Sick and tired of the silence!
March 8th, 2006
Well, if women have to be naked to get into the Met, what do they have to do to get parity in technology-related work? It seems nothing will work. Pretty much everytime I mention this problem to both male and female colleagues at SUNY — I am met with an uncomfortable silence, as though they are all sitting there thinking “ugh, here she goes again.” Recently two committees were announced up in Albany — in the Office of SUNY Learning Environments — regarding the future of the SUNY Learning Network. Now before I write anything else, I want to say that I care deeply about SLN. I am grateful to be part of that community — colleagues like Michael Feldstein, Patrick Masson, Ken Udas, Rob Piorkowski (and the other MIDs), and Alexandra Pickett (and many others that I am not naming here), make my job so much more interesting and challenging, and they have taught me so much.
Anyway, these two committees — the Executive Committee (which is about to make some VERY important decisions about the future of SLN) and the Technology subcommittee — are (approximately) 75% men. I said something about this inequity at a conference call — and no one — no one! — said something that indicated that they were also concerned about the issue. To her credit, Alex told me that she would relay my concerns to the subcomittee, but that’s as far as I got.
What’s up with that? Why the silence? Whe the defensiveness (sometimes I get “Don’t look at me — I didn’t do anything”)? All I am asking for is some awareness of the issue and some effort toward affirmative action — taking conscious steps to fix this serious problem. Just some concern, is that too much to ask? Apparently so.
January 24th, 2007 at 3:55 am
I feel the full weight of the prejudice which so universally excludes us from the sciences; it is one of the contradictions in life that has always amazed me, seeing that the law allows us to determine the fate of great nations, but that there is no place where we are trained to think… Let the reader ponder why, at no time in the course of so many centuries, a good tragedy , a good poem,a respected tale, a fine painting, a good book on physics, has ever been produced by women. Why these creatures whose understanding appears in every way similar to that of men, seem to be stopped by some invisible force, this side of a barrier. Let the people give a reason, but until they do, women will have reason to protest against their education…
If I where King… I would redress this abuse which cuts back, as it were, one half of human kind. I would women participate in all human rights, especially those of the mind… The new education would greatly benefit the human race. Women would be worth more and men would gain something new to emulate… I am convinced that either many women are unaware of their talents by reason of the fault in their education or that they bury them on account of prejudice for want of intellectual courage. My own experience confirms this. Chance made me acquainted with men of letters who extended the hand of friendship to me… I then began to believe that I was a being with a mind.
- The Marquise du Chatelet, 1735