A recent evaluation of M.I.T.’s efforts to redress the underrepresentation of women on its faculty has been discussed widely on the bloggysphere. I don’t have much to add, except that this section from the NY Times’ coverage leapt out at me:
Because it has now become all but the rule that every committee must include a woman, and there are still relatively few women on the faculty, female professors say they are losing up to half of their research time, as well as the outside consultancies that earn their male colleagues a lot of money.
I guess we will have finally reached gender equality when women have as many opportunities for conflicts-of-interest as men do.
Not sure this was the point of the exercise.
mikethemadbiologist
Every female academic I know (including $DAUGHTER) has an excess of “service” on her CV. Seems that they’re always the first tapped and sometimes it’s hard to say no.
See “Consequences, Unintended, Rule of”.
“I guess we will have finally reached gender equality when women have as many opportunities for conflicts-of-interest as men do.”
Yes. If you want to check for the real equality, follow the money.