The drive for gender equality within universities often raises the conversation of how we need institutional change to tackle issues such as gender splits between male and female students within certain subjects, and the overall lack of representation of women in specific academic spheres. However, a recent study by Benjamin Schmidt, an assistant professor at Northeastern University has revealed that engrained sexism can be seen amongst university students themselves, with female academics taking the hit amongst student led feedback for lecturers and professors. This suggest that we may need to focus on changing individual attitudes first by raising a conversation about gender stereotypes amongst wider society. Using an online tool of his own creation, Schmidt compared the frequency of particular words in the evaluations of male and female professors, gathering his data from 14 million student reviews on the website RateMyProfessors.com. The results make for disheartening reading.
An engrained gender bias whether deliberate or unconscious, is still unfortunately found in teaching performance surveys even today, with the resulting negative impact for women in the workplace signalling a need for systematic and attitudinal change. The stereotypical adjectives associated with each gender, particularly in the workplace, reveal a lot; with men described as assertive, decisive and passionate, where as women risk being categorised as shrill, bossy or even hysterical. Using Schmidt’s tool allows you to type in particular words or characteristics and see with which gender, and to what degree, they were most often associated with. The reviews of male lecturers or professors frequently contained the words ‘intelligent’, ‘brilliant’ and ‘genius’, where as women were much more likely to be defined as ‘harsh’, ‘unfair’, ‘strict’ or ‘annoying’. This online tool reveals, that the gender stereotypes just mentioned are clearly being reinforced in the early stages of young people’s lives, even perhaps surprisingly in places of higher education and stereotypically liberal and progressive attitudes.
A clear divide can also be seen in the strength of praise given to the staff of each sex, with men more frequently categorised as ‘cool’, ‘funny’ and more importantly ‘good’, whilst women were described merely as ‘nice’. The extent to which each of the results is based on societal prejudices is difficult to define, however a shocking statistic reveals that even on objective measures such as promptness, gender bias can be seen. Female lecturers were rated an average of 3.55 out of 5, whilst their male counterparts received a rating of 4.35, despite the fact that both handed the work back at the same time. It seems clear that these results cannot be the result of either coincidence or actual widespread failings on the part of female teaching staff. The persistent image of men as the dominant and more assertive sex is having a negative impact not just on how female lecturers present themselves, but also on how they are viewed by their students. The practical implications of such biased results are severe, with student evaluations often taken into account in the world of academia as a method to assess a lecturers suitability within the process of hiring and promotion.
A small consolation and reassuring aspect amongst the results however, is that a focus or pre-occupation with the physical appearance of female lecturers is not noticeably evident, with the search term ‘hot’ receiving a fairly equal spread amongst the genders. Perhaps this illustrates some progress amongst the association between attractiveness and successfulness, whilst highlighting that we need to do more to break-down the less visible and often much less talked about stereotyping of women with certain submissive and reductive personality traits. This issue is particularly important to address within the sphere of higher education, as the students completing these surveys are the ones most susceptible, and we would hope, the most open to liberal and progressive ideas around gender. Schmidt’s tool gives us just a small insight into engrained gender bias within universities, but in doing this it provides a much larger indication of the shift we need to see within societal preconceptions.