Hello all, I’ll wade in to tell that I know two close people, women incidentally, who should have got the position they applied for, but were passed up for younger men without half the number of publications and no experience whatsoever in attracting grants. They were then asked to train the new men and show them everything they knew so that they could do the jobs they had been hired to do. In both cases, these women  asked for a review of the hiring process, got the unions involved, challenged the respective HR departments, and nothing happened, it was all left at the discretion of the Heads of Departments, who were then close friends of the staff who hired the young men. One of these institutions has a Women’s Committee to help improve the rate of take up and promotion of academic women in the Sciences and at their meetings, which my friend has attended, they are told to be more ‘ballsy’ like men, ruthless and though so that they can advance.

There is also the very obscure ways in which some staff are being hired by some institutions. Again, another friend was told by one colleague who participated in a hiring process that a research position was given to a young man because he had five children to feed, although he had no experience of researching or teaching in the discipline he was hired to teach, and had to go round asking for help from other staff. One of these institutions has consistently prevented women from progressing, they are left to languish in research whereas new, young men come in straight into lectureships.

Finally, another person has related to me that her boss, a professor missed a flight to a conference because she was expected to organise his ticket and hotel without her knowing, and he rang her at 2 am to shout abuse at her on the phone. He was in the habit of barging into her office and shouting at her in front of other, demanding this, that and the other, and she’d often leave the office in tears, until she decided she couldn’t take it anymore and left.  

I am joking, right? These can only be gross caricatures, right? Care to comment?

Yara

Dr Yara Evans

School of Geography

Queen Mary

University of London

London E1 4NS

http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/staff/evansy.html