What to remember when supervising female PhD students?

My view is that her gender does not/should not change anything in how I supervise her or what I expect from her, the rationale being that doing so might ultimately hurt her in her post-PhD career. For this reason, I have not brought up her gender in any of our discussions. I briefly contemplated telling her that I will treat her the same way as her male peers, but did not do so because it seemed wrong (as in "of course, why is he telling me this?").

That is exactly the advice I would give in this situation, so congrats, you've already figured it out.

The agency that finances her project offers a special stipend to attend workshops/meetings for female students; I have encouraged her to attend.

Try not to overdo the encouragement. I get so much spam inviting me to assorted "women in engineering" events.

On a related note, you might want to watch out for the possibility that you (or your department) might have a tendency to overuse the students who are "visible" minorities (race, gender) in publicity materials and outreach events. Some people don't mind (some even appreciate this), but some dislike being used as "poster children" to show how diverse the department is. (There's a joke in this TV episode, where the African-American doctor calls out his college for overusing him in their brochure by photoshopping him into the same picture twice.)

I'm sure people must have published studies about how female PhD students are statistically more likely to have families and be concerned about work-life balance issues, and how you have to be more supportive, etc. But all that really just comes down to being communicative and supportive of your students, whatever their individual needs might be. For large numbers I'm sure there's a gender dimension there, but at the individual level it's just about being a good supervisor to an individual student.

Although the question has arisen with increasing frequency "how do I handle said female in x (male dominated) environment?", your approach to it is not common - and it fills me with hope for the future to read how you've handled it. You're doing what so few can figure out how to do - you're not treating her differently. You're holding your concerns about what that may or may not mean at bay.

Most people do one of two things: over or under compensate, and it's my experience that in this time of growing awareness about gender imbalances in certain fields, that most people lean towards overcompensating. As a woman, I find that almost worse. When people bend over backwards to tell me how impressed they are that I'm breaking the status quo and enthusiastically express that we need to fix the gender imbalance, then do everything in their power to support me with so much emphasis on this issue, I start to wonder if I was ever really qualified in the first place. I start to question if I succeed because of my hard work and determination or because of my anatomy. It takes the joy out of all the wins, and I frequently feel like a fraud.

One of the best examples I can provide is that I'm often approached at conferences by recruiters, and one of the first words out of their mouths are "we're looking to hire more women". Quite frankly, it's offensive. They're not looking to hire "more qualified professionals", or "persons with my particular skill set". They're looking to meet a quota, and not knowing anything about me, they still want to hire me because they can tell from a glance what my gender is.

Now I understand there are good intentions there - they want to give me the opportunity to interview. An opportunity that women haven't been given as often in the past. But at this point, I know the opportunity is out there. I know many companies will hire you even if you're less qualified BECAUSE you're a woman and they're trying to prove just how progressive and PC they are to the world to improve their image, while others are simply motivated to fix the problem, but unaware of the best way to help.

Ranting aside, this is what I would hope for, and what has always made me happy when encountered in past interactions:

Be just as tough on her as you would be with your male students. She'll come out better for it. If she's good at her job because she truly earned her education, she'll blaze a path in the field that will change the minds of those dwindling number of sexist individuals she'll encounter in the workplace by the quality of her work. She'll inspire other women to pursue their passions because her intelligence and work ethic will speak for itself.

If you cut her slack because she's a woman, you're simply raising false idols. Other men will dislike her because she's not as competent or qualified when she graduates and you'll reinforce existing sexist views, and women who wind up working with her that did climb over obstacles to get there won't respect her, and will consider her an embarrassment to the movement.

Do your part by doing nothing.

But if you see her stress, trip or begin to falter, do what you would for any other male student - check in. Mention your office hours, suggest peer study groups, and "catch up" alternate class times if you have other open spots.

If she's worthy of her degree, she'll do what it takes to succeed.

We'll catch up eventually both in numbers in the STEM community, and in raising our glass ceiling. All we ask is to have the same opportunities. Not a leg up to reach them.

In addition to @ff524's excellent answer, I would recommend one other important step to take: start following the blogs and/or other social media writings of some outspoken female academics.

Despite best intentions, your perspective is likely to be limited in many ways simply because you are male and not female, and our media tends to provide us with a lot more male perspectives on science than female ones (Quick: name 10 people who write about science. How many of the people who popped into your head were male?)

Explicitly adding more female voices to your media consumption is a good way to broaden your perspective and to decrease the likelihood that you will unintentionally do something problematic in advising your student. For a starting point, let me recommend a few semi-arbitrarily selected blogs that I find interesting:

• Scicurious
• Christie Wilcox
• SoapboxScience
• Zuska

Happy reading---and note that you can apply a similar method to broadening your perspective on other sorts of under-represented perspectives as well.