Friends,

Stefanie di Russo got a fascinating thread under way today. I've been reading the replies carefully. Without offering any comprehensive thoughts, I want to add a few personal replies. Since I do not respond to Teena Clerke, I want to thank her for thoughtful and well structured responses on a wide variety of issues — and for providing useful sources and evidence. I'll be looking forward to the thesis. And thanks to Gunes for an especially cogent reply to Alpay.

Fil Salustri wrote:  "The question that leaps to my mind is: If working conditions were improved to address the concerns indicated in the article, to encourage more women to enter academia, wouldn't that also improve working conditions for men - thus possibly negating any expected benefits?"

IMHO, the point of this is a better workplace and better life for all. Improving work life for men will not negate expected benefits. The benefit of gender-blind hiring and promotion practices is getting the best people for every job. I realized long ago what it meant to live and work a world in which 50% of all possible senior staff were excluded based on gender — and another massive percentage of the remaining males excluded based on skin color, religion, or family national origin. It meant that in many cases, I'd have to work for and suffer under the authority of men far less qualified than other potential senior leaders.

A reasonable world is a world in which I'll work for the best possible chief. These days, my dean is a man, his chief is a women (the Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor and Provost), and her chief is a woman (the Vice Chancellor).

David Durling wrote: "I wondered if anyone has evidence broadly from the design sector? I imagine that it might be quite a range of possibilities from say engineering through to applied arts."

The design sector, as one reply noted, is a bit tricky to measure. In many hundreds of visits to university design schools, though, I've noticed a preponderance of men in the senior ranks. This may be changing.

When I came to Swinburne as dean, we had no women at all above the rank of senior lecturer and most women were lecturers. When I stepped down as dean, we had one full professor, two associate professors, and two or three senior lecturers who should be able to apply for promotion to associate professor soon. (We also had two female associate professors who took jobs elsewhere.) We also have females in senior adjunct roles, and our first post-doctoral research fellow is a woman.

Some of the men on the staff thought that I favored women in the hiring and promotion process. This was never the case. I always hired the best people I could for the budget I had available. If you acknowledge the fact that we could not change out men who were doing a good job for women — and should not have done so — this meant we roughly hired a balanced group of women and men over the past five year, just as one would expect based on a roughly equal population. The big difference for promotion involved ensuring that all men and women got support and encouragement in completing a PhD so that they could develop the kinds of research profile that would lead to promotion. The other big difference involved a shift from a homogenous faculty in which all permanent staff, male and female, were of white European descent. By hiring the best people who applied in every instance, we have become the most demographically and geographically diverse faculty in Australia, with staff from over 14 nations and all 6 of the inhabited continents.

The fact that simply applying a hiring standard based solely on accomplishments and qualifications could make such a major difference is significant. The fact that it gives us such an astonishing range of diversity in comparison with most design schools says something about the preponderance of men from dominant socio-cultural groups in the different regions of the world. I believe things are improving. This is also based on anecdotal evidence and what I see as I travel around. Forty years ago, it was a different world.

Cynthia Lawson wrote: "Why do you and others assume that it is up for a woman to have this flexibility? And what about same-sex couples? Are we then less inclined to assume who needs that flexibility, and can accept that men could also step in when needed?"

Most interesting. Three of my great role models and mentors were women. For many years, my parents ran a business where they both worked — and they both worked close to home. This shaped my view of how the world could be to such a degree that I never realized that women were not equal to men in the workplace until someone pointed it out to me as an adolescent.

Sally Hollis-McLeod wrote: "So if you are not a woman in academia, you have benefited from a system that has resulted in the inequalities mentioned. You may not feel you have benefited, but then I don't feel I have benefited from inequalities that I don't yet truly understand. However, we are all here because someone else is not."

Absolutely. It's not that some of us get specific opportunities because people are denied those opportunities. It's the fact that we face less competition that enables us to get the opportunities that come our way. If only we could find a way to keep Messi, Sanchez, and Lujan off the football field — along with another 10,000 really good players — I'd be ever so much closer to winning my first Golden Boot! Of course, I'm not a ball hog, so I'm happy to acknowledge that Lionel Messi deserves his win.

On the other hand, if it was just Keith Russell, Jacques Giard, and me, I'd leave those guys in the dust.

Seriously, though, reducing the competitive pool does grant opportunity benefits to those of us still in the running. I sometimes wonder if I could compete against some of the first-rate young women in design research today. I like to believe that I am a sharp person whose experience and wisdom makes me valuable to the field — but I am glad I'm not going up Dori Tunstall or Wendy Siuyi Wong for a job or competing against Clementine Thurgood for a post-doc.

Jacques Giard wrote: "The university is an unusual cultural milieu and therefore comes with certain conditions, not all of which make sense. Those of us who have remained in this milieu have learned to resign ourselves to some of the less than logical conditions. Others – perhaps more women than men – have recognized that the university may not be the best place to evolve. Is anyone to blame for the condition? No, not really. Can the culture change? Yes, of course. But it will take people from within to make it happen."

Yup. Who knows, maybe Jacques might win that Golden Boot off me after all.

Fil Salustri wrote: "I'm undecided on this point all men benefit, not because I don't believe it, but because I'm not aware of an compelling evidence in this regard. Is there any?"

Aside from Teena's evidence, I believe that I have offered a compelling argument the benefits men receive in a world where even the best and most qualified women have fewer opportunities. That said, we still stuffer, when you consider the fact that it means that nearly all of us are forced to work for people who got their jobs the same way.

Thanks for a good thread, Stefanie.

And now, back to the future of design education here at the College of Design and Innovation at Tongji University in Shanghai.

Yours,

Ken

Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Phone +61 3 9214 6102 | http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design




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