AWIS and Tierney's Maligned Workshops
Tierney's two articles in the New York Times sparked debate in our forum about whether or not workshops on gender equity in science are a waste of Congressional funds: one Forum posts by me , and one by guest commentator Susan Castagnetto. My post led to a response from the Association for Women in Science, AWIS. They took the lead in lobbying for these workshops and wanted to make sure I was clear about the intended audience and methodology.
Janet Bandows Koster of AWIS explained the workshops described as a part of the COMPETES Act as follows, "The amendment directs Federal science agencies to carry out a program of workshops to educate program officers, members of grant reveiw panels, institution of higher education STEM department chairs, and other federally funded researchers about methods that minimize the effects of gender bias." They are not supposed to be for the vicitims of discrimination, but for those making the decisions. I apologize for picking up the wrong impression from Tierney and propagating it to you; Susan corrected it in her posting.
I agree that these grant-making and hiring/supervising individuals are the ones who often do not make the best choices, being unconscious of their biases or even happy with them. I particularly like the approaches of WISELI, such as the departmental climate training and the information for search committees on their web sites. I hope that these materials and others that are research-based and help those in power actually understand the effects of their decision-making processes will be used.
Do any of you have experience with training for you or your superiors that seems to have worked?
A. People resist mandatory training sessions so I doubt they can work.
B. Yes, some can work, but they must not be boring and all lecture. Hands on, surveys of real people they work with, etc make them more effective.
C. I think any time the bosses see that these issues count and people care about them, it's good.
Hi really true
Yes. Psychology has become a lot more rigorous and there's good research out there on a lot of these topics. Try looking up Diane Halpern for example, on trying to balance family and career in science. Lots of good stuff. And Laura is right about WISELI, they've collected a lot of it on their resources list. Also check out Susan Forsburg's Women in Biology site (see Laura's original post on good web sites for the link).
Planner
HI really true,
I'm afraid so. A number of studies of the type described by "planner" have shown that both men and women tend to rate an applicant higher if he has a male name, compared to the exact same CV with a female name attached to it. It's discouraging, but apparently if you're trained to know about this, you can somewhat control it.
cheers,
Laura
Are women biased against women too? That's surprising. I always think if we get to 50-50 that everything will be fair. But if we do it to ourselves, then maybe not.
We have the kind of activities that demonstrate how much people (sadly, pretty much everyone) rates men higher even when they have the same qualifications. It's not overt, and without something to demonstrate it, people simply won't believe they could be biased.
It's not that hard to take CVs and put a male or a female name at the top of the same one, make up sets of these CVs with the alternative names, give them out to your group and get them rated. Melissa 1 and Don 1 will get different ratings, I guarantee it. Then discussion can get to how to address the bias, once the elephant in the room is unmasked.
LOL. Here we are questioning whether education can do any good, and you said so, Small Science Woman. Good for you. Yes, of course education can help. But we all know that education can't get through to a closed mind, and it's important to imagine how a workshop given to a man who is convinced women in his field are just not as good (or they would succeed, because he's sure he isn't biased) will get his mind to open. That's why imagining activities that might demonstrate that there is still bias among us/them seem like the best choice available.
Cheers,
Laura
I guess I believe in the efficacy of education more than others do. Why can't men learn to recognize bias in themselves and others? If they do, throught workshops, that would really improve things a lot. Go, AWIS!
Dear Still Dubious,
I agree that men with daughters seem to get it! But there must be some way we can open the eyes of those who don't. I like this activity in terms of putting people on alert against bias: looking at data that shows everyone who evaluates the same candidates with male vs female names attached, tends to rank the "men" higher. Evidently, subconsciously most scientists who've tried this expect more of a woman before she "rises to the top." Maybe it would work even better to have the group actually perform the rankings, thus showing it's current. Tierney criticized the medical evaluation paper because it's older and from a non-American context, for example. Showing this group here has the same bias could be very effective.
cheers,
Laura
Hi Laura,
I hate to be pessimistic, but in my experience it's actually experience (say, having a daughter who complains about discrimination against her b/c of gender) that changes minds, not seminars. So I have to pick A. Men I know groan when asked to attend such workshops, ditto women in science who don't think of themselves as feminists. Are their ears open? I doubt it.
