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May 18, 2008
kiss me once / kiss me twice
here's a phrase that bothers me:
"we are trying to identify women to hire."
this is insulting to women and men. it is demeaning to imply that women aren't qualified enough to get jobs on their own.
this, of course, is in relation to hiring in science and engineering academia.
I think that this is the wrong answer. The best person should be hired for a job.
The problem doesn't lie in hiring departments anymore. In my opinion, the problem lies in the environment. To get more women in this field, the field must change. Universities must provide good quality childcare, paid maternity leave, help with finding spouse jobs, and a slow down of tenure clock. In my personal opinion, the environment needs to stop expecting people to work 60 hours a week. When these things occur, I believe that the pool with include more women and therefore the best candidate 50% of the time will be a women.
Posted by christina at May 18, 2008 9:28 PM
Comments
Hi Christina,
I agree with you that the best candidate for the job should be hired. However, I think - in the aerospace world anyway - a lot of hiring is done by word of mouth and there is a bit of an old boy's club. Until you have a critical mass of women, they can be a little left out of some of the standard networking. Therefore, I think a little extra effort is required to identify women candidates. For instance, you are more likely to hire a woman, i think, by going through college's standard hiring process, something startups often don't do. I don't think NASA hires underqualified women, but they make an extra effort (at least in my perception) making it all the more critical for other companies to make an extra effort in order to compete.
But at the end of the day, the best candidate should be hired.
Agree with the points about childcare, etc.
Posted by: Jennifer at May 19, 2008 9:20 AM