Tuesday, December 13, 2011

For Women, Which Form of Job Satisfaction?

Julie White has a post worth reading on the Chronicle of Higher Ed's blog: "A Career Dilemma." She points out that it's not only women who are less well off when this dilemma holds, but students as well.
The proportional imbalance of women (as well as other minorities) creates a career dilemma for some of us. We can work at a community college, where it’s likely pay and job satisfaction will be better for women than at four-year colleges, but we will have less time and energy to get our scholarship out into the world. Or we can work at a four-year college with more prestige and opportunities for research, but where we are more likely to feel underappreciated and culturally isolated.
....
When the perspectives of groups with different cultural experiences are left out (whether based on sex, race, ethnicity, gender, class, ability, or other points of societal stratification), gains in new knowledge will inevitably be incomplete, inaccurate, or downright injurious to the underrepresented or misrepresented groups.

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Engineers are Smokin' Hot

My university has posted this recruitment ad on their homepage. I'm not sure if it's targeted at 18-year-old women or 18-year-old men. Is the intended message "You can be a woman, can study engineering, and can STILL be smokin' hot," or is it "You can come study engineering at RIT and STILL meet some smokin' hot (and fast!) women"?

The male voiceover says "Around here, there's only one thing we expect from our students..." and then the on-screen text flashes the phrase "Beautiful Solutions."

Anecdotally, the women in the video are not actually on the Formula team.




Update: The women in the video apparently are on the Formula team in some role, but not in the roles portrayed. Also, after the college president received negative feedback "from a number of people," including students, the video was taken down from the RIT homepage.