Comments on: Where the girls are: not so much in the Arts and Humanities as other fields!

By: Links of Great Interest: Redefining Latin@ in 2010! | The Hathor Legacy

Links of Great Interest: Redefining Latin@ in 2010! | The Hathor Legacy — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 07:21:26 +0000

[...] daily dose of misogyny in the academy: women are to blame for the poor salaries facing graduating [...]

By: RKMK

RKMK — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 18:30:50 +0000

because no matter how horrible a man is as a “catch” women have to “accept” them.

Snerk. No, we don’t.

Pure anecdata, of course… but overwhelmingly, I’d rather work with women than men. In 90% of my work environments (since I was 14 or so), the men could be counted on to expect cushy perks and enjoy their status while slacking off. Mileage may vary, of course.

By: Liz2

Liz2 — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 03:37:28 +0000

My university has an incoming class that is 61% female (which isn’t too far off the national average I believe) and several of my senior male colleagues were expressing their great concern about what this says about our society and our future. I snapped at them “no one seemed to be worried about our future in the 1950s when men made up the majority of college students.” Gah! But the best part…their answer was that women who are well-educated and “well-kept up” (their words not mine) are in a surplus in our country and so men being “cavemen” just don’t have to bother with getting an education or bathing (seriously, they said these things) because no matter how horrible a man is as a “catch” women have to “accept” them.

By: Janice

Janice — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 22:53:57 +0000

I’m always watchful of these trends as my historical insight has trained me to expect a devaluation of job importance, value and social status immediately upon it becoming identified as “women’s work.”

Whether it’s because women enter that the jobs/qualifications become less valued or men begin to move away from a field that’s less prestigious/poorly paid, leaving women in their wake, I don’t know. That’s the interesting question, isn’t it?

By: Historiann

Historiann — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 22:04:06 +0000

I heard that this a.m. too, and had the same reactions as Susan and truffula. It’s that old devil, patriarchal equilibrium again. The oddball commenters over at Inside Higher Ed will be very relieved to hear that it’s restored!

By: Susan

Susan — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 21:27:23 +0000

@truffula, that was exactly my reaction. If I hadn’t been driving it would have been dangerous. My feminist theory grad students had been reading Elizabeth Minnich’s Transforming Knowledge, and I used this as an example of logical fallacies in malestream thinking.

By: truffula

truffula — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 20:43:05 +0000

Did you hear the NPR story this morning.

I heard it and just about blew a gasket. Don’t panic everybody, we’ll still have plenty of men around to run things. The natural order will not be upset.

By: Susan

Susan — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 18:37:30 +0000

Did you hear the NPR story this morning. In the middle they said, “But there is good news! the number of men in grad school increased by 7% this year, and women only 5%. So men are not abandoning graduate education”
Ummm. They are getting almost half the doctorates — who said anything about abandoning doctoral education?
Sigh.

By: Perpetua

Perpetua — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:23:36 +0000

LMAO, Squadrato! Women for Lower Pay Unite! We could probably join up with the Tea Party.

Some possible slogans for our new party:

- Why pay us more? We’re just going to quit when we have babies anyway.

- Men are just smarter.

- Who will marry us if we make too much $$$?

By: Comrade Svilova

Comrade Svilova — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:29:59 +0000

“Love” the comments that suggest that the life of the mind is now *exclusively* for females and men are being entirely neglected in education. That’s a pretty big claim for an 0.8% difference in number of PhDs awarded.