Re: Where Have All the Boys Gone?

[Doug Craigen <dcc@ESCAPE.CA>]

I hadn't set out to say anything at all about myself, but somehow what
started out as a parenthetical comment ballooned to the point of
obscuring whatever I was trying trying to say at the time.  I'm not
going to dig myself any deeper, but will respond to this:

Stefan Jeglinski wrote:
> 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.

The legality depends on where you live.  I don't know US law on this
matter, I'm writing as a Canadian where we have many women-only
initiatives.  In the early 90's (the critical time for me to establish
an academic career) there was a program to provide funding and grant
support for women faculty positions.  I have no fundamental problems
with this, but looking through the job ads I couldn't escape the fact
that there were more Universities seeking women to nominate for these in
Physics than there were hiring in my area of Physics.  I don't blame
women or such programs for my academic career suddenly derailing - I
said that this was *one of many* things.  Another contributor is the
fact that we (Canada) graduate an order of mangitude more Physics PhD's
per year than we have faculty openings (at least we did back then), and
there are many other contributors.

****

Back to where I went off track:

Somebody had commented on the aspects of political correctness and
popularity of what was being said and I was expressing the fact that I
am personally torn (and I suspect that many of us are).  From a purely
selfish point of view whatever policy hurts me as a man benefits my
daughters so it makes little net difference - but that's not how I
approach life.  From a principled point to view, we are so far from my
ideal world that its hard to know where to go.  I would like everybody
to be on equal footing, but since this has not been the case we have the
problem of justice.  One thing that is NOT just is to confuse the
generations.  Another post refered to "what goes around comes around" -
reading between the lines the idea seems to be that since there was an
era where girls were made to feel dumb in science class, it is only just
to have an era where boys are made to feel dumb in science class.  My
view of justice is different.  I would say that if we are going to
compensate, then a women who had a hard time achieving her position
because she was a women should be favored over a man in an equivalent
position who had a relatively easier time.  This way of tipping the
scales would lead to greater degrees of compensation for more senior
positions, where the candidates come from an era in which the benefit to
being male was stronger.  By the time we consider the generation of
current grad classes there might be no motive for any compensation at
all - but enduring low numbers of female physics students does make one
wonder about that.

What do I want for my own daughters?  I want nobody to doubt that it is
their skill and not their gender that enables their achievements.  They
are fully capable of competing on a level playing field, so thats "all"
I ask for.


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