Lopsided Gender Balance at SETI Institute Board

1. Finding volunteers willing to take unpaid positions serving on the governing board of a non-profit organization has never been an easy thing to do.

   1. All sorts of discrimination are also harder to get rid of for technical fields. Or at least slower to get rid of. Even if, by some miracle, you could reform the entire system instantly, there would still be a problem with finding qualified candidates. That means candidates who have had time to go through a now-unbiased primary school education, before they can go through a now-unbiased high school education, then college, then graduate school, then enough of a professional career to qualify for position on the board of an organization like SETI. The actual reforms are even slower, since no one seems to notice discrimination at one level (or do something about it) until things have improved at lower levels and a balanced pool of candidates is available. That’s not justifying the current state of things or saying there isn’t a problem. I’m just saying there is a tremendous amount of social inertia, and the more levels of qualification/promotion there are, the worse that inertia gets.

2. It would be good to get women involved in all scientific endeavors but I don’t think this is that important an issue. An alien race could easily have a single sex, or three or more. It might not even reproduce sexually. Suppose it is entirely composed of AIs or plants; what sex are they? Or the aliens might be disgusted by the nude drawings on the Voyager and refuse to contact us.

3. As a technical woman, I find this sort of top-level metric to be a very well-intended potential contributor to the underlying issues. The best people should be in any role, no matter their gender. It is generally good to have diverse voices, but this group does not appear to be devoid of women. If there is reason to suspect bias or discrimination, such as a group of clearly overlooked women who want and are more qualified for a role, by all means address it, but just counting the people and wishing they were more balanced can lead to an equally simplistic solution – get more women just to have enough. This common practice leads people to assume (as still happens more than I wish) that we are present because they needed women, not because we belong there. That can silence a voice just as much as being excluded altogether. The same thing can happen in other types of diversity efforts as well, but I can only speak to the gender piece personally.

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