Gender-specific research grants

I received an e-mail in my inbox yesterday informing me that there was a call for the Google Europe Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship (2007/2008) for female students (attached below).

I felt a bit miffed afterwards - if a company X was to offer grants to only male students who are rare to be in a course country-wide, would it not be slated as sexist? I understand the push by several parties 'to get more women into science/engineering/technology' but what about courses which are 90% female? Is it unfeasible/undesirable to offer grants to men looking to do these courses? Is this not sexist?

I acknowledge that Google (or whoever) are free to give grants/money to whoever the hell they want, but the idea of a grant based around your gender annoys me.

Thoughts!

Dear all,

I would like to bring your attention to the following Google Europe Anita
Borg Memorial Scholarship (2007/2008) for female students.

Scholarships will be awarded based on the strength of candidates' academic
background and engagement within the technology community.

A group of female undergraduate and postgraduate student finalists will be
chosen from the applicant pool. The scholarship recipients, selected from
the finalists, will each receive a €5,000 scholarship for the 2007/2008
academic year.

Candidates must:
* be a female student in the fourth year of an honors undergraduate program
(e.g., BA or BSc), or enrolled in an MSc or PhD programme (or equivalent)
during 2007/2008.
* be enrolled in full-time study at a University in Europe. Citizens,
permanent residents, and international students are eligible to apply.
* be studying Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Informatics, or a
related technical field.
* maintain an excellent academic record (e.g. a First Class Honours degree).

Information can be found at: http://www.google.com/anitaborg-europe/

Note that the deadline has been extended to January 24th 2007.

Support in the application process can be found with WISER or the academic
staff. Also please let us know (at <snip>) of any application made.

Kind regards and happy Christmas,

<snip>

*****************************************************************
<snip>
Director of <snip>
Centre for Women in Science & Engineering Research
Research Office, O'Reilly Institute
Trinity College, Dublin 2

Tel: +353-1-896 3508
Fax: +353-1-679 8039
Web: http://www.tcd.ie/wiser

gymrabbit

This is bollox.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

Yeah a mate of mine got quite pissed of at this and wrote a strongly worded e-mail in reply when he got 3 of these in his inbox, I'll ask him if I can reproduce it here, it was really quite wonderful...

ApeXaviour

Ah it's the same story with drivers insurance. If it was the other way around and women happened to claim more than men, higher costs for them would never be stood for.

Edwardius

Hmmm, also the housing rental market and cancer research seems to favour our hour-glass (or otherwise) shaped friends. think they're better at playing the victim or want revenge for the whole "kitchen" thing...

johnl

I am the afore-mentioned friend. I haven't finished the mail yet, but here's the draft I was working on:

Dear Madam,
I was prepared to ignore the unrequested mail about the "Google Europe Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship (2007/2008) for female students". I presume it was sent to every student in at least the engineering and science faculties.
While I disagree on principle with this "spamming" of student class lists with commercial-interest mails (see also the Careers Office who happily promulgate the latest inane dispatches from Goldman Sachs and other multinationals), one mail, at least somewhat on topic (unlike the aforementioned investment banking mail), was not enough to cause offense.
I was, however, incensed by the idea of a "scholarship for female students". I am absolutely in favour of feminism, that is to say, the movement for the equality of the genders in public and private life. Positive discrimination, I regard as a scourge equal to the scourges of racism, sexism, ageism, etc.
When a second and indeed a third copy of this email arrived in my college inbox, I was not impressed. It is not a particularly difficult task to manage email distribution lists, not to say restrict delivery to those whom it may concern.
I took the occasion, offered 3 times, to visit the WiSER website and peruse the content, before it was apparently taken down last night. Since I can no longer view the material, I cannot comment on many particular sections. One point did stand out, "there is a gender pay gap of approximately 3%" between male and female postdocs in the Science faculty". This is mentioned as a criticism, but I think a pay gap of only 3% is something to be commended, and I would imagine is far lower than the disparity in many other areas of college.
Dare I imagine what kind of outcry there would be if I were to inaugurate a Memorial Scholarship in my own name "for male students"? I would be run off the campus in a witch hunt the like of which hasn't been seen since House Committee on Un-American Activities. Or perhaps I should make a submission for this scholarship? It would be worth doing solely in order to see the wording used by the Google lawyers in refusing to consider me. I wonder whether WiSER would offer me "support in the application process" or whether they too would be forced to discriminate against me on the sole basis of my gender.
Why this disparity of treatment? Because of the betrayal of the very principles of feminism, of equality, of parity of esteem. In a vain, misguided attempt to combat discrimination, a new wave of "positive discrimination" is unleashed. The polarity of this discrimination is immaterial, it is still discrimination.

Yours faithfully,
John Lunney

xeduCat

Myth wrote:

Is it unfeasible/undesirable to offer grants to men looking to do these courses? Is this not sexist?

Actually the Dept. of Education is putting a lot of money into the men-should-be-teachers programme.

I acknowledge that Google (or whoever) are free to give grants/money to whoever the hell they want, but the idea of a grant based around your gender annoys me.

I seem to remember you being a quite enthusiastic promoter of assistance for students with disabilities, defender of the Trinity Access Programmes, etc. Are you annoyed by them too, or just gender?

There are all manner of schemes - private and public (this isn't a grant by the way) - that have a limited application. For example, students on an access programme can apply to various companies for head-start or placement-type schemes. Disabled researchers can compete for numerous schemes that are exactly the same as this particular Google-funded one - how annoyed are you by that? That is a 'grant {or scholarship/bursary/fund/whatever} based around your disability'.

Shall we burn TAP down now? It's terrible how Trinity treats some students differently. The TAP computer room should be accessible to all 15,000 students - if not, it is simple discrimination. Agreed?

Thoughts!

Merry Christmas

The irony of complaints about this sort of scheme is that within the world of those who are interested in underrepresentation, this is the 'soft' option that is broadly acceptable - the 'hard' version of quotas/affirmative action/etc is usually more controversial!

xeduCat

johnl wrote:

I am the afore-mentioned friend. I haven't finished the mail yet, but here's the draft I was working on:

Actually a lot of good points in that mail (despite my comments above) - it was posted at the same time. In particular, the spamming is unacceptable, but nothing new for career stuff! However, WiSER aren't that evil - a lot of what they do is something similar to services provided by other support services, in college or otherwise, that attempt to tackle disparities in career progression and so on. To take the disability example referred to above, there are all manner of private and public entities that assist students with disabilities (if they wish to be assisted, it's all voluntary) in applications (or whatever), recognising that the much-desired level playing field isn't quite here yet. To take the 'access' example I also drew upon, the motivation is not to withdraw support from other students, but to offer an extra bit of support based upon (e.g.) high drop-out rates or other noted problems.

Site seems to be working again now, though.

Edit: a friend reminds me that gender ratio in Trinity is actually much better than it used to be and is as a whole more women than men (although the opposite is true at staff and admin levels, which is a problem). But this particular initiative is an industry-wide thing rather than a Trinity one, where the disparities are clear and have been researched in far too much detail.

Nietzschean

i dunno someone who has a geniuine disability i'm all in favour of them getting extra facilities. Though your post seems to imply being female is a disability ? if they wish to turn around and tell us that they are some how disabled because they are female then super they should get extra grants like this. But i would consider them equal so this would seem wholy unfair no?

xeduCat

Heh, no that's not what I meant, but I can see how it seems that way...

What I was referring to was that supports for disability/access student/whatever are not supposed to be against those who are not disabled / from a 'typical' college background/whatever. They are extra, above and beyond the normal equal-rights idea - and it seems that the Google thingie is similar. No male student suffers from the fact that Google gives a pot of money as part of an encouraging-women-to-stick-with-science scheme, just as it doesn't hurt Myth or anyone else if a company or charity does something to encourage Deaf students to stay in college. In large areas of research (and in almost all areas of senior management in Trinity), women are as underrepresented as a lot of minority groups, but somehow doing something to encourage women to participate is more controversial than doing it for others?

I believe that an intellectual disability doesn't mean that you don't have equal rights - but that also doesn't mean that you should shut down the Special Olympics. One of the biggest purposes of the SOs is to act as an opportunity for confidence-building, pride, recognition of achievements etc - not to knock at anyone else. That's what I believe Trinity's trying to do with the women-in-science centre - it's not an anti-men plot (that I know of).

ApeXaviour

Nietzschean wrote:

i dunno someone who has a geniuine disability i'm all in favour of them getting extra facilities. Though your post seems to imply being female is a disability ? if they wish to turn around and tell us that they are some how disabled because they are female then super they should get extra grants like this. But i would consider them equal so this would seem wholy unfair no?

What about tap? It could also be saying that women are equivalent to people on the wrong side of the socio-economic divide? Not so far a jump

Nietzschean

ApeXaviour wrote:

What about tap? It could also be saying that women are equivalent to people on the wrong side of the socio-economic divide? Not so far a jump

I honistly don't see how, women by enlarge these days are given all the same opertunities for education right along as men. The under privilidged is a different senario where all sorts of circumstances i'm not well enough versed on to comment could effect education studies.

Nietzschean

xeduCat wrote:

They are extra, above and beyond the normal equal-rights idea

I wouldn't see them as above, i'd see them purely as an attempt level the playing field, which seems fair. A protection women don't need....

No male student suffers from the fact that Google gives a pot of money as part of an encouraging-women-to-stick-with-science scheme, just as it doesn't hurt Myth or anyone else if a company or charity does something to encourage Deaf students to stay in college.

Thats not necessarily true, that extra 5k means a dept could look at reducing a phd payment by that and make it a condition of the phd. thus in this time of budget cuts prioritising females over males for phd positions because there are extra sources of funding to make it cheaper for them.

In large areas of research (and in almost all areas of senior management in Trinity), women are as underrepresented as a lot of minority groups, but somehow doing something to encourage women to participate is more controversial than doing it for others?

For women wheither they participate or not is a choice, i wouldn't call being disabled or being under privlidged a choice. From what i've seen most women's results in the sciences are on a par with men in my degree class i'd say on average they scored higher, though that i'm aware of none of the women went onto doing masters or doctorial level studies in their degree area(one's doing teaching).... Soe I really don't see why we should pay loads every year to try fix this 'gender gap' if they don't want do it fine. if they do and there is some bias against them then it should be fixed, but i haven't seen any evidence of anything remotely like that. Tossing money at them over men isn't the way to solve it, it just creates a 2 tier system where if a guy and girl both go for a phd position in a dept then the dept to appease the 'politically correct' should pick the girl so there are more girls in science or because they can get other sources of funding which wouldn't be available for the guy?

That's what I believe Trinity's trying to do with the women-in-science centre - it's not an anti-men plot (that I know of).

They can promote stuff with women all they like, we(the general student body in the area) shouldn't be spam'd with stuff associated with it. as far as i'm concerned i'd lump it in with any special interest group, they shouldn't have access to the big mailing lists for one. You can council people all you like and recommend they do further studies, and i think thats where it should stop.

xeduCat

xeduCat wrote:

I seem to remember you being a quite enthusiastic promoter of assistance for students with disabilities, defender of the Trinity Access Programmes, etc. Are you annoyed by them too, or just gender?

Don't be silly (though it is the season for it) of course I'm not annoyed by funding going towards TAP & students with disabilites. I do have a bone to pick with segregrating funding towards one gender however.

My annoyance comes down to this fact - taking the example of the push by the DoE for male teachers... If I was to go down the route of teaching (which I've considered) and was to obtain a job/interview through one means or another, would it then be because I was male, or because I was good at my job/came across well at the interview? If I was to obtain an interview ahead of a female* who was better, I'd feel pretty crap about myself. All theory, but if I was to apply and was accepted, there would always be something in the back of my mind which would be questioning whether I obtained this position due to my competence, or whether (in the end) it was down to my gender.

*I read back over this, and it appeared to sound as if I was referring to women similarly to how the Ferengi referred to 'females'. This isn't intended.

gymrabbit

i wish i had a womb.

John

For dinner?

ApeXaviour

For Christmas...

John

for a face?

Pet

Uterushead, it could be the name of a feminist post-punk band.

John

Or a David Lynch-directed porno movie