again, considering how long the Nobel Prize has been going on,
it's a very, very short list that I have here. Am I surprised? Not really. But let's just...
We did just note how recent everything else was, right? So with that in mind.
I think the sort of the pattern, at least in sort of the... So I'm not looking at the literature and a peace prize.
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I'm just looking at... I'm not even looking at the economics prize. I'm looking at the physiology of medicine and physics and chemistry.
And I think the funny trend that I observe across these disciplines is that there's like one or two fluke of a person that showed up getting like snatching those first ones.
And by the way, the first one for physics and first one for chemistry is awarded to the famous Madame Curie.
Ah, of course.
And she got those in 1903 as a physics and 1911 in chemistry.
Right, you did both.
I have to... So I'm looking at physics, right? After 1903 by Madame Curie, it took 60 years for the next person who is kind of...
Who is kind of like in my PhD fields, like fairy godmother, Maria Goppermeier, who came out with the...
She did a lot of... I mean, what she's awarded for is on discoveries concerning nuclear shell structures.
But what she's famous for in my field is doing a lot of works on two photon cross sections.
So two photon, multi-photon cross sections is what I think of her when I think of Goppermeier.
She even has a unit named after her, even though nobody really uses it.
I was going to say, I don't know what the unit is, but all right.
It's the unit of the cross section. It's a probabilistic unit, but it's a very weird combination of a bunch of different things.
I forgot exactly what.
Yeah, all right. Very cool.
And then after that, it's like another 50-ish years or 55 years to Donna Strickland, who is also kind of like a superstar of my field and ultra-fast field.
She got this for the method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.
She shared this award, I think, with her supervisor, Gerard Moreau.
But so few in between after the first shot.
And the first shot was fire.
But after that has been 2020 and 2023.
It's a lot shorter than 50, 60 years span.
So I can only imagine that it's going to be more that we'll see.
And I think this is not just the result of the world becoming more fairer for women.
But more women doing science, just full stop.
Kind of like the baseline population of how many women are doing scientific research has probably increased a lot since the 1903 in Madame Curie's era.
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Because I read her biography a while ago, and she was one of the first three or five students to enter university for a physics degree at all.
And we've come a long way from that.
And similar trend for chemistry.
One or two every couple of decades, sometimes two to four decades.
And then since 2000s, there's 2009, 2018, 2020, 2022.
In a shorter span where more women are being recognized at the Nobel Prize level.
So all of these are very good news to me.
I think it's only giving me more hope that science is becoming, one, more nurturing and hospitable environment for women to do research.
And two, that the world is recognizing that as well.
So I think that's good things.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's well, I definitely think it's a good thing.
I think you just neatly sort of summarize the two prong approach that I was seeing in your description, which was you're observing the overall increase in bringing in, removing the barriers that were placed there.
Right.
By those in patriarchy level societies, right?
To then have the opportunity, right?
And so that is obviously creating more room and more space.
But there's also an active awareness of it as the other prong to changing and identifying or paying attention to everyone, right?
to those that would otherwise be overlooked, which was usually women in a lot of these fields and why you see a number of articles in the past decade, at least, of women in science that have been overlooked, right?
And like could be, you know, should have more of that attention.
And the Nobel Prize is acting as like a little bit of a thermostat, if you will.
Yeah, yeah, it is.
And it's a huge sort of press power, because even the non-scientists are aware of this awards.
And, you know, people do get excited when someone from their country is nominated or get the award.
And I think what is perhaps less obvious to the non-scientific community people is that this is a huge money that you can pull as a grant.
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Yeah.
Like enough usually to like build a freaking research institute under your name.
And yeah, and that's huge.
That's like, how often do we as a scientist get the opportunity to get that kind of grant?
Very, very few in your lifetime.
So so like, not only is a great press, but it's also a great sort of career advancement.
And I'm really excited to see that these women are getting them when their career is very active, you know, not like right before they are like about to say goodbye to the earth.
Right. They're they're very, very much in the prime time of their career.
They can do so much more science with it.
So that's pretty exciting, even though I do hear that there's like a lot of, you know, you get busy with the press tour and you don't have time to do research, whatever, whatever.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's I think it's still a good kind of problem.
It's Yeah, it's it's it's a very forceful problem, if I if I may say so.
Yeah.
So that's that.
But like, let's just kind of maybe bring us back to mere mortals realm of things, because most of us, let's be honest, will probably not be nominated or get a Nobel Prize.
That's true.
And that's OK.
That doesn't mean that women aren't thriving.
You know, that doesn't mean I'm not thriving because I don't get a Nobel Prize.
That's fair.
That's fair.
Could I could I add one more addition?
Because your talk.
OK.
About Nobel Prizes.
There's a bit of information in my brain about how math isn't included.
That's true.
Math has a Fields Award.
The Fields, the Fields Medal.
Yes.
Which I had to look up to remind myself what it was called.
But that is what it is called.
Yeah.
And so I just checked now.
And so I don't have all of the detail.
But there was not any woman award winner until 2014.
Wow.
And so, you know, I think to me that does scream highly of like the resistance and the
wall to letting in women into the field of math.
Because I can imagine it.
Not even imagine it definitely does have and has had those barriers.
Yeah.
But yeah.
So so I will maybe butcher the names a little bit here, but I will try my best.
Mariam Mirzakhani, which she sadly has passed away since then, 2017.
Rather young, actually.
Iranian mathematician, professor of math at Stanford University.
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So on a whole bunch of I was going to summarize.
This is geometric theory, but it's a it's a variety of things that I'm very briefly
scanning.
I hope you do not take me at my word for this.
But there was also a second from a Ukrainian mathematician known for her work in sphere
packing.
So this is Marina Sergievna Vyazovskaya.
And how have I heard about sphere packing?
Is it because people have thought about this in like molecular level?
It's yeah, it's the arrangement of spheres within a space.
So it's, it's, yeah, it's like math at that fundamental level is so insane.
Like, I remember asking, I stumbled upon a postdoc in mathematics department while in
grad school.
And he described his research as like, I'm studying how to count.
And I'm like, what the?
Yeah, yeah.
I was like, this is the point in mathematics where it's gone so hard.
Yep.
Yep.
That I like cannot even wrap my head around like, what?
Do we not know how to count?
I thought we did.
Something tells me we don't just based off somebody being able to say my research is
about learning how to count.
I don't know where I would go with that.
Right.
All right.
Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, world is full of unknowns, I guess.
Yeah.
Even the shit that we thought we knew.
Not, not, not, not at all verified truth.
Absolutely.
That is, that is time for an educational talk in the future, I think, in terms of, you know,
allowing things to exist in ways that you continue to explore them.
But yeah, so, so Fields Medal to women 2014 and 2022.
So from, from, yeah, Iranian and Ukrainian.
So, yeah, really cool.
Nice.
So I guess, yeah, overall, you know, we are heading towards a better way.
But again, I think as a mere model, I do feel like I have an easier time as a woman born
in the 1990s, you know, doing science because I can really, you know, and I am very, very
fortunate to say that I have yet to encounter sort of obvious pushback from anyone in my
field.
But if anything, people in my field have been very encouraging.
But so I think I do feel like I have a lot easier time as a person who lives now trying
to make a career in science than another woman in few decades ago, right?
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A lot less sort of societal pressure to be not pursue science and prioritize other things
in life.
So I feel like I am very privileged to be able to kind of encouraged at early age to
do this and also be in an environment where I could pursue continuously because I think
it would have been easy to drop it off at any given point.
But somehow I'm sticking through and somehow I am getting paid doing research.
So I think I think that's nice.
And and but I do feel like I am very, very lucky few who feel like my gender has not
been the one that discouraged me.
There were so many other things that might have discouraged me from pursuing it.
But gender was not really one of them.
So for those listening, I want to just kind of caveat that right.
The whole premise of whatever I say about my own experience is from my own extremely
privileged point of view.
Sure.
And very anecdotal.
Otherwise.
Yeah.
But I think though, because I do hear some opinions, voice of people who are like, well,
lucky you.
You're one of the few women doing science.
That's why you have this position or that's why you have this opportunity that, you know,
other your male counterpart has been denied or something or they don't explicitly say
that, but they might hint at it.
Oh, and to that, I just have one answer.
And that is look at how much resources over how long the world has put on to mediocre
men.
That is so much better and nicer than the words that were going to come out of my mouth,
which had to have been removed from the recording.
So bleep bleep.
Well done.
Yeah.
That was that was good.
We don't have to practice.
Oh, wow.
You may use that phrase also elsewhere, if anyone says that.
Otherwise.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But so the problem still persists.
And I remember sharing this article with you a while ago.
The one from science.
I am your mentor, not your mother.
Right.
And the gist of the article is basically how women and female faculty especially are kind
of disproportionately expected to perform a nurturing role, like a maternal role in
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their academic advising than their male counterpart.
Yep.
And that was a really interesting thought.
I saw this as a beginning grad student.
And in our department, there were not too many female faculty, as you remember.
No.
And even less so in our sub department.
So, yeah, that might be the nature of physical chemistry.
Sadly, it I.
Well, OK, we might diverge briefly if I state this, but I think we can loop it back to the
mathematics observation where I won't be pulling on any particular resource here, but there are
particular fields that are a bit more rigid in the ways that they encounter any type of problem
or situation or changing environment.
And that rigidity is observed when the other fields are changing.
So you see a lack of perhaps that diversity in those fields.
You're planting a seed of thoughts in my head by mentioning this.
I think.
Let's see, how can I phrase this?
It's.
It's so hard to.
Talk about female empowerment.
Without factoring in these.
Sort of more subtle societal expectations and impact, like how women are generally more expected to be nurturing
than just being an expert in a field when in an advising role.
I think these are like, well, you know, from from one hand, you can say, oh, well, you made it.
You are a professor now.
Like, aren't you happy?
You like you sound like an empowered woman.
But like even when you make it to that far.
Right.
You still deal with the consequences of being sort of the minority in the immediate environment.
And this weird heterosexual expectation, the gender normed expectation that women have to suffer.
That has absolutely nothing with the productivity as a scientist.
And I know that it's harder to quantify these things.
And I know that it's and, you know, scientists, we like data.
We like quantifying things.
But like if we ignore these qualitative, subtle, yet significant impact of these things, we are completely misunderstanding the situation.
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And misinterpreting somebody's success as something else entirely.
And I don't know where I'm going with this, but my point is sometimes data is not everything.
What a beautiful point that is.
I love that point.
I think data is super important for us questioning assumptions we might make without thinking through more than just the most immediate factors.
Right. But like it's not the be all end all when it comes to trying to interact with other people.
Like we're trying to understand a person both as an individual and somebody who is surrounded by a social structure.
And these things are complicated and we do have some better understanding.
But it isn't perfect.
And I think this you've actually just opened up a moment for me to mention.
I haven't read this book, but this book has been well reviewed and talks about the data bias that exists as well between sort of like in the binary being used between women and men.
The bias that exists as a design for men, which the book is called Invisible Women, Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Carolyn Criado Perez.
I mean, it's got it's got lots of good reviews, at least on, you know, Goodreads as a platform.
And it seems to push into this type of bias within data.
I am not 100 percent sure if this is the same one that I see bits and pieces from once in a while.
But one example of this is like crash test dummies for, you know, vehicles.
Those were based basically on men and children and not women in terms of body size and type for a while.
And they've they've changed that or things like things like in the office spaces with like comfortable temperatures and whatnot.
And those those things just being kind of assumed.
And yet we realize we were totally missing the data, maybe analogously to the whole most of research is weird.
The white, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic, W.E.R.D.
So because those are the people funding the research.
Those are the people funding the research. And that's what that's what you get.
Right. When you're doing this sort of funding.
I don't want to hurt it that way.
Yeah. Yeah. But that book always have to put in there.
Yeah, exactly. This this book might do something like that.
I think it sounds interesting. I'm looking out for it.
See if I can get my hands on a copy. Maybe you can read.
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So Invisible Women with Data Bias in a World Designed for Men.
But there are a lot out there.
So, you know, as far as trying to keep having this conversation around those spaces and how to engage with people and
and the data that then we also need to remember that there's a human involved.
There is there's a lot more discussion about it. Right.
There are there are resources galore of people talking about these situations like we are.
So, yeah. And I think we sort of when we were brainstorming this topic, we sort of touched upon it.
We never really found a landing point for this.
But this is where the data bias is interesting because Japan is famously very behind the world when it comes to gender gap.
Just to give you a number.
Yeah. Let's hear it. Data.
In 2024. I don't know.
I don't know what it means when it's only July that we have a statistics for 2024.
Wait, what?
It is currently ranking 118th place on the world's gender gap index.
That is notably low.
And number one being Iceland, shout out.
But, yeah, like it's it's it's far lower than many of developing countries with supposedly a lot less educational resource than Japan does.
It is kind of mind boggling for Japan to be in this position,
given what a quality standardized education is available to the general populace.
And the overall, you know, quality of life in Japan is very high.
Yeah. Yeah, that's fair.
So, you know, what is it? What is it? What is about gender gap?
I know that it's one of the sort of like a big problem as a nation I think we're facing.
But that also means that the data bias that comes in here is that maybe what they're measuring, like what goes into this index, may not be Japanese specific idea of empowered female.
That's also very true. Yeah.
My guess is that this statistics are collected by some Western white person or entity.
And they have, you know, probably those that are higher up on this list of rankings, probably European.
And they have all these factors that, you know, I'm sure they have tried to remove the bias as much as possible and done the things.
But it's inevitable that overwhelming majority of the top 20 of them seems like most of them, except for Nicaragua, very randomly, who is ranking on sixth, are European nations.
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And I feel like that goes to show like what constitutes what constitutes empowered female or like the factors that goes into it may look a little different for Japanese people than to an Icelandic person.
And that there's a chance that that's reflected in this ranking, right?
Not to say that Japan doesn't have a problem, but to really critically engage with this statistic, we really need to know the ingredients of what goes into it.
And really know, do these ingredients match the idea of empowered female in Japan today?
You know?
Yeah, yeah.
And that's something that I think everyone should think about when they're looking at any statistics, right?
Like what goes in, what are the ingredients of this index?
But sometimes it's a lot easier to just say, oh, they rank here and just say yay or nay, depending on that.
I mean, as humans, well, not as humans, we like numbers, but as those that have found solace in numbers, it is satisfying to see the number and to say, I have a greater understanding of the world from this perspective, which, well, I automatically added that, didn't I?
From this perspective, right?
Is the key point.
We drop that part, though, when we're thinking about it.
Yeah.
So, but having said that, I think it's something to think about.
I don't know how different that is, right?
Like, what does it mean to be empowered in Japan?
And how different is that from sort of other countries' standard or other regions' sort of idea of what empowerment means?
Is empowerment measured by the number of women who get a PhD?
Or is empowerment measured in the number of women who are happy in their chosen career path with or without a PhD?
Or not even like, is it housekeeping?
Is it child raising?
You know, is it other, you know, sort of stuff that doesn't count towards sort of traditional, like, capital C career?
But we cannot really, like, measuring happiness, that's hard.
And we will, I am certain that we're not going to get an accurate data for that.
Yeah.
We have the gender gap report that you were talking about.
Is that from the World Economic Forum?
I'm not sure if it's the same one.
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I think so, yeah.
Okay.
I know that the World Economic Forum also has a happiness index.
Yeah, but how do they define happiness?
So I know this more than you might expect.
But it's old.
It's sort of old in the back of my brain.
I actually introduced this to the students in the high school when I was a chapter about happiness or something.
So I asked them to make predictions and then showed them.
In the data for that, for instance, I don't have it up right now.
We don't have to get into it.
No.
But I glanced at the gender gap one, and I think so there's some notes here.
The differences between countries within a ranking can also be, like, strikingly small.
And so, you know, plus or minus.
So I happen to have, I think it's the same one you're looking at.
Japan was 100.
I have 118 on this particular one.
Yeah, same.
Okay.
Their parity score, 0.663.
If I look up, like, you know, 20, it's, like, 0.686.
And, like, if I look down by 20, it's, like, 0.63 or, like, 62.
So on a scale of 0 to 1, right?
And so it's just an observation.
You know, we'd have to spend more time, like you're saying, with it.
What does it mean for these scores to be there?
Yeah.
But also they're kind of rough as far as things go.
118, okay, plus or minus a little bit here, maybe.
I think this is kind of off topic from the female empowerment part.
But, like, that's, like, rule number one that grad school really drilled in me on how to look at data and statistics.
I'm, like, what are the units and what's the error bar, right?
And how different is different enough?
Yeah.
And these are not easy questions to answer, depending on what you're looking at.
Maybe those 0.001 on parity score is a major change in something.
Yeah, that's true.
And, you know, without a full-fledged understanding of what goes into it and how exactly these are calculated, you cannot say one way or the other.
Yeah.
If a listener wants to read the 385-page document that we're looking at, please feel free.
But I still I think the point I made earlier still stands in that data is a representation.
And it's not a reality.
It's not.
100%.
It's just a representation.
It could be a very good representation.
It's a very good way to compare one from another.
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But, like, that doesn't tell everything.
That doesn't tell the whole story.
And as an individual human, I think what we can do better is listening to, you know, what kind of gets lost in the statistic.
Like, what sort of...
What do you call it?
Stuff that doesn't get captured in the sort of hard numbers.
Yeah.
Or something that we can be sensitive to.
And I think that maybe it starts with just better communication, empathy, kind of just putting your...
Have a slightest imagination to be in the other person's shoe.
And if I may generalize, I feel like women get a lot of training on that in growing up.
We have to constantly kind of keep an eye on these kind of qualitative cues and communications that are hard to grasp and put it into words.
To kind of gauge how the other person are feeling.
You know, are they hurt?
Are they, like, happy?
If they are hurt, why are they hurt?
And things like that.
Because that had been historically critical in our survival as a woman, usually.
Yeah.
Specifically in that case, right?
Yeah.
You've been burdened with the weight of the interaction to take all of that information in.
We had been the glue in this, like, social animals.
And that's the kind of roles that ancestral DNA have assigned to us.
And we're still doing it, you know?
And just think about how many guys get away without knowing these valuable skills of feeling out, reading the room.
Too many.
So many men get away without ever learning these skills.
Yep.
And it's because it's accepted as part of the...
Maybe the manliness vibe or whatever it might be, right?
But it's like, you don't have to do that.
Just, you know, be confrontational and aggressive and stand your ground.
And it's like, that makes you a strong, powerful individual.
And if I continue on this track, it will also go into the whole, like...
Yeah, no, this is like a whole other episode if we start talking about sort of, like, masculine versus feminine expectations and gender roles.
I do have a question that continues maybe on the empowering role here.
Okay.
So, a follow-up to what you were saying before and kind of throughout the data discussion on how does Japan, for instance, right, consider the empowerment of women to look like?
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Like, what is it that the global, the societal sense is, right?
What would we see as that?
I have minor thoughts that are very anecdotal.
So, I'd like to ask you, is there anything that you would maybe think is the focus of empowerment in, like, a Japanese discussion at the moment?
Is there particular, like, language or maybe framing around things like gender and power roles or whatever that might be?
If not, that's fine.
But if there is something, I'd be curious to learn.
So, I don't know if I have, like, the latest lingo of how to talk about gender gaps in Japan.
Sure.
And I also don't know if as Japanese society we have agreed on what empowerment looks like to a woman.
That's also interesting. So, I think, okay.
Yeah.
So, there might not be a consensus.
I don't think there is only because we're at the cusp, I think, of this generational transition of women wanted the same thing as men, like, whatever rights they had.
But then I think we're also realizing we want the same thing for some things, but we want something else, something different for some other things.
We don't all want everything that men have.
We're built different and we have different needs.
I think people are realizing that.
About fucking time, but, you know.
Yeah.
Recognition of the, like, the core sort of differences as well as perhaps the rights that everyone should have.
And I think so.
So that's why I think it's in a very, very good way.
It's complicating sort of the consensus collection of what constitutes a good sort of empowerment.
But ultimately, in my happy imaginary world, empowerment looks like empowered people can choose.
They have a choice of what they want to do at any given moment and also have the freedom to take that responsibility, take that risk.
You know, whatever the consequences.
42:00
Like, all of these are part of their choice.
Right.
With all of this responsibility and consequence that comes with it, the person is able to make a choice and live through all of the consequences and responsibility required with that choice.
Because if they cannot, due to either societal structure or personal circumstances, then that robs, like in a circular argument way, it robs the choice making part.
It doesn't let them choose in a completely free way.
But in order to make that choice, one needs to be aware of the choices available.
It's very true.
And then based on all of the consequences and risk associated with it, be able to choose.
At that point, whatever you choose is your choice.
And if you can fully own that choice, that's empowerment to me.
I like that.
I mean, obviously, that's just an opinion, but I really like that.
I think that's the focus on choice, I think is important for a lot of things.
But it's clear that choice is not available in a lot of different ways in different cultures.
Right.
So, yeah.
So whether it's not available at the stage of what are the available choices.
Right.
As well as, okay, I know what are available to me, but what can I choose?
When that's limited by external factors, I think that's also kind of impedes with your true decision making.
Yeah.
In an empowered fashion.
Right.
And, yeah, I think, I mean, that's a lot to ask, really.
I don't know.
I think that's a reasonable ask.
I think it's a reasonable ask.
I think a bunch of people.
I think it's reasonable, but it's really, really hard.
Hard.
Yeah.
It's because there is a weight of expectation and of comfort with the way that things are.
And you get a lot of response that people are afraid of change.
And also specifically in Japan, you know, if I can generalize it wildly, I think the standard education don't provide enough training in this owning of the choice part.
Okay.
I feel like there's far sort of less opportunities to be aware of different choices and a lot less experience provided to school age kids on sort of living through that consequences.
45:07
A lot of the things are set up for their success.
They're sort of like a surefire way to success.
And that's very clear.
And I think as a collectivist society like Japan, we're pretty good at agreeing on that.
Like, oh, this very narrowly defined success looks good to all of us.
Yeah.
Right.
And we like having that kind of sort of goal to go for.
And that used to work.
Post-war era, like when everyone was just like, yeah, surviving sounds good.
You know?
Yeah.
Different priorities.
Different priorities.
Now that we are able to afford this kind of huge range of options on different ways people can succeed and be happy and live their sort of fullest lives.
That sort of collectivist instinct of like, oh, but it doesn't look like this one way to succeed.
Like, that's really uncomfortable to people who are choosing the different path.
And also people surrounding them as well, maybe.
And that creates like a weird tension and pressure.
And yeah, I don't know.
I think that might be sort of like a Japan specific problem that I feel like sort of the gimukyo-iku doesn't give enough opportunities to practice that.
Yeah.
Maybe this particular version is a Japan specific problem.
I think it's probably not alone in terms of the agreement that something equals X.
Right?
Rightness or success or proper or like some agreed upon moral definition.
Right?
Yeah.
And then for those that step out of that to essentially be treated in some sort of negative way.
Right.
There's a fear of that happening.
And then there is the happening of that at a much smaller level than a national scale.
I think we can apply this to academia and specifically in terms of some situations saying professorial role is the success path.
Right.
More publication is success.
Is the success path.
Right.
You know, fake your data and just don't get caught is the success.
Anyway, that's a joke.
It's a joke.
Everyone, joke.
Don't do that.
It's a bad joke, but it's because we have a lot of problems with that because the funnel says go in this direction to succeed.
48:02
And otherwise you will not survive or you will not be part of this group.
Yes.
And that's what's kind of.
It's terrifying.
Yeah.
And to stray away from it when it's so well defined that success model is so well defined and trusted by people.
And you're mentoring the generation who's mentoring you might be very much in the era where that still apply to them.
And that was sort of that worked out for them.
But it doesn't for you.
And you might look up to this mentoring figure in so many different ways, but you just know that it's a different world that you live in.
And their success model doesn't match, even though you so want it to be.
And that's another uncomfortable sort of things to come to terms with.
Yeah.
And I think just because.
And again, this is probably not Japan specific, but I feel like sort of just by the nature of my country being relatively small in size, fairly culturally isolated, linguistically isolated.
It's very hard to sort of.
Think that there are other options.
I see.
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
So I think I think that the influence, the same thing happens in the US, in the Western countries as well, for sure.
Yeah.
But like.
Isolation is troubling.
What in Japan we call it.
I don't know.
I don't know if it's a symptom, but like you got the gist.
It's like we're so Galapagos of the culture that that's what makes us so cool.
Right. Galapagos has all these cool animals.
But it also makes us have a different ecosystem and in a very sort of self-containing ecosystem that you can, if you choose to, live your entire life without interacting with everyone else outside of it.
And in that kind of small world you're looking at, you don't realize how small your world is.
And that is one of the many good things that happened with me learning English, mastering English fluency to a certain extent, that it just like let me access to a sheer number of information that is way more available in English.
51:04
Sort of expand my horizon, if I may say so.
I think that's why I feel kind of really responsible to make English more accessible to Japanese people.
Because if anything, just to realize how small your world had been, like learn another language.
Doesn't have to be English.
It could be anything.
But like learn another language to realize how small your world has been before that language.
I want to take what you're saying and like connect them because I feel and I am certain that there is like a nice couple of connections here between the idea of accessing other languages.
Sort of breaking some of the isolation and this idea that there is also fear and things that come with that.
All of these benefit or are benefited by aiding and helping somebody to gain more choices so that they can make a decision or learn how to make a decision on their own or what they might be comfortable with.
And by doing that, you empower them.
And this is especially relevant to in the binary we're using women who have been basically removed from those choices, which shrinks and isolates those spaces in order to prevent whether intentionally air quotes or not.
Like there's this there's intentionality.
There is what I'm getting at.
But like.
To prevent the actual sort of gaining or the breaking of this and the seeing of things and that that restrains people.
And so, yeah, if you want to, as you said, you link it back to empowerment, doing these things and giving those choices creates empowerment.
It creates the ability to connect and to grow and to see other things.
I think we landed in a good place.
I didn't really plan this, but you asked me a great question of what empowerment sounds to me.
And I share my few cents.
And I want to qualify this by saying that's like one way to empower.
I don't think that's by like the only way to empower people.
Yeah.
I think one way to empower people is to have available choices and have the capacity to live through that choices.
Right.
So so that's one way.
And then to do that, I think you need to first be aware of what choices you have.
And language acquisition helps.
It helps.
It creates a space for it.
Right.
Pick a language, but it helps.
Yeah, pick anything and cling on even.
54:01
You know, I bet that opens doors to like a whole nother universe.
That is both literal and figurative, I guess, because of anyway.
But yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Doesn't matter how old you are.
It's never too late.
Pick a language.
Yeah.
And realize how fucking small your world had been before that.
Yeah.
Maybe it'll help you see some other things with a bit more.
Yeah.
And I think the more we have this kind of approach to life in general, the more women and men can be empowered.
And, you know, in my experience, empowered people generally want to empower other people, too, rather than robbing off of other people's empowerment.
Yeah.
So that's probably a good cycle to be on.
Yeah.
I both obviously hope that that is the cycle.
And I do find that somebody who somebody who recognizes the empowerment and is empowered, not maybe unaware, the unawareness can lead to continuation of problems.
Right.
But yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Definitely.
Definitely.
Yeah.
So I think it's a good place to end the episode.
Yeah.
I think it was good.
Thanks for listening to our TED talk.
It was.
This is the longest TED episode.
I'm going to have to do some major editing.
All right.
I feel like you should keep this part in.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Eigo de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
