One big reason that I wanted to get my PhD was so that people respected my opinion more.
And guess what. It absolutely worked.
Way too much. /thread

I have a doctorate in microbiology. But these three letters after my name somehow confer respect and attention for basically any topic. And I think that's kind of f***** up.

I've played this experiment before where I dropped the Miss label on emails, or changed my email signature just to S. Harris. And even with annoying emails, I rarely got a rude response. Now, with the Ph.D, the increase in polite responses is stunning. And a little horrifying.

We often hear the word "privilege" in terms of something we are born with that gives us a leg up, not something that we've earned. I earned this PhD, but it still confers a huge privilege that has nothing to do with what I'm talking about probably 90% of the time.

Our unearned and earned privilege matter more than we give credit to. Neither my gender nor my PhD should affect how people view me in unrelated situations, but they do. A PhD doesn't make us overall smarter, and our genders don't indicate our abilities