A student once asked me a question during a seminar about the solar wind. We were looking at particle velocity distributions measured by spacecraft — the kinds of shapes that tell you how plasma behaves as it streams away from the Sun. The student asked why the distribution wasn’t Maxwellian. I explained that in the solar wind collisions are so rare that particles never fully thermalise. Instead of relaxing into a neat Maxwellian distribution, you end up with beams, anisotropies and other structures created by turbulence and wave–particle interactions.
This happens to be my research area, so I was able to go into quite a bit of detail about the physics.
A few minutes later the same student asked essentially the same question again, this time directing it to a male colleague who was also helping run the seminar. He gave a shorter, more general explanation — completely reasonable, since this wasn’t really his area of expertise. But that answer seemed to settle the question.
I doubt the student realised what had happened. Still, moments like that stick with you.
I work on space plasma physics, studying how energy moves through the Sun–Earth system and how magnetic energy is converted into particle motion and heating in plasmas. Much of what we know about these processes comes from spacecraft observations from missions such as the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission and Parker Solar Probe, which measure plasma particles and electromagnetic fields at extraordinary resolution.
It’s a fascinating field to work in. And in many ways physics has made real progress when it comes to gender representation. In the UK, women now make up roughly a quarter of physics undergraduates and about one fifth of academic physics staff. Globally, women represent about one third of researchers across all disciplines. Compared with previous generations, that represents real progress.
But statistics don’t always reflect what everyday life in the field feels like.
The teaching moment I mentioned earlier is one example. It’s subtle and not particularly dramatic, and it certainly doesn’t happen all the time. But it reflects something many women in physics recognise: expertise is not always perceived in the same way depending on who is speaking.
Other moments are even smaller. Someone expressing surprise that you work in physics. A casual comment about how unusual it is to see a woman in a particular role. Most of the time these things are not intended to be unkind. They’re simply thoughtless. But over time they reinforce the idea that women in physics are still treated as slightly unusual.
You notice it in more mundane ways too. In some meetings or collaborations the gender balance can still be strikingly uneven. It’s not uncommon to look around a room and realise you are the only woman there. Physics has made real progress among students and early-career researchers, but representation still thins out further along the career pipeline.
None of these moments are major incidents on their own. Each one individually would be easy to dismiss. But together they form a kind of background signal — subtle, persistent, and difficult to ignore once you start noticing it.
What makes this complicated is that it rarely comes from deliberate hostility. More often it reflects assumptions many of us absorb long before we ever step into a laboratory or lecture theatre. Ideas about who looks like an expert, whose voice sounds authoritative, or who is expected to lead a discussion are shaped by decades of cultural expectations about scientists.
Changing those assumptions takes time. And it requires more than simply encouraging more women to study physics. Representation matters, but culture matters just as much.
What concerns me most is that some of these attitudes do not seem to be fading as quickly as many of us once expected. When I was younger there was a strong sense that gender equality in science was steadily improving and that the remaining barriers would gradually disappear. Recently, though, I sometimes find myself wondering whether that progress is as secure as we assumed. Among my own generation I occasionally hear comments or see attitudes that feel uncomfortably familiar — the kind that previous generations of women in science have described for decades.
Teaching students makes this especially visible. You see how quickly perceptions about authority and expertise can form, often without anyone consciously realising it. If those assumptions persist, they risk shaping the environment that the next generation of scientists grows up in.
And that matters. Girls who are curious about science should grow up seeing physics as a natural place for them to be. If the culture of the field still sends subtle signals that they are unusual or unexpected, that curiosity can easily be discouraged before it has the chance to develop.
There are practical things we can do to improve this.
Simply becoming more aware of unconscious bias in everyday interactions is a start. Paying attention to whose ideas are acknowledged in discussions, whose explanations are treated as definitive, or who is given space to speak can reveal patterns that many of us would otherwise miss.
Visibility also matters. Seeing women as lecturers, research leaders and conference speakers gradually reshapes the mental picture of who a physicist can be. That shift matters not only for those already working in the field but also for students deciding whether physics feels like somewhere they belong.
Institutions have responsibilities here as well. Mentorship networks, fair recognition of outreach and service work, and thoughtful hiring and promotion practices all help build environments where people from different backgrounds can succeed. These may sound like small steps, but they shape the everyday culture of departments and research groups.
At the same time, it’s important to recognise that many physicists are actively trying to improve things. I have been fortunate to work with colleagues who genuinely care about making the field more inclusive. Progress in academia rarely happens overnight; more often it comes through gradual shifts in awareness and expectations.
Physics is built on curiosity — the idea that anyone asking the right questions about the universe can help us understand it. Making sure the culture of the field reflects that principle is still a work in progress. Ideally, the next generation of physicists will spend less time wondering whether they belong in the room, and more time thinking about the questions they want to answer.
Until then, experiences like the ones I have described will remain familiar to many women working in the field.