A Depressing Article

[jaralith]

I just got this article from one of my professional organizations:

http://www.aol.in/news-story/Confident-women-in-interview-lack-socialskills/2008121104589026000003

Comments

[the_lady_lily]

Hmmm. I wonder how much the field of competence being tested was (being manager of a computer lab), and what expectations of male and female geekery were in play. I'm not 100% sure that the same expectations would operate in all fields of academia, tbh, even the managerial ones.

[eigen_zed]

Wow, that's a really interesting insight. Thank you for sharing!

[the_lady_lily]

*wince*

Mind you, this also says something about the expectations of the way that R1 schools are going to interact with their students, i.e. hardly at all, that's why they have grad students. As you say lower down, it's a question of the culture of engagement in the department; if for R1 schools, the pastoral role isn't considered even a part of the teaching game, and indeed the teaching part is a burden to be shouldered and got out of the way as soon as possible, they're going to view the characters of their interviewees very differently.

I'm having a bit of a hard time articulating this because my opinion is that even at an R1 institution, lecturers who have any face-time with students should take it incredibly serious and be passionate about teaching, so talking from the other side of the table is a bit of a stretch this afternoon.

[the_lady_lily]

Yes - although I'm doing three courses this semester, one of them is one-on-one and the other two are small groups (both about 20 now). Plus next semester I'm back to two courses. And it's only a year.

I suppose this is me starting to have thoughts about the wisdom of working at an R1 institution anyway, isn't it?

[saralinds]

This.

I remember coming to my grad school and realizing that there's just one advisor for the grad students and another one for undergrad. I had two grad students explain to me, getting in my head, that I don't get to choose to work with someone of similar interests, but rather, just deal with whoever is assigned for that year. Having done their undergrads in different R1 schools, they were kind of baffled when I mentioned "yes, the advisor's been very helpful! He gave me good advice!" They had barely stepped in his office. Point of the story: SLACs provide a more nurturing envrionment in which it's easier just to pick women over men. But that's just so sexist these days as we have more stay-at-home dads who can raise their kids just as well as the moms.

[wretchmuffin]

Yes--I'm not sure about what "managerial jobs" like the one in the study might require . . .