I take my confusion back.
I'm writing my contribution to the grant renewal, so I just looked over the last grant proposal more generally to see how what I'm writing should fit in. In a section entitled "V. Broader Impacts", I found this: "Broaden the participation of under-represented groups. The University of Illinois has strong programs in place to recruit underrepresented groups into its programs, in particular SURGE (Support of Under-Represented Groups in Engineering) and WISE (Women in Science and Engineering), both in the College of Engineering. We will search for graduate students from underrepresented groups through these and other programs. (...) A tangible result of these efforts is the demography of graduates in the last five years. In the Girolami group, three of the ten Ph.D. graduates have been women, one of whom was African-American, and one of the seven men was of hispanic-latino descent. Currently, nine students are working toward Ph.D. degrees in his group, two of whom are women. In the Abelson group, one women has obtained her Ph.D. and two more are working towards their Ph.D. degrees."
That's something I support. Me being a woman was slightly out of context in the earlier paragraph. If they're actively looking for underrepresented groups... then giving money to reward that initiative is great, since one of the strongest ways you can support something is giving money. If I'm not a single charity case, but part of a more general change in demographics of who gets a Ph. D., then.. I'm happy. That's the kind of support that will help minorities and women overcome the systematic disadvantages we're at - it needs to be the system. Even if other parts of the system are the problem, if the solution isn't systematic, then real change is unlikely to happen. Or at least, will happen far, far more slowly than necessary. That's a more general belief in the capabilities of women and minorities rather than throwing in "Oh, by the way, we have a woman in the group, give us money for putting up with her." And then my role is to show, by excellence in science, that that belief is well-placed and ought to be more widely adopted to the point where scientific excellence really is the only thing that matters, in practice as well as in theory, so that special support and encouragement isn't needed.
Hooray!
Now, if I could figure out a way to get SWE to have feminist forums... *plots*
That's something I support. Me being a woman was slightly out of context in the earlier paragraph. If they're actively looking for underrepresented groups... then giving money to reward that initiative is great, since one of the strongest ways you can support something is giving money. If I'm not a single charity case, but part of a more general change in demographics of who gets a Ph. D., then.. I'm happy. That's the kind of support that will help minorities and women overcome the systematic disadvantages we're at - it needs to be the system. Even if other parts of the system are the problem, if the solution isn't systematic, then real change is unlikely to happen. Or at least, will happen far, far more slowly than necessary. That's a more general belief in the capabilities of women and minorities rather than throwing in "Oh, by the way, we have a woman in the group, give us money for putting up with her." And then my role is to show, by excellence in science, that that belief is well-placed and ought to be more widely adopted to the point where scientific excellence really is the only thing that matters, in practice as well as in theory, so that special support and encouragement isn't needed.
Hooray!
Now, if I could figure out a way to get SWE to have feminist forums... *plots*