Why women fail to take an equal share of top posts in academia

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Conall Boyle

Here’s a nice piece in today’s Irish Times, showing clearly the need for lottery selection in jobs.

It asks the question: Why women (despite being over 50% of the faculty staff) fail to take an equal share of top posts in academia?

You can read the article in full (and for free!) at

http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/why-women-fail-to-take-an-equal-share-of-top-posts-in-academia-1.2108539.

In the comments section we the usual reaction to any suggestion of ‘affirmative action’

“Here we go, more feminist claptrap. All academic posts must be based on merit.”

To which a wise commentator replies: “You think merit has much to do with academic appointments? There’s usually an assessor’s box called suitability which you can fill with subliminal prejudices: plays golf, politics, sounds like me etc”.

While waiting for grand schemes of sortitionist democracy to be implemented, wouldn’t it be nice to have a bit of genuine equality based on lottery selection over the qualified candidates?

Filed under: Academia, Distribution by lot, education, Employment, Press | Tagged: , | 38 Comments »

2014 review – statistics

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Below are some statistics about the fifth year of Equality-by-Lot. Comparable numbers for last year can be found here.

2014 Page views Posts Comments
Jan 2,038 11 179
Feb 2,370 8 110
Mar 1,975 7 76
Apr 2,890 13 269
May 2,956 5 265
June 2,403 8 119
July 2,552 14 205
Aug 1,950 3 71
Sept 2,022 8 91
Oct 2,511 10 105
Nov 2,490 8 108
Dec (to 28th) 2,318 10 183
Total 28,475 105 1,781

Note that page views do not include visits by logged-in contributors – the wordpress system does not count those visits.

Posts were made by 11 authors during 2014. (There were, of course, many other authors quoted and linked to.)

There are currently 188 email and WordPress followers of this blog. In addition there are 83 Twitter followers (@Klerotarian) and 50 Facebook followers.

Searching for “distribution by lot” (with quotes) using Google returns Equality-by-Lot as the second result (out of “about 20,600 results”), as well as the third result. Searching for “sortition” returns Equality-by-Lot as the 5th result (out of “about 73,900 results”).

Filed under: Distribution by lot, meta, Sortition | 3 Comments »

Call for 2014 review input and award nominations

Posted on December 19, 2014 by Yoram Gat

As in the past years (2013, 2012, 2011, 2010), I would like to create a post or two summarizing the sortition- and distribution-by-lot-related developments of the year and the activity here on Equality-by-Lot.

Please use the comments to give your input on what you think are the most mention-worthy events or essays of the past year.

This year I had the idea of initiating a yearly award for the most notable sortition-related article, essay or activity (or maybe a few awards covering a few categories). The award I am thinking of is mostly honorary rather than material (with maybe a token gift). Comments regarding the award(s) idea and nominations are also hereby solicited.

Filed under: Distribution by lot, meta, Sortition | 8 Comments »

Madness! – South Dakota opts for a water lottery

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Conall Boyle

The South Dakota state Water Board has to determine when existing groundwater sources are ‘fully appropriated’ (used to the limit e.g. by farmers for irrigation). Applications for fully appropriated aquifers are accepted during a 30-day time period.  Applications are placed in a lottery drawing system. The winners will then be announced. This is the first time for this procedure; South Dakota is the first (US) state to allocate water resources by lottery.

Comment: Another bizarre example of valuable state assets being gifted to profit-seeking enterprises.

The water in South Dakota, it has been established, belongs to the people. It should be a source of revenue for them. Gifting it to businesses deprives the good folks of SD some relief from taxation. But it gets worse: distributing allocations by lottery means that the precious water may not be used for the most productive use.

By definition, valuable goods distributed by lottery are given away below the price that would balance supply and demand. We accept this for college places because society demands that educational opportunity should not depend solely on ability to pay. But giving away publicly-owned assets to business enterprises for free or by lottery is economic illiteracy.

This is not the only example of such naiveté that can be found in the arch-capitalist US of A: oil-drilling licences, radio-spectra, hunting permits, rafting permits, student accommodation are all given away by lottery! Wake up you citizens of America! Reclaim what is yours! Stop the corporate free-loading! Stop the lotteries for public assets!

Source for this story: http://www.argusleader.com/story/opinion/readers/2014/10/20/voice-south-dakota-water-lottery/17595461/

Filed under: Applications, Distribution by lot | 13 Comments »

‘Lottery’ system would improve access

Posted on October 20, 2014 by Conall Boyle

A lottery system would help poorer children access better education

Collaborative research by the University of Cambridge, the University of Bristol and the Institute of Fiscal Studies has suggested that a lottery system of admissions could make the intake of Britain’s leading schools and universities fairer.

The research was based on the Millennium Cohort Study, which follows the lives of 19,000 children born in the United Kingdom in between 2000 and 2001.

You can read the whole article here:

http://www.varsity.co.uk/news/7586

 

Filed under: Distribution by lot | 6 Comments »

Allocating speaking spots on mass media

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Yoram Gat

FAIR’s survey of cable news discussion programs reveals predictable demographic biases:

A survey of major cable news discussion programs shows a stunning lack of diversity among the guests.

FAIR surveyed five weeks of broadcasts of the interview/discussion segments on several leading one-hour cable shows: CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and OutFront With Erin Burnett, All In With Chris Hayes and the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, and Fox News Channel’s O’Reilly Factor and Hannity.

[…]

Male guests widely outnumbered women on every show (730 to 285), making up 72 percent of the guest lists. Just 5 percent (46) of cable news guests were women of color. […] Women of color (about 18 percent of the US public) were strikingly underrepresented on most shows […] Non-Latino white men, on the other hand, were overrepresented on every show.

But, of course, the bias is not only gender- and race-based:

The largest category of guests were other members of the media: 55 percent of the guests were either journalists (400) or pundits (159). Current and former government officials were the next largest category, accounting for almost 10 percent of guests (107). There were 37 military guests (current and former), 35 representatives of think tanks and 32 academics. Other prominent guest categories were lawyers (21) and business representatives (17).

Such biases give certain groups in the population disproportional voice in politics, meaning they are undemocratic. The way to achieve proper representation is to allot speaking spots on mass media, giving each person the same chance of getting their worldview represented.

Filed under: Distribution by lot, Press | 1 Comment »

Michael Schulson: How to choose?

Posted on July 15, 2014 by peterstone

A few weeks back, I was interviewed for an article in Aeon Magazine. That article, entitled “How to Choose? When Your Reasons Are Worse than Useless, Sometimes the Most Rational Choice Is a Random Stab in the Dark,” has now appeared online.

Some interesting sources cited in it (and not just my book…).

Filed under: Applications, Distribution by lot, education, Juries, Press, schools, Sortition | 1 Comment »

The Vergne lotteries literature database

Posted on July 1, 2014 by Yoram Gat

Antoine Vergne has shared his database of lotteries related literature. The database currently contain 365 items touching on a variety of topics related to distribution-by-lot and sortition, covering theory, practice, history and advocacy, and ranging in time from antiquity to the present.

For those who are interested to access the list, it is available in bibliographical format and as a report.

The database is managed as a Zotero library. Readers who wish to help manage and extend the database are invited to leave contact information below or to email me (the address is here).

Filed under: Academia, Books, Distribution by lot, History, Juries, meta, Press, Proposals, Sortition | Tagged: | 5 Comments »

Politics and gambling lotteries

Posted on June 14, 2014 by Conall Boyle

Nice piece in today’s Financial Times (paywall, so I’m reproducing it below). Interesting fact: The “Yes” campaign in Scotland gets 80% of it’s funding (£3.5 mn) from just one lucky lottery winner.

June 13, 2014 7:03 pm

The whims of the super-rich can turn politics into a lottery

By Gideon Rachman

Courting the rich is both necessary and dangerous for politicians

©Reuters

So this is what the future of the United Kingdom comes down to? Harry Potter versus EuroMillions. On September 18, Scotland will vote on independence. The news that JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter oeuvre, has decided to give £1m to the Better Together campaign is a welcome boost to the pro-union campaign. Until now, it has struggled to match the financial firepower of the pro-independence campaign, which has benefited from £3.5m donated by Chris and Colin Weir, a couple who won £161m playing the EuroMillions lottery in 2011. All told, the Weirs account for about 80 per cent of the funding received by the Yes campaign.
Continue reading →

Filed under: Ballot measures, Distribution by lot | 2 Comments »

School Prayer by Random Selection

Posted on June 3, 2014 by peterstone

Here’s a case of random selection that I don’t believe has been discussed before. An American school held prayers at its graduation ceremonies. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State objected to this, claiming that the school was endorsing a religious perspective in doing so. It appears that the school had been permitting the student who opened the ceremony to decide whether or not to open with a prayer, but since this student was selected by majority vote (in a west Texas school district), this always led to a vote for some pro-prayer Christian. (Insert remarks about the tyranny of the majority here.) So now the school district will randomly select the student to open the graduation ceremony. The student can still make a personal decision to open with a prayer if s/he wishes. Presumably, the fact that the student choice is random means that the school district cannot be accused of endorsing the religious perspective of the prayer.

ECISD Removes Official Prayer From Graduation Ceremony After Lawsuit Threat

ODESSA – The Ector County Independent School District confirmed to CBS 7 that the Invocation and Benediction will now say “opening and closing” after concerns from American United for the Separation of Church & State.

The District says that the students who lead the opening and closing ceremony will now be randomly chosen and can choose to lead those ceremonies as they wish, including adding the traditional prayers if they so choose.

“The references to Invocation and Benediction give the impression the school or the school district are endorsing religion, which is not allowed. Those references will be changed and student speakers will be randomly drawn, according to policy FNA (Local) page 3 of 4, to give the Opening and Closing remarks at graduation,” Spokesperson Mike Adkins said in a release.

The senior class will no longer vote on whether or not to have prayer during the ceremony because that vote will not be permissible.

Filed under: Applications, Distribution by lot, education, Press, schools | Tagged: , | 5 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »