I actually have a real world example that I’ll share in a moment, where evidently you can have your cake and eat it too.

In general, I fully agree it should be the most qualified person for the job, and regretfully this is not always the case. I also concede that in the past (and currently in some professions) that it does tend to be male dominated and women often hit ‘glass ceilings’ in those vocations. Ironically, I recently read an article about a male nurse trying to succeed in a career that is made up predominantly of women – and what he describes is a bias and unfair treatment of him performing that same role as his female coworkers (by those coworkers or female management). An interesting dichotomy to think about.

I’ve also noted a couple of other items that, as a male, now seem unfair to me as a gender. One example would be the large contracting firm that I work for participates in “International Women’s Day”. During this time any woman in the firm can take the entire day (paid no less) to attend various seminars and sessions on womens topics. And I am happy they are allowed to do that. I on the other hand would appreciate something similar that I could attend, and be paid to do it as well.

The next example is an actual scenario that is occuring with a friend of mine in a large law firm in DC, and actually proves that in some vocations you evidently can have children and a high power job. In his firm a woman who has a child gets 4 months paid maternity leave. That’s right, 4 full months. And then the following months they can ramp back in at 50%, then 75%, prior to returning full time. His law firm does this because of retention – too many women were leaving the firm when having children. The main reason for doing so isn’t because of their unique or better qualifications, but because their clients want to be seen as doing business with a firm with a ‘good’ ethnic / gender balance.

Honestly, for me it’s not about gender, it is about equality. And equal means equal in both directions for the defintion to truly apply (IMHO). To right a wrong, bettering the position of one gender should not penalize the other in the process (regardless of which it is)….

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head here, in more ways than one. I’m sure there are other factors involved, but simply the fact that the path to an academic career involves a period of semi-nomadic existence must discourage a lot of people, especially if they feel a biological clock ticking. Add to that the fact that postdocs are often treated as junior researchers, incapable of pursuing their own ideas, and forced to work on a faculty-member’s pet project until they achieve tenure themselves (at which point they can enforce their pet projects on the next generation of postdocs), and the academic career path doesn’t look so wonderful.

I can’t help feeling that this deals a double-blow to the progress of science. Large numbers of innovative young people (including women and minorities) are discouraged from pursuing a research career, reducing the diversity of ideas being studied. And those young people who make it through the system often can’t do the work they want until they are in their mid-late 30s, and are no longer the young, innovative people science needs. It’s no surprise that Einstein did his most ground-breaking work while employed in a patent office rather than a university.

Well yeah, except for the fact that they were too busy working (and society pretty much demands that they be too busy working) to actually spend time with their kids. They very likely miss their kids’ first smiles, first steps, first words. But other than that, no issues whatsoever. Nope.

Yeesh.

The lousy job market kept my wife at home with our son for three years while I took class overloads. I envied her every day as I drove away from the house.

JIM

Jennifer Ruth said:

I live in the UK – as far as I know, it is not illegal to ask questions about an applicants family or future family plans. In fact, a couple of years ago on the tv show The Apprentice, a woman who got to the final 3 was asked exactly that question – how would she would cope with the job and family, and it was implied that she was a bad mother for wanting the job. She did not win.

Well, that’s interesting. I never watched that programme (Alan Sugar’s people skills stink). AFAICT, it is illegal to ask an interview candidate if they plan to start a family in the near future, unless it is directly relevant to the job itself (e.g. working on an oil rig, or some such arrangement).

If you get asked it again, I would suggest that (a) you don’t want to work for that company anyway; (b) try asking them to repeat the question, pointing out that it “sounded like” they were asking if you planned to start a family; or (c) respond by asking them what insight they hope to gain from the question.

I’m in my late 20’s – when I go to job interviews sometimes I get asked if I am married or looking to start a family. I bet they don’t ask this question to men.

In the UK, it is actually illegal to ask this question in a job interview. Hey, looks like we got something right!

A job interview should be about assessing a person’s ability to do the job and their probable fit with the company culture, not about their personal life.

“What he said was interesting. He said that when he interviews a male, it’s considered a good thing if the applicant has a family, the idea being that a guy with a wife and kids will take the job more seriously than a bachelor and work harder to keep the job. Whereas with women, having a family is considered a bad quality because while it can be a motivator in the same way as it is with men, it serves as too much of a distraction for them that the company doesn’t want to deal with.”

That is really interesting. It pretty much makes clear the bias that we all face due to our genders. It is also pretty unfair to men, since they are expected to take literally no time at all from work when they have children. Paternity leave is a stupidly short amount of time.

@The Mad LOLScientist, FCD Says:

I live in the UK – as far as I know, it is not illegal to ask questions about an applicants family or future family plans. In fact, a couple of years ago on the tv show The Apprentice, a woman who got to the final 3 was asked exactly that question – how would she would cope with the job and family, and it was implied that she was a bad mother for wanting the job. She did not win.

The exact scenario that Carl Sagan put into “Contact.”

- Jack

When I was in my Ph.D. program, I realized where the major problem occurs is the difference when it comes to having a child. In my mid-twenties I was thinking of having children (as were my fellow male grad students). What I realized was that if I were to have children in my grad or post-grad years, I would have to work the 60+ hours a week in lab plus do my classes all while pregnant. Then I would have to return to work nearly immediately or lose time in my program. Meanwhile, the men in my program were having children without any issues because their wives were at home and in other jobs that gave them that freedom.

I ended up leaving my program (for other reasons) and am now a science teacher. I love being a science teacher and couldn’t be happier when I’m encouraging my students to think and stretch. But I always wonder if things could/would be different if the grad school wasn’t so male biased.

This may shock people, but in this one small case I agree with this lunatic. She’s absolutely right. All cultures are not equal. A simple example: a large fraction of our own culture in the United States used to accept slavery. Moral equivalency be damned; slavery is wrong.

While I would hesitate to accept anything as a moral absolute, there are some things that are clearly wrong. Murder. Slavery. Institutional torture. Genocide. Racism. Sexism.”

Now, now, Phil – don’t go all conservative on us. Go to a drum circle or something and work it out. BTW, you do realise the last sentance of yours I qouted above is completely contradictory, yes ?

Woman like Ms. Bachmann give women, in general, a bad name.

On the other hand……

I work with a wonderful bunch of women in science: nurses and doctors. They are outstanding examples of working in science–many who balance home and work with grace and fluid dexterity.

I still get the defensive mental reflex twitch that wants to tell you how much weight I could lift and how fast I used to run the 2 mile.

Today I work in an office packed full of women, all doing tech jobs. It’s lovely; I’ve never worked with so many technical women before. We make tons of jokes about stereotypes.

I looked around at many of the Ph.D.’s in the Department, many of whom never married, or were divorced, or were on their second marriage, or who didn’t know their children well, and I did not want that life. I wanted to be a husband and a father, and I wanted it before my life was half over. That realization, more than anything else, caused me to leave hardcore science for education.

I’m thinking that’s what drives many women (and minorities for that matter) out of science. For some reason, that almost monastic existence works for an inordinate number of Males of Northern European Descent (aka Geekus Caucasianicus). Not me, though.

Institutionalized sexism is a very easy answer, but I think it’s just too easy. Until we make changes to that Long and Lonely Road that leads to a science career, I think were going to lose a lot of women and minorities.

And that’s a dang shame.

JIM

I recently made an observation that invalidated two years worth of work. Other people eventually took all the credit.

Trust me, that sort of thing has nothing to do with sexism. Or maybe sexism exacerbates the problem, but idea-stealing egotists know no gender boundaries.

When I worked at a certain rodent-infested movie studio I had the pleasure of working for a wannabe manager who was, by all definitions of the word, a conniving bitch. I also had the pleasure of working for a vp who was, by all definitions of the word, a thieving bastard. Both took joy in stomping on others, taking credit for the good that others did, passing along blame for her/his own idiotic decisions, and being all around jerks in general.

Odd, how when the conniving manager did something stupid, I seem to recall wishing she could be more like some of her male counterparts, whereas after one particularly egregious bit of ratfinkery, I remember wishing the vp would take a lesson from the company’s most senior female directors.

Bottom line: people are morons.

I think there’s something amiss with the blog software. Either that, or there’s a strange censor who randomly deletes comments.

On topic, I agree completely that there should be no artificial barriers for anyone. But I think it’s also important not to expect that any group will be proportionally represented in every endeavor. There are just some kinds of jobs that a given group of people is less interested in, on average. So let’s not get hung up waiting for exactly 50% of any given job to be held by women. Let’s just make sure every woman who wants and is able to take on a given career has no obstacles not shared by all those pursuing it.

Preview was promised sometime this spring, February or March I believe. May we have it anytime soon? Presumably it can’t be premature to have some simple form of preview to preview.

(While we wait, whittling white-bearded in white text windows, wanton as they were.)

If you’ll allow the quotemine:

You’d think after 40 years it would’ve settled into an interesting but mature phase. Blow me, is it heck.

I haven’t read her work in theoretical physics, but naively there is something deeply intuitive and satisfying between conservation of quantities (say charges) and various symmetries.

[Incidentally, IIRC Emmy placed high in a Cosmic Variance beauty contest on the single piece of work that has mattered most, up there with Darwin but not quite Newton. (Probably since Newton more or less founded modern science while, say, Darwin 'only' more or less founded modern biology.)]

Another laadie with a special place in my hearth [I seem to have a big hearth problem (>< ) ] is Sofia Kovalevskaya from the Cauchy-Kovalevskaya theorem on existence and uniqueness of analytical solutions of analytical partial differential equations (partial DEs).

This result I happened to have read (but not worked to understand much) as it was in a DE book of mine, and again there is something deeply intuitive with physical (analytical, or smooth and bounded) solutions to smooth problems. And their use of smooth (analytical) patches to glue smooth solutions together, intuitive also because I believe something like it is used, in a generalized form of gluing local maps, in various areas of modern math. (Say topology where IIRC the Good Math, Bad Math blog has covered some of its use.)

[Again incidentally, I'm sure, Kovalevskaya was also part-time local here.]

Her viewpoints are so bizarre and skewed that her biography would have to be written on a Moebius strip.

ROTL! Advancing from fractal wrongness to topological (möbiusan) wrongness; you can’t possibly be more wrong than that while still trying to argue?!

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