Links for 4-3-2009

Scads of stuff I don’t have time to blog adequately…

• Johns Hopkins Provost Kristina Johnson was nominated by President Obama to be under secretary of the Department of Energy in mid-March. From the email press release:

  She is a distinguished researcher, best known for pioneering work — with widespread scientific and commercial application — in the field of “smart pixel arrays.” Last year, she was awarded the John Fritz Medal, widely considered the highest award in engineering and previously given to Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, George Westinghouse and Orville Wright. She is an entrepreneur and has served with distinction as dean of engineering at Duke and, since 2007, as provost at Johns Hopkins.

  I should have blogged that for the last Diversity in Science carnival!

• Isis smacks down the whiny jerkwads always complaining about “illegals” stealing “our jobs”. You know, the ones the whiny jerkwads don’t want to do.
• Bean-mom left this very meaty comment three days ago on the motherhood/science careers issue,and it got lost in moderation. Check it out. Also check out her blog!

More stuff after the jump.

Sexual Harassment Lawsuits: Even When You Win, You Lose

Reader JC left a comment on a recent post about sexual harassment that led me to a Feminist Law Professor post on a sexual harassment lawsuit against Brigham & Women’s Hospital. It is a post well worth reading, if you have ever wondered why more women don’t sue over sexual harassment, or why women don’t just speak up immediately and complain at the first sign of harassing behavior. Maybe you have been secretly suspecting that women who file sexual harassment charges or lawsuits just have some ax to grind and/or are trying to ruin some Nice Man’s career because they are bitter pre-/post-menopausal shrews and are just doing this to get sympathy. Uh huh. Well, read this, my dears, and be disabused of all your false ideas and pretty fantasies about how easy it is to file these lawsuits, and just what it means to “win” one. Here’s a taste:

So even if you get a verdict like this, the amount is barely enough to cover the costs of litigation (that’s definitely true here) because the impact of the attacks on your livelihood, professional reputation, etc. is minimized. You of course realize that this woman is now marked for life: she will never, never, ever, get a job offer from any other hospital in this country. So, the bonus payoff here is, she gets to work in an environment where she is ostracized, despised, feared, and hated – barred from any leadership position – and will never be taken seriously as a decision-maker or policy-maker – for the rest of her professional life. And that’s because she WON!

Why Do We Think Only Really Hideously Evil Human Beings Could Be Sexual Harassers?

It’s certainly a tragedy when anyone takes their own life. I feel very sorry for the surviving family members and colleagues affected by the suicides of two U. of Iowa professors accused of sexual harassment who took their own lives last year.
And yet. I have little patience with this Chronicle of Higher Education article about them. You can file it under the category of “but he was such a really wonderful person! There’s just no way he could have done these things!” Or, alternatively, “Those TERRIBLE women RUINED the lives of these WONDERFUL men!”

Women Paid Poorly, Men Behaving Badly – What Else Is New?

According to the Chronicle Newsblog

Female professors at the University of Texas at Austin earned an average of $9,028 less than their male counterparts in 2007, and senior female faculty members there feel more isolated and less recognized for their work than do their male colleagues.

You can find the full report here and a press release from the university here.
The comments section at the Chronicle post is full of the usual dismissive commentary that arises whenever the issue of gender inequities in salary is broached. I liked this response from Meshiko:

A Reply to Dr. Isis

A warning: if you are a survivor of sexual assault you may just want to skip this post and the ensuing ugly comment thread it is sure to engender.
A week or so ago the redoubtable Dr. Isis wrote an open letter to me.
In part she wrote:

The pragmatic part of me wants to agree with you that there is no place for open ogling in the workplace. The other part of me fears that there may be a hint of truth in Greg’s argument that we are inherently sexual beings…

I see no reason to fear the truth that we are inherently sexual beings. But the fact that we are sexual beings does not mean that women just have to put up with tit-ogling in the workplace because men are just incapable of controlling themselves. One can both be a sexual being AND exercise self-control. This point has been made before but apparently it bears repeating: tit-ogling in the workplace is not just, or only, about sex. It’s about power, dominance, and control. This has little to do with us as sexual beings and everything to do with patriarchy.
Dr. Isis also commented on a blog post of mine:

Women and Their Sexy Hawt Bodies: Reprise

So, to recap:
A couple of women are having a conversation, and the topic turns to tit-ogling. “No one should be staring at my tits in the workplace,” they all agree. “That makes me uncomfortable, creates a hostile work environment, and constitutes sexual harassment! How difficult is it to look at my eyes? Staring and ogling is a threatening display of power enacted in a sexual manner. This isn’t the Mad Men era. Haven’t men figured out how to behave in a professional situation by now?”
A dude at the table next to them has been listening in and feels compelled to pipe up:

Women With Their Sexy Hawt Bodies: How’s A Man To Look Away?

A reader named Paul Murray left this comment on a older blog post of mine:

The comments on tit-staring make me wish the women could occupy a man’s body for a day. Ignoring tits in your visual field is as easy as it is for a woman to simply ignore a cute baby in the vicinity.

I was flabbergasted, to say the least. What to be more annoyed at? The suggestion that women are somehow programmed – biologically, of course, I am sure – with some sort of infant-adoration module? Or Mr. Murray’s casual insult to his fellow men, that they are simply incapable of behaving decently? That’s quite some theory Mr. Murray’s proposing – that because women have tits, and because they are visible, men must stare at them. It’s the women’s fault, you see. If only they didn’t have the tits. Or hey, maybe if they covered them up! With a hijab! Then they wouldn’t provoke indecent male behavior!
Yeah. Bitch PhD has something to say about that in a post with the apt title It’s More Than Just Your Eyes, Dickwad. Clearly it’s not the visual presence of women’s tits that is responsible for harassment and other shameful male behavior. She notes:

Because the fact is, there is no rhyme or reason as to who gets harassed and who doesn’t, and what kind of behavior/clothing/location/makeup/companionship you have when you get harassed is totally not determinative.

I’ll leave you with one more fabulous quote from her, but you really need to read the whole post.

…[T]he daily drumbeat of the world treating you like you’re a piece of meat every time you step out of the house takes a toll on your psyche that nothing can erase.

Dudes, I totally believe you are able to look away from the magic tits. Do the world a big favor and start acting like adults who are in control of their behavior and able to make choices about their actions. Sheesh. Feminists get accused of whining and playing victim, but I’ve never seen such whining acolytes of victimhood as the poor menz whose bodies rule their minds.

Locking the Barn Door

You are a university president. You naturally wish to avoid scandal and negative publicity during your administration. The time to make it mandatory for all faculty and staff to undergo training in how to avoid sexual harassment is:
A: When you take office, or shortly thereafter.
B: After one of your professors is caught emailing female students a quid pro quo: A’s if they would expose their breasts and allow him to fondle them.
If you are University of Iowa president Sally Mason, you will, of course, pick option B.
If this is only the first time the esteemed Professor Miller has engaged in such shenanigans, I will eat his shoes rather than puke on them. I’m betting it’s not.
Meanwhile, over at the University of Missouri,

Weber v. Fermilab – An Update

I’ve mentioned Kay Weber and her lawsuit against Fermilab on this blog before. Sherry Towers forwarded an email to me that gives an update on Kay’s situation:

Links for 3-4-2008

Janet Stemwedel has a lengthy, informative, interesting post on that eternally troublesome question: When in my graduate career should I have a baby? After reading it, I am put in mind of that New Yorker cartoon with the guy on the phone, looking at a datebook on his desk, saying “How about never? Is never good for you?”
The Chronicle news blog reports on a former professor at U. of Georgia with a “long record of sexual harassment.” What’s a university to do when one of its professors is found to be in violation of the sexual harassment policy? Why, pass him along to another university, of course. Where he will be rewarded by his profession by being made editor of a journal. Makes me wanna puke on somebody’s shoes.
To take the bad taste out of your mouth after that last one, go take a look at the Women’s Bioethics Project. Regular readers of Adventures in Ethics and Science may already be familiar with this site.

The Women’s Bioethics Project is the leading nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy think tank dedicated to ensuring that women’s voices, health concerns, and unique life experiences strongly influence ethical issues in health care and biotechnology.

The WBP was founded by Kathryn Hinsch, a former senior executive at Microsoft. Ms. Hinsch promises that the WBP will “remember the bioethics issues like poverty, access to health care, and looking after children and the elderly that truly affect women’s lives.” WBP has a blog, with several different contributing authors. You’ll like this post on a pharma birth control ad parody, and this thoughtful post on sex-segregated schooling.
Here’s a website on Title IX and science/engineering. If you want to use any of the materials on the site, and would like some assistance in adapting them for use at your institution, contact Ruta Sevo. ruta AT momox DOT org. While you’re over at the site, check out the link for Molly and Dollop. Take a look at Three Times A Week and read about the Every-Ready Man. Here’s an excerpt:

Unlike RU-486 or Plan B, viagra is freely available. Erections are an important national resource.

Lastly, I found this via Arts & Letters Daily: a New Yorker piece on our brains and math.

In Dehaene’s view, we are all born with an evolutionarily ancient mathematical instinct.

Intriguing!