My friend Julia says this is good news:
http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/women-faring-well-hiring-process-science-faculty-jobs-research-universities-21675.htmlI am not so sure. It shows that there is still a real disparity between genders. What it implies is that this is a much more subtle and complex disparity than just blatant institutional sexism. The reason i find that depressing is that it is relatively easy to fight an outright attack on your gender, but very hard to fight the day to day subtleties of how genders are developed in society and how they interact.
(I imagine that the effects of racism are, at this point, quite similar. It is one thing to have laws that prohibit barring minorities from reading programs, for example. It is quite another thing to address the long standing cultural and societal practices that result in young minorities having less access to family-supported early education and literacy resources. In some sense, the gender issue seems easier to attack, because the genders are spread more evenly through society and different programs. Additionally, a lot of the society pressures on gender equality emerge in adulthood, instead of being present from birth. This makes it seem like it is easier for an individual to modify their own experience.)
I think about this sort of thing a lot, actually. I think about it because my experience as an expecting female is far different from my colleagues experience as an expecting male - mostly because the fact of being pregnant is much more demanding than the fact of watching your wife being pregnant. But also because, in my family, their is still a social expectation that the female take on the home-maker role. I don't think that Josh and i are particularly traditional, nor sexist. But because of who we are, we fall a bit into the roles of mom-home-maker, and dad-bread-winner. Add to this societal norms and training, and it is frustratingly hard to find a balance that makes me feel like i can actually pursue a career with any amount of seriousness.
I think about it, as well, because the role models that i am exposed to. I do see female professors and academics who can guide my path. But they are either non-family oriented, or have husbands that are able to do a more complete gender-role-swap than my family seems able to. I suppose the reason that departments with female heads have better success in promoting female employees is that the perception is that those female heads will be more open to creative work structures that allow the employees to deal with their dual roles as scientist and mom. I don't actually know if that is true, and i'm sure it is not always true (women can also fall into the camp of being more demanding and stricter than their male counterparts, probably to dispel the image of 'female').
What i do see, and have seen for a while, is that while the working world is an inflexible as it is towards work hours, length of work week, alternative job arrangements, etc., for both men and women, we are going to have this problem. In the best case i think you will find that, increasingly, men and women do their gender swap so that it is not assumed to be the female who is playing the complicated double role. But even then, i think one person is going to feel at a disadvantage when it comes to professional achievement, in the vast majority of cases. The ability to distribute the extra-career demands is just too difficult in a society where 50 hour work weeks, and dismissiveness towards family obligations are the norm.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
