Insidehighered. No. 3

Insidehighered.com, hillarious article serios No. 3

Simple question; “overt discrimination was disappearing — but that its disappearance didn’t necessarily translate into women rising to the top ranks at the college or in departments.” – why the disappearance of (overt) discrimination automatically needs to result in more women at top ranks? Disappearance of discrimination only, if any, ensure that so-called playing field is leveled, but doesn’t guarantee promotion of people who were previously said to have been affected by the said discrimination. To gain promotion, you strive for it. You work for it. But it won’t be sent to your doorstep in a gift wrap or handed out to you by government or institution (actually it will in our current political climate)

“Three sociologists at the University of Arizona presented a paper on the impact of specialization on the academic careers of men and women.” What are those sociologists main research field? Maybe gender discrimination in their own university. It seems that the university hired ‘diversity officer” or “gender ration enforcement officer” when it really should be hiring sociologists. If the hiring committee of the university were less obsessed with meeting diversity goal or under less pressure to correct gender imbalance in its faculty makeup, they would have had hired ‘the best qualified candidate”, maybe male sociologists, who would be doing some real “sociological” study instead of pursuing narrow agenda that would only benefit their own chance of promotion. But I guess it really doesn’t matter; who cares whether sociologists were concerned about social phenomena that affects the society at large, or their interest is limited to advancing their own agenda (and their position) in faculty.

Another excerpt from the article; “The study found, for example, that departments routinely had smaller shares of women than could be found among younger members of their disciplines.” -Why the gender ratio (women professors) needs to mirror exactly the wider body (women’s ratio of Ph. Ds). It is obvious that the Title XI mentality is at play here. Whatever positions (usually women playing in college varsity teams in the Title XI world but in this case women professors) that feminists deem desirable or enhance women’s standing in feminists’ worldview (leadership role or non-traditional roles for women), at least needs to match the gender ratio of a wider body that happens to be in women’s advantage. Even if the logical connection between the two is hazy or difficult to establish definitively, (feminists could circumvent this by castigating the questioner male chauvinistic pig) it doesn’t matter, if the two gender ratio don’t match, it automatically becomes a ground for launching allegations of gender discrimination.