Strategies for Recruiting and Retaining Women Scientists
1. CNS Women in Science
|Accomplishments|Challenges|Next Steps|
Farshid Hajir
Professor & Department Head
Mathematics & Statistics
2. Department Head/Chair
• Sets the tone
• Fosters & safeguards a positive climate
• Has a duty to be on the lookout for unfair
treatment & counteract (often subtle) biases
• Listens to constituents, acts on their concerns
• Draws out women’s voices within the dept
• Awareness/Acceptance/Activism/Optimism
3. A few examples
• Annual Faculty Reports & Merit Pay
• Student Evaluations
• Number and types of awards for students
• Alumna-funded REU program to draw more
women to research
• Student Chapter of Association for Women in
Mathematics established
• Lesson learned: The desire to treat a particular
subpopulation fairly tends to spur policies and
programs that benefit all constituents
4. Math & Stat Faculty Gender Imbalance
• In late 1960s, there were 5 women among the
faculty (out of a total of ~60 faculty members)
• 50 years later, the number of women today is
still 5 (out of a total of 39 TT faculty members)
• Stat (3 of 7) vs. Math (2 of 32) are women
• # of Math Majors has risen from 100 to 643
• 33% of current math majors are female
5. Focus on Faculty Recruitment
• Activist Approach: timing is so crucial
• Support from Dean & Provost through CHIP &
making multiple simultaneous offers
• Look for candidates as they develop & invite
them to campus before they go on the market
• Having a well-functioning Partner-Hiring program
(campus-wide and indeed 5-college & beyond) is
of the first importance.
• Vigilance by Dept (Head/Chair but also PC) as
well as support of Dean & Provost needed to
anticipate/avoid retention situations
6. Championing Each Other
• “I always want both genders to champion
each other. I just think it’s really important. I
know it’s really idealistic, but I don’t care. Our
job in this world is to help each other, to
champion each other. We’re in this world
together, so let’s make the best of it.”
-- Billie Jean King
I’m honored to have been asked to serve on this panel. As a first-term department head, I’m not appearing before you as an expert who has figured out the answers, but as someone who is engaged with developing approaches to these very challenging issues.
Why are these issues important to me? To summarize it briefly: As Department Head, I am entrusted with safeguarding a positive climate and fostering a nurturing, intellectually vigorous and lively environment in which to work. Paying attention to gender issues at all levels from staff & students to faculty is a very important aspect of achieving those goals.
My approach to grappling with gender issues
Acceptance: We want to believe the playing field is level by default, but it isn’t.
Awareness: We have to train ourselves to be on the lookout for unfair treatment or subtle biases.
Activism / Optimism: It’s easy to feel that since this is such a large and all-encompassing problem, no one individual can negate it. But that’s exactly wrong. Being aware of the issue is half the battle.
As many studies have shown, the default state is that our societal environment is permeated by long-standing, pervasive, and unconscious, gender biases. On a daily basis, we need to fight to negate the effect of such biases.
Once we accept this uncomfortable truth, it’s possible to implement countermeasures that could be quite simple but highly effective.
No one wants to be selected for an honor or a job (or receive praise) based on some characteristic or circumstance of birth or upbringing.
So – shouldn’t we just posit a blanket policy of “circumstance-blind” attitude in all matters, à la Stephen Colbert’s “I’m race-blind” claim?
