Gender Equality As A National Security Policy

There are few American workforces today bereft of women: an NFL locker room. The Catholic priesthood. The upper reaches of national security. That last one would seem odd, as more than half of international studies graduate students are women. But consider Mia Bloom’s experience.

Bloom is a terrorism expert today, but as a PhD student at Columbia, “I overheard an assistant professor tell a senior colleague that ‘Mia has a better future on her back than in academia,’” she told The Washington Post. Later, working at a think tank, she disclosed to a male colleague that she’d just learned her dad had brain cancer. He replied, “I would really like to make love to you in this office.” She left.