Ok this may not be the right forum for it, if you have a better one to suggest please do! But I need some feedback and sage advice so here it is.
I work in a department that has 3 full-time staff including myself, in a field that is historically male dominated though getting more balanced. For years we had 2 men (one the boss) and myself, a woman. Both other positions recently left, I was promoted to run the dept, and I am now working on hiring for the other 2 positions whom I will supervise.
They are different positions requiring specific skill sets. I have a hiring committee to help me evaluate candidates but the final decision is mine. In giving my boss a recap of our recent hiring committee meeting and where things stand, we're choosing a small number of candidates for final interviews for each position.
Position A: among the most experienced candidates, only one was a man, and he had one extremely red-flag that the entire hiring committee unanimously agreed should remove him from consideration. So, all final candidates for this position are women.
Position B: there is a clear frontrunner, all hiring committee unanimously agrees on advancing this person and based on resume has the most experience in the most aspects of the position. There is a clear gap between this person and the next most experienced, and the committee is somewhat divided on who among these to advance, and we are keeping an open mind to see what the next round brings – but at the moment there is a clear frontrunner and she is also a woman.
My boss kinda interrupts the debrief and says “well you know you can have the entire dept run by women, right?”
I honestly don't know what to say to this. I can understand the optics might not be great, it might look like I'm favoring women because I am one, and the reasoning is our male-identifying staff need to feel represented in the leadership team. However, I can't change my own gender, so while it would be 100% women it's also a sample size of 2 and hardly indicative of bias. I was already aware of and uncomfortable about “how it might look” to hire 2 women but dismissed it as my own hypersensitivity, until my boss said this. I can't justify choosing someone less qualified (and by a lot) just to avoid this appearance. I am certain there are similar small departments in this field all over the country that have all men in their leadership that nobody blinks an eye at. I'm reminded of a study I can't quite fully recall that if a board of directors is all men it usually goes unnoticed – if it's 50% women people feel like it has a LOT of women on it. Would it really be that terrible to have 3 women on the leadership team? I never expected to be told to take this into account in my decision-making. I'm also certain, for the record, that I will be able to make my choice, there may be pushback but not to the point of countermanding my decision.
Would really love to hear thoughts on this! I'm honestly dumbfounded and need help to process.