Re: Where Have All the Boys Gone?

[Stephen Murray <murray8@LLNL.GOV>]

> What I expected to be a brief comment on my part has turned into a
> long entry, so I apologize in advance for the length, but these are
> my wandering 2 cents...
>
> Doug Craigen wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> Can you elaborate? I mean, all off-the-cuff gender comments aside,
> this is technically illegal, is it not? What types of technical jobs
> are -truly- female only? And, did you somehow feel that the legal
> system was also against you, to the extent that you just felt like
> walking away from it and not fighting? I'm not trolling here, just
> trying to understand this better.
... [rest of message deleted in interests of brevity]

I don't believe that "reverse gender discrimination" is illegal (well,
maybe it is now in California).  Fairly recently (2-3 years ago) I heard
that, at U. Calif., if a department could identify a highly qualified
woman/minority, then they could hire them onto the faculty, even if the
department otherwise would not have had a vacancy for some years.  I have
no idea of the difficulty or number of hoops through which a dept. would
have to jump in order to actually pull it off.

While my graduate career wasn't as illustrious as Doug's, my background has
similarities--promising in graduate school, then 7 years of postdoctoral
positions before I came to my senses and abandoned the full-time academic
track.  As a result, I believe that I've experienced frustrations similar
to his.

Seeing things like the fast-track at UC, the EOE/AAE tags on job ads, and
statements to the effect that, "Applications from members of
under-represented groups  are especially welcomed," are guaranteed to lead
to the "angry white male," and I was definitely one of them.  This is
furthered by knowing so many white males who've had trouble finding jobs.

I finally decided, though, that my perceptions were being skewed by a
number of effects.  The equal opportunity statements are so similar that I
now just assume them to be boilerplate.  They're something that you have to
put in to keep the lawyers happy.  I also hear too many stories of
misogynistic departments and denigrating treatment of female faculty
members (personal conversations, Physics Today, STATUS newsletter...) from
schools whose ads have just those statements.  As for knowing so many white
males who've had trouble finding faculty positions, well, the people I knew
in grad school were mostly white males.  I think that it's just the
statistics.

I *have* seen one very strong trend: self-promotion.  The people I know who
landed the coveted faculty positions were very good at blowing their own
horn (whether or not there was much to blow about).  The people I know
(often very good people) who preferred to be quietly competent and let
their work speak for itself have all had trouble finding positions.  I know
that everyone's first reaction will be, "How long did it take you to figure
that one out?"  The answer is not very long.  I stuck with it so long,
hoping against hope that academics would prove to be capable of judging a
person more deeply than private industry.

===============================================
  Stephen D. Murray
  Physicist, A Division
  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  phone: (925) 423-9382   FAX:    (925) 423-0925
  email: sdmurray@llnl.gov
  web page: http://members.home.com/murraysj/
===============================================