Slashdot Mirror
MIT Names First Female President
wintermute1000 writes "According to CNN, MIT has just named its first female president. Along with other recent programs' efforts to get more women involved in the MIT community, is this a step in the right direction for the historically gender-biased institution?"
When MIT announces the first robot president, I'll be listening.
This space intentionally left blank.
Who cares? It's those who shout for equality who seem to be the first to highlight irrelevant differences; and such people are the first defence used by the prejudiced to block those with true potential.
fry: can't we just be together?
leela: listen - you are a man, I'm a woman. We're just too different.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
Generally technology field has been boys club and most women around are usually surnamed .jpg.
Women at workplace usually balance the atmosphere towards more positive.
In paper industry, some studies have shown that departments lead by female chiefs, run more efficiently and have less disputes among workers.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
While I do support equal opportunities/emancipation issues, has MIT selected this woman because she is female and very good in her area of expertise, or has MIT selected her because she was the best irrespective of gender?
Don't get me wrong here - if she is the BEST for the post, she should get it, but looking at things like the gender quotas like we have had in Germany - these are the wrong way (as they block progressing potentially better male candidates, if the female member quota hasn't been reached yet. This also led to a court case brought on by (IIRC) a civil cervant skipped in a promotion because there was another woman who could take the post - that case went all the way to the highest EU court which ruled that these kinds of quota regulations also are a form of gender discrimination and hence are deemed illegal.
And there are similar things happening - in a Swiss University I saw a notice for a competition about women in academic study courses, with a prize of EUR 10.000 for the best diploma thesis to be handed in by a female student that year. That particular competition notice actually had been put up by the "equal opportunities" advisor of the school... Where's the equal opportunity here?
In the UK, there is a female-only car insurance (Diamond), which will only accept female clientele because their insurance claims would in average be lower (hence allowing female drivers to save money, while indirectly increasing the insurance cost of males, by removing drivers with "lower claims" from male/female car insurance companies)...
Where's the equal opportunity here?
People will not stop complaining about 'unfairness' until the whole world is perfectly split between the sexes, and that's never going to happen. We have women complaining that they never get the best positions at companies like upper management jobs.
Well, take a look in the coal mines. They too are very gender biased. You don't see many chicks underground with a jack-hammer. Funny, you don't see them complaining about this, either.
The reason women do not have as many of the 'top jobs' in this world is economics. If you hire a woman and she has a kid, then she will be gone for several months and you will have to pay her maternity leave even though she isn't there. Economically speaking, it's better to hire the man. I don't mean that a woman does not deserve the job or isn't capable of doing it, but managers look at the demographics and see that it is more profitable to hire a man. You could even argue that they are obligated to hire the man for the sake of the shareholders.
An article related to this topic.
Is Evolution Leaving Men Behind?
Here's something Charles Darwin in all his philosophies never imagined. As the third millennium of the common era kicks off more American women than men are graduating with baccalaureate and post- baccalaureate degrees. More women are enrolled in law schools, journalism schools, and soon, they will exceed men in all professional schools, with the exception the dreary schools of engineering and business. At this rate, women will soon overtake men as the top wage earners. Evolution is leaving men behind.
McElroy, who writes a column for FoxNews.com, reports being dismayed at finding educated women who are "genuinely horrified at the prospect of dealing with 'lesser' and 'lower' men as equals in their personal lives." But one of the findings of evolutionary psychology is that females of whatever species are hot-wired to find the best possible mate.
The second para is kinda OT, but interesting nevertheless.
i really risk getting flamed with this post, but here we go:
i _do_ gratulate her, because i believe she has really earned that position, but:
"...efforts to get more women involved in the MIT community..."
i really hope that this is not the reason she got elected president. you see, i think such positions should be awarded according to ability, _regardless_ of the gender. so "because of" is as wrong as "in spite of".
" a step in the right direction for the historically gender-biased institution?"
not as long as every time a woman is elected this or that, the fact that she is a woman is more stressed in the reports than the fact that she is doing a good job (or what she has achieved).
If you don't learn from history,
then you are an idiot by definition.
--- Vadim Yasinovsky
She is also the first president with a life sciences background which is probably more relevant to the future of MIT than the make up of her chromosomes. I would prefer that the headlines note that MIT found the best president that it could and leave gender out of it.
It depends on whether she was nominated becase she is a woman or because she fits the bill.
Probably a little bit of both.
Nevermind, just RTFA... :-/
...or is it WOMEN who don't like math, science, and engineering?
Best Buy can have you arrested
Haven't women been discriminated against long enough? Why does the cause of women's rights progress so slowly?
If the US were really committed to ending discrimination, the Equal Rights Amendment would have passed by now.
Hopefully now we'll finally churn out some more geek and gamr grlz.
let me say this, Ceren ain't all that, and I'm tired of seeing quotes saying that she is. just because she prances around geek conventions with annoying outfits on doesn't make her pretty; in fact, she's pretty damn annoying ugly if you ask me, but I only bring that up in defense of common sense. now go out and meet a real girl, regardless of if she needs a hair style (Ceren), needs a visit to TLC's "What not to wear" (Ceren) and needs a shrink to tell her what's missing in her life to have to try to be something she isn't (Ceren).
In closing, F Ceren and the horse she rode in on. Thank you.
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
According to CNN, MIT has just...
...named the FFP to RTS for YTC and BTMBLOTA. TY.
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
"is this a step in the right direction for the historically gender-biased institution?"
g
or looks like Gina
http://www.batnet.com/mfwright/lollobrigida1.jp
A list of her recent publications can be read here.
From the page:
The main focus of our work is to bring biochemical and molecular biological techniques to the classical anatomical analysis of mammalian CNS development.
CNS being Central Nervous System, IIRC.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
If any of you actually went to MIT, you would realize that this whole thing is actually a ploy to get Aimee Smith to fucking shut up! Now when she talks about the overruling partiarchy, we'll finally be able to say, "*ahem* A woman is currently in charge."
Geez, before you know it they will have the right to vote!
As stated already, I hope they hired her for her qualifications, and not the quota. I have somewhat of a personal view on things...
Don't get me wrong, I am married to a structural engineer (yes, a woman) so I fully believe in equality between all genders/races in all fields, but I have seen many instances where a woman or other minority had an unfair advantage at getting a job or getting accepted into a school.
I'm not trying to start an affirmative action argument, but let me say that from my wife's perspective she has had to ask herself many times "Did I get this job offer because I am a woman, or because I am most qualified?" And in my mind she was the most qualified, but it should not be a question that she has to ask herself. It is unfair to her, as much as it is for anyone not getting the job.
Will she have to grow a beard now?
See MIT's actual announcement for Dr. Hockfield's scientific achievements and administrative experience. It's not suprising that the news outlets all highlight the fact that she's a her, but it is not why she was choosen.u ncement.html
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/president-anno
Most people don't like math science and engineering.
I know lots of women who could be capable engineers, but chose other paths.
I don't think it really matters how many female engineers we have, as long as the end result is designed right neither should you.
I am getting sick of working with second rate 'quota' people. Particularly with the government they will put someone without the ability or experience to do a job but got the "Minority XXXX" points to land the job.
You end up with
#1 The job not being done right.
#2 Convincing anyone with the stereotype they are right because look, that kind of person can't do the job.
#3 A person who can't do the job getting frustrated. They either hate their job, and discourage others, or they quit. Then you end up having even more trouble recruiting group XXX into this position.
Removing barriers is one thing, silly quota/promotion games are wrong.
More ranting, in public school (I was 13 years old) The girls got to go to 'science day' at the local university to encourage them to go into science. Apparently it was very interesting, with lots of cool stuff.
Of course as a boy, I couldn't go. Welcome to the wonderful sexist world we live in where girls who don't care about science get encouragement, and guys who do care get slapped down.
The belief of the 1960s progenitors of US affirmative action programs (most notably the late Sen. Moynihan) was that a period of #2 would permit #1 to succeed. I believe the last 40 years have proven him rather misguided. I don't know what the solution is - and I doubt there is one - but enforced discrimination isn't it.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
if I was it would not change my opinion. thank you.
BV$#@CB
free ipod and free gmail!
Most High, Most Mighty and Most Excellent Princess of MIT, Queen Dowager and Queen Mother, Lady of the Most Noble Order of the Geek, Lady of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Science, Lady of the Imperial Order of the Crown of Tech Empire...
Eh.. Enough I guess...
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!
Get the sequence right... it's: Screeeech, CRASH! HONK! :)
As an alumnus, I'm disappointed. I think it's obviously a gender-based decision. However, my main objection is not to the new president's gender, but to her discipline; the MIT President has traditionally been an engineer, not a scientist, while the Provost has traditionally been a scientist.
Will she have to grow a beard now?
2 months later at slashdot.org
Science: MIT Names First Bearded Female President
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Good lord, I knew MIT was a tech school but I didn't think it was well known enough to make SlashDot! Right in my own backyard! Maybe I can be president someday!
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
It's been said, but this is just crap.
If you want to read a real article about why she was chosen, head over to web.mit.edu.
Oh, and "historically gender-biased institution"? It's a fucking tech school, what do people expect? I should also point out that the entering freshman class (the one I'm in) is about 55% male and 45% female. Please, let's at least be reasonable when coming up with non-news, mmkay?
Mmkay.
To debunk the metaphysicist, one needs only to take him outside and throw a rock at his head. If he ducks, he's a liar.
I hope she is a feminist because they ar sooo cute!
Women play a very integral role in the tech sector, and it is about time efforts were made to recruit more women in the field. IT is a boys club and it could definately use some more hot women. If Doc Hock can bring on the babes, I say more power to her. As mentioned earlier, who would select a university because it has a female president? Not me or anyone else I can think of. However, the number of women on campus in hot pants is definately an influential factor!
Holbrook came in, and immediately pissed off people by trying to curb our tailgating for football games - a huge tradition if you've ever been in the area. Then she does nothing to curb the ever-raising tuition rates, agrees to shut off funding to some agricultural programs (which are the traditional basis of this campus), and is only concerned with research funding rather than the enormous undergraduate population.
Kirwan did nothing but foster our traditions, and fought tooth and nail with the state to get them to keep our funding so that tuition wouldn't go up over 10% every damned year.
Of course, this has nothing to do with Holbrook being a woman or even being from Georgia :)
So the point is, it doesn't matter who the newest president is; male, female, black, white, yellow, alien... just don't come in thinking you can change traditions, and don't alienate those that you will eventually be begging for money (which is, by the way, the president's basic duty, like it or not).
Good luck to MIT, hopefully she does nothing but foster tradition and raise the academic bar.
Berto
I, for one, welcome our new female overlords.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
...that in 2005 that we feel that this announcement was newsworthy and we need to decide if this is good or not.
You left out
3: Provide a sound education that encourages wisdom, ethics, and responsibility.
Naturally, if you continue thinking in the same old box, you'll have the same old problems.
My sister got herself a degree (in politics) but then she met a bloke, so now she wants to help run his dads shops and look after the kids. Getting the degree is not sufficient to make you want to take one of those jobs.
This is just yet another hint that women, being generally more inclined to make the necessary efforts to perform in life then men, will take over all leadership positions, one by one.
In the modern sense of the term, equal rights is merely another nomenclature for discrimination. It may sound better and thus is more politically correct, but the same basic idea is there. Everywhere the signs of this discrimination is evident, affirmative action, quotas in both higher education and the workplace, etc... I have observed that these policies are hurting the cause of equality rather than assisting it. A whole new generation of people are becoming bittered against other races & gender because of these programs. If we wish to help the cause of equality, programs that take gender, race, religion, etc into consideration at all must be abolished. I found it most ironic that proponents of "equal rights" fought hard against an amendment to the California constitution that would prevent the government from considering a person's race at all in decision-making. Of course, this was no surprise sense as I stated at the beginning, "equal rights" today is merely a politically correct term for discrimination against white males.
Eh, one of these days I'll get it right! ;)
Fry: Is she hot?
Amazonian: That not important! She all knowing!
Fry: In other words, No.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Because we all want unisex bathrooms and selective service. And what of the difference in net heights in volleyball? They'll combine into one league, and what then?!?!?! See, I look at all the important issues.
Discrimination has no solution. Look at the two alternatives:
You left out option 3:
Don't trust human nature by itself, make some laws to make discrimination illegal, WITHOUT actually enforcing another type of discrimination.
Look at the college application process. It should be illegal to ask about your gender or race on an application.
Fixing discrimination with discrimination is retarded, but making discrimination ilegal is not.
Life is too short to proofread.
If she was the best man for the job, great. This isn't news.
If she wasn't, shame on them.
* Man = Human. Woman = female man.
From an email broadcast by Yale's president to faculty and staff about Susan Hockfield's departure and contributions:
MIT is getting a good person IMO.
Let me tell you a true story from here. I call it "Jack and Jill up corporate hill".
Jack is the stereotypical incompetent monkey. He's a marketer who noticed that he could get more money if he switched to being a "programmer". Unfortunately his only IT skill is marketting himself to clueless PHBs. (I've worked with him before. He's the guy I mentioned that spent hours trying all combinations of *, & and nothing on every variable in C++, because he never could understand pointers.)
But the bosses _love_ Jack. Jack speaks their language. Jack may not be able to code shit, or anything else, but he knows how to say exactly what the bosses want to hear.
Jack also loves making compliments like "Hey, it's rare to see a chick with brains." (Said verbatim to a competent female employee who's programmed in assembly before. _Way_ more competent than him in any case.) He actually thinks it's a compliment, and not the sexist idiocy that it really is.
Jill, for better or worse, did finish a CS college. No, she's not a genius, but I'd say at least more competent than half the monkeys hired in that department just because they were cheap.
Jack has been on a sort of a personal Jihad against Jill for more than a year. He'd hunt every single mistake in her code and run show it to everyone else, or humiliate her in front of other employees.
He came to me a few times with such "proofs" that Jill writes bad code. Invariably Jill's code was right, and it just showed that Jack didn't understand even the _basics_ of Java. The language he's paid to program in these days. E.g., he didn't know that String constants are internalized.
I called him an idiot to his face on those occasions, and explained to him why Jill's code works and is OK. (Hey, I never said I was a diplomat.) He stopped coming to me, and I thought he got over it. I was wrong.
Recently Jack got promoted to team leader. (As I've said, the bosses _love_ him.)
Their team also had grown with two people fresh out of college. Again a male and a female. Let's call them Dick and Jane. Jane was undoubtedly inexperienced. On the other hand, Dick, by everyone else's assessment, bosses _and_ coworkers alike, was a fscking catastrophe.
What does Jack do? Jack recommends that they fire Jane, but keep Dick. The boss's question? "Huh? Why Jane? I thought Dick was the catastrophe."
Jack insists however that they keep Dick, reasoning that it would be bad for the project to fire both, and Dick will probably learn along the way. Takes all his marketting skills, but he gets the boss to aggree.
So Jane packs her bags, and Dick, for all I know, is still blundering to even understand Java, but still in that team.
Now let's get back to Jill. As I've said, at one point I thought Jack had gotten past his unexplicable feud against her. As I should have guessed, he was actually just avoiding me, after I had called him an idiot.
What's Jack doing now, in his team leader position? Finally getting Jill fired.
So it seems to me like you don't even have to try hard to see discrimination in action. You just need an open mind, which is really what's lacking.
CS _is_ a boy's club. Hiring interviews are conducted by prejudiced people. You have prejudiced people as team leaders and co-workers, spewing sexist idiocies without even realizing it. Or being condescending and treating you a priori like a poor retard just because of gender preconceptions. And you have to interact with prejudiced clients and internal PHBs, who need to assert their testosterone supremacy anyway, but doubly so when it comes to women in tech fields.
Seems to me that anyone who's not outright fired, needs a pretty thick skin to stay in CS. A lot prefer to just leave. I've seen people bail out of CS and into other jobs because of this. (E.g., from programming to usability or whatever else, which isn't as supposed to be an exclusive boys' club.)
And the results of this aren't even perceived as the results of blatant discrimination, but used as further "proof" that women aren't fit to use a computer.
It's not even the only discrimination in this field. Age discrimination against males is at least as widespread.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
finally a girl for the geeks.
/. as well.
Hmm. I'm wondering if perhaps the first MIT student to have sex will make
We were hiring for a full time engineer, and our HR purson explained it to us like this: "All candidates are scored. If a male and a female score equally well and are both considered acceptable, then the female will be offered the position."
Not that complicated, not discriminatory. If the guy scores better, he gets the offer. Also note that the scoring was largely subjective -- there were plenty of opportunities to get the person you wanted.
While I fully support editors editorializing in their descriptions of news stories...
...the fact that they didn't have a woman as president before does not a gender biased institution make. I've never seen a female garbageman(person) before either, that doesn't mean the entire field is biased against women, it probably means women don't look for that position or that they weren't qualified (hard to imagine, but I'm sure there are qualifications for being a garbageman).
is this a step in the right direction for the historically gender-biased institution?
--trb
Come on, the only reason this president's gender is mentioned is because she's the FIRST EVER female president. Meaning there must have been discrimination in the past. So if we now start shouting 'Hey, why is it even mentioned she's a woman?', we're being disrepectful for all those women who had the qualities but were never elected.
What did they name her?
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
How do you enforce this? With EEOCs? Jail time? Bullet to the head?
If you ignore it, it's the functional equivalent of #1 in the grandparent.
If you enforce it, it's the functional equivalent of #2 in the grandparent.
In other words, no solution at all.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I'm a person, a human being.
I am not a noun.
I have a sex not a gender.
ARGH!
Gender and declination (masculine, feminine, neuter and 1st, 2nd, etc.) are an attributes of a noun in many reflexive languages (English is not a reflexive language, Latin is a reflexive language.).
So please start using the words correctly.
YES I KNOW THE DICTIONARY COMPANIES HAVE GIVEN UP AND LIST THE FIRST DEFINITION OF GENDER AS SEX!
I guess gender is a less emotionally loaded word than the word sex.
Loose control of the language and you will loose the arguement.
Supra et Ultra
You know when things will really have changed for women? When this isn't news. Look at the summary of this story: It trumpets the fact that a woman has taken a role of great prominence and responsiblity...but doesn't mention her name. As long as women are identified as generic "woman" instead of personalized as the actual women they are as individuals with their own skills and talents, things have not changed as much as they should have.
I wish it had, but all the multicultural horseshit in schoolbooks nowadays doesn't attack the issues. Wisdom, ethics, responsibility - these things have no place in education because they smack of morality, which is forbidden to be taught as an adjunct of religion.
I'm almost entirely atheist (a lapsed Catholic) but these values have a place, religion or no. How many decades will it be before someone sits down and tries this?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
That said, she could be a really good role model for women in science. MIT has been making strides and a serious effort to improve in that area. It'll be interesting to see how she does.
I personally think Vest was an overall negative for MIT. Although he did some things that needed to be done, I think he trashed the culture of the place. If she can improve it more power to her.
It's that she is from the life sciences, not physics or engineering. This has the capability to change the character of MIT as we know it, from a physica science and engineering school into a gooey life science school. Caltech has already started down that road.
there was a quote in the Globe a while back that summarized the differences between Harvard and MIT elegantly: Harvard has museums, MIT has laboratories. Appointing a woman neuroscientist as president is HUGE. Between this, the Whitehead Institute, and the many recent faculty scientist hires, MIT is troucing Harvard, and really is pushing the neuroscience envelope.
And now MITs female population doubles.
--------- I have no signature
Actually I know of quite a few good government workers. I have worked with many excellent union workers too. (And I'm pretty anti-union).
Meetings don't seem to have much value to a lot of 'workers'. It isn't until you're in management that you really understand how much comes out of a good productive meeting.
In my job and most others the meetings is the grease that let the actual work run pretty smoothly. The people doing the work don't realize that the difficulties and problems they aren't dealing with went away during that meeting.
Bad meetings are a waste of time, with lots of garbage out. A good meeting tends to look like nothing except people nodding and drinking coffee.
The president is a fine choice, but I do not see her as an effort to get women more involved in the MIT community.
I haven't heard anyone say, well what are her credentials is the right person for the job?
Instead you've all started bitching about how its so hard live with the stereo type of being male middle class and white.
Who is be descriminant here?
Someone remind me. When was it that women weren't allowed to work with computers? The tech industry ISN'T biased. Just because the majority of people in it are men doesn't mean that it's a result of evil men discriminating against women. Men and women are different. Men have a tendency to be better at certain subjects. And women have a tendency to be better at subjects that men do not. If a man becomes president of Martha Stewart's company, is anyone going to think it's a big step forward for men?
You are an ignorant, liberal fool.
That the only thing people seem to care about is that she's a woman; her qualifications seem to be secondary to her sex.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
You probably just implemented it wrong. Here in Norway it works just fine. At the last election for the student representatives at the university's board at NTNU, a male was quoted in because two girls were first and second.
That's a bit extreme since the quotes are 50/50 for only two seats, but today Norwegian society is much more egalitarian than what would have been decades ago. In politics, two out of four main parties are run by women (Kristin Halvorsen for Socialist Left, Erna Solberg for the Right), and even the populistic Progress Party plans to appoint a woman, Siv Jensen, when current Führer Carl I. Hagen steps down. Another smaller party with a female leader is the Centre Party. You can look at this recent poll to check that 50/50 is approximately respected, even though there is no law saying that 50% of the voters have to vote for a party led by a woman.
Note: I'm not a nationalist Norwegian. I'm born and grown up in Italy, where there is only one woman in the parliament for every 9 men.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
It's about time. I bet everyone was tired of saying "hey you." BTW, what did they name her? I always thought Julie was a good name.
Since the 1990s MIT undergrads have had a fairly balanced gender ratio. The national average is around 58% female in college undergrad.
MIT grad school is still 70% male. But then too that is similar to comparable science schools like Stanford.
MIT has had females enrolling from the beginning. But wel into the 1970s is was 10% or less. There was an uncomplementary folklore about "MIT coeds" in those days: like Wonder Women with a slide rule and horn-rimmed glasses.
If there are more men than women at MIT, does that mean that MIT is gender-biased?
To me, gender-biased, means you prefer one gender to the other. An objective entrance policy would certainly not evidence of such a bias.
As a MIT graduate I was expecting this. The honest truth is that women are under represented in engineering. There are few mentor, few colleagues, and the problems inherent with being surrounded with socially awkward members of the opposite sex day in and day out.
A number of readers seem to see this lady's promotion as reverse discrimination, but the university sees it as a chance to recruit more female staff and to attract more female students. Only by taking steps to remove the discrepancies between the sexes will the problems ever go away.
For anyone still indignant at MIT, how would you feel if you worked at an all woman university and got paid less than your colleagues because your boss was a woman and she preferred promoting other females. Lets say that women got to go to more conferences and were more frequently promoted to senior positions even when accounting for the relative scarcity of male professors. Well that is the problem today except it is male dominated engineering schools.
With powerful women in the administration the female worker finally has someone to appeal to when they are overlooked or pushed aside by their male colleagues. This doesn't mean that they will be suddenly the rulers of campus, just that there is finally a sympathetic ear in power.
Although I applaud Ms. Hockfield's accomplishments, I feel that the current hiring trends at MIT lead to her being choosen for the position. MIT's hiring policy is when you have two people equal in qualifications that you should make the offer to the person that is a minority or female in gender. In addition to this biased policy, MIT has started a trend where they won't even consider internal candidates for a position, they have strictly hired from the outside for the past few major hirings including Directors of Campus IT, Facilities and now this position. In addition to these hiring factors this appointment is undesirable based on the institute's current financial issues. They've now brought in someone who's going to want to spend all sorts of money on science programs, when we really need someone who can get the institute's financials in order and stop the outrageous spending waste that produced 20% in layoffs across the board as well as the construction of the behemoths of Simmons Hall and the Stata Center which leak like a sieve and that are literally falling apart (hugh chucks of concrete are falling in Simmons).
A smart women in the president chair at MIT is cool, but is she hot? ;-)
Look at the college application process. It should be illegal to ask about your gender or race on an application.
There's another option here, and I'm waiting to see someone use it. The very concept of "race" is unscientific: not only are there no medical tests which can determine to which race someone belongs (since what we call different races are not hard-and-fast genetic differences, but rather vague clusters of certain traits to which we give names like "black" or "Asian"), but, at least in America, there are no strict legal definitions for race. The only proof an institution has that a given individual is a member of a certain race is that person's word. So the answer is to list your race as whatever you think the institution's acceptance policy is biased toward. If they accuse you of falsifying your race in order to thwart affirmative action, simply ask them to prove that you are not, in fact, of the race you claim to be. This is, of course, impossible. Maybe if there were enough court cases about this it would finally pave the way to ending the legal fiction of race.
Biological sex, of course, is another issue, since there are scientific and legal definitions thereof. However, with intersexed and transgendered individuals making it more interesting, one's gender identity and biological sex may not always coincide neatly.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
I'm reading a great number of posts in many threads regarding the gender bias in technical fields. Granted, a good chunk of this bias exists because we are only now moving past the culture of "girls aren't supposed to be good at tech stuff". However, some of the disparity is actually a result of much deeper gender differences.
Now, in case anyone is readying the flamethrower, I consider myself a feminist along the line of "feminism is the notion that women are equal to men." However, part of recognizing the equality of the genders is acknowledging and celebrating their inherent differences.
I believe that a good part of the reason that women don't enter technical fields is because many of them find the work uninteresting. Not that women don't appreciate the challenges of technical work -- but, rather, that women tend to be more socially motivated than men. (Yes, I know, some of that is socialized behavior; but some isn't). As a result, while solving interesting problems is just as big a draw for intelligent women as it is for intelligent men, women are more likely to have a distaste for being chained to a computer all day -- they would rather have jobs that allow them to interact with humans thoroughout the day.
Yes, I know that's a sweeping generalization, and there are many exceptions -- some of the best developers I know are women, and most of them love their jobs. However, in general, men tend to be more comfortable in the impersonal technical fields, and women in the more social professions. (By social, I mean "interacting with humans" is a significant part of the job). That same function is partly responsible for the disproportionately large number of women in fields like nursing.
As an aside, my mother-in-law is adjunct faculty for a local college's nursing program. I've scanned through some of the textbooks for things like the Advanced Cardiology Care certificate (a nursing program) -- any woman who can work in those advanced nursing fields is every bit as intelligent and cabaple as advanced IT people.
So, I don't think it's a question of capability (clearly it's not), but one of motivation: most women would rather work in social jobs, where as men often are completely comfortable in the impersonal work environments.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Was she hired because she is a woman? was she hired because she fit the qualifications for the job, but given a leg up over the competition because of her gender? It sounds like the latter. Which is in direct opposition to MIT's stated non-discrimination in employment based upon race, gender, sexual orientation, race, and national origin. Iin other words, the whole policy of EEOC stuff is a lie, and that it is just a way to stomp down the white men that people like Michael Moore hate.
This is just another example of MIT's long slow decline. Soon, it will be as much of a social disaster area as UC Berkeley.
If you enforce it, it's the functional equivalent of #2 in the grandparent.
How is "Make it illegal to have a 'race' field on college applicaitons" equivilant to "require X% of admissions to be Y", or "being Z earns you W more points towards admissions"?
The point is you can't discriminate based on race if you are unaware of someones race. It is not practical for any process containing an interview, but for a paper process (like most college addmisions) it is bullet proof.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I think maybe the little blurb for this one is misleading. It makes it sound like she was named president in an effort to get more women involved in the MIT community, as opposed to because she was the best candidate. Not that I read the article, of course - it's the wording of the blurb that I find unfortunate.
The hard core of the issue, bigotry, still remains.
...and I read your journal, do you think that 40 years ago the hispanic women would have been able to move into your apartment complex? Do you think that if they had they might have been assaulted physically rather than verbally? Do you honestly think nothing has improved in the last 40 years?
Nobody said it was gone. They said reduced...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Firstly, MIT is not the only "historically gender-biased institution". Secondly, while I can't speak for everyone here, most of us could give a flying rat's @$$ about our president's gender. They claim she's qualified, and at least she was a scentist in a former life (even if it is a biologist, way too trendy a pick IMO), so that's fine. But the thing I for one want to see (and others too) is an alum as president. An accquaintance quipped this somewhat aking to choosing a Julliard alum to direct West Point.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Equality means different things in different contexts.Is equality = same or not? if not does it mean equality of opportunity or equality of ability. Does different negate equality. Please lets define equality.
Why are there not more women in geek fields? If the 99% male /. crowd experienced life from the other side youd understand why.
It's chicken and egg. You don't get many women taking geek roles in society because those roles are male dominated. Let's take a simplified hypothetical scenario:
Think of the teenage girl on a campus open-day. She likes coding but has never been encouraged at it. She looks in at university computer lab and sees 50 sweating/overweight/horrendously thin pale boys, all with mildly-pornographic desktops and wearing Tux t-shirts (a stereotype that I've seen borne out often enough to not be a stereotype). She tries talking to one of the students. Gets told that the EnglishLit building is next door. She tries talking to another group of students. Wow, she gets sniggered at by emotionally immature male geeks.
So, due to this experience the girl doesn't want to join this particular highly exclusive and, believe me, misogynistic male dominated profession. The profession takes this as proof that women are unsuited for their work, reinforcing the misogyny that prevents women joining in the first place.
Yeah, so I'm simplifying. But women get told their entire lives - by their mothers, their teachers, their fathers, society - that geek roles are not for women. If you take such a role then you obviously do so because you are a failure as a woman. Do you really expect women to want to join something that theyve been told to loathe?
Now, let's twist the scenario around. Now, how many men can honestly say that they are able to cry at a movie? Who can cuddle up to their best male friend on the sofa? Who actually talk about their emotions? Come on, raise your hands. Oh dear, I don't see many. Now are you telling me that men are biologically incapable of performing those acts? Like fuck you are. You wouldn't be so stupid. Men don't do those things BECAUSE SOCIETY TELLS THEM NOT TO. You're soft, you're a sissy, you're gay, youre not a man if you do any of these things. D'ya see what Im getting at here guys?
Sorry for ranting or if I sound like I'm trying to preach. It just really frustrates me that I see so many geek women turn away from geek roles (or who keep them as a dirty little secret) just because society says no. I don't know if discrimination against men in job applications is the answer, but you cant just leave it to "let managers pick the best person for the job". There IS inherent sexism in the geek world. If you can't see the forest then its because of all the trees.
"What can I say? I'm the queen of java."
subduction.net
... on how biased the slashdot community and geeks are on these subjects already is that you don't even mention her name in the slashdot story.
Perhaps she doesn't deserve a name since she might have been slashdotted just because of her gender? Now, wouldn't that be discriminating!?
I think it is both rude and utterly clueless.
We are currently fostering the male domination in our field by upholding geekish traditions that just don't appeals to women in general.
That said I think the main obstacle in getting more competent women focusing on computer science is culture. That's a thorn in the side not many geeks want to admit.
Oh, and by the way her name is Susan Hockfield. I wish her good luck!
I like to tell my girlfriend that "Women do not belong in positions of authority". That's usually about two seconds before she slaps me.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Here's a situation I want you to consider.
Suppose the large majority of your company is made of "Aversive" racists - whites who don't admit that they're racist but harbor racist tendancies, while not believing themselves to be true racists- and that these Aversive racists find it difficult to work with Blacks in a one-on-one situation. They find themselves overcompensating and being uncomfortable in the situation, even though they believe that they're not racists. Because of these racial biases, the Aversively Racist whites usually have lower productivity when working with black employees.
Now suppose we take a black employee and pair him up with other employees in five seperate projects. Blacks make up a very small portion of the workforce, and so are more likely to be paired first with Aversive racists than they are with other Blacks or with non-racists. Because of this statistical inequity, and because productivity is lower in the majority of his cases (even though it has nothing to do with him!), in a Meritocracy, which is what you're advocating, this black employee will look worse than any of his Aversive Racist coworkers (who have a greater percentage chance to work with other whites and thus suffer a very marginal performance decrement).
I'm not sure if I've explained this correctly, but essentially, these experiments have been done by a researcher named John Dovidio, in an attempt to explain to people who "don't seem to get it" why a Meritocracy just *doesn't work* unless you have an ideal population.
Does this make sense?
Speaking as an employee of MIT Lincoln Laboratory, I've gotta say this is a welcome change. MIT has been in financial trouble for some time, and it has gotten to the point where it's affecting us -- and the Lab is normally financially autonomous.
Here's hoping she enacts some real changes.
I am all for getting minorities and women chances to succeed; however, they should succeed based on their own merit. It's a sad day when you settle for less just because of the package, especially in academics where excellence should be paramount.
At some point, disadvantages of the past becomes somewhat irrelevant. You may have difficult childhood and got into a second rate school, but by the time you finish a university (even a second rate one) education, you shold already have a better chance to succeed. If you keep on going until you get your PhD, you already have better chances to succeed than many others even WASP males. You won't get your doctorate degree if you are not smart enough for it. In theory, anyway. But, the process is compounded by the fact that some schools try to fill some quotas by allowing people to get their PhD even when they are not qualified. That is the worse part in the US education: it perpetuates mediocrity of minorities.
Some universities use high level positions to highlight the examples of the achievement of minorities. Fine, that is great. But what kind of example you show kids when you pick somebody mainly because of their race/gender? That they don't have to work as hard because affirmative action will get them scholarship/fellowship/professorship?
I think it's great that MIT has seen fit to break down the gender wall and name this woman as President. I just hope that she's hot.
Well...
NO SIG
any ideas?
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/gately/pp 01acec.htm
"Technical skills are necessary, but not sufficient, to predict future success as a manager when selecting an engineer for a management position. What is missing? The answer is Job Fit. Does the engineer have the right combination of mental abilities, personal interests and personality traits to allow for success as a manager?"
Even people with proper qualifications often mess up in their new position, but people promoted for political reason really make a mess of things, unless they hire a competent person to do their work while they set back and take the credit. You see this technique used by Saudi men in Saudia Arabia all the time, that's why there are so many foreign second level administrators and technicians over there.
For some reason, I read that as:
MIT Names First Shemale President
MIT actively recruits females and continuously struggles to achieve a female enrollment of a measly 42%. In MIT's banner publication "Technology Review" there is constant handwringing about this.
Colleges and universities are at the tail end of the educational pipeline, the gender and racial mixes of the students in these educational institutions reflect the job that parents, culture, peers, and elementary and secondary schools have done in breaking down discriminatory attitudes. Colleges and universities shouldn't be leading the way in breaking down gender and racial stereotypes, they should be reaping the results of efforts by those listed above. Unfortunately, all too often, they have to in order to prevent being castigated, sued and destroyed by misguided fools in our society.
I'm putting forth this argument, because I don't see it anywhere else in these comments. There seem to be about 15 "5 - Insightful" comments all saying the same thing, and while I mostly agree with them, I don't like one sided arguments that paint things as simpler than they really are.
The prevailing mindset here seems to be: "Encouraging diversity by lending extra weight to minority candidates is actually discrimination against non-minority candidates, and therefore is bad"
That's not an unreasonable way to look at it, but there's an inteligent other side which isn't saying "discrimination against white males is okay", as the strawman posts here state. The intelligent other side of this argument goes like this:
1. There are prejudiced people out there, people who discriminate against various minorities. If you honestly don't believe this, then you don't get out enough.
2. This prejudice almost always comes from ignorance. By very definition, prejudice means you don't have detailed knowledge of the subject. Most people who interact on a daily basis with multiple people who are [pick a minority] tend to lose their prejudices.
Imagine you have a small firm of some kind, made up entirely of white men who are genuinely prejudiced. They truly believe that black people and women are poor workers. As a result, they are unlikely to ever hire anyone black or female, and are likely to go on believing in their current prejudices. On the other hand, if they were forced to hire black people and women, there's a decent chance (not 100%, but probably more than 20%) that over time the exposure would cause their prejudices to erode, and that they'd begin hiring genuinely qualified members of various minorities of their own volition.
That's basically the thinking behind the affirmative action, quotas, and reverse-discrimination. It's not that "white men are bad and should be punished", or that "we owe minorities for past wrongs, and should make it up to them now". It's that the best way to get rid of existing prejudice is to expose to diverse groups of people, which is something they won't do if left to their own devices.
Personally, I'm not convinced that the good accomplished by this approach is worth the cost, but I at least acknowledge that the other side of the argument means well and has a reasonable point.
is double wide.
MIT is following the lead of another fine institution.
President Tighlman was installed in 2001. Her background is also in the life sciences.
--- Corporations Are A Fad.
As with every other kind of profession, you get nice companies and crappy companies. The trick is not to choose a crappy one.
When I was looking for work recently, I had an amusing interview experience. It was amusing rather than disheartening because by that point it was obvious that there were so many other things wrong with this company that I definitely did not want to work there.
I was being interviewed by one of the managerial types; a guy in his thirties. From the first words of PC gibberish that came out of his mouth, I could tell that we weren't going to be friends. After a very boring half an hour, the conversation got to this point (paraphrased):
Guy: So, tell me, how do you feel about working in such a male-dominated field? [IT]
Me: I don't really care. It's not an issue for me.
Guy: [confused pause] Um, yeah, because there's really a lot of testosterone in this field... uh... but maybe you like that...
Me: [boggles]
Guy: Uh, yeah, apparently women make better software engineers than men...
Me: [pointed lack of interest]
So basically, according to this guy, if you're a woman going into a technological field, either you are a self-conscious feminist who will harp on for an hour about the challenges of working in a male-dominated environment, or you are some kind of ho who thrives on male attention. Niiiice.
I always find it entertaining when political correctness backfires, and serves only to highlight the speaker's prejudices - and make it obvious that he (or she) can only relate to people on the basis of broad stereotypical categories.
I should have asked the guy what he thought about women working in IT, since he obviously found it such a fascinating topic.
Mussolini was really a woman?
This is a common misperception: If only they _knew_ someone who was [insert group here], they'd finally see the light. From past experience in the Army, I can tell you that it works like everything else with the average human: experience reinforces prejudice. What most people call "reasons" are actually rationalizations of illogicial decisions. Folks with prejudice only "see" the things that match their preconceptions... So in your scenario, when the white guys hired the minority candidates, the new hire's screw-ups are all because they're [insert group here], not because they're inexperienced, or because everyone makes mistakes. Sad, but true.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Women don't have to be drafted, fix that, then you can complain.
Sorry about the inflamatory title. It's good for karma whoring. :)
Anyhow, I suppose it's true that people and society are still biased against women. Personally, I find gender-based discrimination very difficult to understand. What's ironic about that is that, until it was pointed out to me by a friend, I never realized that the family I grew up with had this kind of slant. It never occurred to me to discriminate based on sex. I mean, I'd heard of it, but I never saw any reason to do it.
There are things that men and women are inherently better at than each other ON AVERAGE. That is, the average man is better at visual/spatial reasoning, and the average woman is better is linguistic/auditory reasoning. But on the other hand, an above-average woman will likely beat the average man at both. Individuals often lie outside of the statistical averages.
This whole concept of pre-judging makes no sense to me. Built-in talent helps, but I've seen time and time again a hard-working average person beat a lazy above-average person. So why can't a woman with determination compete well with men who assume that things should be just handed to them? In fact, she can and often would wipe the floor with them were it not for stupid social-political barriers that say that women, universally, aren't up to the task.
One friend of mine once pointed out that "equal opportunity" does not mean "equal achievement". As I see it, if you're not smart or hard-working enough to achieve something, then tough shit. You shouldn't get special consideration or leniency for being rich, poor, male, female, black, white, gay, or straight.
Here's the "my ass" part: Maybe MIT has been biased. Maybe not. But just maybe there hasn't until now been a woman who was up to the job. Now there is. The fact that she's a woman has nothing to do with her qualifications for the job. Yes, I agree that the obstacles are there. Yes, I agree that she probably had to work much harder than others who would have vied for the position. Should I be sad that I had to work my way through college, rather than get minority scholarships (which, BTW, are fine by me as long as they are from private institutions)?
There is one benefit to me, as a guy, to having this stupid gender bias while it lasts. See, I like intelligent people. If a guy gets into a position of power, it tells me nothing. If a woman gets into a position of power, I can pretty much assume that she's got her shit together and that I can easily have an intelligent conversation with her. This isn't 100% perfect, but it's a strong statistical trend.
Also, I think these women, being intuitive, quickly recognize that I naively lack this gender bias and warm up to me almost instantly. The reason I mention this is because, far too often, I see guys threatened by strong women and find themselves compelled to refer to them as "bitches". Well, I've met a few bitches, but they were just stupid people (both men and women). These strong women, on the other hand, are typically a joy for me to work with.
I think it's telling (aka depressing) that MIT didn't get a female president from their engineering department.
I doubt that's really telling--Every university president whose hiring I am at least somewhat familiar with (granted, that's not too many) has been hired from another university, usually from a Provost or similar position. Department chair to university president is a pretty big jump.
The progression I've always seen is something along the lines of Professor (-> Dept chair) -> some kind of dean -> higher up dean -> provost -> president. Very often the last couple of transitions happen across universities. It would probably be much more telling if they had recruited their president from their engineering department, in that it might indicate that they were trying to hard to find a female candidate.
Okay, here's a list of random names:
Might it perhaps be possible to make a shrewd guess as the the gender, race, and/or religious affiliation of some of those people? Even if you personally are smart enough not to, might you at least concede that people with racist tendencies might be tempted to jump to conclusions?
Do you perhaps think that merely eliminating specific questions about these things might therefore not be an entirely bullet-proof protection against discrimination?
Maybe this will piss some people off, but I just cannot see how an engineering school can be categorized as a "historically gender-biased institution". Now, before the "liberal" Witch Hunt for me starts, I would like to explain myself...
I would like nothing better than to spend the rest of my life in a relationship with a female engineer. However, I doubt that will ever happen. Why will this not happen? It probably will not happen because most women do not want to be engineers. They are not interested. They are usually interested in other subjects (very unfortunately).
If 0.01% of all the girls I met in college were engineers, well, that would be a liberal overestimate at best. Women were quite interested in many subjects. One primatology class I took had 18 girls and 3 guys. So, it is not science. It is only engineering. When I was in high school, I cannot think of a single girl that was interested in engineering. My high school was one of the largest in the city.
My question is: When women choose not to be engineers, through lack of interest or whatever (which from what I have seen appears to be the case), how can a school be blamed for having more guys than girls? How can the school be labelled "gender-biased"? Is this fair?
I have seen lots of places in society where I would freely use the term gender-bias. It just seems absurd applied to an engineering school. No engineering school can attract women who are not interested in engineering.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
is this a step in the right direction for the historically gender-biased institution?
Could the answer to that question possibly be no?
Any discussion of a lack of women at the top should also include discussion of a lack of women at the bottom.
In a lot of endeavors, (objective ones, even) women tend to perform towards the middle of the pack, with most of the winners and most of the losers being men.
Here is an example.
It's not THAT stark a difference in the case above. But it's significant. There ARE a lot of women who achieve, but there are MORE men who do. In just about everything measure of success and failure, men dominate the high end of the scale. I think the dominance of men in power and in prison is more likely a symptom than a cause. (though it could be both.)
Never mind how women tend to avoid technical fields in droves. Maybe Ms. Hockfield could be a step towards changing that.
In my computer science classes in college, there were two sections. 80 students. Of those, 3 were female. And two of them were over 40. (One was the mother of a friend of mine, she was in most of my classes, actually).
It would be trivial to reduce all identifying information on the application to "applicant number" and review applications devoid of given name.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Give them a vote, a job out of the kitchen, and an education and look at what they go and do!
It's another episode of....
Quota Misconception Correction Time!!!
Myth #1: Quotas mean that you need to keep your workforce proportionally balanced to the racial and gender distribution of the area.
False. There is one little difference that has a major impact: Quotas mean that you need to keep your workforce proportionally balanced to the racial and gender distribution of the area *of qualified candidates in the given field*.
So, for example, if you managed a large-scale farm, if there were a lot of female farm workers out there, then yes, they would be discriminating by hiring only men. But if there were almost exclusively male farm workers out there seeking jobs, then the quota for women would be little to nonexistant.
Myth #2: Violating a quota means you get fined
False. If you violate a quota, there is no penalty. However, if anyone thinks that they're being discriminated against, they have the right to sue you; how you did in respect to quotas is used as evidence. You have the right to appeal the quota set for your business; for example, if you think that the quota is assuming too many female farm workers qualified for the positions that you have compared to what are in the area, you can challenge its accuracy. In general, in a discrimination lawsuit, only a clear pattern of significantly not meeting quotas (for example, if the quota was 15% women, hiring only 5% women year after year) will result in judgement against the employer.
Leela: "It's like a textbook on evolution!" Fry: "... Except in Kansas."
Does any institution that exhibited a historically negative trait ever get to put it behind them? Just once in a while I'd like to see us focus on the current positive status of a group, and not unceasingly rehash the historical negative.
If we continually focused on former traits of groups, places, or organizations, we'd still be calling all Native Americans cannibals, all Germans Nazis, and all white men racist slave holders.
By all means, strive for perfection (whatever that may be), but acknowledge the progress!
The point is you can't discriminate based on race if you are unaware of someones race.
Well, there's no race field, but someone might pick John Doe over Abdul Mohamed.
Are they giving her an extra-wide parking space?
In the UK, there is a female-only car insurance (Diamond), which will only accept female clientele because their insurance claims would in average be lower (hence allowing female drivers to save money, while indirectly increasing the insurance cost of males, by removing drivers with "lower claims" from male/female car insurance companies)...
Where's the equal opportunity here?
I'm curious why you blame Diamond for "indirectly increasing the insurance cost of males." Your statement is essentially a confirmation that you understand that, statistically, a female is in most cases likely to cost the insurance company less in claims than a male of her same age group, driving the same car type. The insurance company can't predict the future, but it can take cues from what other people fitting the same criteria have done in the past, so with all else considered equal, it will usually charge females less. So in a company that insures both, males are indirectly increasing the insurance cost of females.
In any case, equal opportunity hiring practices and selling practices are two different things. Businesses have much more leeway in treating customers differently, or refusing customers outright.
And this is a good thing, because if business were held to the same standards of equal opportunity selling, everyone with good driving records and good credit histories would be in a spittle-spewing rage over their higher interest rates and premiums.
Growing your own replacement bones?
Learn About Outsourcing. http://www.pioutsource.com
I for one welcome our new female overlord.
- each application is assigned a unique identifier (such as a random number, or perhaps an MD5 or SHA1 hash of the person's name and address).
- a database entry is created for the applicant, with all the personally-identifying data, linked to the ID generated in (1).
- another database entry is created, this one for all the application materials (only that which is necessary to make an admissions decision). again, this is tied to the applicant via the ID.
- the applicant ID alone, and access to the database in (3), is passed on to the appropriate admissions officials.
now, there are still some problems with this approach. first of all, it's up to the college to do this. the actual admissions people can only have access to the database referenced in (3), and of course the ID number. you can make a law that this needs to be the case, but i haven't a clue how you'd enforce this without spending tons of gov't money on audits (unless you want to make the colleges pay for the audits, which of course is basically asking the students and parents to foot the bill).there's some information the admissions people need to have that could be considered personally identifiable. for example, it might be necessary to know what high school the applicant attended, so the admissions person can normalise their GPA based on the school's record for grade inflation/deflation.
the fact of the matter is that in some areas you just have to trust that the admissions official won't go out of his/her way to dig up info about particular applicants. i think this is acceptable, as long as it's made more than trivial to do so.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
An increasing proportion of women, especially at some schools with strong affirmative action programs, are either incompetent, or willfully game the system. Several of my friends count in the "gaming the system" group. They're intelligent, but they don't learn anything or do any work: they know that as long as they do a bare minimum, the professor will give them an A or B, because giving a lower grade would cause the professor problems as people ask why this white male professor was giving the only woman in his class a bad grade. In fact, it is pretty much impossible for them not to graduate, because the school cannot afford to have its already poor "percentage of women in the EE department" numbers look even worse. So they graduate people who purposely do no work.
Doesn't end after college either. These same women, who graduated with a decent GPA despite knowing nothing, get hired to do nothing at companies, which don't fire them because they serve a useful purpose for the company's diversity statistics. I know people who admit doing this, and have absolutely no trouble doing so.
This isn't anything particularly unique about women. If you tell a group of people that they can do a half-assed job and still succeed, many people will. Hell, I would.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Some things just never change.
What gender-bias are you talking about? You make it sound like MIT is willing culprit in exluding women from higher education.
MIT was built as an engineering school. For decades, engineering was the sole domain of men (not fair, of course, but that was the way things were). In those days, MIT was predominantly male, but not because of their own doing. The men wanted to learn engineering, the women didn't, and the student demographic reflected that.
While I certainly don't take offense to the idea that MIT used to be gender-skewed, I do resent any implication that MIT is actively gender-biased. As an MIT student, I've learned that the greatest thing about MIT is that it's supremely meritocratic; there simply is no room for other, irrelevant factors such as gender to enter into the equation. Indeed, one need not look any farther than my graduating class, which is 50% male and 50% female.
For what reason she was chosen (either because she was the best-suited president or because MIT wanted to break new grounds) is now irrelevant.
Now that she is in that position she is a beacon for women and her/MIT's success will be detrimental in either advancing or digressing how women are seen in science and engineering.
Knowing from experience of attending a technical institute, the president's job is of utmost importance to the success of the institute; her work will be heavily scrutinized. However, every female professor I've ever worked for in science and engineering has been an absolutely outstanding leader.
can't sleep. clowns will eat me.
it's a man, baby!"
This would have been a big deal 20+ years ago but today its rather common. I'm happy for her but what's so special about it happening at MIT vs. every other time its happened at other institutions?
... as well as her gender; geez.
I thought MIT came up with some sort of handicapping software and was able to predict the first female United States President in advance.
The Whiting School of Engineering announced a female head a few years ago (Dr. Ilene Bush-Vishniac). No big deal, right?
Some big wigs in the department went on sabbatical as a sign of protest. WTF? Apparently there is enough sexism amongst geeks for this to be a big deal!
So why is this necessary? Because geek guys feel their testicles are threatened by powerful women. GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
As a female chemistry grad student, I am involved in some science/engineering/technology activities for girls and young women, such as the Expanding Your Horizons conferences for middle-school girls.
/. readers would be suprised at the discriminatory messages that Valian documents and I definitely can relate to.
The intent is not to deprive boys of fun science activities, but rather:
1. To give the girls a "safe" place to explore SET ideas. When I say "safe" I mean free from the well-documented behavioral differences that result in teacher face-time being dominated by boys.
2. To counteract, if you like, the accumulation of signals that girls recieve from their peers and adults. Namely, science and math are for boys. When you first evinced interest in science &c., did the adults around you look happy or did they say "ew, science is awfully difficult." Your answer correlates very strongly with your gender. SET activities for girls both demonstrate female role models _and_ show the girls that they are not alone among their peers in liking science.
A good read, with lots of references to the sociology literature, is Virginia Valian's book _Why So Slow_. She discusses which observed sex differences are biological and which are social (and therefore potentially reparable). Near the end, she discusses some actual case studies.
I think many
Ok then, how do you know (or prove) discrimination played a role? You eventually do have to show up in person, or talk over the phone. Do you look at trends and stats? Ex. 10% black population, but School A has only 5% black students. But that's just affirmative action and quotas all over again.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
If she was hired on merit alone, power them. If she was hired because they felt obligated to put a woman in that position then damn them.
wisdom?
ethics?
Mod parent +5 Funny. Those words are completely out of sync with the times. Personal responsibility is so passe.
Last night, I went with a friend to some Materials Science Industry conference dinner thing at the Science Museum of Minnesota. We were walking around the museum, and there was a kiosk which said "Why should we have women in Science and Technology?"
Below it, was a laminated photo album with notes from schoolchildren in it. Most of the responses were insightful. However, one of them read:
So they can get the male scientists a sandwich or something.
Donna
It was written in bubbly little girl handwriting too. Obviously someone didn't want to be on that field trip.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
if you don't provide a race, they do a "best guess" and do the labeling for you. at least that's how they did it at michigan.
Thing that annoys me a little with this is that people always say women are objectified by men when I see women every day who do teh smae thing to men.
At one time, our department did have more men then women but now it's about equal. When one of the men went on a business trip or vacation to Miami, we'd either bring back a postcard or send a post card with a picture of a hot babe in a thong on it. We put them at the top of our whiteboard. Now the women also do the same thing instead they just put up pictures of hot men up there. Noone is offended by this. I have never understood why anyone might be offended by a picture of a women in a small bikini....I mean it's not like we're showing a picture of a couple having sex! IN any case there are women that treat men as sex objects too.
Hiring someone on the basis of sex or race is always goign to be discriminatory. The best thing that should be done would be keep both names and sex out of the selection process. When a resume or application comes in, before handing it to the manager, black out the name. Do a voice disguised interview and the only one who knows the sex or race can be HR. Once the selection has been made, then and only then do you share the sex or race with the hiring manager. Thi scould be the only way to truely create a non discriminitory hiring policy. My bet though is even if you do that, you will still see inane lawsuits come up that said they hired x person cuz he's white.
I am so sick of blacks who whine they don't get a fair shake in this country. It's always their race if they don't get x job or get x loan or of x happens to them. It's only that if you think it is and it will only be that if you always think it is that way. Got news for you...the world isn't out to get you...we just didn't pick you because you weren't qualified and that's it!
Gorkman
The first thread will be full of politically correct +5: Instightful posts.
The second thread will be for those who want to use the words "boobies" and "hynie" and "jpg"
Thank you.
That's not CS you're talking about, it's bullshit corporate politics.
I'd agree with you on the age discrimination thing though, because I personally find old people annoying as I'm sure they find me annoying.
How come we don't see, "MIT's new president developed theory X, was first to Y, and happens to be a woman"?
interesting.
This headline has such sexual bias. Why is there the underlying assumption that this is somehow a freebee appointment? "Is this a step in the right direction?". Ever stop to think that she might be the most qualified candidate before you start bashing the decision?
How many male kindergarten teachers are there?
w s/ 0425155234/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/002-6226579-4929601?%5 Fencoding=UTF8&me=ATVPDKIKX0DER
How many female coal miners are there?
Garbagemen (there are no 'garbagepersons') are 2.5 times more likely to be killed than police officers. Fire fighting, construction, heavy trucking , coal mining, in short nearly all of the back breaking low paying jobs are done by males. 94% of occupational deaths occur to men. Every workday hour a construction worker loses his life. Same horrible statistics when it comes to catastrophic injuries. Secretaries may be underpaid but they can rise on the social scale without fear of amputations.
Funny how women don't want equal opportunity 'equally', just in the safe, cozy industries.
I'm all for equal opportunity, but its a two-way street. A good read on the subject is The Myth of Male Power:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-revie
-Copyright law #69:Whenever Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain,copyrights get extended by 25 years.
What's so bad about choosing a woman for a figurehead position in order to help increase female enrollment in the school ? She has a long list of qualifications, has held the position of provost and done well. She sounds like she's perfect to be in a position where she basically just attaches her name and persona to the university. Also, the life sciences have lots of women and that's where all the money is. The current president of Caltech is a Biologist and that was no accident. So she's got the right stuff, in the right field, and if they can get more attention and female enrollment as a bonus, good for them.
@AlexSheive
> MIT Names First Female President
MIT board of regents apologizes for not having one sooner, but it took decades to get up the nerve to ask her.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Seastead this.
The whole point is we can be ignorant and act like social status has zero effect on educational performance or we can realize that the wrongs of the past have to be corrected some way.
Personally, I am not for reparations, but I think something has to be done to level the playing field. I am not so arrogant to not realize that part of the reason I did so well in school is that I had a comfortable house to go home to and stability in my life.
People who act like there is a level playing field now are lying. Yes, maybe racism isn't such a problem in hiring, but the dire economic circumstances that we have put people in make it much more difficult for people to get to the point where they can be at that hiring table. You can say it isn't fair to penalize people for things they didn't do, the white student enrolling didn't own slaves, but also, the black student enrolling didn't have a choice to the circumstance he was born into (sorry if this sounds racist at all, it really wasn't meant to be)
It behooves all of us to not have entire races living in poverty. If you want to look at it in fiscal terms, poverty breeds crime, not race. And we all pay for crime. Some estute people may say but "Oh, West Virginia is impoverished but doesn't suffer high crime rates", but it is also different when there is land available for people to live on.
In US academic insitutions there seems to be more emphasis on who you are than what you can do. So appointments are constantly made as long as the appointee is not a white male regardless of excellence or real competence. But this is not how excellence is created. China and India certainly are not pushing political correctness at the expense of excellence - and so the decline of US education and the US in general continues apace. Within 30 years one will look back at the US (as China dominates) and wonder how it could have ever been a great nation. In much the same way one looks at Italy and wonders about the Roman empire. Only difference is the time frame is faster. Americans by then will be so poorly educated they will not be able to figure out how it happened. It is already a standing joke in Europe that the US needs educated immigrants simply to maintain a pool of people capable of dealing with modern complexities. Sadly in the future Americans won't realize that their society's obsession with political correctness and confusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcomes has weakened their educational system and hence their society to the point that they will no longer be a real world power. Think I'm crazy: remember these words. China will win more medals than the US in the next Olympic games. China will have a base on the moon by 2020. China will be economically more powerful than the US by 2025/2030. China will be militarily more powerful than the US by 2035 (by then Taiwan will be taken back) Chinese and Indian universities will gain in stature to the point that ambitious students will aspire to attend those institutions rather than Harvard, Yale or MIT. (Similar thing has occurred in England where Oxford and Cambridge are not the institutions they once were.) Still it is good to know that they are getting rid of gender bias. In effete academia that is what really matters. (PS -I'm not Chinese or American - just an observer from another country)
*nods...* Ideally, in a selection process--and any other place in which even uncocnscious discrimination might come into play--it should be impossible to tell who is whom. I'm put in mind of how, when in a specific case tests were made anonymous, with the tester being unaware of who was being tested, suddenly females began getting even the scores that previously only males had received.
I have no problem with non race based afirmative action... I think it is a good thing. But giving the child of a black doctor preferance over the child of a white welfare recipient is nothing but racism.
I agree that people from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to have disadvantaged children, but it is only cooralated with race, not caused by it. I the long run the only way to get rid of institutional racism is to have institutions ignore race. Do majority people from a poor background not deserve help?
I am a first generation advantaged child. My dad was born in a mined out western maryland coal town, and his dad died when he was 4. He and my uncle had to work while my grandmother was in the TB hospital, so that the family could keep eating. Nobody in his family had ever been to college before he went. Do you think that the color of someones skin is a bigger disadvantage than that?
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I have Asian, African, Indonesian, Khazar, Indian, Aboriginal, Spanish, American Negro and other friends mixed in with the usual dose of Caucasia. Yet I still don't feel comfortable that I'm treating everyone equally, again forex, I met an Asian girl about two years ago who has totally full-on blue eyes and didn't do very well at helping her to feel like just another part of the crowd. One of the reasons I'd like to travel the world is to truly first-hand understand what it feel like to be the only white guy in a crowd of something else, ditto the only English speaker in earshot. Easier targets like "the only bloke" and "the only straight" (ie non-homosexual) have already been met, but these still don't provide the ambiance of being genuinely unusual.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing