victorydance

Well maybe if that poster didn't write every single one of their posts in straw man-laced rhetoric, I would be more likely to understand what they are talking about. Regardless, I won't be addressing them any longer.

I don't even know what the fuck you are talking about at this point.

Do you know what time they hold office hours? Why not just show up during that time?

Hilarious, you are exactly the type of person my post was directed at.

http://swns.com/news/woman-beat-men-to-be-most-organised-in-the-workplace-2003/ https://books.google.ca/books?id=5YNfNAorfuIC&pg=PA197&lpg=PA197&dq=%22women+are+more+helpful%22+study&source=bl&ots=gJmHhLcATQ&sig=yQRdPFoDdGrgtCDW-Pw6ZhLIkwk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TzvZVITsHcTHsQSslIG4Dw&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22women%20are%20more%20helpful%22%20study&f=false

But it works both ways right? I am nearly 27 myself. I don't have a wife, nor kids (nor do I intend on getting married or having kids). I already accrue a passive income, it doesn't matter to me that I am forgoing approximately 7 years to go through a Ph.D. program. Nor do I really care about earning money because I live a minimalist lifestyle. Different strokes for different folks. I am following my passion of political science, others may be doing a doctoral program for other reasons.

My problem stems from the idea that both genders should be considered completely equal and anything that deviates from that is deemed gender discrimination or sexism. That's a dangerous path to go down if you want to continue to improve gender relations in society. The simple matter of the fact is that genders, and let's just keep it male and female for simplicity sake here, are different. Women and men are different both because of our biological makeups but also because of how were are conditioned in society and the general behaviour we are taught to follow. Studies have shown that women are more risk adverse, women are more passive, men are more aggressive, women are more organized, women talk and are more likely to express their emotions while men are not, ect. There are innate differences between those genders. I think the study you pointed to is a good place to start for the discussion because it's interesting. Looking through some of the words you will see that women TAs rank much higher in things like organization, 'niceness,' and helpfulness. This to me, is not surprising. Women in general are more organized and willing to go the extra mile to help others. And this is actually interesting because this could be why the OP was perceived, and perhaps backed up in her behaviour towards her students, as more helpful and organized and hence more likely to relay the absence excuse to her professor. On the other hand, men were perceived to be funnier, geekier, and boring. This does not surprise me as either. Men are less animated than women, hence perceived as boring in a classroom setting. Also, the way that mating has evolved in our culture, men are encouraged to be impressive in terms of their story telling and joke telling; one of the reasons why the vast majority of comedic stand-up actors are men today. These are all generalizations of course, but perceptions often result from behaviour that has been observed. Of course, any individual of either gender can cross either threshold of typical norms within their gender for sure, but the overall trends are fairly hashed out. Now, things like people perceiving men as smarter, without any data or empirical experience to back this up is definitely a problem. Women getting passed over for certain things, whether positions or awards is definitely a problem. However, my beef comes with calling attention to every perceived discrimination under the sun as discrimination. This to me is more harmful than good because it results in backlash. Just because someone perceives someone as more helpful or organized, because they are a women and their behaviour has reinforced this, does not make it discriminatory. We need to understand the strengths of both women and men, protect those strengths and weaknesses, and work towards equality of opportunity for everyone, but that doesn't involve pointing out discrimination in every corner of the country when it may or may not exist. Regardless...I realize I am curbing this thread towards more of a treatise than somewhere where someone, or others, can share their experiences or ask questions or whatever in comfort. And I also realize I didn't necessarily explain myself that well earlier either...so yeah, just wanted to state my opinion; take it or leave it.

.... There are men trying to hit on female TAs. There are women trying to hit on male TAs. There are men trying to hit on female TAs for personal gain. There are women trying to hit on male TAs for personal gain. None of this is gender discrimination. Are they ridiculous and completely unprofessional behaviours? Certainly, but hardly a form of discrimination.

Bingo.

What I mean by comfortable is the comparable freedom academia affords an individual to conduct their own research, both what they intend to pursue and how they want to do it. A policy analyst on the other hand is more akin to a standard job where you are given tasks and expected to complete them. Research is a broad topic, but to suggest they aren't comparable is not honest IMO. You may be asking different questions and using different methods, but you can use a number of approaches that you learn in an academic setting in a number of different career paths. I don't care about efficiency. My number one goal is to be involved in political science research, ergo, Ph.D. is the right path for me. I also disagree with a Ph.D. in political science not being helpful. For one, people underestimate the amount of skills you can develop, for free, as a doctoral student in political science. I could take almost straight quantitative methods courses and programming courses besides the minimum survey courses in a doctoral program in political science. What makes someone attractive for any stream of occupation is the skills they have, not the certifications or diplomas they have. I mean by the time I finish my Ph.D. I will be proficient in three languages, be adequate in statistical analysis, have a good analytic mind, and be able to write better than 95% of the general population. There are plenty of things one can do with these skills outside of academia. Career isn't important to me, neither is making money. Political science research and being in an environment of learning is on the other hand, that's why I want to do a Ph.D. There are more reasons than being a professor (which would be fantastic) than going into a doctoral program IMO.

The way I look at it: I am interested in research in the field of political science, ergo, getting a Ph.D. in political science is the most obvious path towards following that goal. Obviously academia is potentially the most comfortable occupation to do research in, but it's not easy to get into. If I end up as a senior policy analyst or working on research at an embassy so be it. For me, I don't subscribe to the mantra "only do a Ph.D. if you want to be an academic." I already have a passive income + a bunch of savings...doing a Ph.D. is more of a lifestyle choice for me because I am interested in research and political science. If I break into the field of academia, that's just gravy.

I don't mean it in a negative way. Just a description (and I think perfectly accurate) of what has unfolded in this thread. I mean, the sentence that I was replying to, the one in bold, was kind of useless considering the vast majority of the anecdotes or opinions have come from, well, biased sources.

No, it's a bunch of women coming into the thread giving their accounts. I am trying to point out that there are two sides to this coin which seems to the large devil in the room. These so called instances of "gender discrimination" (whether they were actual discrimination or due to a large number of other factors is irrelevant) seem to only matter when they are happening to women given the tone of this thread. And the post above me is a perfect example of that.

How did you come to make these assumptions?

Is it any different in the case of male TAs? I would be willing to wager that there are more girls using their looks to try manipulate a male TA than the other way around.

^ Or you could just buy a used car and not have to use a loan.

So basically, what it comes down to is what you are interested in... Are you really interested in the politics of the ME and/or North Africa? Are you interested in how political dynamics affect X, Y, or Z within the region? Do you think analytically more like a scientist? Do you like to develop your own theory and try to support it? Do you like mathematics and/or statistical analysis? This is more in line with comparative politics or IR. Do you like to read a lot of primary sources and do lots of archive and bibliographical work? Are you interested in languages and like to read texts from different languages? Do you like to analyze problems by taking a broad approach and then making generalizations about the sources? Do you like to compare and contrast different perspectives and accounts of history? This is history.

I think this is actually a fairly easy decision, just because the disciplines are so vastly different despite some overlap. Comparative politics does incorporate some degree of history, but for the most part it's a small portion of the analysis (although there are scholars out there that deal almost solely with historical comparative methods). Similarly, you can specialize in political history, but it's still completely different than political science as a discipline. It basically comes down to which type of methods and tools you want to use to conduct your research and/or how you want to develop/look through your questions. History involves doing research on historical texts and making assumptions or generalizations based on the evidence. Political science is more of a 'science.' It involves developing a theory and finding evidence to support it, whether through qualitative or quantitative means. So in essence, they are actually nearly complete opposite ways of doing research. Let's break it down with an example: say, Kurdish independence movements (bear with me, I am not a specialist by any means on the ME). From a historical perspective, you will look at the Kurdish development and how it came to be. Contrast that with other minorities or majorities in their region, and begin to make some generalizations based on how they are different economically, socially, culturally, politically, ect. From a comparative politics perspective, you will look at how Kurdish politics functions within the bigger realm of the state, and compare the different Kurdish minorities in each country. How do they influence state politics? How has their claim for independence affected their relations with other groups within their state? Why does one Kurdish group have more autonomy in one country but not the other (perhaps Turkey? I don't actually know)? Does more autonomy lead to more ethnic violence or less? You could even ask the same question 'why does one group of Kurds have more autonomy in X country than others." But how you get there is going to involve a completely different process. Additionally, history is a little more broad, because you can specialize in questions on any spectrum whether social, cultural, political, economic, or linguistically. Political science is always going to be how it relates to politics. But as we know, there is politics in everything so of course it can be broad, but the difference is the main focus of any political science question is always tied to politics. Or more specifically, the relations between two or more actors.

Just wanted to say that a lot of your interests don't even fall within the realm of IR, these are all pretty much comparative politics or could fall within history if you take a more qualitative and longitudinal approach to them: Minorities in the Middle East (women, Kurds, gays, Jews, Turks, Shia Muslims, Yazidis, etc.) Development & evolution of gender, religion, culture, and nationalism Kurdish independence movements, nation-state debates regarding Iraq

I don't believe in debt, whether from school, owning a house, financial, or otherwise.

This is typically for any large research university professor. They might teach a couple more intensive seminars, but any lower level undergrad course is going to be like this.

The best is here in Latin America they have 'mega queso' which has like three times the amount of cheese as regular ones in North America.

- I've been living abroad for the the last year or so, working on becoming advanced in Spanish. - I want to start to turn my honours thesis into a workable manuscript by the time I start grad school. - I am reading/writing a book review for a journal.

Sorry man, but you are all over the place here. Spanish, French, Chinese, starting Korean, want to learn Japanese? You are putting the cart before the horse. A good translator is fluent in two or three languages and hedges those skills. You don't need to be a massive polygot to be a good translator. In fact, you are wasting a lot of time and resources learning a bunch of languages to a rudimentary or intermediate level. Chinese is a massive commitment considering the amounts of characters and it's tonal nature. You need to pick a stream of language based on area and go hard with that. If you are interested in Latin America that would mean English + Spanish + Portuguese. If you are interested in East Asia that would mean English + Mandarin Chinese + Japanese. I don't know how this career trajectory works so I won't give advice on how to get to where you want to go. But pick two foreign languages that make regional sense and perfect them.

On average you are looking at 5-7 years. It also depends on the discipline, for example comparative politics seems to take a bit longer because of the fieldwork component.