Mark your calendars everyone, Fermilab has asked the American Physical Society to do a site review of the climate for women at the laboratory May 20-21.
If you are a woman at the lab and you want to talk to the APS reviewers, you are required by the lab to register with the Fermilab Equity office first, giving your name and position at the laboratory.
Great.
Just like the recent luncheon meetings at Fermilab, this will no doubt be really productive and everyone will feel free to express their views in an open and inviting atmosphere, similar to the time several months ago when the lab individually interviewed its female employees because the lab said they were thinking of asking the American Physical Society to do an onsite review of the climate for women at the lab, but they wanted to know what the women were going to say to the APS first. Will the women who want to talk to the APS next week have to first be interviewed by the Fermilab Equity office as part of the "registration" process the lab has put in place? Why do women have to register with lab to talk to the APS anyway? I've taken part in site reviews of university physics departments before, and group meetings with the reviewers were scheduled but no one had to register to attend because it violated confidentiality.
In its description of its site review procedures, the APS states
Prior to the visit, APS will administer survey questionnaires to graduate and undergraduate students or lab employees. The results of the surveys, as well as any written comments, are then provided to the site visit team to assist them in preparing for the visit. All survey results are confidential to the team.
This confidential survey has not been given to women based at Fermilab. Instead the only way the women have been given by the lab to communicate with the APS is rather non-confidential and controlled by the lab.
In an ideal world, a APS site review would result in positive changes for a better work climate on site for everyone at the lab. In practice, manipulation of the review process and issues of trust between Fermilab administration and researchers at the lab will perhaps make the review a lot less productive than it could be. Perhaps there are some women at the lab who implicitly trust the Fermilab administration, but I can say for a fact that I know of many who do not, and these issues of mistrust have to be overcome if progress is to be made.
