July 15, 2008
Federal government is looking to apply Title IX to NSF , and in particular, is examining discrimination in the sciences at universities receiving federal grants.
I'm not sure I agree with this one. I feel like the fact that woman are the majority of doctors, biologists (and BME's), and psychologists kind of shows that there isn't a systemic bias in the education system. Of course, if there are specific cases of bias preventing hiring they should be swiftly addressed but I feel like this is a witch hunt to find (or manufacture?) something that doesn't exist.
One thing that I can't decide how to feel about is the difference between using Title IX for sports vs. academia. Sports have become "separate but equal" i.e. there are an equal number of female teams as male teams but the men compete for spots with other men (and the women with women). In a sense, no one feels like they've been "affirmative actioned" because they're not competing for the same spots. If you introduce this same system into hiring in science you're doing something very similar to affirmative action for gender. Basically what I'm saying is I don't know how my gut feels about affirmative action. Am I a terrible person?
We've had enough dicey situations just in our own department that I'm sympathetic to unfairness claims.
It is at least anecdotally true that the attrition rate (BS => PhD and PhD => academic track in Physics) is lower among my female acquaintances. Only one comes to mind who jumped ship to be a mom, so I don't think that's a large determiner in my sample group.
I believe the Women in Physics group has made life easier, and alot of that comes from Reichl and DeWitt driving the bus. I know among my undergrad engineering friends the SWE was also a great help.
An imperfect point of perspective is to imagine I were studying abroad; sure, maybe it's only Ireland or India, but I'd be glad to have some American acquaintances to watch the Superbowl with. As a product of American schools I'd naturally be more likely to converse directly with professors, to want to work in groups on homework, and to be aggressive in classroom discussions -- which can come across wrong in a culture accustomed to the opposite. Advice from a fellow expatriate professor who had navigated these mild but disquieting cultural disconnects would be of some significant comfort.
Affirmative action isn't and shouldn't be to replace a qualified XY with an unqualified XX. It is to credit being XX among the many peripheral desiderata that distinguish the final selection from several otherwise equally-qualified candidates. Front-loading some worthy women scientists to the extent that they comprise something more than the current 7% isn't going to bring the edifice tumbling down.
(Incidentally, a question that came up the other day: What professors rank at the top and bottom for "nurturing/sabotaging female physics students"? We know Fink's record, and Heinzen would star except that he sabotages everyone's career. At Swift's FestSchwift I was suprised and impressed by the number of women scientists he'd graduated; Markert, Sitz and McDonald also come to mind as having graduated a fair share of women PhD's.)
Speaking as a woman who entered college a math major and came out with a degree in history, I have to agree (at least on the student side) with mrflip's assessment that a larger peer group would prob make a big difference. A little encouragement can go a long way, and for depts that aren't seeing enough female prospective majors, how about a little recruiting? I'm not sure that it should be so tightly regulated, but I'm no longer in the thick of things and have no idea whether the situation really is bad. Some math/phys depts & engineering schools are prob still known for being more receptive to female students, while others are just ho-hum about it (Harvey Mudd stood out in the mid-90s for its deliberate efforts to boost female enrollment; I don't know what the score is now), so to me it does come down to an administratively-led culture (whether that is the dept head, College head, or Univ provost).
On the faculty side, I wonder if these actions are more or less a follow-up to the 1999 MIT study? I find the article strikingly uninformative about what NSF, NASA, and DoE are actually doing, and with what impact. I'm not sure who is making the leap to affirmative-action status (Tierney, his interviewees, etc), but I see Title IX compliance as a pretty different beast. Affirmative action is the one associated with quotas, while Title IX is about equal *quality* of treatment. In athletics, it has come down to equal field time and equal money for men's and women's programs, but since classrooms are shared (coed) spaces, I don't see the same problem.
However, to argue with natedogg (and myself, a bit), it's not individuals per se that feel they've been "AAed" by Title IX, it's (or it was) entire teams (wrestling and crew being the most popular examples) that have been cut and told it's because they have to make room for the women's softball team. Of course, in most cases they could also have been told that they're being cut because the football team refuses to cut 5-10% of their scholarships, but in the '80s the women were an easier scapegoat. Since the teams were cut a long time ago, individual athletes (for the most part) just accept that it's not theirs to have, not that it was taken from them.
"Harvey Mudd stood out in the mid-90s for its deliberate efforts to boost female enrollment"
I was wondering how wiepooh got in... now I know.
The general consensus was that these "deliberate efforts" had changed the male/female ratio at Mudd from pi to e.
What's in a name? That which we call a swordfest
By any other name would smell as ...
But that was great for a gal like me.
having just come out of the system and jumped ship I would like to point out a few things. Flip is dead wrong about Reichl and DeWitt. It is Paban leading the charge and doing a good job of it. Reichl is one of the worst profs to women. She is of the "it was hard for me so it will be hard for you" camp though she will go on all day about we need more women in physics but she is know for forcing them out of the program. I have only seen DeWitt on one occasion and it had nothing to do with woman stuff. Paban is amazing. She is tough but supportive and doing a good job helping the women in the department.
I do agree with nate in one aspect. Title IX doesn't work here because everyone is competing against everyone and the competition is not inherently separated by gender as is the case with sports. But whatever the system is right now in physics, it isn't working. There needs to be something to force the old white men to change. Yes, they think that they are not biased, but we all know they are.
I was one of the Fink female students. I was actually a PhD track engineer that had a lab in the physics department. I never really felt like I was biased against because I was a girl. There were always the finkisms: “She’s part of my harem” and “how would you explain this to your wife”. At the same time, I was in physics in a time when there were a lot of women around me so I didn’t feel like I was alone. I was the only female in my engineering group but I was used to hanging out with the guys (and they were all great) and that didn’t bother me. I decided to get out with a masters because I failed the quals (but so did all the guys who took them with me) and because I knew I was never going to be a good researcher because I always preferred to do something else besides work in the lab. I didn’t mind putting in my 8 hours a day but I wasn’t about to give up evenings and weekends. I have a feeling that has something to do with being a female and my desire to want to have time to do more than just be a good researcher (be a good mom, wife, friend, etc.). But this also is probably why I wouldn’t be a good doctor, lawyer, anything that requires a lot of time.
In retrospect, when I quit the program, I did feel as if I let my gender down. I was one of the few women in both of the departments and I stereotypically cut out early. So I always felt as if my ex-advisors would think twice about taking on another female student.
Believe me, it is not just a female thing to want to do something else besides be in the lab. Having an 8 hour work day has become my new lifetime dream...
We still love you Claw.
See, maybe what physics needs is ads like this one, but for "adjusting lens optics" and "finding integrals" instead of "pipetting". And since you're wondering: yes, soku, the song is available as a ringtone.
forget the ringtone, i'm waiting for the album.
This pic gives no insight into title IX but goes here because we talked about Dr. Swift (original size):
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Just as a warning, the article quickly becomes an anti-feminist disaster that goes as far as to quote Christina Hoff-Summers herself.
posted by Valatan at 11:51AM CST on July 15