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Re: Where Have All the Boys Gone?



Wes Davis wrote:

Mark and Others:

This is bound to result in vitriolic attacks, but it is an issue that
needs to be addressed. I'm glad that you've done so.

And yet in university Physics departments men still far outnumber
women. Lets remember how far we are from the norm in this and realize
that while the battle may be won and then some for women in many areas,
we still have a ways to go in Physics.

As a father of 3 very bright girls I approach this issue with mixed
feelings. On the one hand their record to date shows they don't need
any help, on the other hand I had thought the same of myself... you see
I entered grad school already as the first author on two refereed
publications. I was an NSERC scholar who finished a PhD in Physics at
the U of Waterloo faster than anybody else had for almost a decade. My
thesis was accepted without modifications - all it needed was to be
bound. I went straight to a 2 year contract as assistant professor
bypassing post-doctoral work altogether and receiving rave reviews from
the students. In short, I thought I had good reason for confidence
about my career..... Then 1993 hit, my 2 year contract ended, and the
bubble burst. Since then my "academic career" has consisted of
occasional sessional teaching. A variety of things converged
simultaneously, but one of them was the high fraction of posted jobs
which I couldn't even apply for because I am a male. Its harder to
assess the impact of "the U of ... is an equal opportunity / affirmative
action employer" (a contradiction of terms), but I have been told off
the record many times that my only problem is being a white male. I've
always been a supporter of the idea that our culture made it easier for
me as a white male to aspire to and succeed in science early on in life,
and this should be addressed in the hiring process. I should have to
prove myself a bit more because others had to overcome greater odds just
to compete against me. However, it seems that it is men of my
generation who received relatively little initial advantage from being
male who are shouldering most of the burden for achieving 'equity',
while men who grew up in a male dominated era have given up relatively
little of their career advancement to women.

I expect there to soon be a backlash, there has to be... the signs are
that the level of frustration among many men has reached a boiling
point. It seems that my timing is off again though because by the time
my girls are looking for faculty positions there will be a shortage of
men. But maybe, just maybe, by then things will have settled down and
hiring will be done without regard to race, age or gender. I suppose I
could take some consolation in that ;-/

\_/~\_/~\_/~\_/~\_/~\_/~\_/~\_/~\_/~\_/~\_/

Doug Craigen
http://www.dctech.com/physics/