Friday, May 27, 2011

Who do you tell?

I recently had a meeting with a dean that I admire. One of the things we talked about was my adjustment to the new university. We are in between department chairs and I'm anxious about my future. I told my prior chair about my RA, and he responded the right way: understanding, support, and empathy. I am concerned that our future chair might be biased. This is a valid concern considering the candidate pool here. I told the dean about my concerns, and I told her that my RA might generate bias from a new chair. She then gave me the advice not to tell anyone about my RA. She said that people here look for weaknesses in women, and this is an easy weakness for others to latch onto. I don't know how I feel about that advice. I don't shout it out to the world, but I can't hide it forever - especially if I'm trapped in a flare. I'll sit back and wait for a new chair...

5 comments:

studyzone said...

I can certainly sympathize. I am hearing-impaired (I wear hearing aids, and can function well in most environments), and have decided to limit who I tell. When I was in a teacher-prep program in secondary science ed, the program knew about it. About half-way through, I was encouraged by the program director to drop the program, because she was afraid students would hurt my feelings. Really. Now, as a postdoc looking for a tenure-track position (at a PUI), I take it on a case-by-case basis because I have absolutely no idea if hiring committees will see it as a detriment or not. (I had to tell one school because the room in which I gave my job talk was so deep that I wouldn't have heard questions from the back row, where just about everyone was sitting.)

GMP said...

I agree with the dean -- there is no need to tell anyone preemptively. I think women (it certainly held for me) have a tendency to be upfront to a fault about things that might potentially hamper their productivity in the future. I have been advised not to divulge anything that is not absolutely necessary, and I have since adopted that approach -- nobody needs to know where I go and what I do outside of teaching times, what my plans for family expansion are, or in your case, the fact that you have RA. I have no experience with RA, but from your posts you seem to be doing really well in your research (grants flowing in, students being productive) so unless it starts interfering with your productivity on paper, I would not disclose it to a potentially hostile chair.

Junior ChemE Prof said...

I think your dean is right! Why should any one know about your health unless you need to justify lower productivity? In your case you have big grants, writing papers, giving invited talks- there is no drop in productivity. You are doing better than most assistant professors in your field! These men are looking for excuses to discredit women. Don't give them one.

Josh Verienes - Political Science MA said...

Be yourself. Act like yourself and you'll be just fine. Your conscience will be ok with that too...

Eileen said...

I just found my way here (not sure how anymore), and I'm glad I did. I'm a graduate student in a humanities field, facing down a possible RA diagnosis myself. I've decided not to talk to anyone in my department about it for now (although I may tell my advisor down the road) because, like GMP pointed out, women in academia face so many (presumed) barriers to productivity already. My department has a culture of very subtly revoking support for female graduate students who marry or have children while in the program; I don't plan to give anyone any more ammo due to something beyond my control.