Thursday reading

There's a new report out from Pew Research on singleness, marriage, education, and economics in America, if you're in interested in that kind of thing.

A few particularly relevant findings for this blog and its (two) readers:

• "Today’s young adults are slow to tie the knot, and a rising share may end up not getting married at all." 
• "For young adults who want to get married, financial security is a significant hurdle."
• "Among never-married young adults with post-graduate degrees, women outnumber men by a large margin." [No surprise there, sez I.]

Do read it all.

We Can't Have It All... But Neither Can Men

I've been re-watching The West Wing lately. And yes -- for those of you keeping track, this marks the second time I've watched the series in less than 8 months -- a level of nerdiness on my part that is only eclipsed by the fact that I read the Tolkien cannon with even higher average frequency...

But I digress.  Last night I watched an episode in which the First Family's oldest daughter, Elizabeth, has decided to help her politically clueless husband run for Congress. Her father (President Bartlet) isn't a fan of the arrangement:

BARTLET
[Your husband's] a great guy and a fantastic father. You're the politician. Why the hell don't you run?

LIZ
Because Annie [Liz's teenaged daughter] pierced her face. And this one [holding up her son's baseball mitt] can't catch, or bathe.

BARTLET
You can handle it.

LIZ
You can't. Forgive me, Ms. Steinem and Ms. Friedan, you cannot do it
all.

BARTLET
Your mother did.

LIZ
No, Daddy. She didn't.


Bartlet goes on to apologize (in so many words) for the moments he sacrificed fatherhood on behalf of a political career, but later in the episode the First Lady -- Dr Bartlet -- also apologizes for the sacrifice her children made on behalf of her career.

And that's what got me thinking.  Elizabeth Bartlet is wrong to invoke famous feminists in the scene quoted above, because she's only taking one side of the perspective -- that of the woman/mother -- whereas the parents, President and Dr Bartlet, correctly recognize that when both parents have a career, neither parent can "have it all". Nor should they expect to.

If "having it all" for a woman means being able to pursue her career just as she would were she not a mother, than this old feminist mantra is an obvious (and, I might add, rather silly) falsehood:  having kids requires sacrifice.  But the same is true for men, and this is something we've not often talked about in connection to the question of "having it all". Should men with children be urged or expected to pursue a career as if they didn't have children? Should women?

If what is meant by "having it all" is that women can and should be enabled to successfully manage a career and a family at the same time, then I couldn't agree more -- but with qualification: it must be recognized that the success of both career and family on the part of the woman is contingent on the man's also pitching in and sacrificing in his career in order to have a family.  In other words: a woman cannot have it all if she's the only one making sacrifices.

The ultimate goal for society should not be, contra third-wave feminists, to get to a place where women can approach their careers "as if on a par with men", because this view relies on an overturned, outmoded, misplaced Mad-Men-esque gender bias that allows -- nay, encourages or even expects -- all men, including those with children, to go on behaving like bachelors.  That is, to align their time, energies, focus and career priorities in a way that supersedes or neglects all other considerations. Instead, we should aim for a society that encourages both women and men to think very differently about their careers and how they will direct their own finite resources once children are part of their story.  Hint: it ought to look different than if they were single.

This is a point the church has understood for several millennia now.  It's why until very recently (relative to its venerable age, that is) the church has always had celibates in prominent leadership roles -- people without children, without spouses.  Because the church has always recognized that the project of puzzling the deep questions of God and leading God's people in right ways is a job that requires total sacrifice to the gig.  When one has a wife or a husband or children, one cannot serve the church in the same way, and that's because he or she has a family requiring nurture as well.

The same is true of other callings, and for me that means as an academic.  I will use this time of my life when I am single to give all I can to the sort of research, teaching, and building of personal and professional relationships as only a single person can. Because I know that if one day I should enter a relationship, then having children will become a possibility and that will mean sacrifice in lots of directions... as well as great reward, of course.

Just as I was finalizing this entry, I was forwarded by a dear friend (thanks B!) a really excellent HuffPost article about Having It All, written by a woman/mother/author I know and greatly admire. I resonated with her deeply on her main point: it's important to ponder how we're defining the "all" in "having it all".  Give it a whirl (click here to read) and get back to me, will ya? Otherwise I'll go on re-watching The West Wing ad infinitum instead of pondering the deep questions of life...

Job Interview Tips

As someone who recently entered and then (thanks be to the good, sweet, merciful Lord) exited the job market, I thought I might share some nuggets of wisdom with y'all about the whole experience.

Nice thought, right?  Yeah, I'm a nice girl.
 
But then I had second thought. And that thought went something like this: "Damn! Who am I kidding? I have two book projects, four talks, and a few papers to finish before I start my first tenure-track job in three months, Oh GOD WHAT AM I DOING?!?!?!!?!"  [panicked breathing, muscle convulsions, whimpering...]

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I decided not to share job market wisdom with you.  Isn't that a nice story with some sort of lurking moral? But I don't want to leave you high and dry either, dear The Readers.  So instead I've decided to post this helpful video on job interview tactics.  And by "helpful" I mean "hilarious", and by "tactics" I mean "as interpreted through the eyes of two small children."

You're welcome.

Now back to those two book projects.... [more whimpering]

Aspirations

Today, I aspire to a job in an environment in which a comment on my attire is not the standard way to open a conversation.


The first conversation I had this morning went like this: 

Me: "Good morning, [Professor X]."

Prof X, disapproving: "Hello, Lauren.  You look very school-marm-ish today."

Me, cheerfully: "Oh!  In a good way, I hope!"

Prof X, doubtfully: "Well I don't know... I'm really not sure about those shoes."


For Pete's sake. 

Hunh? (Faculty Edition)

I have had these conversations about my appearance this week:

Faculty Person 1: "That's a nice dress.  In fact, that color actually looks GOOD on you!"

Me (in tasteful --- albeit very green --- dress): "Thank you."

I am pretty sure that this person was trying to compliment me, but the shock and awe in the tone of voice undermined that intention a bit.


Faculty Person 2: "Even in the twenty-first century, a young female theologian should look non-threatening... and be wearing rather less lipstick than your good self!"

Me (in black turtleneck and grey slacks, with a swipe of a color called "pure red" on the lips): "Well, fortunately I'm not a theologian!"

And I am pretty sure that this person has, as my father would say, all the social skills of a charging water buffalo.  But really?  Really, folks, is this the best we can do?

 

Some Christmas present...

One of my mentors--a kind, savvy, and ferociously-intelligent academic--was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Say a prayer for R and her family if you think of it. 

If You Can't Say Something Unrelated to My Gender, then Shut the F*** Up

Spend a few minutes reading the short article and watching this video by Emily Graslie, who is a science reporter/blogger in Chicago.  (Props to facebook friends for bringing attention to it).

I don't know how Graslie remains so poised -- this sort of thing makes me furious -- but we all benefit from her wisdom and clarity when tackling the issue of gender bias against women in science, technology, engineering and math (and one can safely extrapolate to pretty much any academic discipline with significant underrepresentation by women and other minorities).

Awareness is the first step, but lord it feels so small.  And in my heart of hearts I thought we'd be well past the point, in 2013, in a progressive country, where the following still needs to be stated: after a woman presents her work, whether it be in print or in a video or at a conference or during a workshop or lecture, etc., it is never okay for your response to include, let alone be solely comprised of, commentary about her physical appearance, dress, posture, or "mansplaining" (cf. here and here) aspects of her own research back to her.

Do you know how often this sort of thing happens?  In my own experience, more often than not.  In the over 30 talks I've given at this point in my career, I'm hard-pressed to think of more than 9 instances in which I received only appropriate, professional, collegial responses to my work.

That means that after 2 out of every 3 talks, some guy has sauntered up to me with commentary primarily directed at my being female. (Once, a colleague told me he was too distracted by my looks to focus on my talk. ABSOLUTELY OUT OF LINE.)  More frequently I receive special male "instruction" on how to better give my talk or present my own findings, or how to answer certain questions I was asked during Q&A.  One man even gave me advice on how to stand behind the podium during my talk.  In this case, I did tell the man flat out that this was entirely irrelevant, and he should only speak to me further if he has actually understood the content of my research and can formulate a coherent question pertaining to it.  He didn't respond; in fact, he didn't speak to me for the rest of the conference (no great loss on my part).

This behavior is unacceptable.  The fact that people evidently still don't know or realize that this behavior is unacceptable... is unfathomable.

Young (Female) Historians

Why yes, I am taking the Daily Mail seriously enough to respond to it.

 


It occurs to me that I can respond in about six different ways:

1. Look!  Female historians!  With jobs!

2. Lady, get your fingers off the ink on that manuscript page. 

3. Why are they all white?

4. Actually, why are they all young and attractive?

5. I wonder what it would take to get the tenured male profs I know to wear outfits and poses like this.

And finally, as always:

Are you £@$%-ing kidding me?

E.M. says N.O. to Initials

Dovetailing with L's last post, I want to express first of all my gratitude for these practical suggestions for moving beyond gender bias in academia.  Believe me kids -- this is a real issue, and one I've already experienced after a single year on the job market in a ridiculously competitive field, much to my extreme frustration, shock and anger (not to speak of the psychological toll on my confidence moving forward this year).

So concrete suggestions are great.  But with all due respect to those who favor or ascribe to the following view, the idea of publishing using initials only is a short-sighted, quasi-solution that needs to die.

Everyone's told me to do it at some point-- peers, mentors, senior big-wigs in the field, and even myself: Just use initials on documents, and in that way force a gender-blindness for those reviewing your CV, your publications, your research proposals, whatever.

Using just initials in order to hide gendered names may help us avoid some bias (at least until the reviewers meet us in person, at which point the jig is up), but at what cost?  This: we can never change anything.

The "initials-only" method is a cop-out.  The bias will never be challenged if we hide our gender in this way.  All our fabulous work fails to be attributable to the fabulous women generating it.

I realize that, given the statistics, I am and have been and will continue to lose out in certain ways by attaching my whole, very female name to my academic work.  But dammit, I work hard and with integrity in my scholarship; I stand by it, and I want to initiate long-term, rich interdisciplinary dialogue through it.  So the world and all who live in need to know that this good work belongs to ME, and I am woman.  Hear me roar.

So no, dears. No, no and N.O. I will never publish under initials only.

Let's talk about solutions to gender bias, not evasive maneuvers. Yes there's cost, but in fighting status quo there will always be cost.  Ask yourself: do you want optimal chances at landing a job or getting published here and now?  Or do you want to change things so that someday your students, and your students' students, can publish under their fully female feminine girly flowery lovely beautiful names and not be punished for it?

End game, ladies.  Think end game.

A Practical Suggestion

"I've been in academia for 20 years.  During that time I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many talented male and female scholars.  I’ve also watched a disproportionate number of the female scholars in this group drop out of grad school, be denied tenure and fail to reach the highest levels of professional success.  As one of the few women who have made it to full professor at an elite research university, I often ask myself, 'Where have all the women gone?'"  Read it all. 

We can discuss whether quantifying citations -- or recording" impact factor" -- is a legitimate way to assess actual scholarly significance.  For a humanities field that relies less on journals than it does on books, this may be a flawed methodology.  We can also discuss whether or not "full professor at an elite research university" is, and should be, the goal of every one who pursues an academic career.  However, well done to B. F. Walter for making a practical, achievable suggestion for a minor policy change that could potentially have very significant results.  

Once upon a time, I submitted a thesis to a university that did blind evaluations.  I was given a number, and the readers had no idea who I was.  I was awarded a very high mark.  Would I have gotten that high mark if the readers had seen my name?
  

No Such Thing As Winning

"No complaint outcome, on paper or in the form of material support, is going to undo the damage that harassment does."

-- From a sobering account of sexual harassment in the academy. Read it all.

Historians with(out) kids

We blogged about this before, but Friend-Of-This-Blog Laura asks some provocative questions about gender, parenting, promotion, and historians here.  Take a look.

Don't be an Interrupting Cow

The joke, a favorite of small children I know, goes like this:

Knock, knock!

Who's there?

Interrupting cow!

Interrupt...

MOOOOOO!!!

And I've been thinking about that as I continue my international disciplinary workshop / gender theatre 101.  I have noticed a woman interrupting a man precisely once in discussion.  Every woman, including me, has been interrupted by men multiple times.  Last week, a male participant interrupted a female participant about three times in as many minutes, insisting that she wasn't answering his question.  Of course she wasn't answering.  She was supposed to have the floor, and couldn't get a word in edgewise. Yesterday, the female presenter, when answering a question, was interrupted by a male participant who started his comment with, "I demand that you fix this."

Don't be an interrupting cow.  Shut up.  Listen. 

Great idea! (Or not.)

The scene: I'm at the opening reception of a multi-week international seminar for graduate students in my field and associated fields, chatting with strangers, eating unidentifiable canapés, being charming, trying to remember names, and drinking a magically-refilling glass of wine. 

Editorial note: Despite the fact that the relevant fields are about 50-50 men-women at my university, and quite possibly majority female on a national level, women make up less than a third of the cohort of seminar participants.  

The great idea: Male graduate student from another university declares, "I have a great idea!  Since we're all staying in adjacent flats, why don't you girls just cook us all dinner every night?"

Me: Dumfounded. "Ha! Or not."

Editorial note: What a comeback, hmm?  And here's the thing: even if he didn't mean anything by it, even if he was just trying to be funny, he wasn't.  It's not about the cooking.  It's not even about the comment.  It's about his assumption: we do the work, you do the cooking.

More bad news for women in philosophy

Today, a Facebook friend linked to this short blog post, and it left me simply aghast.

Seriously?!?

It got me thinking about my own recent experiences. One involved the convening of a very big-wig, super-exclusive, by-invitation-only annual conference in my field that has rarely had women participants and even more seldomly invited women to be official discussants or speakers. I gave some moderate flack to a few of the organizers and participants from this year's all-male shindig, but was met with the very unsatisfactory response that "An effort was made" to include women.

Seriously?!?

As far as publications, I've got a story there, too. I was recently asked to contribute an article to a volume of conference proceedings. I was flattered and accepted, but then got to thinking. The proceedings are of a conference that I was not invited to, that took place a while ago, was an all-male event, and was on a topic I have not myself specifically engaged with in research or teaching. Not by a good margin, in fact.

I conclude that I was surely invited to contribute in order to serve as the token female. Or at least, that had to have been a key factor. Why else would they have asked ME? I was so bewildered by this that I wrote a brief email to the organizers asking point-blank why they had asked me to be a part of this project, given the non-overlap between my research and the topic of the conference/volume. What I wanted to know but didn't add to my email was: Why are you asking me when I can easily list 6 women in the field who HAVE published outstanding work in recent years on topics of greater relevance to the proposed project? Do you not know of this work by your female colleagues? Additionally, given the existence of such relevant work by women in the field, why weren't any of them invited to be part of your original conference? Hmm???

The answer I got back to the question I did ask was vague-- along the lines of, you've done some historical work that is kind of relevant, but if you don't wish to write about that, well, you can pretty much write whatever you want to write.

I guess I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth and all that, but something died in me a little to realise that they wanted a contribution from me and they didn't necessarily care about its contents. I mean, maybe -- just maybe -- I appear to be such a brilliant light in my field that they had to have a contribution from me, even if it wasn't in my subject area. Or perhaps through divine foresight the organizers sensed I would add something crucial to the debate, despite my lack of engagement in the debate hitherto. But the likelihood of that is quite small, whereas my being welcomed in as the lone female author is far more probable.

For now I'm going to adopt an optimistic stance, because what else can a girl do? I'm going to forget about all this and give the organizers the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they just wanted to help a young career kid get another good publication out, and I just happen to be female. Who knows. And besides, why the hell not? I'm up for the challenge of adopting an entirely novel direction for my research and having the resulting work be published alongside contributions from Big Names in The Field who've been thinking about, writing about, and attending conference without me on this particular topic for years. All in a girl's day's work, I guess.

Wish me luck.

What is it like to be a woman in Philosophy?

No commentary from me.  Just read it all.

Good news at the Béguinage!

E's got a one-year job, L's got funding.  Hallelujah!  Pass the cheap champagne.

Conferences and photo ops

In this month's glossy magazine for my field, I found a photo montage with snapshots from the recent Annual Conference.

Now, if one were to describe the roles women play in The Field by looking at the photos, here's what one might say.  Women, judging by these photos:

• Sell books
• Listen to men and diligently take notes
• Have men point to a large map and explain things to them 
• Drink wine
• Serve cake
• Buy books
• Sit in cafés

In these pictures, the men:

• Walk and look important
• Talk into a microphone
• Lecture
• Explain things
• Think Deep Thoughts
• Drink beer
• Use smartphones
• Buy books
• Walk other places looking important
• Lecture again
• Interview for jobs

There are twenty-five photos over three pages.  Not a single photo shows a woman giving a paper.  "Oh, I know," quipped a colleague, "they must be at a conference where only men are allowed to speak!"  I'm terribly tempted to write a scathing letter to the editor... but I want a job.  I don't dare.

Plus ça change...

"Do you know any man who sincerely admires a woman for her brains?"

"Well," said Harriet, "certainly not many."

"You may think you know one," said Miss Hillyard with a bitter emphasis.  "Most of us think at some time or other that we know one.  But the man usually has some other little axe to grind."

"Very likely," said Harriet.  "You don't seem to have a very high opinion of men -- of the male character, I mean, as such."

"No," said Miss Hillyard, "not very high.  But they have an admirable talent for imposing their point of view on society in general.  All women are sensitive to male criticism.  Men are not sensitive to female criticism.  They despise the critics."

"Do you, personally, despise male criticism?"

"Heartily," said Miss Hilliard.  "But it does damage.  Look at this University.  All the men have been amazingly kind and sympathetic about the Wome's Colleges.  Certainly.  But you won't find them appointing women to big University posts.  That would never do.  The women might perform their work in a way beyond criticism.  But they are quite pleased to see us playing with our little toys."

Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night (1935)

Sorry for the brief descent into bitterness.  I'm trying -- and obviously, not being wildly successful in this -- to spend less time in bitterness mode.  But that's where we are tonight, folks.  And, as usual, Dorothy L. Sayers says it very well indeed. 

Life on a Mobius Strip

The Moth takes on academics and relationships: 

(I know, you're thinking, "I don't have seventeen minutes for this!" Yes, yes, you do.  Many thanks to the Friends Of This Blog LivanDan for first introducing me to this story on a golden day in October.)