Say Anything Blog

According to Dakota Women and the Fargo Forum there’s a “gender gap” among the tenured faculty and school administrator positions.  A gap that the school’s leadership is looking to close.

Women are underrepresented among North Dakota State University’s tenured faculty and administrators, and top university officials are trying to determine how to address the disparity.

Of 260 tenured faculty, 33 – or 13 percent – are women. Of the school’s 136 full professors, 10 are women, representing 7 percent.

NDSU has no female vice presidents. Of the seven academic deans, one is a woman.

13% and 7% are low numbers given that women make up approximately half of the population, but just because those numbers are low does it mean that NDSU is discriminating against women?  Or has a diversity problem at all?

I don’t think so, given this paragraph from later in the article:

The low representation of women stands in contrast to other statistics. NDSU research shows the university promotes women and men at the same rate and pays them the same wage.

There is no apparent gender discrimination taking place at NDSU.  It appears, for lack of any evidence to the contrary, that the low number of women among the faculty and administration is simply a result of women not being interested in or qualified for those positions in numbers equivalent to the percentage they make up of our overall population. 

So, case closed as far as I’m concerned.  I see little need for the folks at NDSU to waste time and money solving a diversity problem that doesn’t exist, not am I in favor of implementing any policies that promotes diversity simply for diversity’s sake.  Especially if such policies would favor women over men simply for the sake of bringing employment numbers for women at NDSU up to higher levels.

We should be hiring people at our colleges based on their professional qualifications, not their gender.