Academia, that bastion of inclusion.

[auburnblu]

Not even close.

This article has a stat that should have everyone that really believes in diversity and affirmative action should be outraged by. Of the top 50 university computer science departments, the number of African-American, Hispanic and Native-America women professors was???? Zero. That is a joke.

Where are the cries of equality when it deals with the hallowed halls of education and representation.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/01/16/women.professors.ap/index.html

[david_vincent]

1. Devil's advocate

Sometimes reality lags behind the ideal because of decisions made by the individuals involved. How many male professors are there in the top home economics departments (Univ. of Mississippi, etc.)? Just wondering.

[auburnblu]

6. Not many, but I would imagine more than zero

Not sure how many Universities have Home Economics depts these days. But would imagine that if you looked at the number of say hispanic or black men in those top 50 depts, the number would hopefully be above zero.

[Mikimouse]

2. Computer Science does not equate to all of academia...

If one reviews the historical trends, the most prestigious fields are often dominated by men, largely because they are encouraged to invest their time in 'competitive areas. Women are generally 'supportively discouraged' from pursuing those fields, and thus end up being underrepresented, as are other minorities. There are, thankfully, many other disciplines that are much more balanced. All in all, you will probably find more diversity in the liberal arts disciplines than anywhere else.

[auburnblu]

5. All nice reasons, but 50 programs and zero representation

n/t

[Mikimouse]

20. Not 'nice' reasons' actually, there is a great deal of evidence..

in the professional literature that supports the facts and explanations of why the academic structure exists as it does (and professional organizations as well). The composition of CS departments does not come as any surprise. These are all reflections of two major theories put forth in the 1940s and 50s, and which are still with us. Sex Role Theory and the theory of the Isolated Nuclear Family (thank you, Talcott Parsons, now go and rot). Along with these, western stereotypes of women and our cultural values (which are geared 100% to achievement ideology above all else, and which tend to exclude women from recognition), grant high prestige jobs and positions to white men almost exclusively. Generally speaking, as the number of women in any discipline increases, the occupational prestige associated with the discipline (or sub discipline) decreases. The flip side of the coin is that as the number of men(even in a discipline dominated by women)increases, the occupational prestige increases. Use Nursing as an example. I suggest Renzetti and Curran, Nielsen, Connell, and Kanter as readings. They all raise a number of germane issues.

[Nay]

25. Thank you, Mikimouse, for bringing up these points.

I've tried to make them before, but people have trouble beliveing them and think I am just some man-hater.(Not necessarily here at DU, but elsewhere.)

The job prestige angle, for me, was perfectly illustrated by the Russian bus drivers (almost all male) who made 4 or 5 times the money as Russian physicians (majority female). Or the Middle Eastern rugmakers -- in one country, it was a female job and paid nothing. Right across the border, it was a male job and paid well.

To think that these sentiments don't hold here is silly. They are very hidden and unconscious, but very there.

[Mikimouse]

27. I am honored...

thank you for the kind words. Folks usually ignore these things, prefering instead to blame individuals when the problems arise from social norms (which can be changed, but they take time).

[Gulf Coast J]

3. Whose job is it to fix this?

I don't blame the computer science departments. I know very few females in the computer science department where I went to school. I imagine there were even fewer twenty years ago - the pool from which current profs are chosen. I don't expect a top computer science department to hire a female for the sake of hiring a female.

I think more effort needs to be placed at lower education levels to teach girls that it's OK to like science and math. I'm not quite sure the best way to do this. Some of the more education minded people here probably have some ideas. Even though females make the majority of incoming undergraduates, they are under-represented in most science fields. Something could be done at an early age to correct this (can it even be corrected?) But I do know college is too late for social engineering.

[CHIMO]

8. Fix What!

Do you know the percentage of male teachers in high school?

[auburnblu]

13. Its low, sure.

Zero out of 50 programs is a problem. I can't imagine there are many high schools where there are zero male teachers.

[auburnblu]

15. Whose job, the universities for one

More emphasis on targeted recruiting women into PhD program. I think you've got a great point of pushing math and science to younger girls.

[SadEagle]

4. Uhm, it's an incorrect claim, for starters

The university I attend would be pretty objectively be considered around 30ish or so in Computer Science in the country, and it has a female Indian professor. (Besides, Indians are hardly a minority in Engineering these days, they are like 50% of many technical graduate programs).

The whole thing about women math professors is also silly, and I am surprised they are wondering about it. This is just a generational gap, simply. Until recently, getting a Ph.D. in math used to be a pretty much male-only thing, so it takes a while to get the parity through.

There is also a huge gender gap in the student bodies of most undergraduate CS, CE and EE programs. We're talking about 5-10% women here. And you're surprised you don't find too many people who are both minorities and women in the faculty? (Now, to be fair, I think it's probably more like 20% for graduate students. But these days, a large %%% of grad students come from India, China, and various parts of Europe; there are not too many Americans, which further skews racial diversity)

[auburnblu]

9. So lack of affirmative action is okay sometimes

Am I surprised by the lack of affirmative action, sadly no. As we approach Dr. King's birthday am I outraged, hell yes. It seems like those on the left are far too willing to look the other way sometimes on representation. The chants "i love diversity, I love diversity, become a hushed silence it seems when it comes to professor hiring. I'm at grad school at Duke right now and there sure as hell is weak representation.

At this point, sorry I'll have to take CNN's story over your self ranking of your program, unless you give the school which I can then go look up the ranking. And yes Indian men are represented, but are Indian women, that was the issue of the story.

This is an area I get passionate about, this country still seems too focused on selective situation equality and too many on the left and of course the right seem to have a not in my back yard attitude, "hey affirmative action is great but not in my field".

[SadEagle]

10. Doh, neither me nor you read it right

It said American Indian, not Indian, as you extracted. There are quite a few Indian women at top universities -- see
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~mona/
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~priya/
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~devika/

Native American is an another point entirely.
edit: notice the mistake in the extract

[auburnblu]

12. Whoops, thanks

Changed my original post. Thanks.

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. So?

It's a useless statistic.

Maybe all those women are off working for a hell of a lot more money than they'd make as a professor.

I would think also that, since you're intersted in those who are professors, we have to look at the time it takes to make a professor - roughly 30 years? So, naturally, it's gonna lag 30 years behind the first time a number of hispanic, african, and Indian women are told by their parents that maybe they could be a computer science professor.

But if you really want it to have meaning, you need to find out how many hispanic, African, and Indian women have tried to get into computer science and couldn't because of discrimination, and then look at how many of them tried to be professors at the top 50 departments and were denied due to discrimination. Then you'll know if there's a problem.

I think we get too specific sometimes. As I said in the beginning, what happens when no african, indian, or hispanic want to be professors of computer science? What's the percentage of women's studies professors are latino men? Maybe they have other things they'd rather do, like make 5 times as much in the private sector.

I think the statistic you offer says more about the state of primary education and our society which still tends to dissuade women (though thankfully not as much) from pursuing sciences than it says anything against those colleges.

But I'll have you know that, when I was in college in the 1980s, we had two Indian women teaching in the computer area (we didn't have computer science specifically). My college, which is engineering only, was about 30% female when I was there. Sometime late in the 1990s, it moved into majority female. And there's also a huge increase in the percentage of non-white people, though I can't tell you what that is (but considering it was only about 5% when I was there, it wouldn't have been difficult to increase that percentage).

[auburnblu]

11. So???

Damn. Have you ever heard of affirmative action or targeted recruiting? I give up, I'm becoming convinced that on this forum that academia is the bastion of the elite and thus lack of diversity is okay. "Let us not be so hasty, we shouldn't hold academia to the same standards". Why the hell not, because some white liberal guyss might not have such a clear cut easy career path?

This is not the same as Dean's Vermont record, 50 departments zero representation among hispanic and black women, zero. Combined they represent what 15% of the total U.S. population. This is in the 21st century. Where the hell have the divesrity initiatives been in this field for the past 20 years.

I'm pissed off about this and hopefully I'm not the only one.

[DrWeird]

14. Hmm.

In my immmediate research area in grad school out of about 20 graduate students, 2 of them are female. We're eager to add more female students and faculty, but there's not nearly as many women applying as there are men.

[auburnblu]

16. But at least that's ten percent

Still low and in some fields in may never fully equal out. But I bet 20 years ago it may have been zero out of 20 and your program has worked to build up some representation. I'm not advocating a belief that any has has to mirror the representation of the country, I just want some sign of life. If equality and representation is not pushed, progress won't happen.

[Rabrrrrrr]

19. So, according to your hypothesis

If there were zero women twenty years ago, and only 2 now, then isn't it fairly safe to say that the actual group of women avilable to be professors is still really quite small, especially since they'd be looking at a good 8 years for their Ph.D., then a few years teaching a low-level university before getting into one of the big ones?

And one still needs to answer the question - how many women who do graduate want to teach? especially consdering the amount of filthy lucre to be made in industry.

on edit: changed hypotheses to hypothesis; added last two sentences

[Yupster]

23. Interesting

There are more women in grad schools currently than men overall.

I guess they are still very segregated by field then.

[Rabrrrrrr]

17. Yes, I have heard of those things

I'm only saying that you have a small amount of data, and are looking at something so small and specific, that it's not very meaningful to look at.

I'm also saying that, more than likely, african, indian, and hispanic women probably first showing up in engineering and computer schools sometime in the 90s. Assuming they need to get Ph.D.s before becoming professors, and assuming that the top universities rarely if ever hire new Ph.D.s for tenured teaching postition, and assuming that the available pool of candidates right now is actually rather small, you're probably a good ten years or more in jumping in the gun on being righteously angry about this.

Here's something that's worth looking at: look at the number of indian, african, and hispanic women who have entered computer science in the last decade or two, as a percentage of incoming students. Now compare those numbers with the sum-total of indian, african, and hispanic professors at ALL universities and colleges in the country for the last couple decades - adjust the final number to compare with the previous numbers by ten years off (that is, compare 1984 entering women with 1994 professor statistics). Are the numbers rising or falling in accordance with each other?

If they are, then there ya go. All set.

If they're not, then find out why. But you can't automatically claim discrimination. Do they want to teach? How many new positions were actually open in those years?

I'm not saying that discrimination is right - I'm telling you to make sure it's there before you go off about it, and not condemn the entire academic milieu because of a sample of 50 colleges out of, what, 10,000?, and looking at only one small department in each of those 50 colleges.

Sheesh.

[SadEagle]

18. They don't represent 15% of computer science Ph.D's.

Heck, at the time the bulk of faculties were getting their diplomas, I would be surprised to find that many women of any ethnic background at all. And with the current pool, there are still very few women, very far from parity (see http://nt.cra.org/scripts/rankcs.pl?TOP=108&DIRECTION=DESC&ORDER=FEMSTUDS
for the percentages in 1992), and a large percentage of current CS Ph.D's students are Indian and Chinese; I'd say about 50%-60%, and I am being very conservative (I wouldn't be surprised if the true number was 80%-90%). And last I checked, there are no African-Americans, Latinos, and Native-Americans amongst those countries. I understand your frustration, but until the profile of people getting Ph.D's changes significantly, the amount of people in the groups you highlighted who would be looking for professorships is tiny. And I don't think it's going to change much until
(1) there will be more female CS undergraduates (more than 10% or so)
(2) American students will be more interested in getting Ph.D's, and will be competitive at least given the existing pro-American bias in admissions.

[DjTj]

21. The problem is at a much lower level...

Somebody should ask them how many African-American, Hispanic, and Native-American women applied for professorships at those schools.

I am almost sure the number would be zero for some of the schools.

Almost every university now has very active recruitment programs for finding potential female and minority professors, and they have to fight over a very few candidates.

This is already a problem at the undergrad level. I went to one of the top science and engineering schools in the country and I graduate in a class with zero African-Americans.

The acceptance rate for African-Americans is already much higher than for the general population, and in recent years the school has even offered full tuition scholarships to all African-Americans, but other schools do the same thing and the top schools end up fighting over the same minorities. Sometimes one school gets screwed.

There is already a problem at the undergrad level so I'm not surprised that it is more acute at the highest level. It's time to stop waving your arms around about affirmative action and devote more resources to outreach programs that will get the kids interested in science. It's time for less outrage and more doing something about it.

[ConsAreLiars]

22. This is why affirmative action

is important. The Cheney-Bushit administration has been attempting to eliminate these programs, and you provide good evidence about why they are still needed. I hope you direct your concerns toward the Cons who block progress in this area. If you haven't yet written a letter or made a phone call to your gov't officials I assume your willingness to post here is matched by a willingness to address your concerns to those who obstruct progress in this area. Be sure to let us know how you contacted them and the replies you receive. If you actually care about this, that is.

[DemBones DemBones]

24. You want to hear something MORE depressing?

Twenty-five years ago, I was attending "Women in Science" meetings to discuss the problems and how to get more women into science.


I'm a biologist and a woman and I know there must be many more girls who love science in elementary school but are turned off to it somewhere along the way. One problem is that elementary school teachers are typically weak in math and science preparation, typically dislike the subjects, typically would rather not teach them. Even if they are able to do a reasonably good job of presenting the material, their negative attitude may come across to the students. They have carried their attitudes since their own elementary school days, after all. Convincing parents not to talk down math and science would also help.

Elementary schools have specialists to teach music, art, and physical education. I have long believed they should have specialists teaching math and science as well. Getting people to fill those positions might be difficult, of course. But the high schools and middle schools continue to find people qualified to teach math and science at those levels so perhaps a supply would develop to meet the demand.


Minds are being lost to math and sciences in the elementary years, so that's where we need to correct the problem.

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

26. Hell, why go into computer science now?

They didn't get suckered like we did! :eyes:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

28. Twenty years ago

I was friends with a graduate student in math at the University of Minnesota. He told me that the Institute of Technology was disturbed at the lack of African-American engineering students, so they decided to go to the twelfth grade math classes in the Minneapolis and St. Paul public schools and talk up engineering as a career.

What they found was almost no African-American kids taking math in twelfth grade, either trig/solid or pre-calc. There were maybe one or two per school.

They decided that they had to move their recruiting efforts down to the earlier grades and let students of color know about the careers that would be open to them if they took math past the minimum requirements.

I don't know what caused the black students to drop out of math too early to qualify for engineering school. Perhaps it was low expectations on the part of teachers, perhaps the students had internalized society's racist attitudes saying that they were incapable of academic achievement. Perhaps they came from families that weren't clued in to how the academic world worked. Perhaps they were subject to peer pressure against "nerds."

I left Minneapolis shortly afterwards, and I'm not currently in touch with goings-on at the U., so I don't know whether the attempts to recruit African-American students in the earlier grades were successful, but I think that's the appropriate tack to take.

People who have a math or science bent usually exhibit such abilities early, so they need early encouragement. There was a black kid in my sixth grade class fortysome years ago who was fascinated with airplanes and how they worked--a seeming natural to become an aeronautical engineer. He was very bright, and I hope that he was able to find a satisfactory career.

[Ramsey]

29. This is a big problem

I sit on the Gender Equity Committee for my university. I was chosen as the representative for my department because I am the only full-time female academic appointee in the department (out of about 20 doctors). And having worked in this department for 10 years, I can honestly say it's not for lack of trying to recruit women.

In medicine we most often see our women graduates go into private practice. More and more they want lifestyle with their careers. In private practice they can work 3-4 days a week and make more money than in academics. In my particular field (Radiation Oncology) we have twice as many men applying for residency and training. I am the training program director and I struggle to find qualified women applicants to accept, and I consider it a priority. Last year we took four men and one woman, and that was literally the best we could do. My field may be a bit off the average given its high technical component, but as far as I am concerned this is a problem with secondary education. Women are still being made to believe they aren't as good at math and science, very early on. I suspect the same thing happens to minorities, who are very early on made to feel less academically accomplished.

On this committee we have been trying to identify the reasons why our university is slightly below the national average of women academic appointments (which is already abysmally low at about 20%). We have no child care, no alternate tracks for women with children, no discrete family leave program, and no aide for spouses seeking positions.

I firmly believe that affirmative action measures for women and minorities are still necessary and I believe we need much stronger secondary school education for all levels of society. There is still an old white boys network that rules this country. I was lucky to have grown up in an upper middle class family, have a private school education and very supportive parents (edit: and spouse), and I have still found it challenging to be a woman in academics. Think of how it must be nearly impossible for those less privileged.

What this society needs to accept is that the majority of women no longer have the luxury nor the desire to stay home and raise their children and cook their husband's dinner as their sole occupation. And how much better off our country is for having the intellectual efforts of women in the workforce. What we need are flexible hours, child care, family leave policies that allow men and women time off as necessary, and generally more humanitarian attitude. The Europeans understand that the only goal in life is not to maximize one's income.

[Iverson]

30. circular firing squad again

That's right, write off all of academia, or as my students say: "NOT!"

You'll find, if you care to look and listen, that academics are at the forefront of those voices that you don't believe you hear.