In one of my meetings today, we were nominating committees for some campus work. And lo and behold, several of the draft lists were all men. So I suggested that perhaps some gender balance was appropriate. And yes, everyone agreed, that made sense. It's a positive sign that I didn't actually have to fight for that one, isn't it?
So, every nominated group of three people has one woman. None has two.
At least there's some balance now, and that's important given the work of these committees. But still, in a world of about 50% women, the overall list doesn't exactly represent balance. Day to day mundane sexism wears on me.
That's interesting... here there's a real effort towards having committees be gender-balanced, but the drawback to that is that there aren't as many female faculty on campus as male. So women find themselves carrying a heavier service burden as a consequence, and God help you if you're female and a minority.
ReplyDeleteYeah, my experience is more like P/H's. Speaking in terms of my department, at least, the women usually get stuck with everything because the men are perceived as too incompetent to do the work. They probably aren't actually so incompetent, but somehow they make themselves look that way so they don't have to serve on any committees.
ReplyDeleteP/H and Ianqui, You're both right on the mark with the workload issue, and I think that's really important. Here, women often get assigned to do stuff that involves work with less power and meaning, while men get work involving more power. But the groups we were setting up will be doing work that involves some departments with sopme history of sexism related nastiness, so having women on the committees is vital, even though it's extra work.
ReplyDeleteHere (in our department) women do all the committee work, run everything, do all the jobs. Very little expectation that the men will do anything except their basic jobs. Cause, you know, they're men. Their time is important. delagar
ReplyDeleteWow, this is really interesting to hear... we have the same pattern as ianqui, where the women do all the work because we don't trust the men to. (Half of that's our fault for just doing things without them, and half is theirs for not being remotely interested.) We had a department function last week - an awards banquet for students - where only a handful of faculty showed up, all women. I thanked one of the women yesterday for having been there and said it was a shame more faculty hadn't come, and she said "Yes, I'm getting a bit tired of it always being 'the good girls.'" Hear, hear.
ReplyDeleteDelagar, That sounds miserable. We have a few men like that, but most are okay.
ReplyDeleteP/H, The appearance at functions sounds so familiar. With few exceptions, always women. And if it's a male thing, then lots of complaining about how few people showed up, as if the women who were there don't count as people.
We've been having a bit of a campus conversation about how what women do counts as service, but when men do the same thing, it counts as campus leadership.
YES!!! That's exactly it.
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