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teaTitle somewhat irrelevant but from a Maclean's news article which is essentially a post of the Canadian Association of University Teacher's complaints about the recent Canada Excellence Research Chairs 19 "coups" of international, established scientists at 10 million a piece over seven years, plus whatever the individual universities offered on top of that (my university, for example, added another 15 million to get an American expert in nonlinear optics and photonics).
Oh, and by the way, all 19 were men. 18 were white men. All 36 scientists on the short-list, in fact, were men. Better yet? These were all the scientists named at all - programs were nominated first, and if accepted, the university nominated one or more names - were men. Not a single woman scientist was mentioned in the whole process. And by better, by the way, I meant worse.
Bullet points of my scattered thoughts on the positives:
However:
100% male is not "we didn't want to engage in affirmative action". 100% is not "hey, look, we were taking established scientists in fields that, 30 or 40 years ago when they went into them, women weren't going into". 100% is not "every university independently submitted men, what were we supposed to do?" 100% is not "it was a competitive process so women suffered" (WTFWTFWTF). 100% is this:
Ding ding ding. Look, I could have accepted 70% male. I probably could have accepted 90% male. I'm in a field that is, top to bottom, 80% male, and while that isn't awesome, I can see that whatever causes it starts before 18-year-olds pick their majors. But this quote is so freaking illuminating as to why there's a big fat ZERO in this outcome.
Look, it's all circular. We get this idea that men are better at "excellence" in research because that's who we see, again and again, in the forefront, being highlighted as being "excellent", so no wonder we - men and women alike, I firmly object to the idea that you can fight this kind of sexism by simply having women on the panel - have an instinctive preference for men, and thus give them the opportunities to excel, by giving them publications and publicity and reputations and above all, money. I don't "like" the idea of affirmative action or quotas or equality for equality's sake, but the fact is, this is not choosing the best and the brightest of everyone, this is choosing the people we're told are the best and the brightest. How is that putting excellence above gender equality? It's putting excellence above the difficulty of confronting our long-trained biases.
Can I say that clearer?
If we have a precedent of highlighting male excellence, we will continue to do so because that is who we believe are capable of excellence, because that is who we let be excellent, call excellent, and see being excellent.
If I tell you that red smarties are the tastiest, and then only give you red smarties for a year, and then hand you a box of them all? I bet you'll eat the red ones preferentially. This is not complicated psychology. This is not about "men just prefer science", because prefer does not equal "all scientists are male", so even if that argument holds water, there should be at least one woman on the bloody short-list. But the fact is, give a bunch of scientists an opportunity to say "hey, let's pick who we want to work here from around the world", and all of them will pick a man.
It's not rocket science to see that this isn't just the power of statistics.
ETA: Icon sadly inappropriate.
Oh, and by the way, all 19 were men. 18 were white men. All 36 scientists on the short-list, in fact, were men. Better yet? These were all the scientists named at all - programs were nominated first, and if accepted, the university nominated one or more names - were men. Not a single woman scientist was mentioned in the whole process. And by better, by the way, I meant worse.
Bullet points of my scattered thoughts on the positives:
- Funding for science is a good thing. Our government doesn't do enough of it.
- Big name researchers are necessary for a university's research program: they draw bright grad students, more funding, and other productive researchers to the university. I do believe this also benefits undergraduates, and am skeptical of the cries of "but you need to improve universities for the students and this is sucking money away!" This is not a zero sum game, and good research has to be good for a university's finances.
- Accepting that some of these minds are not Canadian, and going out of the way to bring them here? A-okay with me. There are existing sources of big-time grants for people already in Canada. This isn't decreasing that amount. Again, not a zero sum game.
- The government can't actually steer research. However, I think focusing on a few (very broad) research areas is a good thing. We are a small country, and most of these universities cannot be cross-spectrum powerhouses, at their sizes and with their locations. Picking focuses, and saying, "let's be the best at this", that's good. Trying to pick focuses that the government thinks will be patentable or money-makers? Not awesome, but these categories are really too broad to be guilty of that: environmental sciences and technologies, natural resources and energy, health and related life sciences and technologies, and information and communications technologies. All things I think Canada should be awesome at.
For example, the I&CT category? Take a look at the recipients. Quantum Nonlinear Optics, Quantum Information Processing and Quantum Signal Processing? Yeah, okay, quantum means this isn't "hey let's make Nortel work again" type research, this is primary research. Only the third scientist's research chair title sounds anything like it's application centric, and application research is not evil, hi.
However:
100% male is not "we didn't want to engage in affirmative action". 100% is not "hey, look, we were taking established scientists in fields that, 30 or 40 years ago when they went into them, women weren't going into". 100% is not "every university independently submitted men, what were we supposed to do?" 100% is not "it was a competitive process so women suffered" (WTFWTFWTF). 100% is this:
The academic âold boys club,â also was a factor. With limited time to find and court top researchers, universities resorted to âinformal processesâ to find candidates, the study finds. âThese informal outreach processes may have involved senior researchers identifying potential nominees from among their international peers,â it says.
Ding ding ding. Look, I could have accepted 70% male. I probably could have accepted 90% male. I'm in a field that is, top to bottom, 80% male, and while that isn't awesome, I can see that whatever causes it starts before 18-year-olds pick their majors. But this quote is so freaking illuminating as to why there's a big fat ZERO in this outcome.
Look, it's all circular. We get this idea that men are better at "excellence" in research because that's who we see, again and again, in the forefront, being highlighted as being "excellent", so no wonder we - men and women alike, I firmly object to the idea that you can fight this kind of sexism by simply having women on the panel - have an instinctive preference for men, and thus give them the opportunities to excel, by giving them publications and publicity and reputations and above all, money. I don't "like" the idea of affirmative action or quotas or equality for equality's sake, but the fact is, this is not choosing the best and the brightest of everyone, this is choosing the people we're told are the best and the brightest. How is that putting excellence above gender equality? It's putting excellence above the difficulty of confronting our long-trained biases.
Can I say that clearer?
If we have a precedent of highlighting male excellence, we will continue to do so because that is who we believe are capable of excellence, because that is who we let be excellent, call excellent, and see being excellent.
If I tell you that red smarties are the tastiest, and then only give you red smarties for a year, and then hand you a box of them all? I bet you'll eat the red ones preferentially. This is not complicated psychology. This is not about "men just prefer science", because prefer does not equal "all scientists are male", so even if that argument holds water, there should be at least one woman on the bloody short-list. But the fact is, give a bunch of scientists an opportunity to say "hey, let's pick who we want to work here from around the world", and all of them will pick a man.
It's not rocket science to see that this isn't just the power of statistics.
ETA: Icon sadly inappropriate.
