CCL: ICQC shame

[Jason Swails <jason.swails~!~gmail.com>]

On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 6:27 AM, Sergio Manzetti sergio.manzetti.*.outlook.com <owner-chemistry*ccl.net> wrote:

Dear Aurora,

 I am not sure that the number of women or the number of men defines the quality of a conference. It is the topics, the level of experience built in each topic, and naturally the experience of the presenters, whether they are men or women. I have seen both good men and good women in QM, the latter particularly in teaching. Conferences should be organized according to topics of research, independently of gender. Maybe this conference has topics that are mostly covered by one gender. That does however, not stop anyone from organizing another conference, where, occasionally, another gender is more overrepresented.

This is the type of rationale that sustains sexism and discrimination.  Should it matter if a presenter or researcher is a man or a woman?  Of course not -- all that should matter is the quality of the research.

I'll also lay down a crucial assumption necessary for my argument: there is no difference in innate talent for our field between men and women.  The gender disparity in our field is then a direct consequence of the pervasive nature of sexism and its enduring inertia.

With that stated, it then follows that when sampling blindly from the PIs that do the 'best' contemporary research in our field, the number of men and women chosen will reproduce the percentage of men and women at the forefront of our field, barring discrimination.  The invited speakers for ICQC -- all ~30 of them -- are men.  The gender of the speakers in this case matters because the likelihood of this happening in the ABSENCE of discrimination is very slim.  (This is not unlike statistical mechanical sampling from an NVE ensemble)

To me, as to many others, the blatant sexism reflected by the selection of invited speakers is embarrassing on the part of the organizers responsible.  *We* [1] are not making this about sexism, the conference organizers are.

All the best,

Jason

[1] We being those of us wanting to see the end of gender discrimination in our field and the entire workforce.

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Jason M. Swails
BioMaPS,
Rutgers University
Postdoctoral Researcher