Meanwhile, if you're a businessperson and you're hiring based on sex rather than talent, you're an ass who's doing damage to your business.

Yes, but you yourself have cited the studies that show that people will downgrade a CV if it has a woman's name at the head rather than a man's. Both men and women are prone to this kind of selection bias, wherein they think they are hiring the best person but are not sensitive to how their definition of "best" is biased.

We make an effort when inviting people for talks in our field to make sure we aren't just honing in on the usual suspects. This does not mean inviting women just to meet a quota, but to make sure that we are not dismissing women, minorities, and junior scientists just because we all mentally defer to the standard list of "experts" in our heads.

If I were Clancy, I would be pissed off too. Extremely tacky and unprofessional on the part of the senior scientist who could have taken a stand against quotas if he felt that strongly about it but instead decides it is much easier to crap on Clancy unprovoked. This is typical behavior for tenured academics, who are rarely portraits in courage.

There are many forms of discrimination but demanding discrimination is not the cure. In fact, it causes people to question whether those invited have the goods or just the vaginas or the skin color that's supposed to be brought in.

The Ada Initiative Supporting women in open technology and culture

http://adainitiative.org/2013/01/take-the-pledge-dont-serve-on-all-male-panels/

Take the pledge: Don't serve on all-male panels
A hopeful new trend is growing: People are noticing when conference speakers are all or mostly men (and often all white as well). And they are asking questions: What kind of selection process results in an all or mostly male speaker lineup? Is it true that all the best speakers just happen to white men, or are there other qualified speakers who are getting passed over? No one thinks these conferences are deliberately signing up only men, but they do think that all-male lineups are a sign of not trying very hard to get the best speakers.

One solution is for men to publicly pledge only to participate in panels that have at least one woman on them, as Rebbeca Rosen proposed in The Atlantic last week. Speakers in many different areas have already adopted this rule, but now it seems to be gaining popularity at an explosive rate.

Another way to help change the ratio is for people of any gender to make a rule to not speak at conferences with less than a certain percentage of women speakers: depending on the field, perhaps 10%, or 25% – we know one speaker with a 35% rule. This is something you can note in your talk application and decided on when the speakers are announced. If you are male and invited to speak at a conference, you can make it a habit to suggest qualified women speakers in addition or instead of yourself. Another rule that helps is to not attend conferences without an anti-harassment policy.

Near as I can tell

Clancy wanted to be invited to participate in that Cool Science Thing.

Clancy felt women should be given an extra hand in getting to participate.

Clancy didn't feel the need to adhere to the rules and guidelines of submissions because she felt her work was so important.

When Clancy was turned down she felt it was okay to reach out for an appeal to the woman that recommended her.

The only real problem was someone told Clancy she was being given special treatment because she is a women.

That's when Clancy had her #ripplesofdoubt

In the meantime, the Ada Initiative is calling for quotas on tech panels. #ripplesofdoubt

Amy, maybe soon there will be a push to have more redheaded people in powerful positions! Also, more left-handers are needed, don't you think?
I do draw the line at the double-jointed, however. That's just icky!

Seriously, no one has ever been able to explain the "value" of diversity for diversity's sake without relying on assumptions and propositions that are flat-out sexist and racist.

If, as has been drilled into our "progressive" heads, the color of one's skin, or one's sex, or other similar characteristics are only superficial and therefore basically meaningless, then why do we promote the use of the same characteristics to measure "progress"? What in the world can we assume we know about Malia Obama, for example, just because she's female and black, when she comes from the most privilged circumstances imaginable? Yet, in the measure of "diversity", she's the equivalent of single mother living in Section 8 housing.

I guess ol' "the content of his character" MLK, Jr. was full of shit, after all...

I think of myself as a black lesbian trapped in a white man's body, so I guess I've got the bases covered, n 'est pas?

Yes, this is what I think I'm experiencing in my quest for a new position at my current workplace. I met all of the qualifications and the position was only open for internal applicants. I went through two interviews. I thought they went very well. At the second interview, they told me they were still early in the selection process, and it would be a few weeks before they reached a decision. I figured my only competition would have been from other people in that same department.

Several weeks passed and I didn't hear anything until I got an e-mail that said the position was no longer available. Since I figured that they had hired whoever was covering those responsibilities, I knew that there might soon be another opening in the department. I checked the job listings a few days later and they had posted the exact same job I had applied for. However, there were two differences. The first was that it was open to outside applicants and the second was that it required a Masters Degree, which I don't have.

I believe now that I may have been the only applicant for the position. I don't want to sound sexist or racist here, but I feel that if I was female or another race, they wouldn't have any problem hiring the only applicant.

I also don't like to seem paranoid, but I feel that by changing the parameters of the requirements, they are specifically EXCLUDING me from being a candidate for the position.

I've applied anyway. I want to see what happens.

If you follow the link and read the comments, someone over there asked her just how prominent she is in her field. Her response, "I am very prominent." Um, no you aren't. A quick Google search reveals that she is just an associate professor in a program that doesn't even rank in the top 40 in the nation. Further Google research shows that she hasn't even published in a journal for the last four years. All this adds up to is a middling professor, at a middling school whose only claim to fame is that she is a woman.

I guess I am sensitive to this bc my husband is a scientist and I don't take kindly to the implication that he is sexist pig by virtue of his birth. I also have a daughter who hopes to be a scientist and we are working with her now to get her the extra math instruction she will need to compete with the boys. That is how you get ahead...not by hanging off the coat-tails of your higher performing female peers.

She actually published most recently in 2013. FYI, Google Scholar is a better place to look for research publications than ordinary Google:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=kbh+clancy&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5

Getting in because you're a woman and there's a clamor for more vaginas around the table sets back progress and diminishes the accomplishments of women who are there because they are good.

I pretty much started my "professional" jobs when I enlisted in the USAF in the 80's. You pretty much got your job depending on how you did on the ASVAB, a side consideration of your physical conditions (PULHES Factors) and what positions were open when you wanted to go active and do basic training.

When we went through the job training after basic the instructors didn't care what was between the legs or color or anything else other than can you do the job at a minimum level.

Then when you get to your unit -- you may work with someone all day. You aren't required to hang out with them off duty, usually.

So I worked with everyone during my time. The only question I generally asked, mostly to myself, is "Can you do your job to not hinder me?" I also pretty much struck gender oriented curses (bitch, bastard, SOB) from my vocabulary unless very well deserved.

Now having been back to the civilian world for 20* years I still have the same attitude.

I'm in IT. So I have worked with H1-B staff, women, blacks, Hispanics and just about everyone else. I just don't care.

So when I hear stuff like this I still ask "Can your viewpoint and information help me?" This person doesn't seem to be helping. And doesn't want to help based off of her dream and not the reality that a large part of American professional jobs are still going to be white males. Take a guess what the large part of the American population looks like? Take a guess what, I'm going to dismiss her as irrelevant.

This is another indication of the pervasive social schizophrenia America offers.

We are not allowed to discriminate at all if we are looking for criminals. This is so badly handled that if we were looking for tentacled Martians, grandma must still be strip-searched at the airport.

Yet we must discriminate to set others ahead of the position they have earned. The marketplace does not lie.

Just spotted this Kate Clancy tweet:

‏

@KateClancy

Just deleted a comment on my blog that told me to "cool it, baby." You know, the one on my recent experience with sexism.

I do have to admire the chickie for not being afraid to confirm that notion that feminists are grim and humorless

I want to hire Lisa Randall. She's the hottie Harvard theoretical physicist.