David Broockman thinks Kay Steiger’s post on women in academia could be turned into an argument against affirmative action. Maybe that’s true, but only because I think she infers too much too readily. Here’s the gist:
Once women earn tenure and arrive at the institution they immediately begin getting pulled into various “service” commitments. This includes heading committees, become program coordinators, or take other leadership roles. While this is good for women that long to go into administration at a university, it often pulls female professors away from research…I think the urge is to make sure women are represented in leadership roles but when this pulls time away from their principal mission of research, it becomes a bad thing.
On the face of it, I can see why it’s easy to read this as a simple affirmative-action narrative. But I’m surprised that Broockman didn’t pick up on the fact that the affirmative-action motive is inferred, and start thinking if there might be something else going on. Especially because he’s in the Yale Political Union, where a similar phenomenon takes place, and there is very definitely something else going on.
You see, the YPU on the whole doesn’t have anything close to gender parity, at least among active members. And at any given debate, women are much less likely to speak than men are. But the Union’s executive board has represented something pretty close to a 50/50 split during the three years I’ve been around, and the top three positions have been held by more women than men during that time.
But here’s the result, as in Steiger’s example: while women end up running the show — managing, that is — men are able to devote themselves to success in the field as the field itself defines it (for Steiger, research; for the YPU, debating prowess), and therefore continue to be labeled “leaders”. This is only progressive in the same way that, say, thanking a housewife for the hard work she does is progressive: it’s nice to have the recognition, but it’d be nicer to acknowledge that maybe she’d rather be doing something other than housework.
But even to get the acknowledgment, women have to get noticed and taken seriously, which is tricky in an environment where they’re underrepresented. And often, the way to get noticed and groomed for leadership is to get things done, and get them done well. It’s hard to mount an impressive track record in intellectualism as a freshman, because intellectualism doesn’t lend itself to track records; it’s much easier to hang posters and organize events and do other things that mark one for “management.” Like female academics, they get siphoned out early and therefore miss the chance to get everything they can out of the environment they’re in.
So I really can’t see this as a reason to oppose affirmative action, but rather to ensure that the pools from which candidates are selected are of equal size, so that women don’t feel the need to “prove themselves” in male-dominated settings. Much more importantly, though, we need to recognize that in plenty of fields (academia, sure, but what about advertising? Programming?) many of the roles that get marked as “service”, “management” or “administration” aren’t positions of authority in the least; rather, the managers are those who keep things running so that other people can do what they came to the field to do in the first place, and get all the glory in the long haul.
I’m all for specialization, but let’s be honest about it. Appointing a junior academic to the position of program coordinator, regardless of gender, isn’t a promotion but a qualitative job shift. I think many of the problems that affirmative action hasn’t fixed or has exacerbated might be addressed if we stopped thinking purely in terms of organizational flowcharts but also in terms of social capital or personal fulfillment. And I certainly think that the trends Steiger notices might begin to reverse if tenure committees et al. had it brought to their attention that their actions were the ivory-tower equivalent of telling their daughters: “Oh, no, little girls can’t be doctors. Why don’t you pretend to be the Head Nurse instead?”
Like I said in my post, there does exist an argument against affirmative action there but it’s also not a very good one. I completely agree with what you’ve said here.
There’s two main reasons I see for affirmative action. The first, which you address here, is to help make individuals’ experiences more equitable — i.e., a woman in a man-dominated YPU would ideally face the exact same… incentives. Or whatever. I hate that word.
The second, which you don’t address, and on which Yale bases much of its admissions practices, is that there is something different that diverse people bring to the table. By this theory, a YPU which had 80% men and 20% women would hopefully have more than 2-3 female eboard members simply because women bring a different experience and outlook to the process. Even if it’s not true in the YPU context, it’s certainly true in the wider university context with race and gender. I’m curious as to what happens to your argument when it expands in scope from YPU:eboard to 17-year olds:Yale. I’m not quite sure.
Nor am I, and it’s interesting, but I’m wary of “Women bring a different outlook to the table” arguments being used as prescriptions. It tends to become a lazy shortcut to actual gender equity — oh, we need more interpersonal/verbal/visual skills, and we need more women, and women are good at that! — which in turn causes women to be chosen/respected only in accord with their conformity to that norm.
To clarify, what I’m trying to say is that while your argument holds in organizations I don’t think it holds for what we more broadly understand to be affirmative action in society. Perhaps points 1 and 2 are incompatible in the YPU and organizations as you suggest — there’s no way both to encourage female leadership and keep women participating in equal numbers — but is that really true in hiring practices, for example?
I wrote my last comment before I saw yours.
Totally, 100% agreed. A lot of gender equality is really cheap and stereotype-reinforcing. “Rewarding women for their innate gifts” is pretty much nothing but society/an organization saying “keep acting like this.”
So I agree with the thrust of everything you’ve said here, but I’m not sure that it applies that well to academia (though very, very much to other organizations and 110% to the YPU). I say this because getting tenure is success in the field. It takes a lot of time and a lot don’t make it, especially given rapid casualization of academics. You only get sidetracked after making it to the top. So I think it’s a different process in the one instance we’re talking about.
As an analogy, I think the most prominent example of this is African-Americans being put in charge of community relations at big banks. It’s a major position - always a vice president - but it isn’t banking. What this would be in the analogy would be the head of the real estate division being shifted over, or whatever.
The committee heads and deans are substantively different. This is the shift, not recieving tenure. These administrative positions don’t just take away from research time, the position means a reduction in teaching hours.
Everyone at my high school was disappointed when the best social studies teacher (male) was ‘promoted’ to department chair. He got a raise, and we got screwed; he now only teaches one period a day.
There is a significant gender issue here, but the thing that really bothers me is that the culmination of a career is moving away from it. Doctors:Health Administrators::Teachers:Dep’t Chairs. I do want administrators to have experience in the field they’re overseeing but having the reward for doing your job well be leaving your job is bizarre.
“But even to get the acknowledgment, women have to get noticed and taken seriously, which is tricky in an environment where they’re underrepresented. And often, the way to get noticed and groomed for leadership is to get things done, and get them done well. It’s hard to mount an impressive track record in intellectualism as a freshman, because intellectualism doesn’t lend itself to track records; it’s much easier to hang posters and organize events and do other things that mark one for ‘management.’”
I disagree. Making a name for yourself in the Union as an intellectual leader is hard work for anybody, but it isn’t any harder for women. If anything, the fact that women are underrepresented among speakers makes it easier for a woman to distinguish herself.
The real problem here, I think, is that most women at Yale /prefer/ management over getting in the game. I wouldn’t want to speculate as to why; they just do. (Look at the women you know who’ve followed the “management” track. Do you think any one of them really /wanted/ to make it as a speaker but got sidetracked?) Maybe my own trajectory in the YPU has made me insufficiently sympathetic to the flyer-hanging ambitious type, but I don’t think the overrepresentation of women on that track has anything to do with gender bias in the YPU.
Bottom line: you say it’s hard for a woman to prove herself on the debate floor; I think it’s just rare.
And as for this paragraph:
“So I really can’t see this as a reason to oppose affirmative action, but rather to ensure that the pools from which candidates are selected are of equal size, so that women don’t feel the need to ‘prove themselves’ in male-dominated settings.”
Gender theory aside, we can at least observe that male-dominated settings have a different dynamic from female-dominated settings or fifty-fifty settings, right? And if there’s something alchemic about DEBATE + MALE-DOMINATED SETTING, then how can you suggest we destroy that dynamic?
I think you’re totally wrong about the Union thing. Women have disproportionate representation on E-board not because members feel like we need to give them an advantage, but because they’re smart and qualified for the positions. I see no reason why this has anything to do with their gender.
It is possible that there’s a situation like this: The Union is an old boys’ club, and so women feel generally uncomfortable, but the ones who do commit commit hardcore and so are very committed to rising through the ranks. But this is by no means shoving them off to administrative positions, and it’s by no means affirmative action.
Who was the last male secretary?
Hint: I’m living with him.
Also, I do think Dara needs to answer Helen and flesh out this sentence “But even to get the acknowledgment, women have to get noticed and taken seriously, which is tricky in an environment where they’re underrepresented.” a lot more.
I don’t think that “But women PREFER to be managers!” settles the question. Unless you can go back and ask these girls in, say, elementary school or middle school “So do you want to be a manager, or a debater?”, you have no idea whether the eventual “preference” for management developed because they have some sort of innate yen for the stuff or because of nurture/conditioning: maybe they have a desire for recognition and found it as managers, maybe some other process occurred.
I do, however, cede to Helen on alchemy, and I think that goes a long way toward explaining what David III wants me to flesh out. It isn’t just that men predominate in debate, it’s that they dominate it. The form itself has become gendered (this is especially true where debate shades into PoR-style pugilism). Women who have been told their whole lives that they, as girls, are better at compromise and bringiing people together — which is to say, women brought up within the educational mainstream — are more likely to be uncomfortable with such an environment even if they are attracted to it, and decide that they’d “rather just watch” (which is an attitude toward debate I’ve seen expressed by plenty of women, primarily underclassmen, and never by men). Getting over the discomfort often takes the form of feeling known and valued before getting on the floor — hence having something concrete to point to.
And as long as we’re getting into particular Union careers: Helen benefited from running against another woman who had distinguished herself primarily through debate, and her reputation had suffered worse than Helen’s for it. And as for “the last male secretary” — I don’t want to dredge that up again, but it’s worth pointing out that his administrative experience was considered irrelevant to debate. The distinction is the problem, far more than its gendered nature — I agree with Leah on this.
I think that’s a much more persuasive explanation for the phenomenon. But if the problem is now what happens when the medium of debate and gender roles clash, it seems like the the point of the rest of your post changes entirely.
Using your framework, affirmative action would seem to imply that there is something qualitatively different about female leadership, the reason you think we’re in this mess in the first place.
Rather, I think it’s that rather than using the fact that many women are drawn to debate as an occasion to interrogate the processes that have led debate to become identified with male leadership, we’ve bifurcated our definition of leadership to accommodate “male” and “female” styles, but both of those styles are culturally generated. That said, they’re also internalized, so it’s not as easy as just blowing up the concepts — as with so much of the postmodern world, we need to walk the line between recognizing the original arbitrariness and recognizing the meaning it’s accrued for people (in this case, women who have internalized that they are “female leaders”).
Yes, but wouldn’t institutional recognition of those differences only reinforce them…?
I really didn’t want the post to be about the institution of affirmative action at all — and really, it wasn’t, Will’s sendup aside. That being said, even the passing reference I did make to affirmative action had nothing to do with institutional recognition of leadership differences.
“[this is a reason] to ensure that the pools from which candidates are selected are of equal size, so that women don’t feel the need to “prove themselves” in male-dominated settings”
This may not be intended as an endorsement of something, but I guarantee you that it will be read as such by some non-negligible fraction of people who are not me.
I know I wrote it. However, it was followed by a “more importantly” for a reason. I assume that the hypothetical fraction of readers to whom you allude will have the understanding to read past that sentence and understand that the thrust of the post doesn’t fit into standard affirmative-action policy-oriented discussions, the existence of that clause to the contrary.
I know I’m late to the party on this one, but I don’t think that women are actually underrepresented as top speakers in the Union relative to their total numbers (that is, the YPU has a gender balance problem, but of those who do join the YPU, women are just as likely to become debating stars as men).
Also, I call bullshit on the notion that management of the Union and prowess in debating are fundamentally separate tasks. Last semester, the President and Speaker were Rachel and Helen, who just happen to be two of the Union’s best and most prolific speakers (Rachel was someone I could always count on if I needed a speaker when I was FLL, Helen was always one of the people on the Right whose speeches I was able to respect). People are getting deceived by the April Lawson/Laura Marcus phenomenon in this discussion, but I don’t think that’s the dominant path for women in the Union (and there are men who’ve followed the same - George Singer, for instance).
Now that I think about it, if I made a list of the Union’s best debaters, women would probably actually end up overrepresented in relation to their numbers in the Union at large (as a quick example, I think the single best speaker in each of four parties - the Libs, PoL, IP, and PoR - are all women) just as they are overrepresented on E-board. Doesn’t change the fact that the Union has a gender problem, but most of the preceding discussion of debate in the YPU bears little relation to the facts.