STATIC

This piece originally posted as an Opinion Editorial in The Stanford Daily.

by Miranda Mammen, ’14

Earlier this week, I received a Facebook invitation to Stanford 2020: Visions of Tomorrow. It looked awesome: “Come see 7 all-star professors talk about their research, why it matters, and what the world will look like in 2020.” I scanned the list of faculty with enthusiasm, noting how many of the professors I have admired or heard friends rave about.

But as I reached the end of the list, my enthusiasm quickly turned to confusion, then disgust. Of the seven faculty members who presented at Wednesday night’s symposium, exactly zero of them were women.

This level of gender disparity is unacceptable. And it’s particularly problematic for an event that explicitly looks toward the future. At last year’s symposium, there were two women; this year there are none. Maybe it’s just me, but in the future I’d like to see more gender equality, not less.

The more I thought about it, the more outrageous the discrepancy seemed. On Wednesday, I posted a sarcastic comment to the event page: “Visions of Tomorrow: Because in the future, there will be no female faculty.” Adam Adler ’12, who is listed as an event creator on the Facebook page, commented in response: “Because in the present, female faculty do not respond to email requests.” (He included a winky smiley face, too.)

It’s absurd and shameful that the nearly twenty groups that co-sponsored the event could not muster up even a single female faculty member to speak. Continue reading →