Comment by AussieWog93 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AussieWog93 | Hacker News Reader

I know there'll be a lot of anti-diversity sentiment here, but just to be HN-contrarian:

Sexism (not sure about racism) really is a problem in academia in a way it just isn't in the corporate world.

There are influential old professors in science departments all across the world that genuinely believe women can't do science. They refuse to change, refuse to step down, and the universities don't do anything about it because the administrators just exist in lala land.

It gets worse than that. I know at UniMelb (the more "woke" major University in the most "woke" city in Australia), they refuse to do anything about a particular Chemistry professor who is so egregiously sexually predatory that even the men know about him; a genuine Weinstein character.

His most famous act was hosting a fake department party at his holiday house. He created invites that implied it was a big event, but only sent it to one young female student he had his eyes on. God knows what would have happened if she actually turned up alone...

I guess the point is that University administrators really can create the worst of both worlds - on one hand pushing a "diversity" narrative that demonises (powerless) young white men, while at the same time covering up for (powerful) genuine bigots and sexual predators.

Just for what it's worth, the department actually put out a report praising the predatory Chemistry professor mentioned above - he was promoting diversity by only taking on female students!

I can only support you there. Imho, it's fair to see diversity efforts as highly problematic since they lead to discrimination, but on the other hand, what women have to endure in academia is astonishing.

One example from someone near to me: She got permanently harassed by a colleague in the office. Friend of the boss - which complicated things, the boss on his own was nice and helpful - that guy even gave me the creeps later, as a man, with his constant women hostile comments and a specific aggressive behaviour. The guy was just unhinged, clearly dangerous, and that he looked strong did not help. It went so far that she hit him with a piece of equipment she just had in her hand after being verbally barraged by him again, an involuntary automatic reaction. Thankfully that made him back up for good.

Another "nice" story at the same university: The married older professor, who told her how lucky her boyfriend at the time was to have her and a good job, clearly implying the compliment how attractive she was. He was right, sure, and a simple compliment is okay, no? But given the power dynamic it was not a good situation for her, and she saw it as more than a simple compliment because of the way it was delivered. Became a problem later, iirc, when a possible job offer would have meant working directly under him - no pun intended.

Add to that the typical academic situations of professors hating other professors, not attributing work, and being in a discipline where the majority is men, and even that normal - but of course never great - part of academia always had the question mark of how much of that behaviour was made worse by discrimination against the minority she was part of. And if she had reached a good position, how often would she have been seen as only being there because of being a minority, and not because of her effort, even though she was as far as I could gather one of the best in her field, doing bleeding edge research in a highly prominent area?

There were positive aspects of that environment, sure, but the negatives existed.

She does not work in academia anymore.

> I know at UniMelb (the more "woke" major University in the most "woke" city in Australia), they refuse to do anything about a particular Chemistry professor

But they did kick out the powerlifting coach, for a similar episode of sexual abuse.

Wow, that's bad.

I also think that structurally, universities have academic career advancement problems. It's a very difficult system to to into and out of, in a way that is toxic for everyone but unusually so for women.

It's almost perfectly crafted to disadvantage women. Compare it to law, and imagine someone who moves through the elite path quickly. Graduate college at 22, finish law school at 25, go into heavy debt but start at around $200k a year, work brutally until age 30. Ok, not a great spot for starting a family, but you have now earned well over a mil (you probably started at 200 and are now well above 300k). You don't have much time, but you do at least have money and the ability to buy help. You also (if you're a woman) still have a few years before age related issues in having children manifest.

Now, again, it's not great, but compare this to academic. You finish college at 22, you finis your PhD at 28. That's moving quickly. Next, you do a post-doc or two. Now you're 30. And now, even if you're a winner with a tenure track position (not tenured, just the kind that can lead to it), you're still in grave danger, career-wise. It's do-or-die. You are also, at this point, earning about half of what that law graduate earned at age 26. You have no ability to buy your way out of this.

Now, to me, it's nutty that anyone voluntarily signs up for this, male or female [1]. But it's unusually harsh on women, because taking time off at this junction to have kids derails your career at the worst moment. And academic is unusually bad for on-ramps later in life. There essentially are none. Honestly, in spite of age-related discrimination in tech, I'd rather try my odds finding an on-ramp in tech at age 40 than in academia.

There is a commonly cited study that showed women applying for academic STEM positions received over twice as many offers as similarly qualified men. I actually think the research was good, but people didn't dig into the data. The comparison was for women and men who had achieved a high level position in academics. Yes, I have no trouble believing that women who make it through this gauntlet (which again, I absolutely insist on pointing out is lousy for men too) are very appealing to departments that don't want to change structurally. If a well funded department can hire a group of women who made it despite the odds, they can put a halo up and appear to be one of those virtuous departments even as they participate in the structure that makes it very unlikely women will become one of that small successful group.

[1] indeed, part of the reason universities like worker-visa programs is that it creates a pool of candidates who aren't allowed to live and work in the US with economic freedom.

Great username /s

As I, in a bout of synchronicity, learned today, in Australia wog is a term that used to be a slur for middle eastern and mediterranean people, but has somewhat been reappropriated.

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