harem3gm.doc
The 1999 formulation of the Harem Hiring Hypothesis (HHH) designed to account for the support of some senior male faculty for sexist discrimination in hiring. This hypothesis was advanced first in oral form at SAFS’s first annual meeting (1993).
Although meant as a jest, many a true word is said … John Furedy
April 1, 2005
The picture showing a middle-aged male focussed smilingly (or even leeringly?) on the female sex in Jennifer Curtis's focus report ("All's fair for the fair sex", Globe & Mail, August 14) does not seem completely germane to the contents of the article, but actually, as I suggest below, there's more to the picture than first meets the pre-Freudian eye.
The "equity" policies have been seldom as blatant as the WLU no-men- need-apply version, but they have been discriminatorily sexist nevertheless in Canada since the mid eighties, just like earlier versions of "affirmative action" that set quotas for Jews in order to ensure they were not "over- represented" on campus were discriminatory, even if a few Jews were allowed on campus.
Moreover, it is worth nothing that although most of the administrators who have applied these discriminatory so-called "equity" (really inequity) policies with such enthusiasm and moral rightousness, have been mostly middle- age males, there has not been a single documented case of a pro-"equity" senior academic giving up his job in favor of a young female academic to redress the so-called "gender imbalance". So, given that generally the policy handicaps young males in favor of young females, one does not have to be be steeped in Freudian and evolutionary psychology to recognize that this may well be a hypocritical harem hiring policy on the part of these senior male academics. The policy conveniently removes the competition from younger males, and provides a coterie of young females who are themselves insecure, never being sure of whether they were hired on their individual merit, or because they were members of a designated group. Why, come to think of it, at times when I feel the impact of all those younger potential male competitors, I'm almost tempted to switch sides in the "equity" debate!
John J. Furedy
Past President and Board Member, Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship
Professor of Psychology, University of Toronto.