I have been asked by a former colleague to apply for a job in an overseas country. Colleague knows I have no intention of moving, but they tell me that their department will be in BIG trouble with the government if they have no female applicants, and so far none have applied. Colleague admits this will be a burden on me, and realizes I am doing them a big favor.
Should I do it?
NO. It would be unethical to apply for this job. While I'm sure its an honor to be selected, it undermines the hiring process to fulfill their requirements with a fake application. If you want to help your colleague out, you could help him recruit qualified (and interested) women for this position.
ReplyDeleteWhy? It's a lot of work on your part, with nothing for you to get out of it. If they're worried about getting in trouble for not recruiting enough women then they need to reevaluate their recruitment strategies rather than look for a fake applicant to cover up the problem.
ReplyDeleteNope. They might not have female applicants for a good reason - because the work environment is for shit. If you apply, you would just be covering up that stink. It's cheating.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't do it. There is a good reason that they would be in trouble for not attracting any female applicants and there is also probably a good reason they don't have more female applicants. Saving them that trouble will prevent that problem from being addressed and undermine the drive to get more women into science.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention the burden it would be on you with your already overly busy schedule. And what if word somehow got back to someone at your school (however unlikely that might be) that you're applying for other positions?
Weeeellll.... If this were my country, then it would have similar rules, and they might well say - and even feel - what your colleague said, but: The "huge trouble" would be repeating the search (which sucks, granted) and unless the department already had a bad track record, they could get out of the requirement my demonstrating steps taken to reach qualified female applicants. Other countries have similar rules, and I am not aware of any country, where departments get into deep trouble without any cause.
ReplyDeleteHere, they explicitly want a female applicant whom they know not to be a serious candidate. A bit fishy, that. If their other ideas regarding diversity were of the same kind, I'd not feel a lot of pity if they were prodded to try a bit harder. So, it might well be that the department actually deserves some of the trouble and I do not think that you are under any obligation to help them out.
In my opinion, no.
ReplyDeleteIf they have no female applicants, there must be a reason for that (they haven't advertised properly, dept head known as a misogynistic bastard, etc.) Whatever it is, they probably *should* get in trouble. I am sure there are real, qualified, unemployed female applicants around, and the search committee could have sought them out if they really wanted some to apply; I don't think your friend's institution should be off the hook.
Why not, its not their fault they didn't get female applicants?
ReplyDeleteHave they emailed women who might actually want the job and invited them to apply, even if they're not friends? The point of having quotas for the applicant pool is to make search committees look for real candidates who might not have otherwise applied. I don't think you should help them get away with avoiding that, especially since it's a big imposition on your time.
ReplyDeleteSo, you're going to go through a hassle because they borked their search and couldn't attract a single female applicant. Maybe they should look at why that is before soliciting fake applications...
ReplyDeleteHoly fucking bullshit. Are you seriously telling me that neither you, nor they, nor anyone else on here has ANY female friends who might be a) qualified and b) desperately seeking employment? Why aren't you tweeting, facebooking, LinkedIn, and emailing everyone you know to forward the ad around to everyone THEY know?
ReplyDeleteInstead of doing a fucking fake application?-! You people are seriously lacking in the "creative solution" department if you haven't exhausted ALL the possibilities of network dissemination.
And I have no idea about what went on with the search on the other side.
ReplyDeleteOf course I forwarded it to the people I thought were relevant. If any readers are interested, email me at puiprof at g mail dot com and I will forward you the flyer.
ReplyDeleteBTW, Ms.PhD, I think the reliance on FB, twitter etc. for job networking is still a relatively North American phenomenon. For one, I know only about 1/4 to 1/5 of my former non-US colleagues have a FB account and most of those check it rarely.
ReplyDeleteThat's entirely possible, although I'm connected to people all over the world IRL via twitter. It's mostly younger people, though. Still, in this case you want postdocs and very junior faculty, right?
ReplyDelete