HOW TO PERPETUATE THE WAGE GAP IN 13 EASY STEPS

March 16, 2015

by JA1

i.      Be a department within a faculty within a prestigious academic research institution that gives hiring priority to Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada.

ii.     Be a department where your province’s governmental priorities are all breathing down your neck.

iii.    Advertise for two faculty positions simultaneously.

iv.    For the first position: check references for 4 of 18 candidates, invite 3 for formal interviews (call them candidates X1, X2, and X3). For the second position: check 4 candidates’ references of 10 applicants, invite 3 to campus for formal interviews (call them Y1, Y2, and Y3).

v.     Have X1 identify as a white cis gendered man and doctoral candidate without a set defence date. Have X2 and X3 each identify as a person of colour, the first with a set defence date and the second with a completed post doctorate.

vi.    For candidate X1, have a reference advise that X1 is personally quite conservative but tolerates divergent perspectives well. Have this same reference say that X1 has not had difficulty collaborating with colleagues who are at the opposite end of political and ideological perspectives.

vii.   Invite X1 for an interview. Have your junior administrator tour X1 around campus. Call them JA1. Have JA1 volunteer for a community education program in their spare time. Have JA1 identify as a person of colour. Have JA1 identify as a cis woman. Have JA1 discuss the program’s funding, operations, curriculum, and praxis in casual conversation with X1. Have X1 pay minimal attention.

viii.  Have X1 give a seminar about their proposed research plan. Have X1’s area of expertise be the ongoing evaluation of precisely the kind of program JA1 discussed on their walk.

ix.    Have X1’s doctoral research sample be comprised of an unfathomable majority of participants who identify as white. Have X1 hail from a site within two hours’ drive from a geographical flashpoint for discussing race relations in the United States for the past year and a half. Have X1’s research participants hail from the same area as X1. Have the one professor in the department who identifies as a visible minority publicly ask X1 why his sample does not reflect the racial diversity of the United States in general. Call them PR1. Have PR1 identify as a cis woman. Have X1 reply that his home is just a really “white place” and move on.

x.    Offer X1 the job immediately upon completing a two-hour formal interview. Offer X1 the job over X2, a Canadian citizen who, on paper, was the selection committee’s top pick, but was not “personable enough” in their interview. Offer X1 the position over X3 who was “overconfident” in stating their teaching abilities and whose accent was read as a detriment to their capabilities as an instructor.

xi.   Have a senior administrator be X1’s main contact in negotiating their acceptance offer. Call them SA1. Have SA1 be taken aback with X1’s requests and tone during negotiations to the point that SA1 casts themselves as being blackmailed and bullied. Come to a hard-wrought, and decidedly liberal, conclusion with X1’s negotiations. Send off X1’s paperwork for signatures.

xii.   Conduct interviews for the second position with Y1 and Y2. Offer Y2 the position. Have Y2 be a person of colour. Have Y2 identify as a cis woman. Have Y2 be completing a postdoctoral position at (arguably) the most prestigious institution in her field. Have Y2 not negotiate her offer. Have official paperwork be sent to Y2. Have JA1 ask SA1 if Y2 and X1’s packages were equivalent. Have SA1 respond that said offers were “not quite equivalent,” but that they had added “a bit” to Y2’s offer in hindsight to make it “more fair.”

xiii.  Hire two professors, one less experienced white cis male and one overqualified woman of colour. Give the man what he asks for and deny the woman what she doesn’t. Successfully perpetuate the wage gap.

 

ABOUT

JA1 would call you a cunt but you lack warmth and depth.

Image: Ian Barbour, Flickr

 

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