Institute of Physics appoints an Inclusion and Diversity representative

[RoyalCorgi]

Physics as a profession is dominated by white men.

So guess who the Institute of Physics has appointed as its new Inclusion and Diversity representative?

Go on, guess.

https://www.iop.org/about/news/dr-clara-barker-appointed-iop-inclusion-diversity-rep

😔

Oh what a total surprise. Not. Wonder who the other candidates were, or if this was an appointment rather than a selection process.

Dr Barker seems to have done a Ted Talk in 2018 called 'Why we need to build trust to build diversity and inclusion.'

Trust. And Dr Barker?

Yeah, right.

Absolutely ridiculous. The comments are heartening though.

It really is a mockery. That the field is so male-dominated that most of the 'women' are male is quite telling.

For fucks fucking sake

As usual the cowards have turned off replies on Twitter but have been ratioed to fuck in the quotes

Does anyone else think they're taking the piss at this point? ie deliberately having a laugh at women's expense to show us how little they care?

Honestly Corgi I don’t think they gave even one seconds thought too women .

Thanks was just coming on to say I couldn't see those heartening replies....
If I'm ever first to the heartening replies in one of these scenarios, I will take a screenshot before the sinister hand of control intervenes!

https://twitter.com/PhysicsNews/status/1721842016026308879

I know several women in this field, so hoping this might be what finally peaks them, if it's not too late that is....

To be fair “diversity and inclusion” isn’t about getting more women into STEM. (There are whole groups aimed purely at women in STEM.) Or at least, women in STEM is only one small aspect of it. It’s as much about increasing engagement with marginalised groups, encouraging people from the types of backgrounds that wouldn’t consider STEM. People from poorer backgrounds whos parents didn’t attend university, etc.
I wouldn’t say this was disrespectful to women. The previous post holder was a woman.

Only a select few in the echo chamber allowed to reply.....

Every ‘woman in STEM’ group I’ve looked at includes “anyone who identifies as a woman”

Here's Barker whining about women spending their money on women's rights in 2020.

Since mid-2017, more than 800,000 pounds has been raised via about 27,500 donations to fund about 16 trans-focused legal cases on CrowdJustice, a crowdfunding site set up specifically for lawsuits, according to a tally by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Basically, money is being used to bully,” said Clara Barker, who contributed to a Trans Toolkit For Schools that was withdrawn in May after a crowdfunded lawsuit against Oxfordshire County Council in southern England.
“It certainly feels like there (are) deeper pockets for those challenging our rights than those trying to protect our rights,” said Barker, an academic at the University of Oxford who is trans and also runs an LGBT+ youth group.
Crowdfunding platforms have been utilised by both sides, as the increasingly bitter row in Britain over whether trans rights encroach those of other women has spilled over into the courts.

www.reuters.com/article/britain-lgbt-tech-idINL8N2HK93O

Point taken with regards previous postholder.

But on the coalface of reality, so called diversity and inclusion can be something of a Trojan horse for current ideologies.
(I'm absolutely in favour of university applications from all sectors of society.)

I'll eat my hat if the new post holder focusses on people with poorer backgrounds or other underrepresented minorities. I am pretty certain I know where the focus will be.

When I see pictures like that one my brain just screams SAFEGUARDING RED FLAG.

Expecting children to subvert the evidence of their eyes and ears and name this person as anything other than male - against their own perceptions - is such a massive safeguarding failure.

But we know children don't matter as long as certain XY individuals get to use Malaga Airport.

And they could so easily have appointed someone from a working-class background, or someone with a disability, or someone from an ethnic minority. Why appoint an able-bodied white male - someone who, as far as I can see, has experienced no barriers or disadvantages to a career in physics?

These days I scroll to the photo first before I read the c.v.
It means I get to say For Fuck's Sake a lot sooner.

Baker was responsible for the Oxford Transfish Bollocks
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3054472-Museum-of-Natural-History-Oxford-transfish-bollocks-Edited-by-MNHQ?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

The physics degree I did was a five-year course. Five years in the physics department and not one single female lecturer. Not once.

'Diversity' is such a woolly, fuzzy concept, because it has no proper way of being measured. Is an organisation with 99% men and 1% women diverse in sex? Does an organisation become diverse if it changes from 100% white to 99% white? Is it diversity to have a board with one person who in her or his body covers more than one ground for diversity (say, someone who is female, poor, and belongs to a racial and/or ethnic minority)?

The fuzziness allows organisations to get away with sometimes minimal changes for publicity purposes, and it also allows the concept to be exploited by powerful minorities.

Because it is not comparing the results (at least in popular debate) to population proportions of the various groups, it's harder to note that adding one white female and two black males could affect two different aspects of 'diversity' in opposite directions.

What should matter is how many of each type of demographic groups there are in a particular society (or in what is called the pipeline for particular posts or occupations in that organisation). A country where type z people are 50% should have more of them in various decision-making rules than a country where the percentage of type z people is 5%. Yet I see this often misunderstood.

So after that long tirade, because women are half of all people, diversity cannot mean that their numbers are expected to be as small as the numbers from very small demographic groups. But that is pretty much what is happening, to the detriment of women, when all 'diversity' is lumped into one big kettle and stirred like this.

I have always seen it this way. To my mind, a diverse organisation would be 50% women at every level and the percentage of other groups would match the population percentage, at every level.