Some people who have read my recent paper on arXiv.org regarding endemic gender discrimination on my old experiment think that the point of the paper is that the administrators on my old experiment were a bunch of discriminatory jerks.
That's not the point.
I have many good friends who still work on the experiment, some of whom have held administrative positions there. The problem with the way that experiment (and many other particle physics experiments) handles conference allocations and appointments to mid-level administrative positions is that it does it in closed door meetings. Senior administrators are under pressure from other senior people on the experiment to pick "the right people". Many studies have shown that people (especially males) tend to favor people of their own gender and race. And usually the bias is not intentional. It is just mentally easier for them to compare themselves to people who are like them, I guess. I'm not making excuses for them...it's just the way it is.
The point of the paper that people should take to heart is that the closed-door-meeting practices of my old experiment that led to the gender biases are used very widely in pretty much all particle physics experiments for allocations of all kinds of things that can forward the career of a physicist (like administrative appointments within the experiment, or conference presentation allocations, etc).
