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Clive Seligman
In 500 Words, Western News
Compelling Diversity through Discrimination
The theme of the recent report of the President's Standing Committee on Employment Equity goes something like this: "Yes, yes, Western discriminates against women. We admit it. We will fix the problem. We will purify the institution. We will become diverse!" When confronted with clear evidence that Western does not actually discriminate against women, the celebrants of guilt respond with incredulity, obfuscation, confusion, and moral obtuseness, proving once again that you can't teach a spent ideologue new tricks.
Earlier (November 21), I reported data that showed that female applicants for faculty positions at Western were about twice as likely as male applicants to be hired: 5.4% vs. 2.9%, respectively. Because female applicants have a higher hiring rate than male applicants, the data explicitly refute the claim that female applicants have faced discrimination by hiring committees at Western.
Yet, Letitia Meynell (December 5) and Tracy Isaacs (December 12) refused to accept this conclusion, and continued to argue for their ‘ideological belief’ that women (and not men) are discriminated against at Western. Their arguments contain several logical errors:
First, they failed to make the distinction between the phenomenon to be explained (i.e., there are fewer women than men currently employed as faculty at Western) and the explanation for it. The observation that there are fewer women than men currently on the faculty (or at different ranks) can not be used logically as evidence for discrimination against women in hiring. There are many possible explanations for this gender gap other than discrimination, in particular, many fewer women than men have applied for faculty positions.
Second, they misunderstood the difference between the current hiring rate and the current faculty composition. The hiring rate is informative about possible discrimination in yearly hiring. The current faculty composition is a result of the past 35 years of hiring decisions that were limited by the low numbers of female applicants. The percentage of women currently employed says nothing about the validity of the current hiring rate, which demonstrates there is no discrimination against female applicants.
Third, they are confused about the appropriate baseline to use to judge the fairness of Western’s hiring procedures. At different points in their letters, they use baselines that vary from the percentage of women in the population (about 50%), of new PhDs (about 35%), and of faculty at other Ontario universities. None of these statistics tells us anything about whether Western discriminates in hiring, because Western can only hire from the pool of women who apply for positions here. Women consistently make up only about a quarter of the applicants at Western.
The only way to move Western to the 50% population or the 35% new-PhD baseline is to disproportionately hire women relative to their representation in the applicant pool, which is precisely what has been done in every year since at least 1987-1988, when Western began keeping records.
A recent COMPAS poll reported that 85% of Canadians reject using sex and race as criteria in hiring decisions. Yet Isaacs and Meynell, while professing a deep concern with morality and justice, insistently advocate that Western continue to discriminate against male applicants to achieve diversity. Apparently, Isaacs, Meynell and Western’s Caucus on Women’s Issues believe that achieving (their version of) diversity is a more important principle than treating applicants fairly based on their individual qualifications. We should not be too surprised. George Orwell pointed out long ago that some ideas are so foolish that only an intellectual would believe them.
Clive Seligman is Professor of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario.