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?"

Comments

Big deal...

[avalys]

When MIT announces the first robot president, I'll be listening.

Re:Big deal...

[chunkwhite86]

When MIT announces the first robot president, I'll be listening.

Yeah, but you put your brain in a robot body? You'd have the strength of FIVE GORILLAS!

male/female/black/white

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:male/female/black/white

[zaxios]

"The present is a product of the past." Male/female/black/white have not traditionally been treated equally, and the current employment landscape still reflects its history. That can't just be ignored in the idealistic minority's hurry to move on. We can dream of true equality without regulation, but for the moment this and and this need practical solutions.

Re:male/female/black/white

[Anonymous Coward]

So the solution to discrimination is more discrimination?

No, the solution to discrimination is the elimination of discrimination in every realm. The silly notion that we can somehow right the wrongs by giving those groups discriminated in the past preference over those who were not is just as wrong.

Re:male/female/black/white

[PatrickThomson]

Precisely! My place of work is in the throes of equal opportunities policies that are simply insane. I appreciate the need to remove any lingering subconcious biases in the minds of those who conduct interviews, but not giving a job to someone because they're not in an under-filled denomination is pure discrimination

"sorry, we have too many white people, try again next week"

Honestly, these things are no more relevant than being left-handed.

Disclaimer: We don't work with members of the public who might have prejudices that affect the ability of, say, black disabled gay women to do the job effectively.

Re:male/female/black/white

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. This is why I have no problem hitting a woman. I'm a feminist and believe in equality.

Re:male/female/black/white

[Daniel Dvorkin]

It's those who shout for equality who seem to be the first to highlight irrelevant differences

Funnily enough, the vast majority of people who say things like this (in the US, anyway) are white males from middle- or upper-class families who speak English with one of the standard American accents. What a remarkable coincidence.

Re:male/female/black/white

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are going to call one type of racism and gender discrimination bad, you are going to have to call all forms of racism and gender discrimination bad.

I have never had a problem with giving those who struggle in life a hand. I always thought that colleges should, instead of being racist in its admissions policy, pay some attention to the work the applicant went through to get there. Why? Becuase this rewards personal effort, not skin color or gender.

But, don't ever suggest that being white means everything is handed to you on a silver platter. That type of thinking that is used to support affirmative action couldn't be further from the truth.

Regulation should promote equality, not preference.

Re:male/female/black/white

[FauxPasIII]

> 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.

Over half the population is female. Do you honestly believe that in the history of that institution, Dr. Hockfield is really
the first and only qualified woman to emerge? If not, then please conjecture as to why her 15 predecessors were all male.

Re:male/female/black/white

[9mind]

Being a black male who also doesn't believe in affirmative action, the plain and simple point is that there isn't a better alternative to it.

A lot of people say it's a bad idea this, and a bad idea that... however, history has shown, that companies supporting the "good ole boy" type of infrastructures have keep the minorities out through very shady practices.

My alternative to affirmative action would be that all interviews are recorded and stored off-site as they happen along with candidates resumes. Disputes in this case would have more merit without the need for affirative action. However, not all the hiring process goes on during the interview, so even this is not a 100% fool-proof. It would just give more merit to someone who thought they were discrimanted against.

Because in my experience, give someone the opportunity to pick what they are comfortable with over what may be better... they'll pick what they are more comfortable with.

Re:male/female/black/white

[shufler]

Unless the job is lesbian porn. I don't wany any tranny surprises.

Re:male/female/black/white

[Tanktalus]

Gender actually can be a quality that matters to a job. Probably not this one, but sometimes.

For example, women often relate better to women when in psychiatric treatment, or when it's a police officer aiding a victim.

Personally, I prefer female chiropractors - mostly because they're smaller and less likely to be able to accidentally break my back ;-)

In other jobs, gender may not be the quality that matters to the job, but may influence qualities that matter to the job. Again, probably not this one.

For example, men are generally larger and thus stronger ("generally"!) and thus would probably be what most people - men and women - would prefer when being saved, half unconscious, from a burning building. On the other hand, women are generally better in interpersonal communication, and would often excel in HR, mediation (that's a big $$$ field nowadays!), and the like.

I'm not really fond of even the idea of "[h]ir[ing] the best man or woman for the job." How about just "hiring the best person for the job." If they have skills that are useful for the job being applied to, they're eligible.

While I don't support the idea of having a different bar to measure against for women and men trying to become police officers, I see no reason why we can't have different bars for different positions in the police force. Those becoming beat officers would have a different bar than those becoming hostage negotiators. And that may find that genders are not equally represented in all sections, but you'll probably get more qualified applicants than what they do now.

Just my 2 cents.

Re:male/female/black/white

[WillowAnneLyra]

The kind of policy you are describing was declared unconstitutional about 25 years ago. Companies are NOT supposed to use any kind of quota system. They also are not allowed to use a literal point system for race. The idea of affermitive action is that all other things being equal (ie if given qualifications, people skills, etc, you'd probibly have to resort to coin tossing), you give the job to the person who is in the minority group. The is to offset the fact that often the white male would be given the job in a "they're both equally qualified".

Re:male/female/black/white

[Fnkmaster]

I'm not saying that you are wrong, since there is some truth to what you say, but it is a truth about human nature, not a proof of discrimination. People in general do feel comfortable working with people who are "like them" in some abstract sense. Of course, working up in Massachusetts and doing a lot of hiring, I always found that I preferred the younger candidates for a job since I was myself young, and I identified with them (their work ethic, out-of-work interests, educational background, etc.) much more than the older candidates. Being able to relate to and communicate well with the people you work with IS critical.

But I also hired a black person (yeah, I know, sounds like a token, but if you know Massachusetts, you know there aren't exactly thousands of blacks applying for high tech jobs either, one of about 15-20 people I hired, along with 2 or 3 asians, and 2 Indians - to some extent, it just reflects the demographics of moderately qualified candidates who applied for jobs).

As a guy who grew up in New York City, a thoroughly urbanized young guy, in many ways I would identify more with a lot of black people more than I did with many of the middle aged, blue collar-ish white males I worked with. In any case, my point is that there are a lot of other factors that come into who people feel comfortable with and who they relate to beyond just the hue of their skin. These are complex cultural and background issues, whether people like to play golf, watch baseball or hack on open source code in their spare time, whether people are religious zealots or avowed atheists, whether people have 7 children or are sworn bachelors. All these things can have just as much effect on the hiring process as race does. That's why I don't believe in practicing affirmative action in the way it is now (I do support legislating non-discrimination, I just think it's generally pretty tough to enforce, since like I said, there are so many other arbitrary but often coupled factors involved in workplace fit that it's hard to say why certain people get promoted, why others get fired, and so on).

futurama quote

[Janek Kozicki]

fry: can't we just be together?
leela: listen - you are a man, I'm a woman. We're just too different.

probably change towards good

[Keruo]

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.

Re:probably change towards good

[mirio]

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.

I don't understand how we can look at gender in the workplace as being a positive thing (as in your example) but not also use it with the negative. For example, you would never hear someone say, "In X industry, some studies have shown that departments lead by female chiefs, run less efficiently and have more disputes among workers".

I guess it simply follows the tried and true rules of political correctness in the US: As long as you're basing your opinions of prejudice against white males, you're not really discriminating.

And yes, that's exactly what the above opinion does. It basically says that women chiefs/department heads/whatever create a better work environment than men -- prejudice.

Re:probably change towards good

[pla]

In paper industry, some studies have shown that departments lead by female chiefs, run more efficiently and have less disputes among workers.

Well, duhh!

In a "boys club" work environment, you can talk about whatever you want - Rude, crude, offensive, and no one cares. This occasionally may lead to a few riled tempers.

Throw some women into the mix, and everything changes. Since we have sexual harassment laws based on the "feelings" of the "victim", rather than the intent of the accused, the friendly banter grinds to a halt. Suddenly, a formerly happy work force becomes silent, bored, and frustrated.

As a side-effect, efficiency increases (less banter means more more time to actually work), arguments decrease (what can you argue about if you can't talk freely about anything?). But morale? Well, no one cares about morale. Only productivity.


And anyone who thinks I mean this as a troll or flamebait has clearly never experienced this transition in person... Like helplessly watching a tsunami speed toward you.

Not to say that I in any way object to working with women - I've worked with quite a few that understood the idea of "humor". I object, however, to the current orientation of the sexual harassment laws. Basically, if someone bothers to accuse you, that in itself counts as "proof" of your "crime". That I consider intolerable.

Re:probably change towards good

[dasunt]

I guess it simply follows the tried and true rules of political correctness in the US: As long as you're basing your opinions of prejudice against white males, you're not really discriminating.

Case in point -- the article itself. Few people see anything wrong with MIT promoting one gender over another as long as the gender they are promoting is female.

[PS: I've been called sexist for discussing this viewpoint before. ]

Re:probably change towards good

[abda]

Case in point -- the article itself. Few people see anything wrong with MIT promoting one gender over another as long as the gender they are promoting is female. [PS: I've been called sexist for discussing this viewpoint before. ]

Yeah, well as much fun as it is to be "politically incorrect" or whatever, men don't need promoting because they are doing just fine. Women still get the short end of the stick in this country. They earn less money than men for the same job positions, and get treated like sex objects. People expect them to be pretty and dumb.

The status quo is unacceptable, and idealistic views (such as claiming that promoting women is sexist) aren't doing anything to help.

Re:probably change towards good

[abda]

Ok, you do realize that as long as women leave the workplace to have kids, then they will tend to earn less. Also since women tend to be the primary caregiver for those children they will be less able to put in those 80 hour crunch weeks. As for sex objects, it takes two to exploit. And status quo it has worked pretty well so far.

No. The salary gap numbers compare workers with the same level of experience and qualifications. A mother who takes two years off to raise a kid doesn't add years of job experience, and would be compared with men having the same amount of experience. The gap is pretty big - being a woman results in about a 25% cut in pay. Your handwaving about raising kids doesn't convince me that sexism isn't the cause. And I'm not going to even start on your unfortunate "it takes two" remark.

I agree, the status quo has worked pretty well so far... for white men like me.

Re:probably change towards good

[iabervon]

MIT is actually pretty careful to arrange their gender-equality-seeking efforts in terms of marketting toward women, rather than actually giving women an advantage. MIT admissions specifically tries to get women to apply, and tries to get women who are accepted to enroll. The idea is that there probably aren't fewer smart women than smart men, but more of the smart women don't apply. MIT has had sufficient qualified applicants to make a 50% female class for years, if they wanted to arrange things that way. Instead, they try to ignore gender in admissions and try to make the application pool gender balanced.

The WTP program mentioned in the article is part of this. There are similar programs open to everybody, but fewer girls show up to them than boys. So they have a program for girls that does more outreach.

It's easy to see statistically that white males apply without any particular encourgement (the same seems to be true of asian women, actually). If the chance that a good candidate doesn't apply is higher for a particular minority, that means that the chance that a random member of that minority who wouldn't otherwise apply would be a good candidate is higher (assuming that demographics really don't matter). So you get better results by seeking applications from underrepresented minorities and ignoring demographics in your decision than you do by seeking applications equally from everyone.

When will this kind of regulation go too far?

[beh]

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?

Re:When will this kind of regulation go too far?

[Anonymous Coward]

MIT isn't promoting the fact that she is the first woman, the press is.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/president-ann ou ncement.html

From the announcement article it sounds like she was selected because she was best for the job overall. Not surprised at how the press it promoting it though.

Re:When will this kind of regulation go too far?

[hurterer]

With regard to the prize for best female whatever, the equal opportunity angle is that those prizes are attracting female students into the field, through the university. The prize's purpose isn't to reward current female students over current male students, it's there to encourage potential female students to pursue that course of study. They can't do the second thing without the first, in the current system.

As far as the insurance thing goes, insurance companies dont owe you shit. If you want better rates, then make all (young) men drive more safely.

Re:When will this kind of regulation go too far?

[attam]

>>MIT isn't promoting the fact that she is the >>first woman, the press is VERY good observation. as an MIT alum, i have received NUMEROUS messages about the appointment and NONE of them mentioned that she was the first woman. my friends and i kept wondering and wondering, but it never came up anywhere until i saw this /. story this morning. they arent making a big deal out of it, and neither should we.

Re:When will this kind of regulation go too far?

[dave_mcmillen]

MIT isn't promoting the fact that she is the first woman, the press is.

Right - the article somehow makes it sound like this is a result of quota hiring, but there's nothing to suggest that.

Further note, grandparent post, that the "other recent programs' efforts" mentioned in the article involve getting girls in high school to participate in activities (and classes) related to computer science, electrical engineering, and math. This is far from some sort of quota program, and it seems to me to be a very sensible approach: if the problem is that too many girls are either shooed away from these fields or have never thought that they were an option, then give them a chance to see what it's all about, then decide for themselves.

Re:When will this kind of regulation go too far?

[mattyrobinson69]

I contacted the UK TV advertising watchdog (cant remember what they're called) a few weeks ago about diamond, here's their reply.

Dear Mr Robinson

Diamond Car Insurance

Thank you for contacting us.

I am sorry that this advertisement concerned you. The television companies are responsible for ensuring that the advertising they carry complies with our codes. Among other things, we expect them to make sure that any claims are justified and to seek the advice of independent consultants where the claims are technical, complex or disputed.

Section 45 of the Sex Discrimination Act permits preferential treatment in relation to certain types of insurance. The broadcasters have received substantiation to show that female drivers have a better claims record on their motor insurance policies than male drivers. (This does not, of course, mean that there are no good male drivers.) As such, Diamond is entitled to offer preferential rates to women. Therefore we have concluded that the reference to better drivers in the context of an insurance advertisement will be understood.

Even though we dont have grounds to intervene on this occasion thank you for taking the trouble to raise this matter.

Yours sincerely

Alistair Hall
Broadcast Team Officer - Contact Centre
Office of Communications
Riverside House
2A Southwark Bridge Road
London SE1 9HA
www.ofcom.org.uk

Re:When will this kind of regulation go too far?

[pioneer]

beh writes: 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?

Your gender bias has already presented itself. An equally valid question would have been "has MIT selected this person because they are a MAN" (assuming they were a man). Gender bias in the past has caused situations in which men get positions over women despite the women being more competent.

You have ignored the fact that this women is the first non-engineering background president (she is involved in Life Sciences). I think this is the most important difference. MIT has made a commitment to a biological revolution.

I would look over your own post there, beh, and notice how biased you are against women. Do you assume anytime you have been chosen over others that your maleness wasn't a factor?

The whole world is gender biased.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:The whole world is gender biased.

[Artifex]

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.

Interestingly, most European nations take care of this disparity by granting new fathers potential leave as well.

Re:The whole world is gender biased.

[daveaitel]

Well, I think there's clearly something else at work here. Even if I wanted to hire 50/50, I'd be hard pressed to find 4 good female computer security professionals who can compete on a technical level with the other people on my team (doing software audits and writing exploits). There just arn't that many women coming out of computer science classes. Maybe 10% of the total, generously, and of those, almost none choose to go into hard core technical computer security. I think it's telling (aka depressing) that MIT didn't get a female president from their engineering department.

Why aren't women going into computer science? It's not like coal mining where the job sucks afterwards. Generally, it's sitting in an office and making a lot of cash. So why is it?

-dave

Re:The whole world is gender biased.

[David_W]

Give me one good reason the man should have leave? Perhaps some time directly around the time of birth in order to accommodate the wife but aside from that why does he need more?

OK, let's turn that around... by that logic, why should the woman have leave (of course, as you said, except for right around the time of birth so she can recover)? The point is to remove the gender bias surrounding leave ("women have the babies, so they should be the ones who get leave to take care of them").

Re:The whole world is gender biased.

[David_W]

I still need a reason why the male should be off. I'm not looking for why it should be equal because biologically we are not equal.

Well, I think I disagree with your basic argument here... I too agree with the fact that women have the babies (rather hard to dispute ;)). What I don't agree with is the next step you seem to be taking: that the natural result is the mother is the only one (most appropriate, whatever) who can take care of the baby after birth. I'm not convinced that these days, once the baby is actually out of the womb, that a man couldn't do just as fine a job taking care of a newborn than a woman. (Yes, I'm ignoring breast feeding in this instance, but there are pumps and formulas, so I think I'm OK there.)

Question for women

[andy1307]

Are you more likely to apply to MIT because it has a women president?

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.

Re:Question for women

[doodlelogic]

The original McElroy article (which itself has some interesting onward links) makes it clear that she does not view herself as one of these elitist women; it concludes:

"I still squirm at the thought of how many successful women now seem to view a large percentage of decent single men. Namely, as lesser and lower."

The Spectator may think that "females of whatever species are hot-wired to find the best possible mate" but McElroy clearly disagrees, at least if you reduce the best to a simplistic, status based analysis. It is a clever trick in the article, which makes it look as if that is what she was saying, when the journalist knows it was the opposite.

Re:Question for women

[Nevyn]

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.

There are always more students than qualified practitioners. The usual way this stat. is abused is to say "there are more law students in the US, than lawyers ... so soon we'll be overrune with them".

In pretty much every high earning business I see men outnumber women, esp. as the pay scale goes higher (very few CxOs, very few politicians, no presidents etc.) And maybe some professions will naturally tend towards one or the other gender over time, but I really can't see lawyers being female dominated given how good men are at being lying bastards (it's ok, it tastes like a strawberry lollipop ... no really it does :).

Re:Question for women

[TheWormThatFlies]

Are you more likely to apply to MIT because it has a women president?

No.

It irritates me intensely when people place emphasis on giving girls female "role models" in the sciences and technology in an attempt to make them more interested in pursuing those fields.

I think that this spreads the unconscious perception among girls that they shouldn't try to explore new ground, or be the first to try something new, or not give a crap how many men and how many women work somewhere - instead, they should wait until another woman has tried it, to see if it's "safe for women". WTF?

I have never cared about the gender balance in any place I have ever wanted to go to. If I wanted to go, I went. Nobody has ever tried to stop me.

Re:Question for women

[Radar|TGS]

From what I have seen, I'd say that, on average, women perform as well as men at any job.

Except for writing their names in the snow, we still totally kick ass at that.

gender-biased...

[tobi-wan-kenobi]

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).

Which First is more important?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Is it MIT that's gender biased....

[callipygian-showsyst]

...or is it WOMEN who don't like math, science, and engineering?

Re:Is it MIT that's gender biased....

[Saxton]

...or is it WOMEN who don't like math, science, and engineering?

This should prove to our readers (in response to some of the above posts) that there indeed is some serious gender bias out there. How depressing.

-Aaron

Re:Is it MIT that's gender biased....

[tuxette]

Why is it they don't like math, science, and engineering?

Remember the "I hate math" Barbie doll? A raging debate ensued, and educators and others were forced to face (and deal with?) the issue of the assumption that not only do girls hate math and science, they are biologically programmed to do so. So the rule was girls are not supposed to like math and science, if they do there's something inherently wrong with them and thus we must ridicule and pressure them into becoming a proper female. And as most of us know how peer pressure can be, girls end up being conditioned to stay away from math and science if they ever want to be cool and have a life.

What was worse for me while growing up, was that I loved science and math. "Well, OK, but that's because you're Chinese" was what I always got back. The implication that I couldn't help myself for that or something. So not only did I get the derogatory labels regarding female geeks rubbed in my face, I got the racism as well.

Re:Is it MIT that's gender biased....

[grumbel]

How is that gender bias? Maybe it is simply true? Man and women are not equal and never will, remember the little birth thing and the children, man on the other side went hunt some animal a few thousand years ago. Just because we know have a society that makes them equal from the 'rights' point of view doesn't necesarry mean that they ever will behave equally, you can't wipe out a few million years of evolution with some hundred years of equal rights.

I am not saying that we shouldn't remove gender bias where it is truely there, just that we shouldn't automatically assume that there is a gender bias just because the distribution between man and women is not exactly 50/50.

Re:Is it MIT that's gender biased....

[zoeblade]

...or is it WOMEN who don't like math, science, and engineering?

I think it's more a case that girls aren't encouraged to take an interest in such subjects as much as boys are. I'm lucky in that my parents got me a Commodore computer when I was very young, and I got really into it, but how many perents would do that for a girl? Would they instead be more likely to encourage something that it's more widely believed girls like doing?

Maybe it's a vicious circle. Girls are told they don't like maths or science so don't get a chance to try it properly, so they grow up to not be into it, so people think that women don't like it, so don't try teaching it to girls.

Just try your best to work out what kids are into and encourage it regardless of whether it's something considered appropriate for their gender.

Of course, articles making a big deal out of a woman being into computers (remember the one about that female hacker?) tend to reinforce the notion that this is unique and unusual, reinforcing the stereotype. It doens't help anybody get over such stereotypes, but it helps sell issues of newspapers apparently.

Sorry, I'm rambling now.

Re:Is it MIT that's gender biased....

[cecille]

There have been studies done that show that up until junior high, females tend to score better on tests than males. It's only in junior high that these levels tend to go down. One of the reasons given for this is that teachers don't tend to encourage girls to go into math and science. Now we all know that there are more factors at work than that, but in my personal experience, it IS a factor. Now, I went to an all girls high school and junior high (flame me all you want for being a hypocrite here with my single-gender school choice), and something like 70% of our graduating class went into maths and sciences. And believe me, they all liked it. But compare those numbers to that of a typical high school and I think you'll see a big difference.

Re:Is it MIT that's gender biased....

[prestonmarkstone]

It's much more than simply "sticks and stones." It's a regular and ceaseless confrontation with a privileged group that has refined and subtle methods by which to make you feel marginalized. Many members of that privileged group don't even realize they're marginalizing you (as an Asian-American, I tire of regularly being asked, "So what's your background?" when my white peers are rarely asked the same question). These are accepted behaviors in our society that have the effect of subtly establishing who is privileged and who isn't.

It's difficult to understand if you aren't part of an historically marginalized group, but all the individual looks, remarks, gestures and the like accumulate into a steady wave of exclusionary sentiment, and that wave can wear nearly anyone down over time. When every guy you meet in your profession stares at your chest, calls you "hon," or acts in a subtly dismissive manner at any intelligent thing you say, you begin to consider switching professions.

Re:Is it MIT that's gender biased....

[Macrat]

Always remember, as a female Chinese geekette you'll always have a percentage of us males groveling to be your mate. ;-)

Re:Is it MIT that's gender biased....

[Macrat]

Definitely not a proper female.

More like the perfect female.

Dr. Hockfield's accomplishments

[Guano_Jim]

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.

If you went there...

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Woman at MIT???

[jmcmunn]

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.

Hormones...

[Skiron]

Will she have to grow a beard now?

MIT's view

[Anonymous Coward]

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.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2004/president-annou ncement.html

Sexist policies

[nuggz]

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.

Re:Sexist policies

[CornerScribe]

In middle school one of my English teachers told the class that guys shouldn't worry if they're not good at language, and girls shouldn't worry if they're not good at math and science. Not only did she give everyone permission to slack off in some of their subjects, but she made those of us who were actually good at what we weren't "supposed" to be good at feel pretty abnormal. As a woman in the tech industry, I don't want people to assume I'm a "quota employee" because I'm female. I'm good at what I do, and that's why I'm here. On the other hand, I don't want to get a job or promotion because they need to put a woman there. If I'm not the best qualified, then don't hire me.

Re:Sexist policies

[kitty tape]

Many of these posts make it sound like "quota people" are abysmally worse at the job they were hired for than the hypothetical white male candidate they disloged. Now, while this may be true in some cases, it shows an inherent assumption that the white male is significantly better than the person where !(M = white && N = male). Now, this seems silly on two counts. If companies were being forced into hiring dramatically less qualified people, something would have been done about it by now. Businesses have money, and money talks.

Secondly, suppose there is a small delta between the skills of hypothetical white male and the hired candidate. In the long run, is a small difference in skill really that big of deal? It seems like the difference between getting 94/100 and 95/100 on an exam, i.e., unimportant.

I understand why people feel upset over this. I don't like quota systems because they make people think others were hired just because of their race or gender. However, the ridiculous inflation of the differences between candidates seems like nothing more than a case of sour grapes to me.

wrong

[HBI]

Discrimination has no solution. Look at the two alternatives:

1. Ignore the discrimination and trust to human nature: well, human nature doesn't have an exemplary history of ensuring nondiscrimination. Gender based roles (and racial/appearance based roles) are tightly integrated with just about every society whether animal or human, and a certain portion of the population (the 'followers') will feel constrained by these roles despite their fitness to take on others, absent gender/racial or appearance based stigma.
2. Have a whole host of rules and regulations to make sure society and employment are nondiscriminatory. This causes stigma for the beneficiaries of said regulation, with the perception (if not reality) that they are unqualified for the positions granted them by the regulation. Moreover, it also encourages corruption, whereby those of means are able to avoid the regulations. The net effect is that no one is happy - not the wronged groups, and not the traditional advantaged groups. Ultimately this will cause more discrimination as a result, solving nothing.

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.

Re:wrong

[s.fontinalis]

"rather misguided"? So it's still socially acceptable to mock blacks, women and other minorities, and denigrate them in public? The income levels for these minorities haven't risen? Things aren't perfect now, but much progress has been made in the last 40 years.

Re:wrong

[HBI]

You haven't walked the streets much apparently if you think progress has been made. While a black middle class has arisen, there are still just as many trapped in slums as before, and the racial stigma has not lifted. The problems have changed: it's no longer alcohol but rather other kinds of drugs that serve as the symptom. These are the followers: they are left behind.

In the business world, glass ceilings still exist for women. It isn't as apparent, but it's there. Moreover, I can count (but I consider it shocking) how many times i've been directed to 'find a woman' for a job because our ratios are horrible. Invariably, this is a low level job, and invariably, management doesn't give the women quite the same chance that the men have to bond with them.

In terms of mocking minorities, I am not going to repost something, but read my JE of a few months ago, happening right in suburban NJ. Then tell me things are better.

Re:wrong

[Betelgeuse]

You haven't walked the streets much apparently if you think progress has been made.

Are you kidding me?!? You honestly think that progress has not been made in the past 40 years of race/sex relations? The grandparent didn't say that all of the problems had been solved (and I would be the first to disagree there), but that progress had been made. I would say that the 24th Amendment (abolishing the poll tax) was progress. I'd say that allowing interracial marriage is progress. I'm ceratainly not saying that all of the problems have been solved, but there certainly has been progress.

Re:wrong

[Rei]

And you, of course, won't bother to note that there's a causal relationship between being poor and not being able to afford an education, and not having an education and ending up poor. And there's a causal relationship between a parent not having a college education, and the child ending up without one. Etc. It's a viscious cycle.

Non-news

[kirbyman001]

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.

Education

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Left out option 3

[theLOUDroom]

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.

Re:Left out option 3

[PsychoFurryEwok]

I did up a whole speach in my poli sci class about applying for colleges and making it nondiscriminatory by just using your social security number, no other information besides test scores, etc would be provided. Biggest arguement against it was that it was dehumanizing, reducing people to just numbers. But who cares as long as I get in based on my own accomplishments, not my race.

High Praise for her work at Yale

[Anonymous Coward]

She was Dean of the Graduate school here at Yale for years and had recently become Provost so this was a bit of a surprise here.

From an email broadcast by Yale's president to faculty and staff about Susan Hockfield's departure and contributions:

"Over the past six years, Susan has excelled as Dean of the Graduate School and as Provost, possessing in rare combination intelligence, integrity, pragmatism, and grace. As Dean she utterly transformed the environment in which graduate education takes place - strengthening support for teacher preparation and career services, and building a vibrant sense of community through public lectures and other events [...] In her three semesters as Provost she has moved aggressively to accelerate investment in science and medicine, and she has encouraged interdisciplinary collaboration across the humanities and the arts. She has made superb new appointments to our administrative ranks, and she has worked closely with the other officers to fashion plans for strengthening the culture and practice of management within the University."

MIT is getting a good person IMO.

Or they just don't like existing discrimination?

[Moraelin]

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.

How Affirmative Action works with us

[mks113]

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.

Re:How Affirmative Action works with us

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

If a male and a female score equally well and are both considered acceptable, then the female will be offered the position.

Um, that's the very definition of discrimination. Why should the woman/man/white/black/yellow/green/blue person automatically be preferred? Ultimately, the choice should lie with the hiring manager, not policy.

Re:How Affirmative Action works with us

[general_re]

Not that complicated, not discriminatory.

Of course it's discriminatory - the fact that it's a legal, politically-correct sort of discrimination doesn't change the fact that you're discriminating against one gender or the other. If their scores are equal, you're basically saying that there is no difference as far as merit is concerned, and so you select your candidate based on their gender. It doesn't matter which one you choose based on gender, it's the fact that gender becomes the deciding criterion that makes it discriminatory - it would be equally discriminatory to choose only men when faced with candidates of equal qualifications. If you want an equal, non-discriminatory way of choosing among similarly qualified applicants, try flipping a coin next time.

Then again, what do I know? I think the whole equal-opportunity thing is bullshit anyway...

Re:How Affirmative Action works with us

[4of12]

Not that complicated, not discriminatory.... Also note that the scoring was largely subjective

While I admire efforts to recruit and hire underrepresented groups to the extent possible, there is no escaping that subjective scoring is both complicated and discriminatory.

And it continues to this day, to cut both ways, both for and against underrepresented groups.

Re:How Affirmative Action works with us

[Bob Uhl]

Not that complicated, not discriminatory.

Let's change that rule, then: all candidates are scored; if a man and a woman score the same and are both acceptable, then the man will be offered the position. Would you find that non-discriminatory?

That rule is prejudiced against men, and for women. The fair thing to do in a case where two candidates score equally is to decide randomly.

Re:How Affirmative Action works with us

[kelnos]

The fair thing to do in a case where two candidates score equally is to decide randomly.

personally, i think the best thing to do here is ask the people who will have to deal with this manager who they feel they can work with better. when the objective scoring system gives you a tie, the only thing you have left is a random decision or a subjective decision (ignoring the aforementioned discriminatory decision). the random decision is "fair", but isn't necessarily pragmatic. the subjective decision may in the end turn out to be discriminatory (say for example, the people who will have to work with the manager feel more comfortable working with a woman than a man), but when it comes down to it, the important thing is that the new manager fits into the structure well - both professionally and personally. i see little reason to make people feel uncomfortable _solely_ in the name of non-discrimination.

gender bias?

[(trb001)]

While I fully support editors editorializing in their descriptions of news stories...

is this a step in the right direction for the historically gender-biased institution? ...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).

--trb

Re:gender bias?

[ScottyB]

"...the fact that they didn't have a woman as president before does not a gender biased institution make."

That would be a very powerful argument, if MIT were not actually historically gender-biased. It's not a fun fact to face up to, but both in student life and in treatment of professors, MIT has shown signs of gender-bias.

It's arguable that in student life, MIT has been less gender-biased and more a symptom of females being discouraged from following science and engineering. MIT was all-male until the 1960s, and since then, from what I can tell, the admissions officers have been trying to admit more women without shortchanging the men. However, having more men has meant different treatment, in student life and academics. For example, in student life, the residential system at MIT has been and still is heavily dominated by fraternities, which means the men have dictated much of how student life operates. That's just an example and not the whole story, of course, since student life is a complicated system.

In the treatment of professors, though, MIT admitted in a report in ?1999? that it found significant bias against female professors in many important areas, including assignment of lab space to new professors.

So, while I agree that MIT, like everyone else, should hire the best candidate, it is absolutely proper for the media to bring into the discussion MIT's previous gender bias and what the effects may be of having a female president for the first time at such an institution.

Really?

[Bluesman]

What did they name her?

enforcement

[HBI]

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.

Re:enforcement

[theLOUDroom]

How do you enforce this? With EEOCs? Jail time? Bullet to the head?

The same we enforce all the other laws that relate to how a company operates. Duh.

If you ignore it, it's the functional equivalent of #1 in the grandparent.

Obviously you won't ignore it.

If you enforce it, it's the functional equivalent of #2 in the grandparent.

No more that using the police to catch murders is still "relying on human nature".

In other words, no solution at all.

Actually, it's a quite reasonable solution, you're just coming up with issues that are non-issues, and only by making ridiculous assumptions like:
"Okay, so we pass this law, but what if we don't enforce it?"

Re:enforcement

[Dun Malg]

Cut their funding my 50% for a year. See if they repeat it. Above all else this requires of the authority/government to ignore political cost or any form of backlash.

The people who do the hiring and run the place aren't the ones who suffer when funding is cut. My wife works at the University of California and when her department's funding was cut by 70%, they mostly laid off administrative staff. None of the directors got laid off, nor did anyone in HR get laid off. Funding cuts aren't going to hurt the right people. Additionally, a subjectively applicable weapon like that will be used by the enforcing authority to bludgeon departments it doesn't like to death.

The summary said it all

[FunWithHeadlines]

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.

hasn't been tried

[HBI]

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?

Re:hasn't been tried

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Wisdom, ethics, responsibility

Trouble is that one person's wisdom is another person's stupidity, one person's ethics is another's "inhibitions preventing success", one person's responsibility is another person's "dangerous altruism" (Ann Ryand) etc. In a homogenic, single-religion, single-culture society, these are easy to fix by teaching kids the prevailing values of that society. In a big (and increasing) mess of cultures and viewpoints, its next to impossible without a wrath of some offended zealot clique. So schools cop out by taking the easy "non-confrontational" way out. I cant blame them, they are not set up (and should not be) to wage religious/societal wars on behalf of some group versus all the other groups.

Re:hasn't been tried

[radarsat1]

And that's why School, as it is structured today, is no longer applicable to the way the real world is structured. The idea of sticking thousands of kids with different backgrounds and different opinions and viewpoints and ethics into one building and teaching them the exact same way is becoming more and more obsolete. Education begins at home.

Re:hasn't been tried

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Education begins at home

If it were only so easy. Unfortunately that leads to deepening of clique divisions and fracturing of the society along ever increasing gaps between various religious/ethnic sects. Parents pass on all their superstitions, ignorance, paranoia and hatreds of other groups onto their kids in full force, not tempered by attempts at unification of the society by (however incompetent) public school system. Home schooling or private schools along religious/racial/ethnic/economic divisions are a recipe for massive friction, possibly culminating in Nazi-style persecutions, witch hunts and eventually civil warfare down the road.

Time will tell...

[BookRead]

I think the fact that she's a life sciences person is more significant that the fact she's a women. When Vest was chosen they tried to get a life sciences person but he ended up at Rockefeller University IIRC.

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.

Re:IT IS NOT GENDER IT IS SEX

[avalys]

Loose control of the language and you will loose the arguement

Well then, it looks like you've lost, doesn't it?

isn't it sad

[b-baggins]

That the only thing people seem to care about is that she's a woman; her qualifications seem to be secondary to her sex.

define "race"

[Colonel Cholling]

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.

Re:define "race"

[Colonel Cholling]

A friend of mine studied anthropology. Anthropology definitely recognizes a scientific notion of race. According to my friend, skulls can be classified according to race by looking at shapes and distance between features.

I have also studied anthropology, and I know several people who are actively working in that field. I can tell you that it's not as cut-and-dried as you make it sound. There is no such thing as a "negro gene," for example. Certain traits might be more common in Africa than in Europe, but there will always be some mixture of traits across even the most isolated population. Skull measurements and the like can give you a rough idea of whether someone would be considered black or white by today's standards, but it's not remotely in the same league as telling, say, a chimpanzee skull from a babboon skull.

For example, the so-called "asiatic trait" of shovel-shaped incisors is found in most east Asians, but also in Native Americans and Scandinavians (though it is less common in the rest of Europe or in Africa.) There are people in the south of India whose skin is as dark as any African's, yet whose facial features resemble those commonly associated with Europeans. The aborigines of Australia were classified as "negroes," yet many have blonde hair.

The concept of race rests on the assumption that there are genetically distinct and isolated populations in the first place, and other than in a few places like the New Guinea Highlands, this has never occured. The Danes invaded Ireland and gave them the now typically Irish red hair. The curly dark hair of many Mediterranean Europeans indicates some African ancestry. The Romans stocked the garrisons guarding the Germanic tribes with African troops, and to this day there are swarthy, dark-haired Germans in those regions. The Mongols interbred repeatedly with Europeans. And the "race" we call "Native Americans" is believed to have originated from at least three separate populations who migrated from Asia. In short, it would be nearly impossible to find any individual anywhere whose ancestry did not include people from most, if not all, of the inhabited continents.

As a matter of fact, it's said that if you compared the genetic average of all Europeans against the genetic average of all Africans, they would resemble each other to a much greater degree than if you compared two randomly chosen Norwegians.

What was the first line on her resume?

[drwho]

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.

huh?

[TamMan2000]

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.

Chicken & egg

[bondgrrl]

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.

A counterpoint

[Geoff-with-a-G]

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.

Re:A counterpoint

[emil_nikolov]

Example of how this works in the real world and exactly opposite to your fantasy.

Philip Greenspun

Re:Or they just don't like existing discrimination

[TheWormThatFlies]

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.

Gender bias, my ass.

[Theovon]

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.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Okay, here's a list of random names:

1. Robert Johnson
   
2. Rachel Lawrence
   
3. Ahmed al-Safi
   
4. John Carpenter
   
5. Sheng-Chen Chou

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?

Biased?

[LuYu]

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.

Quota Misconception Correction Time

[Rei]

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.

but an increasing number are abusive

[Trepidity]

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.