I'm pleased to see so many speaking up in favor of keeping the personal personal when asking job candidates questions. As a feminist I'd like to remind that the reason this is a "feminist issue" is that "the personal is political" as we used to say in the 70's. Personal characteristics that have nothing to do with our skills or abilities can and will be used against us... or if we're lucky, for us. But as many women know from personal experience with things like pay-scale disparities, they are often used against us. Questions that uncover marital status at all are problematic since they could lead to discrimination, and in many places discrimination on the basis of marital status is illegal. Discrimination could cut either way, and often does but along gendered lines: a married person may be thought more responsible and stable or they could be supposed to be burdened by a relationship that would constrain working hours or imply the imminent arrival of children to breast-feed (as if single people, yes sometimes even men, don't ever choose to parent alone.) Another reason such personal questions can be problematic is that so often they are phrased in such a way as to assume the interviewee to be heterosexual. This places anyone who doesn't fit the category in a very delicate position. "What does my husband think about us moving?" Answering this question in what I would consider to be a truthful or helpful way would require me to out myself, as in, "well, I don't have a husband, but my partner and I have discussed it at length she's fully supportive of the move." Even if the hiring institution has a very clear anti-discrimination policy including sexual orientation, discussing one's sexual orientation can be a very risky move in an interview. How to explain this: to a non-heterosexual this whole line of questioning about husbands and family plans begins to feel like a no-win game. I'll elaborate: I could be cagier in answering: As in, "well, I'm not married, but my partner and I have discussed it and we're both really excited about moving to Iowa City." The risk here is that then the interviewer asks another question forcing me to declare the gender of my partner. Or the interviewer may have figured it out anyway because almost no heterosexual women seem to use the word "partner" (they simply say "boyfriend" or "fiance" because it is clear, and easy.) Or, I could plan to use caginess as a strategy, because the sensitivity of the interviewer's response gives me some information about the gay-friendliness of a potential workplace. Or I could just say "I'm not married." Which is the truth (almost... but I won't go into that) but does leave out information if I do have a partner and we do make life decisions together. So it **feels** like a lie. And if I did get hired, I'd be in a situation where people around me might assume I had no partner, and might feel I'd lied to them. Or I could be witty and find a way of not answering that neither offends nor reveals but instead shows my true skill at managing ridiculously intrusive interviews. But I can't even think of a witty response now and I'm not in an interview... So I guess the interviewer would figure out wit isn't one of my skills? Now if you find yourself asking why would I torture myself about such a simple question, ask yourself why are you -the interviewer- asking a potential employee this question? When an employer asks me about my husband, or about my faith, I have to ask myself what they really need to know this for. In asking about my "family plans" or about "what my husband thinks" what is it you really want to know, and why are you asking it in a job interview? If it isn't going to be part of your decisionmaking process, then why are you asking? And if it is going to be part of it, can you really be sure that you'd feel the same way about it if the answer you got came from a woman or from a man? Or from a woman of 20 versus a woman of 40? Or from a married person versus an unmarried person? Or from a gay person or a straight person? Or that you've asked your question in such a way that information is revealed that you find it difficult to ignore, even if it is illegal to use it as a factor? When I think about how to interview someone I try to think about what do I really need to ask that will help me discover if they have the skills necessary for the job. Your marital status, your age, your plans to have children or not, your apparent skin color, your religion, your gender, and your choices of partner: these will not tell me about what skills you bring. But your answers may tell me a lot about whether or not you are similar to me. And study after study has shown us that people hire people who they feel are similar to themselves: in "race," in gender, in age, in values and beliefs... They make biased evaluations of people's competence or skills for the same reasons. They? **We** do this. We do, even if we try not to. So ask yourself, why do you really want to know? And once you do know, can you really keep it from influencing your decisions? What if the woman on the other side of the desk answers, "Husband? Family plans? Well, since you ask, I'm not married but my wife and I are expecting twins." Now perhaps some on the list think it is okay to discriminate on the basis of age, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, number of nursing babies or other personal matters. Perhaps some don't care whether through active or unwitting selection they have "selected out" a perfectly qualified candidate based factors that are not skills-related. Acts of discrimination in hiring are often illegal (but not often enough), even if the questions themselves are sanctioned. I will be job-seeking myself one day soon. Perhaps my application will come across the desk of a fellow museum listserver. Have I done myself damage by outing myself? Personally, I'd probably find it "damaging" to find myself a member of an institution that didn't want me. But mostly I hope that when employers stop asking these irrelevant kinds of questions they will start finding out how "qualified" so many people really are. Qualified, perhaps precisely because they are not "the same as" the people already at the institution. And yes: I do blind grading too. Early on I did "peek" to find out which student wrote the exam I was reading. And I was astonished at how difficult it was not to "reevaluate" what I had previously graded based on what was just not pertinent information. Sometimes extra information is just a burden. Annette A. Wilson _________________________ _____________________ The University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning : Research Assistant -Joint Programs- : Interdisciplinary Program 3+ Master of Architecture and : in Feminist Practice Doctoral Program in Architecture : 2125 Lane Hall Environment and Behavior : 734/763-3589 __________________________________________________________________________ ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . 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