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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31616 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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It's made up sinecures all the way down.

This article takes this thesis and tries to talk about the gender dynamics behind it:

One would expect office politics to intensify when good jobs are scarce. But where some respond to scarcity by fighting harder for existing resources, others may seek to deepen the pool. Here a look at the cradle of elite (over)production suggests something intriguing is afoot.

“Administrative bloat” has been a remarked on feature of higher education for some time. According to one 2014 study, the number of faculty and teaching staff per administrator fell roughly 40 per cent at most US colleges and universities between 1990 and 2012, and now stands at around 2.5 faculty members per administrator.

Less remarked on is the sex breakdown of the growing proportion of administrators. A recent diversity and inclusion report by the University of California indicates that women make up more than 70 per cent of non academic staff across (among others) nursing, therapeutic services, health, health technicians, communications services roles, and a majority or near majority across all non manual staff roles. In other words, if men are still over represented in top academic roles, the non academic supporting ecosystem is overwhelmingly female.

In practice, then, as pursued within universities, one byproduct of student activism is something akin to a “jobs for the girls” scheme, in which a heavily female student body drives demand for more roles across feminised non-academic administrative roles, which in turn helps create an environment geared toward women, and so on. Or, as 2019’s “Afghanistan Papers” famously described that military campaign, a “self licking ice cream cone”.

Young alumnae graduating from this ecosystem might be expected to carry its insights out into professional life. And indeed, according to America’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, HR (a career whose employees are 71 per cent female, according to one industry report) is one of the fastest growing occupations in the country.

70.3% of all human resources managers are women, while 29.7% are men.

https://www.zippia.com/human-resources-manager-jobs/demographics/

I imagine it's harder to get this kind of scheme to work in private industry, but I don't see a reason why it wouldn't be at least a minor component. In my own experience, most HR folks I've talked to were women who were also heavily into a certain flavor of politics. I wouldn't put it above them to invent work, then use that to argue for increasing headcount and hiring more comradettes. But I don't think this is a large force. More like upper single digits of % perhaps?

I wouldn't put it above them to invent work, then use that to argue for increasing headcount and hiring more comradettes. But I don't think this is a large force. More like upper single digits of % perhaps?

More like near-triple digits. Arguing for increasing one's subordinates is a standard managment behavior, as documented in the classic "Parkinson's Law or the Pursuit of Progress"

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