Gender Discrimination at Universities still alive and well in 2021 Prof. Dr. Nicholas Markatos, Professor Emeritus, FRSA

An article to be published in 'Bulletin of the European professors Emeriti' , October 2021.

Keywords: gender, discrimination, student, faculty, harassment

Abstract

A condensed but critical literature review is given in this article because of the wealth of studies completed in academia (parts of which are copied here) on the perceptions of female University faculty and students discrimination.

Gender Discrimination is the type of discrimination which is based on the gender of the person. Usually women are treated differently and unequal than men in their education, career, economic advancement and political influences. It is common type of discrimination that is happening throughout the world. The gender gap in universities has tilted in favor of women as a result of increased access and inclusion of women in higher

education. This does not mean, however, that gender equality – equal status between men and women and personal empowerment – has been achieved in universities, as will be shown below.

Main findings

A gender balance has been achieved in enrolment and in undergraduate and some graduate degree programs. However in many doctoral programs and in jobs following the PhD (especially in research posts and those that have more power, resources, rewards, and influence), men predominate while women PhDs and academics remain in more subordinate positions.

A numerical advantage of women at the undergraduate level does not prevent unequal gendered power relations between women and men. Despite increased representation of women on campus, relations have not transformed much.

Women still experience patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity that manifests itself in various forms of discrimination. Moreover, when rigid cultural gender roles are strong and gender equality mainstreaming is slow or absent, higher numbers of women do not translate into a decrease in gender-based bias, stereotypic and violence [1-3].

There are still pressing issues on university campuses despite their being largely invisible and in many cases silenced, or rationalized [4]. Sexist relations between men and women, manifesting from casual “teasing” to physical attacks, are mostly targeted at women, although many men have also reported being sexually harassed.

Such heterosexual masculine culture and sexism on campuses are produced and reproduced by students and professors alike in the forms of discriminatory and prejudicial treatment and harassment and assault. This culture with its differential treatment erodes self-esteem and opportunities for women.

Results indicate that although the female doctoral labour supply and political constraints are powerful factors in the representation of women faculty, selective organizational contexts play a substantial role as well. Although we find little evidence that insulation from competition or segmented faculty labour markets strongly influence the gender composition of science faculties, women are more often found in entry-level positions where institutionalized discrimination may be checked by unionization and proportionally sizable constituencies of women administrators and students. Consistent with statistical discrimination, women scientists and engineers are poorly represented at the entry level in research-oriented institutions and are more scare in tenured positions

within highly prestigious departments and institutions with very selective admissions. These organizational influences on women’s faculty representation hold even after controlling for gender differences in the prestige of academic credentials, level of work experience, and marital and child-rearing responsibilities.

College-bound women are not less likely to enter specific fields because more math or science is required, but rather because of the gender discrimination they are likely to encounter in those fields [5].

Women are often underrepresented in many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors and some non-STEM majors, such as philosophy and criminal justice.

In the context of the study by Milkman and her colleagues [6, 7], existing social theories of gender would suggest that even well-intentioned professors who might not otherwise be seen as racist or gender-biased, and who do not act in overly discriminatory ways, have internalized beliefs that women are perhaps not as well prepared for graduate school as their male counterparts, or that they may not make reliable or adequate research assistants. In fact, this phenomenon is documented in the book Presumed Incompetent, a compilation of research and essays from women and people of color who work in academia.

Women with familial responsibilities seemed to be judged unfairly in multiple ways: by the quality and value of their work, women’s commitment to work, the degree of respect received by peers, the scrutiny of the work, differing performance standards between men and women, and unequal pay raises and promotions. Even with an abbreviated literature review, the message remains the same; gender bias continues to impact female faculty members.

So there is a problem and the gender pay gap among professors is not due to indirect factors like pay grade and subject area. There is also lack of diversity in the senior leadership of academic departments and centers, differences in work load and salary and the persistent problem of harassment and discrimination in research.

Two relevant examples [8].

The young doctor masked up and took her place around the operating table with the other male physicians at a major hospital in the Northeast of USA. The lead surgeon scanned all four of his team members and said, “Good morning, Gentlemen.” The young woman’s eyes arched. She said, “Good morning Dr.Taylor,” hoping to get appropriate recognition. The lead surgeon ignored her and went on with the operation. When she brought it up with the department chair, he told her she was being too sensitive and over-reacting to the situation.

Her male counterparts didn’t seem to understand or care that she might have felt dismissed, invisible and insignificant. To some, this might seem like a harmless event, but it’s symptomatic of an attitude than often persists under the radar in many different workplaces-even in 2021.

A study published in February, 2021 [9] concluded that female academic internal medicine hospitalists routinely encounter gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment.

In a second example, the tenure and promotion committee sat around the Dean of Education’s conference table, evaluating dossiers of applicants for tenure and promotion. As they scrutinized a female faculty member’s credentials, one of the male full professors commented, “She’s an old maid. Wonder why she’s never been married?” No one spoke up, and the highly-qualified faculty member was never notified of the discrimination that denied her tenure and promotion. She was fired from her position, despite the fact that the prominent university clearly states it doesn’t discriminate on the basis of gender. Shocking, certainly, but true.

In another study, focused on hiring practices at university science faculties, staff members were asked to review several job applications. The applications reviewed were identical, apart from the gender of the name of the applicant. They found that science faculty members (both male and female) were

more likely to rate the male candidates as better qualified than the female candidates and want to hire more men than women. They also found that male candidates were given a higher starting salary compared to female candidates, and that the employers were willing to invest more in the development of the male candidate than the female candidate [10].

Other studies show that women are interviewed more critically than their male counterparts, and are interrupted more often [11]. Implicit bias impacts not only the recruitment decision, but also the salary of the individual and the amount of development that is invested in their ongoing progression.

Another interesting study focuses on gendered working in job announcements. The study shows that when job ads mostly include words associated with male stereotypes (e.g. ‘leader’, ‘competitive’ and ‘dominant’) they are found less appealing by women compared to job ads that mostly include words associated with female stereotypes (e.g. ‘support’, ‘understand’, and ‘interpersonal’). Therefore, job ads with more “masculine” wording reinforce gender inequality in traditionally male-dominated occupations and thereby amount to “institutional-level mechanism of inequality maintenance” [12].

Finally, this interesting report discusses why women are less likely than men to apply to jobs for which they do not meet all of the advertised requirements.

Another concern for female students is the difficulty to engage with male supervisors and a tendency to be left out of their supervisor’s circle where male students feel welcome. Given such experiences of isolation, male students tend to benefit from friendlier and more respectful attitudes from their supervisors.

Male student thus have greater access to grants and projects from their supervisors, which in turn gives them greater opportunities to be published and to enhance their skills and professional advantage while studying.

Particularly in STEM fields, male doctoral students bond with their male professors and junior fellows, creating “brotherly comradeship” through their mentoring, role modeling and academic grooming – experiences from which women in STEM are largely excluded.

At a professorial level, research has found that there is much more expected of female academics than their male counterparts. They are held to a different standard, especially by students who are more biased against female professors and lecturers and expect them to treat them in a motherly way while also engaging as expert researchers.

There are also studies that report on all-male conference panels, on the overlooking and exclusion of women at conferences, and on sexual harassment and advances women often face during academic conferences. While these stories are receiving more publicity now than in the past, the abundance of such stories highlights how male-only panels have very much been an academic norm, which has not undergone much scrutiny until quite recently.

In promotion and leadership, gender inequity has long been recognized as a serious problem. The recent case of the Nobel Prize winner Donna Strickland, an Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo, drew attention to the issue of promotion, as she had been an Associate Professor for about twenty years while conducting her research.

Women tend to not be taken as seriously as men. If she is not in her office after 3 p.m., it is assumed that she is picking up her children from daycare, when she may be doing research at the library or at a committee meeting. However, when her husband is not in his office after 3 p.m. it is assumed he is busy doing scholarly work.

Women spend more time on teaching and service, and carry heavy teaching loads, creating a disadvantage for research time, while men have more access to research facilities and resources [13].

The need for more universities to have family-friendly policies is also well documented [14].

Closure

According to the ratings, male professors are described often with “genius” and “brilliance” much more than female professors.

The language encourages discrimination between genders. Male professors rank high for knowledge, smart, charming and sensitive, while female professors receive high rankings for words such as bossy, mean, quick, beautiful. Female professors rarely obtain high ranking for words dealing with intelligence. No wonder, therefore, that discrimination increases the difficulty of a woman being hired or promoted.

A male engineering professor earns more than a female engineering professor and the same is true for a German Studies professor. Men receive higher performance benefits than women. So there is a problem and the gender pay gap among professors is not due to indirect factors, like pay grade and subject area.

There is also lack of diversity in the senior leadership of academic departments and centers, differences in work load and the persistent problem of harassment and discrimination in research.

Although huge strides have been made in the last few decades, women are still experiencing discrimination based on their gender in Universities.

The University work climate seems to be less accommodating for women and more permissible for men, even if bias is often unconscious.

Awareness can lead to correcting action particularly by the academics that are typically thought to be more liberal and progressive than the general population.

Recognizing common stereotypes of women in the workplace and taking measures to eliminate them would improve the climate for all women; especially those who have children in the home and are still highly productive and successful.

University hiring practices could be reviewed to help reduce the negative influence of stereotypes and increase gender parity.

Any University has the obligation to eliminate gender discrimination. Every University should have a code of conduct, and that code of conduct is based on morality.

References

1. Acker, S. and Feuerverger, G., 1996. Doing good and feeling bad: The work of women university teachers. Cambridge Journal of Education, 26(3): 401-422.

2. Bain, O and Cummings, W., 2000. Academe’s glass ceiling: Societal, professional-organizational, and institutional barriers to the career

advancement of academic women. Comparative Education Review 44 (4): 493-514.

3. Bonawitz, M. and Andel, N., 2009. The glass ceiling is made of concrete: The barriers to promotion and tenure of women in American academia. Forum of Public Policy Online, Summer. https://forumonpublicpolicy.com/summer09/womenand leadership.html.

4. Cress, C.M. and Hart, J. 2009.Playing soccer on the football field: The persistence of gender inequities for women faculty. Equity and Excellence in Education 42 (4): 473-488. 5. Ganley, C. M., George, C. E., Cimpian, J. R., & Makowski, M. (2018). Gender equity in college majors: Looking beyond the STEM/non-STEM dichotomy for answers regarding female participation. American Educational Research Journal, 55(3), 453–487.

6. Milkman, K. L., M. Akinola, and D. Chugh (2012). Temporal distance and discrimination: An audit study in academia. Psychological Science 23 (7), 710–717.

7. Milkman, K. L., M. Akinola, and D. Chugh (2015). What happens before? a field experiment exploring how pay and representation differentially shape bias on the pathway into organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology 100 (6), 1678–1712.

8. B.Robinson, Feb. 15, 2021, www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2021/02/15.

9. Sanjay Bhandari, Pinky Jha, Cynthia Cooper, Barbara Slawski, Gender-Based Discrimination and Sexual Harassment Among Academic Internal Medicine Hospitalists. J.Hosp. Med. 2021 February;16(2):84-89. Published Online First January 20, 2021 | 10.12788/jhm.3533.

10. Moss-Racusin, Corinne and others (2012). Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, pp.16474-16479.

11. Yorke, Harry (2017). Women are given a tougher time in interviews than men scientists find. The Telegraph, 3 July.

12. Gaucher, D., Friesen, J. Kay, A. ? Evidence that gentered wording in Job advertisements exists and sustains gender inequality, March 2011, J. of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(1):109-28 DOI:10..1037/a0022530.

13. Wilson, M., Gadbois, S. and Nichol, K. 2008. Is gender parity imminent in the professiorate? Lessons from one Canadian university. Canadian Journal of Education 31 (1): 211-228.

14. Monk-Turner, E and Fogerty, R.2010. Chilly environments, stratification, and productivity differences. Online publication: Springer Science+Business Media. LLC.