CHE: How Sexist is Science?

[Wahoo Redux]

CHE: How Sexist is Science Fiction?

Of the six areas of gender bias we examined, we found significant evidence of bias against women in two of them, teaching evaluations and salary. Also, although grants in the United States were gender-fair, elsewhere there was bias. Concerning teaching evaluations, we synthesized a very large number of studies across all academic fields and concluded that there was some evidence that students rate female instructors less charitably than they rate men, even when the instructors give the same lecture or when students are misled into believing the lecture was prepared by an instructor of a different gender. But because of the context specificity (e.g., findings vary by discipline, gender match between instructor and student, size of class, instructor's native language, number of points on the rating scale used to evaluate instructors), the clearest example of bias is not found in the quantitative data but rather in verbal descriptions chosen by students to evaluate instructors.

[lightning]

Yes. I see this a lot. T&P Committees have to be very cognizant of the bias.

[Wahoo Redux]

Yes. I see this a lot. T&P Committees have to be very cognizant of the bias.

Did you read to the end of the article?

[marshwiggle]

CHE: How Sexist is Science Fiction?

Of the six areas of gender bias we examined, we found significant evidence of bias against women in two of them, teaching evaluations and salary. Also, although grants in the United States were gender-fair, elsewhere there was bias. Concerning teaching evaluations, we synthesized a very large number of studies across all academic fields and concluded that there was some evidence that students rate female instructors less charitably than they rate men, even when the instructors give the same lecture or when students are misled into believing the lecture was prepared by an instructor of a different gender. But because of the context specificity (e.g., findings vary by discipline, gender match between instructor and student, size of class, instructor's native language, number of points on the rating scale used to evaluate instructors), the clearest example of bias is not found in the quantitative data but rather in verbal descriptions chosen by students to evaluate instructors.

That sounds like there's a lot more going on than can be distilled into a headline.