GayandRight

My name is Fred and I am a gay conservative living in Ottawa. This blog supports limited government, the right of the State of Israel to live in peace and security, and tries to expose the threat to us all from cultural relativism, post-modernism, and radical Islam. I am also the founder of the Free Thinking Film Society in Ottawa (www.freethinkingfilms.com)

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Why do Universities continue to discriminate against men???

This really has to stop...
As someone who teaches at a Canadian university, I'd like to think that when my students graduate and apply for jobs, each applicant will be considered on his or her merits. Unfortunately, that's not how things work at many universities today.

Although some people have expressed concern that the first round of Canada Excellence Research Chairs have all gone to men, much more common are university job searches that are biased in favour of women.

In one recent job search, a Canadian arts faculty encouraged only women candidates to apply. Once applications were received, only women were considered and only women were interviewed. This kind of restriction didn't happen in the case of the Canada Research Chair searches where both men and women were considered for positions.

Discrimination against men isn't always so extreme. Most departments allow men to apply, but almost always "give preference" to women. For anyone who favours non-discriminatory hiring, even this is a shameful practice.

For those of us who have worked in Canada all our lives, is this the kind of job market we want to leave to our children and grandchildren? For the many people who immigrate to Canada each year, is this the kind of non-discriminatory society they're hoping to discover once they arrive? Probably not.

So why do such practices persist?

Partly it's because they're supported by a small but active group of ideologues, people who mistakenly believe they'll be able to prevent the perceived wrongs of 50 or 100 years ago from ever recurring by refusing to hire a generation of young men who had no role in past discrimination.

More often it's because such practices are encouraged in today's world of identity politics. Twenty years ago, many people expressed tremendous moral outrage when slightly more men than women were enrolled in Canadian universities. Now that the percentages have reversed and university degree programs are filled with many more women than men, there's not word of complaint.

Far from wanting to introduce a few temporary, gender-neutral procedures intended to help advance the cause of non-discrimination, it turns out that what most advocates of affirmative action really wanted was to advance the interests of a few favoured groups. Pretending to be friends of the merit principle, they convinced governments and universities that temporary discriminatory measures were essential for combatting so-called "systemic discrimination." What was never mentioned was that this newly discovered form of discrimination was to be found only in male-dominated disciplines, never in female-dominated ones.

It was a neat trick. As one colleague memorably put it, "Saying you will hire someone preferentially in order to combat discrimination is like saying you would give your right arm to be ambidextrous."

3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I was definitely born seventy years too soon. What a deal! For this new social order to function you have to have the co-operation of both parties. As the system seems to be shaking out women are now the bread winners and pay the taxes; women still, and will remain, the primary child rearing parent and housekeepers because most men simply won't do it. Thus, like a bee colony, men can just lounge around until their procreative services are required. Should there not be a female available to support them, the men can go on welfare which is paid for out of the taxes of working women. What a deal!
I sure missed the boat.

10:48 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I discovered that Social services does do it for White males born in canada.
In fact,how racist and insulting for me to get such a hassle just to ask for a short-term coverage of just my low Rent until my Severance dispute is resolved.
Seems that every person I contacted had a heavy accent along with 99% of the H.R. and HRC's having females answer the phone or emails.
While a non-Citizen from Mexico can enter canada with NO-ID and get instant welfare and housing, I'm now in my 3rd week of fighting to avoid being evicted pretty soon because I've used my money in the last year with NO welfare at all.
I guess I'm a previleged group and must be cheating the system,but this begs the question for why non-white are presupposed by Ontario and Toronto for being lazy and stupid to get Welfare by default just from their colour or accent???.
How insulting,I've always had some kind of employment since 1970 and was born here,but the SCOC in 1985 allowed our Charter to apply to tourists who don't want to leave and can make a Refugee claim for instant Welfare,Health care,dental,housing,cloths,furniture and schooling for any rent-a-kid scam they might have.

I want to be self-employed because the USA has a huge market for canadians with a good cammand of English to function in all 50 States,these poor ghettoized minorities aree stuck in Toronto for the rest of their lives from needing social services in their language and few skills in demand outside of canada.
Even a Toronto Cop hired because of a Quota may be too small or uncultured for a American city one day and they too are stuck as the token dwarf/cop or Moderate Islamist with a Hijab.
Universities created people like Mayor Miller who spent $30 million to NOT build a $20 million bridge to the Island,it made people like George Smithermen who pi$$ed away 1 Billion on eHealth when it could have gone to AIDS vicrims or AIDs research and Aids shelters.

Give me a hard working visionary any day,Ontario can keep the barbara hall's and Miller's that would bankrupt my business and pit co-workers against each other with 15 different washrooms and luch rooms to placate the whiners.

11:57 PM  
Anonymous DoorHold said...

Self-interest groups should have an expiration date or quota. "OK, the population has 55% women, and 55% of university enrollment is now women, we're no longer needed."

2:25 PM  

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