Goodbye to women only scholarships

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Oxford ends women-only fellowship after university rules that it breaches equality law

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2019/01/11/oxford-ends-women-only-fellowship-university-rules-breaches/

twitter.com/womenstandup_/status/1083997600502693888?s=21

I’m still digesting the fact 75% of professorships are held by men, there is something that doesn’t sit quite right with me about that.

No reason in principle why a woman shouldn't be a bin collector but of course historically jobs like that were kept for men, who got their sons, nephews, grandsons, neighbours' sons etc in by buying the foreman a pint any time somebody retired and needed to be replaced. Like so many other jobs, traditional men's jobs were on pay scales that were higher than jobs like dinner lady and home help. That shouldn't apply now as most public bodies and other big employers have consolidated all their payscales into one and tried to ensure that salaries are fixed by reference to competences to get rid of the sexist bias.

Of course, in practice a lot of women would be unable to take on a job that meant getting up in the small hours because of caring responsibilities. We can say till we're blue in the face that men should be taking an equal share of those but we all know it doesn't happen, especially in relation to childcare after the parents split up.

Of the men I trained with in my field, one was in a top senior leadership position within 2 years of qualification. He was low average in terms of performance and skills in the group I trained with. Much higher ability women took ten plus years to get into even the lower levels of senior leadership

So much this. I’ve slogged for 10 years to get to a low senior position in my industry. Watching many deeply mediocre males get advancement over me. I assumed I was imagining it at first, just unlucky, maybe I wasn’t all that good.

Till a colleague leaned over and said ‚‘ you were better than the other candidates put together, if your name were Dave, you’d have got that job‘ and I knew I wasn’t imagining it.

Bittermints and that’s so true even before you yourself have children!

My brother had an early paperround, I couldn’t (at 12) because I had to clean the fire out, help with breakfast, and getting the youngest ready for school.

It starts young, and it always felt unfair, but I’m not sure when I really started to question it.

I hate to bring him up as I know Jordan Peterson is persona non grata here, but I’ve seen him speak on precisely the topic that women on average are more agreeable than men, and less likely to put themselves foward for promotion. Like it or not assertiveness IS a crucial skill in most jobs if not all high status ones. I know he’s done a lot of work with professional women precisely to develop greater assertiveness. I’d be happy to toss a considerable amount of tax dollars into maybe looking at providing women with assertive training. I think it might move the needle in a more equitable direction than positive discrimination or all women short lists.

I’d be happy to toss a considerable amount of tax dollars into maybe looking at providing women with assertive training.

No. This is not the correct way forward and it is telling women it is their fault because they have the wrong personality type. Do you realise how much fucking harder it is to be 'assertive' when your face doesn't fit and when you're in an environment where you know the perception is that you are not as good just because you happen to have certain genitalia? The purpose of feminism is not to make women act like entitled men (who act that way because their whole life they have been given dominance over another group), but to make the world fairer. I cannot see how that can be done other than through quotas and additional support for women. NOT by telling women they could have equality in the workplace if only they asked for it. Many women ARE assertive and DO ask, yet they don't get anywhere. Mr Prize Knobhead Peterson probably doesn't understand that because he has never ever been on the receiving end of misogyny.

An alternative approach to address issues which predominantly but not exclusively cause inequity for women in academia is something like the Dorothy Hodgkin fellowships:

royalsociety.org/grants-schemes-awards/grants/dorothy-hodgkin-fellowship/

Young women are more likely to go to university than young men so I imagine in the future universities will have affirmative action type policies to make it 50/50. How is this not what those demanding equality of outcome wanted?

I wonder if they scrapped it because they know anything aimed at women is a TRA-magnet and they just don’t want to have to deal with that?

This is exactly what I think has happened. Heading it off before they are forced to give it to a man.