Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Have we come a long way, baby?

The NYT had an article up a few days ago about the progress towards equality of female faculty at MIT. As cackleofrad points out, DrDrA has an amazing response over at her blog.

I don't really have much to add, other than to say 1) I am really tired of women's career issues automatically defaulting to family issues and 2) it is really annoying when the NYT takes a story (in this case, progress in advancing female faculty at MIT) and doesn't point out that this is specific to MIT only. In fact, reading the article quickly, it is possible to come away with the idea that MIT's changes are far more universal than they really are. I am glad things are working out so well for women at MIT. Now that we have our example case, where is the discussion of what things are like everywhere (or even ANYWHERE) else?

I would LOVE to have institutional help for childcare during business-related travel (for a nice discussion of the importance of travel in academic, see GMP's post here). It would warm my heart to know that parents everywhere (outside academia too) had access to paid parental leave. It would be awesome if men were invited to speak about work-life balance.

One thing I did like about the article is the mention of this:

But the primary issue in the report is the perception that correcting bias means lowering standards for women. In fact, administrators say they have increased the number of women by broadening their searches.

This is something that I and others have been advocating to increase diversity of all kinds in science. I am happy to see acknowledgement that this strategy works without changing the yardstick. Amazing scientists who happen to be from underrepresented groups are out there--the trick is in getting them to apply.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

it is really annoying when the NYT takes a story (in this case, progress in advancing female faculty at MIT) and doesn't point out that this is specific to MIT only. In fact, reading the article quickly, it is possible to come away with the idea that MIT's changes are far more universal than they really are.

Hmm. Funny you got that impression. My impression from reading this article was that it obsessively focussed on how things are so good at MIT, and how it is only MIT which has been concerned with diversity in science, while other universities are sitting around doing nothing. The article did not mention similar efforts made for example in the UC system, and I am sure in many other schools.

Of course a lot still remains to be done, and things are by no means rosy. But there are people outside MIT who are working on this too.

Anonymous said...

At the moment, in my subfield, women only have to be qualified applicants for TT positions, while men have to be the best of the pack. Right now, it is a great time to be a woman TT applicant or a woman coming up for tenure: one just has to be good enough, not the best of the lot. Of course, with women now more than equally represented among PhD students, this discrepancy may change rapidly if the social hurdles are removed and women start competing with each other. (But I can still count the number of black scientists (at all levels) in my entire field....)

Anonymous said...

ps. I like your sincere and informative blog after spending 15 minutes skimming through it, but I think that personal experiences of "subtle sexism" must be weighed against the fact that gender is only one among the many factors (looks, color, personality tics, physical attributes, cultural traits) that influence how other people perceive, judge and behave towards you, especially at first glance. As a scientist of color (but from a well-represented minority), I am acutely aware of this. But more serious studies like this one (Also: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/02/02/1014871108.abstract) will help redress this.

prodigal academic said...

Anon, I don't know what subfield you are in, but this is not my experience AT ALL. I wouldn't doubt that there are some institutions that are desperate to find qualified female faculty, but then again in 2011, there shouldn't really be any departments that have no female TT members! I think that at least part of the problem is that women and underrepresented minorities are denied opportunities starting back in elementary school that lead to inequality of opportunity, making it harder to find qualified applicants than it should be.

Thanks for your nice comments about the blog. I definitely agree with you that there are plenty of other factors that can impact first impressions. I certainly never meant to imply that gender is the only (or even the most important) issue in diversity in science today.