Conversations With Female Science Administrator

I have an acquaintance who works in what some of you professorial types jokingly refer to as the dark side - administration. Ha ha ha. Yeah, I was an administrator in academia myself, you know, and let me tell you, you should be grateful to your administrators, if only for the fact that if they didn't spend their days attending all those meetings, you'd have to do it yourself. Somebody's gotta do that administrative crap while you're out there doing the whizbang gollygee fun stuff in the labs.

My acquaintance knows both sides of the story, for she herself is a tenured full professor in the field of -ology. The type of administrative position she has now is a standard issue administrative position, and she's got to deal with all the usual administrative stuff. She's also, in the normal run of her daily business, got to deal with managing diversity.

Recently she reported to me the following:

I just spent half an hour talking to a male department head about one of his untenured women faculty members, who had been in to talk to me about what she perceives as unequal treatment by the head. I talked about how perceptions are important even though he feels as though he is being fair. I talked about accumulation of disadvantage. I talked about how if
they ever want to diversify their department it is important to have not just successful but
happy female and minority faculty members.

And at the end of the half hour, I think that he walked out convinced that he was right and everything was fair and hunky dory and he need only apologize for one kerfuffle that involved [one particular incident].

My work here is obviously not done, but I am not hopeful that it can be done. Worst of all, this...department head [is] a younger guy with (I think) a professional wife...the kind we hope that get it and are our allies.

FSA is not new to the business of dealing with diversity issues and trying to educate her colleagues. She is quite an expert in this area. So it's not that she doesn't know how to talk to people about this stuff.

It's just that she is tired, oh so very tired, of banging her head against the giant wall built of Nice Guys Who Just Don't Get It. The guys who listen, and then say "Okay, I'm sorry you got so upset over that." The people who are all for including women and minorities, as long as nothing substantive about longstanding departmental culture really has to change. The folks who think that if women are not being accosted in the hallways and hit up for sexual favors in the lab, then everything must be, well, hunky dory. The scientists who think that there is absolutely nothing that social science can teach them about how to create a better, more equitable scientific culture. The Nice Guy Knuckleheads who believe with all the faith that a creationist believes in an Intelligent Designer that Science is a Meritocracy.

FSA, I feel your pain, and if I could I would go right now and puke on your Nice Guy Department Head's shoes. But I have the feeling he'd just look up in bewilderment and say, "Now why in the world would you do that? I'm such a nice guy!"