tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/gender-in-academia-14843/articlesGender in academia – The Conversation2020-08-07T08:35:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1440872020-08-07T08:35:40Z2020-08-07T08:35:40ZHow women in academia are feeling the brunt of COVID-19<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351591/original/file-20200806-18-epd02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on the productivity of women could see many leave academia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent public health response of lockdown has brought into sharp relief the constraints faced by women across the board.</p>
<p>We have been keeping a keen eye on the impact it’s having on women in academia – our field of work and research. What we’re observing, and what’s being backed up by research, is that women are facing additional constraints as a result of COVID-19. </p>
<p>These range from the added burdens and responsibilities of working from home, through to the fact that fewer women scientists are being quoted as experts on COVID-19, all the way to far fewer women being part of the cohort producing new knowledge on the pandemic.</p>
<p>None of these constraints are new. Earlier research confirms that women academics <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01294-9">carry large teaching burdens</a>, with relatively little time for <a href="https://www.thelily.com/women-academics-seem-to-be-submitting-fewer-papers-during-coronavirus-never-seen-anything-like-it-says-one-editor/">research and publication</a> compared to their male colleagues, many of whom do not carry equivalent domestic responsibilities. </p>
<p>Increased pressure on women academics caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is magnifying this fractured landscape of gender parity in academia. The impact is being felt <a href="https://theconversation.com/women-are-getting-less-research-done-than-men-during-this-coronavirus-pandemic-138073">in terms of productivity</a>. This is manifesting itself in terms of public exposure, knowledge generation and who is being called on to provide advice.</p>
<h2>Academic output</h2>
<p>An <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/women-science-are-battling-both-covid-19-and-patriarchy">article</a> in the World University Rankings points to the bias towards men experts in media coverage of COVID-19. Written by a group of women scientists, the article points out that women are advising policymakers on the outbreak, designing clinical trials, coordinating field studies and leading data collection and analysis. But, when it comes to media coverage, there is a bias towards men. While epidemiology and medicine are women dominated fields, men get quoted far more often than women about the pandemic. </p>
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<p>A June 2020 article in the correspondence section of a leading medical journal, <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(20)31412-4.pdf">The Lancet</a>, makes the same point. It points out that women have made up just 24% of COVID-19 experts quoted in the media and 24.3% of national task forces analysed. </p>
<p>Women’s outputs are being affected in other ways too. A <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200709121230.htm">recent article</a> in Science News shows that fewer women were first authors on articles related to COVID-19. This was especially so in the first months of the pandemic. They compared 1,893 articles published in March and April 2020 with those from 2019 in the same journals, and found that first authorship for women declined by 23%. </p>
<p>This they attribute to the <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200709121230.htm">increased demands of family life during the pandemic</a>. </p>
<p>The Guardian newspaper also reported a decrease in women’s academic outputs, with the journal Comparative Politics reporting that submissions by men <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/may/12/womens-research-plummets-during-lockdown-but-articles-from-men-increase">went up by 50% in April</a>.</p>
<p>The Lancet article makes the same point. </p>
<p>Recent <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(20)31412-4.pdf">data</a> from the US, the UK and Germany suggest women spend more time on pandemic-era childcare and home schooling than men do. This is particularly difficult for single-parent households, most of which are headed by women.</p>
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<h2>Domestic constraints</h2>
<p>The article by women scientists in The Lancet makes it clear that none of the challenges are new.</p>
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<p>Challenges women in academia face are well documented in non-pandemic
times. These challenges include male dominated institutional cultures, lack of female mentors, competing family responsibilities due to gendered domestic labour, and implicit and subconscious biases in recruitment, research allocation, outcome of peer review, and number of citations. </p>
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<p>But, they write, COVID-19 has led to unprecedented day care, school and workplace closures exacerbating challenges.</p>
<p>For decades, women in academia and professional practice have striven to achieve work-life balance, juggling professional and <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/13106038_Constraints_facing_the_female_medical_practitioner_in_private_family_practice_in_the_Western_Cape">domestic responsibilities</a>.</p>
<p>Institutional support for women in terms of maternity leave, childcare facilities, lactation rooms, flexible working hours and protected research time varies across institutions in South Africa. It is <a href="https://mg.co.za/article/2019-09-20-00-advancing-gender-equality-in-academia/">lacking in many</a>.</p>
<p>And now women are working from home, where they are also expected to take care of children and elderly parents, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/upshot/pandemic-chores-homeschooling-gender.html">do home schooling</a>, clean, cook and <a href="https://theconversation.com/women-are-getting-less-research-done-than-men-during-this-coronavirus-pandemic-138073">shop</a>.</p>
<h2>Addressing the problem</h2>
<p>This disproportionate effect on productivity of women has the potential to bleed women from academia. This will have a negative impact on the diversity that is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01294-9">critical for excellence in academia</a> and in civil society.</p>
<p>None of this is factored in to promotion criteria or performance assessments, when women in academia compete directly with their male counterparts. Consequently, women are seriously underrepresented in academic leadership, perpetuating a patriarchal institutional culture in tertiary educational institutions.</p>
<p>Some global funding agencies, among them the European and Developing Country Clinical Trial Partnerships and the National Institutes of Health, have recently started to consider constraints facing women scientists <a href="http://www.edctp.org/web/app/uploads/2019/05/EDCTP2-Work-plan-2019-web-20190527.pdf">in grant applications</a>. This effort needs to be seriously expanded. </p>
<p>This could be done via revisions to existing policies and proactive development of new policies to create optimal gender balance in research. Funders also have a responsibility to explore how institutions that financially benefit enormously from research funding via indirect costs support women scientists in academia.</p>
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<p>Scientific journals are becoming sensitive to gender balance and diversity with respect to authorship. But the requirement for gender equity in terms of participants included in research studies and authorship <a href="https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1513/AnnalsATS.202006-589IP">must be tightened</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, conference panels and keynote speaker selection are in dire need of appropriate representation of women, especially those from the global South, whose voices are underrepresented in international academic meetings and scientific conferences. Anything less than these efforts will perpetuate pre-COVID-19 levels of gender inequity and lack of diversity. Sadly, academia will be the poorer for it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144087/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keymanthri Moodley receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. She is affiliated with the Women's Forum, Stellenbosch University. All views expressed are her own. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amanda Gouws holds a SARChI Chair in Gender Politics, funded by the NRF</span></em></p>Increased pressure on women academics caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is magnifying the fractured landscape of gender parity in academia.Keymanthri Moodley, Director, The Centre for Medical Ethics & Law, Stellenbosch UniversityAmanda Gouws, Professor of Political Science and SARChi Chair in Gender Politics, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1021032018-08-29T20:17:12Z2018-08-29T20:17:12ZGender quotas and targets would speed up progress on gender equity in academia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233767/original/file-20180828-75981-1q31i51.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Men outnumber women in top-paying academic jobs and university leadership.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Recently, the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-22/university-advertises-women-only-engineering-positions/10151496">University of Adelaide</a> used a special exemption under the <a href="https://www.humanrightscommission.vic.gov.au/the-law/equal-opportunity-act">Equal Opportunity Act</a> to advertise eight academic positions in the faculty of engineering, computer and mathematical sciences for women only. This raises questions about why a university might take this approach. </p>
<p>While Australia has had gender equality legislation for 30 years, there has been very slow progress towards addressing the gender equity issues plaguing the sector. To illustrate, women are still <a href="https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/uni-participation-quality/Equity-and-Participation/Women-in-universities/Universities-Australia-Executive-Women-Group#.W4Sp5yQza70">under-represented at senior levels</a>. Only 27% of full professors (the main recruitment pool for top jobs) are women, and only 32% of Vice-Chancellors in public universities. </p>
<p>One of the principal reasons women don’t reach leadership roles is women are concentrated in fewer disciplines. Women’s academic employment in the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) disciplines is particularly <a href="https://www.chiefscientist.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/OCS_Women_in_STEM_datasheet.pdf">low at 17%</a>. This under-representation of women in STEM and higher education leadership is a result of multiple barriers to women’s career progression. </p>
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<p>Posting job openings in male-dominated fields to specifically target women is one of the most direct and immediate measures to bring about change. </p>
<h2>Does selective recruitment work against the merit principle?</h2>
<p>One of the concerns raised when employment targets are implemented is that women will be appointed unfairly over more qualified male candidates. But the intention of selective recruitment is to address the problem that qualified women are discouraged and excluded from academic employment. </p>
<p>The corporatisation of higher education has led to the growth of contract and casual positions in academia. This often results in little prospect of career progression. While these conditions impact all academics, women work in academia under different conditions to men. </p>
<p>For example, women are <a href="https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/57321/90918_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">more likely</a> to be employed as sessional workers, at lower pay levels and have interrupted career development. Women are effectively held back or slowed down in many ways men are not, making the long-term goal of academic tenure and progression illusive. </p>
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<p>So, despite being <a href="https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/australias-universities/key-facts-and-data#.W4SuRyQza70">over-represented</a> overall at undergraduate and entry level in academia, women are still underrepresented in STEM disciplines and at senior academic levels. The disciplinary culture of STEM favours men who have an uninterrupted focus on research for decades. It also doesn’t make these careers attractive to younger men, and particularly to younger women, who <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1073638.pdf">value work-life balance</a>. </p>
<p>The implementation of targets is designed to address these barriers and expand the potential academic talent pool.</p>
<h2>Barriers to women getting into and staying in academia</h2>
<p>Women in academic leadership roles have often successfully negotiated with and navigated gendered leadership cultures at the cost of expending considerable energy to fit in to this masculinist culture. Not surprisingly, a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07294360.2013.864611">study</a> found younger academic women examined then dismissed leadership careers in higher education. </p>
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<p>Two studies examined the careers of women in middle management in universities. The first <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07294360.2013.864615">study</a>, conducted in Canada, questioned if these positions were a ladder to leadership or a revolving door taking women back to the ranks from whence they came. </p>
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<p>The other <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1360080X.2013.812179">study</a>, conducted in Australia, found the managers and colleagues of mid-career women academics were commonly unsupportive or even actively discriminatory or hostile. A 2004 Australian <a href="https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/09513550410554760">case study</a> found these women were subject to bullying from senior managers. </p>
<p>This has made academic careers, particularly in STEM, either unattractive or unsustainable for many of the next generation of women leaders. </p>
<h2>Do quotas work?</h2>
<p>Evidence suggests quotas in higher education do work. </p>
<p>For example, in Austria national legislation was introduced to require university bodies such as the senate and all commissions appointed by the senate to meet a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=oGuADAAAQBAJ&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=austria+40%25+gender+quota+university&source=bl&ots=ygD-XVWmVI&sig=oWrQpkPysI8Rmslih4ey2ki9kE0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjZrKLQ6o7dAhXXzmEKHfAtBSo4ChDoATAEegQIBhAB#v=onepage&q=austria%2040%25%20gender%20quota%20university&f=false">quota of 40%</a> female members. By 2016 all but one of the university councils had fulfilled this quota. The quota was <a href="https://blogs.eui.eu/genderquotas/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2015/04/Executive-summary-Austria-Gresch-Sauer-2.pdf">raised to 50%</a> in 2014.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233997/original/file-20180829-86153-cv02ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233997/original/file-20180829-86153-cv02ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233997/original/file-20180829-86153-cv02ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233997/original/file-20180829-86153-cv02ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233997/original/file-20180829-86153-cv02ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233997/original/file-20180829-86153-cv02ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/233997/original/file-20180829-86153-cv02ci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Research from Austria shows gender quotas in academia do work.</span>
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<h2>Do anti-discrimination laws support or prevent this?</h2>
<p>Cross-national structures such as the <a href="http://www.oecd.org/">OECD</a> and EU, driven by market logic, are <a href="http://www.oecd.org/finance/financial-markets/women-in-economics-the-unknown-cost-of-gender-imbalance-2018.htm">concerned</a> about the <a href="http://eige.europa.eu/gender-mainstreaming/policy-areas/economic-and-financial-affairs/economic-benefits-gender-equality">loss to society</a> when highly educated women are excluded or marginalised. </p>
<p>This concern is shared by the professions. For example, the engineering profession notes women’s higher attrition in engineering is a <a href="http://www.aced.edu.au/downloads/ACED%20Engineering%20Stats%2031%20Jan%202017.pdf">cost</a> that should be addressed. </p>
<p>Linking commitment on getting more women into leadership roles to funding appears to be one of the most effective ways of increasing women’s representation in academia. This has been demonstrated by <a href="https://www.ecu.ac.uk/equality-charters/athena-swan/">Athena SWAN Charter</a> in the UK. This <a href="https://www.ecu.ac.uk/equality-charters/athena-swan/2018-statistics/">aligns science funding</a> with an institution’s performance in improving gender representation, especially at senior levels. The program has become a catalyst for institutional change, and is now being implemented in some <a href="http://www.sciencegenderequity.org.au/the-athena-swan-accreditation-framework/">Australian</a> universities. </p>
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<p>Similarly, the <a href="https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/">Australian National Health and Medical Research Council</a> (NHMRC) introduced a <a href="https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/media/releases/2015/nhmrc-announces-new-gender-equity-policy">gender equity policy</a> requiring institutions to submit gender equity policies that include a strategy to address the under-representation of women in senior positions.</p>
<p>These strategies take time to yield results, but the implementation of targets and affirmative action in recruitment will directly speed up progress on gender equity. The alternative is to allow the same inequalities to prevail for another 30 years. This will cost us economically, and means we would only be using half of Australia’s potential pool of talent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102103/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanne Pyke receives funding from government research grants. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate White is affiliated with Women in Higher Education Management Network. </span></em></p>Without affirmative action through gender quotas and targets, we will have another 30 years of glacial progress on gender equity in academia.Joanne Pyke, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Strategic Economic Studies (CSES), Victoria UniversityKate White, Adjunct Associate Professor, Faculty of Education and Arts, Federation University AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/472392015-09-09T17:17:36Z2015-09-09T17:17:36ZLack of women professors means research grants are skewed towards men<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94255/original/image-20150909-18658-152blly.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trying to readdress the balance. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lecture via Matej Kastelic/www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Our <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/gender-balance-women-are-funded-more-fairly-in-social-science-1.18310">new research</a> has shown that when women working in the social sciences apply for a research grant, they are just as likely as men to win funding. But while there is equality in the success rate, the fact that so few women are in professorial positions applying for grants means men still get more research money than women in the social sciences. </p>
<p>The role and inclusion of women in science has attracted considerable attention recently. Rightly so. Cambridge physicist <a href="https://theconversation.com/post-16-education-must-be-reformed-to-tackle-damaging-arts-science-divide-46995">Athene Donald has recently highlighted</a> that girls’ early years and their socialisation as they develop, is likely to have a role in women’s subsequent careers. However, we also need to focus on how women succeed once they have embarked on a career in academia.</p>
<p>One important measure of success is the receipt of competitive research funding. Our analysis, published in <a href="http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/525181a">a Nature comment piece</a>, considers whether men and women submitted similar numbers of applications, were equally successful and were awarded grants of similar size by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). </p>
<p><a href="http://erc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/document/file/Gender_statistics_April_2014.pdf">Previous studies</a> show that women’s success rates are worse than men’s in European Research Council funding: for example, in physical sciences and engineering, women submit 17% of grant applications and receive 15%. <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22863053">While data</a> from the Wellcome Trust show that women in biomedical sciences receive significantly smaller grants than men. </p>
<p>We compared how well women and men fare in the social sciences. It is true to say that women are better represented across the social science disciplines than they are in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects, but we remain far from equality. </p>
<p>Overall, we found that between 2008 and 2013, accounting for academic position, success rates for women and men were equal and the size of grant awarded was similar at the ESRC. Indeed, women aged under 40 were significantly more successful than men and received slightly larger grants. </p>
<p>However, overall women received only two-fifths of the ESRC funding over the period. This meant women received 41% of the £127m distributed. The underlying reason for this was the representation of women in senior positions. While there was a similar number of men and women in non-professorial social science positions in the UK, less than a quarter of professorial positions were held by women, according to data from the <a href="http://www.heidi.ac.uk/">Higher Education Statistics Agency</a>. Women professors were as successful at winning grants as their male counterparts, but because there were fewer of them, far more grants were awarded to men.</p>
<h2>Structural impediments</h2>
<p>Fortunately, much is already being done in the UK to try and redress this imbalance. The Research Councils have published a concordat which includes expectations for both themselves and the institutions that receive their funding to <a href="https://www.vitae.ac.uk/policy/concordat-to-support-the-career-development-of-researchers/concordat-equality-and-diversity">promote diversity and equality</a>. Notably, under Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, the National Institute for Health Research took bold steps to link eligibility for funding to performance in the <a href="http://www.ecu.ac.uk/equality-charters/athena-swan/">Athena Swan programme</a>, which awards institutions and departments for their work supporting women.</p>
<p>Even so, we argue that there are structural impediments to gender equality in academia. Across UK academia as a whole, less than a fifth of all professors are women and, <a href="http://www.ucu.org.uk/media/pdf/9/6/The_position_of_women_and_BME_staff_in_professorial_roles_in_UK_HEIs.pdf">according to the University and College Union</a>, at the current pace of change it will take 39 years for women to be represented equally among the UK professoriate.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94258/original/image-20150909-18669-11ukjmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94258/original/image-20150909-18669-11ukjmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94258/original/image-20150909-18669-11ukjmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94258/original/image-20150909-18669-11ukjmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94258/original/image-20150909-18669-11ukjmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94258/original/image-20150909-18669-11ukjmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94258/original/image-20150909-18669-11ukjmd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leading the way: Ruth Luthi-Carter, chair of neurobiology of behaviour at the University of Leicester.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">University of Leicester.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Men still do not have the same work-life balances or child or parental care responsibilities as women, so unless structural changes are implemented within universities and funding agencies, change will be slow. Like many universities, our own institution, Leicester, has recognised the need to rebalance – and we are taking practical steps, including championing women’s roles, revising our promotion criteria and encouraging both women and men to recognise and react to inequality. </p>
<p>Gender equality issues must be embedded in work practice and women’s career progression should be supported by promotion criteria that allow for career breaks and part-time working by focusing more on the quality than the quantity of publications and grant awards.</p>
<p>Our research also includes a series of recommendations, including that all funding agencies should submit their data annually to independent scrutiny of gender differences in applications, success rates and award sizes. The funding agencies and universities should also come together to discuss these and other strategies.</p>
<h2>Global action</h2>
<p>We are therefore supporting the UN global <a href="http://www.heforshe.org/">HeForShe movement</a>, which aims to engage and encourage one billion men and boys to take action against the gender inequality which women face across the world. Ten prime ministers, ten CEOs of global companies and ten universities have been chosen worldwide to act as HeForShe impact champions to lead this initiative, and we are proud both that the University of Leicester is one of those ten, and that the UN will be launching its UK initiative at Leicester later this month. This seems particularly fitting, as when the university was founded in 1921, eight of the first nine students were women. </p>
<p>There is no good reason for women to be under-represented in senior posts. It is clearly not a result of innate differences in intelligence or ability. Gender equality is not a matter of being “nice” to women. In the higher education context it means ensuring that the very best people go into and remain in research and teaching for the benefit of society. Women in our universities are just as imaginative and talented as men but, sadly, our academic system has worked against them since its very beginning. We really must change this.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Boyle was CEO of the Economic and Social Research Council from 2010-14.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lucy K Smith receives funding from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henrietta O'Connor, Kate Williams, and Nicola Cooper do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is more equality for women winning social research grants, but men still get more overall.Paul Boyle, President and Vice-Chancellor, University of LeicesterHenrietta O'Connor, Professor of Sociology, University of LeicesterKate Williams, Senior Research Fellow in Nursing, University of LeicesterLucy K Smith, Senior research fellow in health services research, University of LeicesterNicola Cooper, Professor of Healthcare Evaluation Research, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/426382015-06-11T15:02:09Z2015-06-11T15:02:09ZFour ways to get more women into leadership at universities<p>The appointment of Louise Richardson as vice-chancellor of The University of Oxford has been hailed as momentous and inspiring. As the first woman to hold the position in the history of Oxford University and one of few female vice-chancellors of higher education institutions in the UK, this was a remarkable and celebratory event.</p>
<p>Richardson’s achievement as a woman from a non-Oxbridge background brings to light not only the under-representation of women in leadership roles in higher education (of 24 Russell Group universities, only <a href="http://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/Vice-chancellors/">three vice-chancellors are female</a>), and the lack of diversity at our top universities, but also the failings of the academy to deal with gender inequity. </p>
<p>Universities in the UK, renowned globally as high-quality institutions that foster ground-breaking research and innovation are disappointingly persistent in their failure to address fundamental issues of gender equality. This is brought starkly into relief when compared with the achievements of women entering and leaving higher education. </p>
<p>Only one in five professors in UK higher education are female, and the professorial gender gap varies significantly from one institution to another with many falling <a href="https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/gender-survey-of-uk-professoriate-2013/2004766.article">below the average of 20%</a>.</p>
<h2>Who can be a leader?</h2>
<p>Richardson has said she hopes her appointment will inspire young undergraduates. However, research on women’s leadership shows that ambition alone is not enough to make a substantive difference to the continuing gender imbalance. </p>
<p>Research points to <a href="https://hbr.org/2003/12/how-unethical-are-you">deeply embedded gendered assumptions</a> that shape who we think can be leaders. These assumptions lead to a “think leader, think male” mindset with the effect of signifying women as usurpers in leadership roles, where women are viewed and evaluated first as women and second as professionals or leaders. These ingrained assumptions are played out through our expectations and treatment of men and women, and the way we understand leadership. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://mlq.sagepub.com/content/44/1/63.abstract">study</a> of women leaders in higher education highlighted how senior women’s leadership and professional expertise is rarely understood as the norm, and rendered either highly visible or invisible due to their gender. </p>
<p>For example, women being asked to sit on recruitment boards as the “token” female draws attention to their sex rather than their status or leadership ability. Conversely women chairing faculty or university committees can find both their sex and their leadership ability rendered highly visible and under additional scrutiny because of their minority status. Put simply, women are often made to feel uncomfortable as leaders, as though they don’t fit in. </p>
<p>This is compounded by organisational structures that exclude many women. For example many research seminars and networking opportunities are in late afternoon moving into early evening, just the time when those caring for young children are at their busiest with the school run, meal and bedtimes. Those carers are still mostly women, and typically many of those women will be at stages in their career when they need to develop a research profile and network.</p>
<p>As well as individual strategies that support and mentor women, we also need to focus on systemic change. Here are four ways to start.</p>
<h2>1. Be disruptive</h2>
<p>Women are by their very presence disruptive to the leadership norm. Their membership of a committee can bring into stark relief their minority status and encourage us to question the way things are. We need to be strategic in bringing about positive change. We can challenge practices that are inherently discriminatory and which many of us take for granted. </p>
<p>In administrative roles, academics have opportunity to draw attention to practices that continue to favour some over others and even to implement different ways of doing things. <a href="http://mlq.sagepub.com/content/44/1/63.abstract">Research shows</a> women can challenge the system both overtly and covertly. For instance using their visibility as women, such as drawing attention to a lack of representation of women in strategic decision-making roles, and where speaking out felt risky, acting covertly by developing networks that could work behind the scenes to effect change. </p>
<h2>2. Teach gender in the classroom</h2>
<p>We can put gender on the agenda in our management and business schools. This includes bringing gender into the classroom to influence the next generation. Too often these issues are sidelined or marginalised, seen as an add-on to studies rather than something that underpins our everyday experience and interactions. It is time we recognised the urgent need to foster equality through education. </p>
<p>By making gender part of our core curriculum we can challenge the status quo, encouraging students to think about the kind of leader they want to be and inspire new models of organising for the future.</p>
<h2>3. Change leadership research</h2>
<p>We can also broaden leadership research. Contemporary leadership research is still dominated by <a href="http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book233409/toc">studies that polarise men and women leaders</a>, focusing on differences in leadership styles and behaviours that can serve to reinforce men as natural leaders and women as outsiders. </p>
<p>By developing research that looks less at individual traits and focuses more on how leadership works in everyday practice, we can gain greater understanding of how we perpetuate gendered practices and processes. This can also help us to identify how we can make changes that foster alternative models of being leaders and of doing leadership. </p>
<h2>4. Demand women experts</h2>
<p>Finally, we can challenge media representations that reinforce stereotypical views of leadership as a male activity and focus more on women’s appearance and domestic lives than their <a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/business/research/management/critical-studies/projects/misrepresentation/">professional ability</a>.</p>
<p>Working with the media to promote positive representation of women in leadership roles, such as calling on women academics to provide expert opinion, can challenge the representation of the academy as male.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42638/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Valerie Stead with colleagues from Durham University Business School, Roehampton Business School and University of Bradford School of Management receives funding from the ESRC for the Seminar Series, 'Challenging Gendered Media Mis(s)representations of Women Professionals and Leaders.<a href="https://www.dur.ac.uk/business/research/management/critical-studies/projects/misrepresentation/">https://www.dur.ac.uk/business/research/management/critical-studies/projects/misrepresentation/</a>
</span></em></p>We need more Louise Richardsons. Here’s how to get them.Valerie Stead, Lecturer, Management Learning and Leadership, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/412292015-05-12T20:12:21Z2015-05-12T20:12:21ZSexism in science: one step back, two steps forward<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81309/original/image-20150512-19528-yrye5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The call for a male author on a paper was met with outrage from within the scientific community and the general public.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keoni Cabral/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Two postdoctoral researchers <a href="https://twitter.com/FionaIngleby/status/593408243772297216/photo/1">took to the internet</a> last month after having their research paper rejected for publication on <a href="http://retractionwatch.com/2015/04/29/its-a-mans-world-for-one-peer-reviewer-at-least/">laughably sexist grounds</a>:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"593408243772297216"}"></div></p>
<p><a href="http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/317225">Fiona Ingleby</a> of the University of Sussex, and <a href="https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/head-ml">Megan Head</a> of ANU were advised by an anonymous reviewer from journal <a href="http://www.plosone.org/">PLoS One</a> to “find one or two male biologists to work with”. </p>
<p>The reviewer supposes that having a male co-author would improve the paper, reasoning that men work more hours per week on average, “due to marginally better health and stamina”. </p>
<p>The reviewer added that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Perhaps it is not so surprising that on average male doctoral students co-author one more paper than female doctoral students, just as, on average, male doctoral students can probably run a mile a bit faster than female doctoral students.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The sound of foreheads being slapped rung out across the globe. The internet was ablaze with <a href="http://jezebel.com/female-scientists-told-to-get-a-man-to-help-them-with-t-1701245887">righteous feminist fury</a>, <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/catferguson/women-scientists-share-their-stories-of-sexism-in-publishing">collegiate sympathy</a> and words of support. </p>
<p>The results of Head and Ingleby’s research would perhaps fail to surprise the reviewer as well: after surveying 244 people with PhDs in biology, they found that on average men had better job prospects than women. They suggested institutional gender bias was to blame, though perhaps the reviewer might put that down to women’s “natural” disadvantage.</p>
<p>PLoS One has since <a href="http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2015/05/01/plos-one-update-peer-review-investigation/">sincerely apologised</a>, sacked the reviewer, sent the manuscript to a new editor and called for the resignation of the Academic Editor who handled the review. </p>
<h2>One step back</h2>
<p>This incident confirmed two things for me: first, that sexism is alive and well within the scientific community; and second, that we’re making progress in its rectification. </p>
<p>Deplorable as the review was, its discussion and the attempted mollification of the wronged parties suggest reasons for optimism. To me, it is an indicator of very real progress within the scientific community. </p>
<p>The dominant assumption used to be that scientific research is self-correcting, and therefore incapable of bias. It was thought that the process of scientific research enables, or ought to enable, a “<a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/%7Euctytho/dfwVariousNagel.htm">view from nowhere</a>”. This is the notion that science is neutral, so it doesn’t matter who does the research because the results will be the same. </p>
<p>In living memory, arguments have floated around in the mainstream that science doesn’t need social diversity because of its <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-social/">inbuilt neutrality</a>. This assumption squashed the potential for honest confrontation of bias within scientific research.</p>
<p>Since the mid-1990s there has been an <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/research/swafs/pdf/pub_gender_equality/meta-analysis-of-gender-and-science-research-synthesis-report.pdf">upward trend</a> of both qualitative and quantitative research into gender segregation within science, as well as <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-we-can-break-free-from-sexism-in-science-41110">ongoing efforts</a> to address the existing gender imbalance. </p>
<p>Gender in science has become an academic discipline in its own right, producing <a href="http://genderedinnovations.stanford.edu/links.html">primary research</a> as well as countless historical, philosophical and sociological insights from universities across the world. Head and Ingelby’s work is in fact a part of this burgeoning discipline. </p>
<p>Various organisations have formulated initiatives to address the now well-documented gender imbalance in science. The Royal Society, for example, has taken it upon itself to become better informed about <a href="http://blogs.royalsociety.org/in-verba/2014/09/24/gender-balance-among-university-research-fellows/">its own gender bias</a>. At home, the <a href="https://www.science.org.au/sage-forum">Science in Australia Gender Equity Forum</a> is engaged in continuing discussion as to how to address this problem. </p>
<p>Stanford science historian <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/schiebinger.html">Londa Schiebinger</a> is the project director of a huge and ongoing research project called <a href="https://genderedinnovations.stanford.edu/">Gendered Innovations</a>, which was founded in 2009. The project provides governments and the scientific community with practical methods for sex and gender analysis in science. </p>
<p>Schiebinger has been talking about the relationship between gender and science since 1989. She <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141107-gender-studies-women-scientific-research-feminist/">remarked recently</a> that even twenty years ago, “nobody wanted to listen to me”. Progress might be <a href="https://theconversation.com/study-claiming-gender-equity-in-science-technology-maths-doesnt-reflect-real-life-40314">slow</a>, but the cry for gender diversity certainly isn’t being ignored anymore. </p>
<h2>A kind of progress</h2>
<p>The public’s reaction to the PLoS One review is testament to our commitment to eradicating gender bias within the scientific community. The backlash caused by this event was not because we want to see these two particular researchers published, but because we will not abide their rejection purely on the grounds of their gender. </p>
<p>Ironically, even the blameworthy PLoS One reviewer is concerned about gender diversity in scientific research. The reviewer was concerned that the research may be in danger of “drifting too far away from empirical evidence into ideologically biased assumptions”. </p>
<p>The justification for the reviewer’s request that a man co-author the paper was patently ludicrous. Yet among the garden-variety sexist nonsense there lies a glimmer of hope. The reviewer’s comments were pointed particularly at combating potential gender bias. </p>
<p>While this review serves as one among many examples of real and variegated sexism within the scientific community, it also shows how perfectly ordinary it is to show concern or criticise a research paper for potential gender bias.</p>
<p>Over the last two decades, the public and the scientific community have come to understand how diversity enriches the quality, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/4575.html">and the very content</a>, of scientific research. Achieving diversity within the scientific community is the best and only way to ensure that inevitable biases within research are recognised and countered. </p>
<p>While the PLoS incident was deplorable, the reception of the review by the researchers, the journal and the broader public reveals just how far we’ve come in our attitudes towards gender and its potential impact on scientific research.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41229/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Baitz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sexism still exists in science, but a recent scandal shows that progress is being made.Emma Baitz, Postgraduate student in History and Philosophy of Science, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/373702015-02-10T01:23:48Z2015-02-10T01:23:48ZRate my professor’s gender?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71542/original/image-20150210-24687-1vilyug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When rating their classes, students use different words to describe male and female professors</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalassemblyforwales/6937339042">National Assembly for Wales</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A friend of mine calls me professor of genius studies. It’s a sort of slip of the tongue, as I teach in gender studies, but it‘s also funny because everyone knows that genius is not associated with gender studies, and I’m the wrong gender anyway. A genius has electrified hair, big glasses, problems talking with mere mortals, and is white and male. Disney confirms this repeatedly, as does Christine Battersby in her 1989 study <a href="http://philpapers.org/rec/BATGAG">Gender and Genius</a>.</p>
<p>Now the anonymous online ranking system, <a href="http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/">RateMyProfessors.com</a>, has been subjected to algorithmic sifting to find that genius is a term students apply to male professors at least three times the rate for women, depending on the discipline. Brilliance is also something men do better in university lecture theatres, according to these ratings, and in music male professors are seven times more likely than female professors to be virtuoso performers. That was by over 3 million students. Consistently more knowledgeable and smart, men are also handsome, cute, charming, funny and sensitive.</p>
<p>So we know what’s coming next. As this is a gender mapping, women professors are consistently more likely to be described as feisty, bossy, aggressive, shrill, condescending, rude. You get the picture. We are also ahead on that vanilla descriptor, nice.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71446/original/image-20150209-13716-icpuqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71446/original/image-20150209-13716-icpuqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71446/original/image-20150209-13716-icpuqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71446/original/image-20150209-13716-icpuqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71446/original/image-20150209-13716-icpuqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=642&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71446/original/image-20150209-13716-icpuqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71446/original/image-20150209-13716-icpuqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71446/original/image-20150209-13716-icpuqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=807&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Female professors: much nicer than male professors, according to their students.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://benschmidt.org/profGender/#%7B%22database%22%3A%22RMP%22%2C%22plotType%22%3A%22pointchart%22%2C%22method%22%3A%22return_json%22%2C%22search_limits%22%3A%7B%22word%22%3A%5B%22nice%22%5D%2C%22department__id%22%3A%7B%22%24lte%22%3A25%7D%7D%2C%22aesthetic%22%3A%7B%22x%22%3A%22WordsPerMillion%22%2C%22y%22%3A%22department%22%2C%22color%22%3A%22gender%22%7D%2C%22counttype%22%3A%5B%22WordsPerMillion%22%5D%2C%22groups%22%3A%5B%22department%22%2C%22gender%22%5D%7D">Screenshot: Gender and Teacher Reviews</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These fascinating results are enabled through the work of Assistant Professor <a href="http://benschmidt.org/profGender/">Benjamin Schmidt</a> from Northeastern University, who released an interactive chart that groups results from about 14 million reviews over a couple of months from RateMyProfessors. It’s easy to use: type in the word and the results will be graphed, split by gender across discipline and per million words.</p>
<p>Schmidt notes that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>not all words have gender splits, but a surprising number do. Even things like pronouns are used quite differently by gender. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Indeed, even the definite article, the, is applied more to men than women. Note that these results are only distributed by the gender of the rated professor, not by the gender of the reviewing student. And they can also be sorted by whether the review was positive or negative overall.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71543/original/image-20150210-24700-178jvdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71543/original/image-20150210-24700-178jvdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71543/original/image-20150210-24700-178jvdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71543/original/image-20150210-24700-178jvdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71543/original/image-20150210-24700-178jvdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71543/original/image-20150210-24700-178jvdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71543/original/image-20150210-24700-178jvdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/71543/original/image-20150210-24700-178jvdn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Walt Disney’s stereotypical Professor Ludwig Von Drake. You get the picture - despite him being a duck.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100629171814/disney/images/3/3a/NewPicture6-1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://disney.wikia.com/wiki/Ludwig_Von_Drake&h=574&w=755&tbnid=nSYbgySlNhWVFM:&zoom=1&docid=IV9tLhrORXgSxM&ei=qE7ZVO_ZEcOymAXtxoG4Cg&tbm=isch&ved=0CB8QMygCMAI">Disney.wikia.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This graphical mapping of language used by American students to rate their professors tells us that gender is repeatedly constructed through the language we use to differentiate behaviours and values, and that women still face systematic obstacles in academia.</p>
<p>This usable dataset has been noticed by <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/education/2015/02/07/3620571/rate-my-professor-sexist/">online media</a> commentators and compared to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/upshot/is-the-professor-bossy-or-brilliant-much-depends-on-gender.html?abt=0002&abg=0">other studies</a> that demonstrate that teaching evaluations, citation, promotion and research funding are all highly gendered practices. </p>
<p>This is part of a larger narrative about women and work, about the structural hostility when women enter workplaces that are traditionally occupied by men. Such workplaces have already normalised the authority and historic contributions of men – often they are literally built for men, as in the cases where women’s toilets <a href="http://alga.asn.au/site/misc/alga/downloads/womeninpol/ALGA_WomenInPolitics.pdf">have to be added</a> to buildings (<a href="http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/austn-women-in-politics">including parliaments</a>).</p>
<p>The mass introduction of women into higher education as academics and as students is only relatively recent. In my university, for example, the ban on employing married women was rescinded only in 1976. These structures take generations of making visible, naming and countering.</p>
<p>It’s still sobering to see evidence of the ways gender – or should we be calling it misogyny - is so deeply embedded in language. Australian feminist <a href="http://dalespender.com.au">Dale Spender</a> has been talking about this since the 1970s: how language is male-centred (man comes to stand in for humanity); words reserved for women are derivations/deviations from the word for men (actress, woman); the sexual double standards (stud and slut); and the lack of words to name sexism, rape, sexual harassment, child abuse – all words which have entered our vocabulary since that time. </p>
<p>Spender attributes this lineage of English partially to the history of dictionary, but the impact is that it limits the ways in which we can construct our social world and speak to each other as gendered social beings.</p>
<p>Because this is just raw data, though, we can find other things about gender in it as well – you can search for whatever word you want, and its antonym. Women are more likely to be caring, helpful and encouraging, as we might expect in a society that continually associates women as carers, but we’re also more likely to be uncaring, unhelpful and discouraging – again consistent with the higher expectation of women as carers.</p>
<p>With a different set of terms, though, women are much more likely to be described as feminist, creative, fabulous, amazing, wonderful. Men are consistently ahead on crude, old, vulgar, outdated, misogynist. </p>
<p>I wonder what would happen if we made this the lead story: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Women professors are fabulous, amazing, wonderful; men crude, vulgar, old. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It doesn’t fit with the stories we tell about women, or universities, but it’s there in the data as well. And it doesn’t contradict the systemic oppression story; in a whole different way it supports it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37370/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Bartlett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A friend of mine calls me professor of genius studies. It’s a sort of slip of the tongue, as I teach in gender studies, but it‘s also funny because everyone knows that genius is not associated with gender…Alison Bartlett, Associate Professor in Gender Studies, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.