Re: Female scientists report pervasive gender bias, sexual harassment

[Neil Abramson <nabramso@sfu.ca>]

It's a good idea, Abraham, to do a study of SFUFA members. We could canvas for critical incidents. We could see if they correlate more with specific ethnicities, races, gender, and sexual or gender orientation. I think, for example, there is a lot of prejudice against Aboriginal peoples at Canadian universities, both intentional and unintentional, but equally hurtful.

Regards
Neil

Sent from my iPhone

> On May 21, 2016, at 10:38 AM, Abraham Punnen <apunnen@sfu.ca> wrote:
> 
> It is not simply a matter of women and not simply within the realm of sexual
> harassment. It is an important issue.  We need to discuss openly on all
> forms of harassment, bullying, and discrimination to make the SFU community
> stronger. If SFUFA wants to conduct a study to see if such issues exist at
> SFU,  there might be volunteers who will bring forward cases (their
> experiences) and even allow them to be discussed openly to hear all views,
> supporting and opposing, so that informed conclusions can be made. Victims
> of discrimination often feel helpless in reality, despite policies exist to
> address them, and sometimes be labelled as complainers without any formal
> investigation of the issues they bring forward.  Continued voluntary silence
> by a victim or when the issues brought forward are dismissed without proper
> investigations leading to forced silence, could eventually lead to major
> health problems for the victims and it is a loss for the organization, for
> our country, and for our profession. 
> 
> Abraham Punnen
> http://www.sfu.ca/~apunnen/ 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Neil Abramson [mailto:nabramso@sfu.ca] 
> Sent: May 21, 2016 9:09 AM
> To: SFUFA Forum <academic-discussion@sfu.ca>
> Subject: Female scientists report pervasive gender bias, sexual harassment
> 
> When I was an affirmative action consultant in the 1980s it was well known
> that in the federal government a woman who complained would probably win the
> first time but be judged negatively as a complainer the second time. So you
> couldn't complain because though you'd often win, then you'd be a sitting
> duck and everyone would know that.
> 
> Do we know for sure that this is not a problem at SFU? I know of more than
> one very competent woman researcher/teacher consistently denied full prof
> status in my faculty these last 23 years. But I was not on the relevant TPCs
> so perhaps I am misinformed.
> 
> I imagine the same situation is true for some visible minority men and
> women.
> 
> Regards
> Neil Abramson
> Beedie
> 
> https://www.statnews.com/2016/05/17/sexual-harassment-female-researchers/
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone=
>