Gender snark below the fold. I’m overworked and irritable, and the blog seems to be where I deposit such things lately…
Small suggestion. When you ask a massively overworked person to make time for your meeting, on a day when they are so busy they had no time for lunch, on a day when people were following them into the bathroom with questions, on a day where they put serious thought into calculating whether they could afford to stop off for a coffee at the cost of running a few minutes late to your meeting – and chose your meeting over a desperately-needed dose of caffeine – when you do something like this, please try to remember that it might not be ideal, in the strict sense, to point out that you are really glad they could make it – because, otherwise, there would have been no women present…
Aside from the issue that, really folks, there are rather a lot of us around if you look, such that it shouldn’t be difficult to achieve a gender ratio rather more balanced than we seem to have managed in this instance – such that you wouldn’t have had to breathe such an intense sigh of relief when your single female participant arrived – aside from this, you probably don’t want to imply that this might have been your major concern in putting together your invitation list. Maybe it’s just me, but I generally appreciate some assistance in maintaining my illusions that I get invited to such things for something I can substantively contribute…
(Truth-in-advertising: I should indicate that a great deal of my irritation here is self-directed. There’s a delicious irony in that, in order to attend this meeting, I had to skip another function I really wanted to attend. A function to discuss gender equity in appointments to research roles in the university… ;-P)
Now call me cynical, but the gender ratio in research argument is only being pushed so that one clique at BLEEP can try and dispose of another clique. How about a committee to deal with nepotism at BLEEP and to make appointments transparent? There is no actual problem with the number of women in research (if that was the do you were going to attend); the problem is created by one clique shoring up their power base against some people who happen to be men. I used to consider myself a pro-feminist, but the way that the argument has been used is not about feminist ideals, but about power and empire building.
I’ll have to apologise in advance for speaking a bit indirectly, as my policy is not to get into things like this on a public forum – your self-censorship suggests you’re familiar with my preferences… ;-P
Very vaguely: I suspect the people, and the issues, are more diverse than you suspect. And sometimes there can be a substantive issue at stake, even if not everyone is motivated purely by what that substantive issue might be… In terms of substantive issues: there are some serious concerns that probably do need to be considered, particularly in relation to upper-level positions – something that is all the more noticeable because (in my opinion – I know others would disagree) we haven’t done that bad a job at lower levels. My opinions about the causes of this imbalance probably differ from those of many people – I don’t see as much intentionality as some people do (I could, of course, be wrong), but I do think there is some value in drawing attention to what I regard as some unfortunate unintended side effects.
But this probably can’t be discussed in a satisfactory way in this format… Happy, though, to talk about the more generic issue of women in research in the Australian academy here, and we can chat about other things offline.
“Maybe it’s just me, but I generally appreciate some assistance in maintaining my illusions that I get invited to such things for something I can substantively contribute…”
No its not just you. I remember a professor I worked for in my early student years expressing similar feelings when being asked to write an article for a psychology journal (she is a historian having worked extensively on psychiatry at that time) by the argument that they’d need a female author for their issue. She promptly denied. Her very comment though is not reproducable in this public forum, either.
I’d hope that you would be invited to such university forums and the like for what you can contribute to such forums. I don’t even get invited anymore :(
Look to put my last snide comment in context, I am jaded… (Duh!) :P I am just aware that people use whatever argument they can to push an agenda, which is a shame really, as I agree there perhaps are deeper systemic issues, although I doubt that they are all purely gender related. But to someone on the outside it is just going to look like a group of academics using a ‘whatever-it-takes’ approach.
Basically I reckon some women will also get squashed just like some men get squashed… I’m not sure it is purely a gender issue (speaking from a position of someone who was squashed and discarded – and by women – that came out wrong :P ) I feel it is more an issue of power and personality politics at BLEEP.
Ed – I don’t generally get invited to such things either – the meeting I was originally describing was nothing so import as any kind of broader university function – and, to be fair (or, perhaps, to be hopelessly self-deluding) I don’t honestly think they invited me for my gender. It’s just that there was a lot of specific discussion during the meeting, in addition to the comment directed to me, about recruitment, where things were being discussed along these lines. And – you mentioned being jaded – I’ve just been in one too many meetings lately where people were discussing things like this in front of me, as though they believed this was somehow a progressive discourse to be having… ;-P So in a sense my reaction – like your reaction – can’t really be explained with reference to this particular incident…
The issue of how substantive issues can be pushed for non-substantive reasons, and how particular substantive issues can gain a lot of explicit attention, while other, equally substantive, issues go overlooked: this is actually an interesting dimension of social movements full stop – of the strange ways in which anything “gets done”. It’s kind of interesting from a research perspective, in a way – just not so pleasant to be caught up in the middle… ;-P
I’m tempted to run back through and replace all names on the blog with BLEEP U!
orange. – Yeah: my full reaction probably wasn’t reproducible on the blog either… ;-P The thing that really gets me, as I was saying to Ed, is that people can do this sort of thing so openly, without it occurring to them that this is not a progressive position…
“The thing that really gets me, as I was saying to Ed, is that people can do this sort of thing so openly, without it occurring to them that this is not a progressive position…”
As far as I refigure, without having an aprooving look back (so don’t take this comment as academic statement, but as musing at the virtual coffeeshop’s bar), in germany theres a standard formulation in academic job announcements saying that female and disabled applicants are especially encouraged to apply and in case of equivalent Eignung will be prefered.
I don’t necessarily mind these sorts of statements – I see them as trying to counteract an impression that certain applicants might not be welcome, and also as saying that, other things (skills, qualifications, etc.) being comparable, the diversity of faculty is an additional important consideration in hiring decisions. What gets me is the casting about for some representative – any representative – of a particular group, posed in such a way that it manages to suggest that it would be impossible for such a person just to come up in a pool that was otherwise defined by things like skills and qualifications…
“I am just aware that people use whatever argument they can to push an agenda, which is a shame really, as I agree there perhaps are deeper systemic issues, although I doubt that they are all purely gender related.”
Hi Ed. Can’t tell why I recall it right now and can’t tell its exact source but in an interview Stuart Hall reflects his time of leaving the CCCS at Birmingham. He describes there how the ideas he was teaching and their second generation advocats finally forced him to leave teh institute. What impressed me was the absolute lack of bitterness.
Is the institution you and N. share your first place of academic employment? Perhaps it helps to acknowledge that some people just need more time than others. I have cultivated the three-try-method. By whatever is related to social interaction–as writing term assignments–I undertake three tries. The first for several reasons (most often) is a terrible failure. The second works out better but still I don’t deliver final paper. The third leads me to great success. Of course the in-betweens are of most importance. [Tranferred on academic jobs: First and second try within a field of specialization probably won't appear on my CV. No success without failure, but noone later will ask for how old I've been when having presented my first conference papers, you see? :-]
“I don’t necessarily mind these sorts of statements”
No doubt they are well meaning. Nonetheless the constitute inequality.
It’s a long way, still.
Hmmm… Getting some weird artefacts: did something happen to the text of your post? (I’m also seeing some other things going a bit wonky with the site – I’m just trying to track down when it started…)