On occasion, I stumble upon an article and have a double-take to make sure that it's not a satirical piece from the Onion.

With the help of a $300,000 National Science Foundation grant, Joan C. Williams, a professor at the Center for Worklife Law at the University of California created Gender Bias Bingo.

You read that correctly: bingo!

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education:

The game is intended for women, although men who have overheard biased statements or have faced bias because they are fathers can also play. An online bingo card names six overall categories of gender bias, like assumptions that women cannot be both good mothers and good workers. Professors who submit examples online of at least three of the types of gender bias in the workplace can declare bingo and win a T-shirt.

That's right. If you submit a story, you can win a t-shirt exclaiming, "Real Professors Play Gender Bias Bingo!"

What strikes me is that academia is extremely sensitive, almost to the point of paranoia, of sexism and gender bias. Why did the NSF need to invest $300,000 to further train academics? Colleges are the most politically correct, and therefore "safe," places to work. Perhaps it's the sheer volume of ink spilled on sexism that makes it difficult:

Ms. Williams had read nearly 200 scientific studies of gender bias in academic journals and wanted a way to make the findings accessible to female professors. So she came up with four general patterns of bias, solicited examples of them from focus groups of female professors, and made it all available on a Web site, along with the bingo game.

Given that definitions of "gender bias" are generally biased against conservatives, particularly conservative women, it is tempting to create a "Feminist Bias Bingo" game. I'm betting that it could be made for a lot less than $300,000.