Request for arguments against affirmative action

Allow me to start by posing a hypothetical situation:

A top-25 astronomy department has a major gender imbalance on their faculty. Let's say the fraction of women professors is below 10% of the overall faculty (This is a safe example since we don't actually know of such a department, do we? Right? Anyone?). 

Let's suppose that the upper administrators at said hypothetical university (e.g. the Dean of Sciences) would like to address this problem with a radical approach. If the astronomy department conducts a programmatic search for a woman junior professor and identifies a candidate that meets the high bar expected of the university and department, then a special faculty line will be made available that won't count against future departmental hires.

CSWA Special Session at the AAS: Family Leave Policies

At the 221st AAS meeting at Long Beach, CA, the CSWA sponsored a special session entitled, "Family Leave Policies and Childcare for Graduate Students and Postdocs." The principal organizers were CSWA members Dave Charbonneau and Laura Trouille.

Slides from the presentations by Dave Charbonneau, Natalie Gosnell, Bob Mathieu, Edward Ajhar, and Charles Beichman are now posted as PDFs at http://www.aas.org/cswa/jan13.html.

Charbonneau's presentation included a report of preliminary results from the CSWA's national survey of department chairs on this topic. Gosnell and Mathieu reported on implementation of a forward-looking policy at UW-Madison. Ajhar reported on the NSF's work-life balance initiative, and Beichman described NASA's fellowship programs and their parental leave policies. Laura Trouille briefly presented preliminary results from the postdoc family leave survey. These results are also posted at the website listed above.

If you couldn't attend the session, take a look at the slides for a snapshot of the current state of this issue, which is critical for 21st century careers in astronomy.

If you'd like to voice your support for improving family leave policies for our community, please consider signing http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/aaron-geller/petition. As of this post, the petition has over 1100 signatures. 

Gender Inequality in Deliberative Participation

Posted by Daryl Haggard in this week's AASWomen Newsletter. 

American Political Science Review article that considers the impact of women's participation in group decision-making.

Article abstract: Can men and women have equal levels of voice and authority in deliberation or does deliberation exacerbate gender inequality? Does increasing women's descriptive representation in deliberation increase their voice and authority? ... We find a substantial gender gap in voice and authority, but as hypothesized, it disappears under unanimous rule and few women, or under majority rule and many women. Deliberative design can avoid inequality by fitting institutional procedure to the social context of the situation.

To read more, please see:

https://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8675859&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0003055412000329