Mentoring men

I submitted this earlier post about mentoring. I can’t believe it, but it just happened again. We’ve got two tenure-track people starting next year, one man and one woman. We were recently wrangling over our reduced budget, trying to decide where to direct resources, and several times the department chair asked a male colleague to check with our incoming man to see what speakers he’ll want to invite next year, what conferences he wants to go to, etc. These two men work in the same area, so it was pretty clear that the more senior person was being asked to informally mentor the more junior one. After several of these requests I finally spoke up and asked if anyone was going to do the same thing for the incoming woman. The chair looked surprised and said, “Oh. I don’t know. Could you take care of that?” So I guess I’m her mentor. But if I hadn’t said anything, she would have received none of this support, and I don’t think anyone would have noticed that they had forgotten about her.

Does your husband know you won’t cook dinner every night?

In my first week of grad school at a non-Leiter top 20, my graduate adviser asked if I was married. When I told him I was, he asked if my husband knows I’m in grad school, and then he asked if my husband knows I won’t be home to cook dinner every night.

When I responded that I’ve been working and going to school for many years and that he’s quite bright and can cook for himself, he seemed to dismiss me on the spot. In fact, that was the last meeting I managed to have with him in the 5 or so years he was the graduate adviser. I figured out right away I was on my own.

In the end, he retired due to a medical condition and I finished my Ph.D. It seems to me that I won.

“I am fed up”

I am a female graduate student in philosophy and I am fed up.

I am fed up with my male dissertation supervisors never giving me written feedback on my work, never wanting to read my work (“just describe it to me (over email), please”), and never wanting to meet with me to talk about my work. I have verified that they have good rapport with most of their male graduate students and have given them pages of feedback.

I am fed up with being told by well-meaning female faculty that maybe the reason why I’m having a hard time establishing rapport with my male supervisors is that they “feel awkward” about the women in philosophy “problem” at university and “don’t want to risk anything that could be perceived as sexual harassment”. Is this supposed to make me feel better? Thank you for making me feel like a walking pair of breasts.

I am fed up with men and women never co-mingling during informal departmental activities. What year is this?

I am fed up with seeing my male classmates talk about going out to dinners and drinks and playing basketball with their supervisers, when mine barely acknowledge my existence.

Be friendly – in a way that isn’t lecherous. And mentor your students – all of them. It would go a long way.

Women’s treatment of women

I am a grad student in a department with a heavy focus on critical theory. Interestingly enough-and perhaps as a result of the strong focus on gender studies in our department-the male faculty members are fairly respectful when dealing with female students and colleagues. The real issues have emerged between the female faculty and female students. Despite attempts at forming a women’s caucus, and despite the fact that our centre is headed by two very distinguished women, the female faculty consistently treat their female students in a patronizing and disinterested manner, while choosing “golden boys” among the other students. Their behavior ranges from condescendingly refusing to acknowledge the arguments and questions of female students in seminars, to discouraging their projects altogether. I have a theory that their own experiences as women in philosophy forced them to be so competitive and hostile; as “exception women” they are more comfortable taking on their male colleagues and feel threatened or insecure about working with other females. Ladies–it’s hard enough being women in philosophy, so let’s not make it any worse for each other.

Mentoring (and lack thereof)

I’m a female grad student. A few years back I forged a friendly mentorship connection with a male professor Z. I was a naïve student initially, so Z’s disinclination to talk about my academic work or my academic career path did not worry me. Instead, Z enjoyed talking about his hobbies and sometimes about his research. To his credit, he often politely asked whether I’m enjoying my classes. Naively, I just assumed that one day this mentoring would turn more “academic.” One time I overheard Z speaking with a male grad student from my cohort. Z told him to identify a promising seminar paper, revise it, then publish; Z was willing to work with him to identify and polish the paper. I knew this student well and, like me, he was a few years away from going on the market.

“Who was my mentor?”

I’m the only woman in my department. We recently hired two men, one tenure track, one temporary. At a department meeting before they arrived, we discussed who would “take responsibility” for each of them — be a mentor, show the person the ropes, talk to them about their work, etc. Somebody said, “you know, like we did for persons A, B, and C when they got here.” A, B, and C are the three men who were hired at the same time as me (about 5 years ago). I tentatively asked, “Who was my mentor?” because I don’t remember anyone helping me out in that way. Everyone looked surprised as though it had never occurred to them that I should have a mentor. I do remember a discussion at the end of my first year, when my department chair said that if I wanted some mentoring I was free to contact a female professor in English. She was their department chair and “very busy”, but maybe she’d be willing to talk with me. Needless to say, I did not follow up on that half-hearted suggestion. Maybe I should have, but there would have been no overlap in our research interests. I did manage to get tenure last year, but now I’m watching a 1-year hire be wined and dined by his philosophy mentor, and it’s making me pretty angry about the disparity in treatment.

Mentoring for men VS women

I witness almost daily how my male colleagues spend significant more time supervising and mentoring young male philosophers than young female philosophers. I’ve witnessed many times how considerable effort is invested to help a struggling male philosopher get publications, conference invitations, and the like. The relevant male philosophers always deserve this special treatment. The problem is that I have yet to witness a struggling young female philosophers get anything remotely equivalent to the kind of help that I’ve witnessed many struggling young male philosophers get.

“I’d like to see more serious thought”

I am a (male) graduate student in a Leiter top-20 department. Recently our department’s liaison to a university committee on diversity reported in a faculty meeting on the lack of representation of minorities and women in our department. A grad student always attends faculty meetings and sends reports about the meetings to the grad students.

Maybe it is too much to ask that bold solutions to such large problems be raised at faculty meetings. But the liaison’s suggestions consisted of things like, “try to vary the names of people you use in examples you give to undergraduates, like Tran instead of Tim.” This is something faculty and graduate students should do, obviously — but what about changes that require *real commitment and time* from faculty members? For example, they could work on establishing better mentoring relationships with PhD students, and being sensitive, when mentoring their students, to the tendency of women (and possibly minorities?) to undervalue their work and make self-deprecating remarks about their abilities.

The report on the faculty meeting noted that this part of the meeting was short, and that it ended with faculty members “speculating” about the relative scarcity of female undergrads in upper-level courses. I’m glad they’re thinking about it, but I would like to see more serious thought about how to address under-representation.

Importance of mentoring

I’m a female graduate student close to finishing my PhD in philosophy at a well-regarded school. Lack of friendly, informal encouragement and mentoring from our nearly all-male faculty had been difficult, confidence-eroding for me. From the beginning faculty expected me to interact with them on a formal footing, via arranged office hours and a highly professional, often awkward on my part, “shop talk.” Male grad students enjoyed a much more relaxed exchange in the hallway or over coffee, and most of them quickly found mentors and even friends among the faculty. I had only a couple of female students to commiserate with and have fun talking philosophy with. If it weren’t for my supportive, understanding spouse (also a philosopher, a graduate of different philosophy program) I would have quit after my third year, in spite of excellent “formal” standing in the program. My self-confidence eventually improved once I formed a good working rapport with a supportive dissertation adviser and started attending conferences where I met many wonderful female philosophers.

Yes, women can be sexist too

I was a graduate student in the early 1990s, when a prominent female philosopher in my overwhelmingly male field visited our department. She was traveling with a child. We (few) female graduate students were thrilled to have the chance to meet her. After her talk people gathered round to chat. She asked the male graduate students about their work. She asked the women about their availability for babysitting.