Category Archives: equitable policies & practices

Student evaluations & potential employment discrimination

equitable policies & practices, teaching

The other the day the Chronicle posted resclassroom-1699745_1920earch by Kristina M. Mitchell and Jonathan Martin, “Gender Bias in Student Evaluations,” published in PS: Political Science & Politics last week. Here is the abstract:

“Many universities use student evaluations of teachers (SETs) as part of consideration for tenure, compensation, and other employment decisions. However, in doing so, they may be engaging in discriminatory practices against female academics. This study further explores the relationship between gender and SETs described by MacNell, Driscoll, and Hunt (2015) by using both content analysis in student-evaluation comments and quantitative analysis of students’ ordinal scoring of their instructors. The authors show that the language students use in evaluations regarding male professors is significantly different than language used in evaluating female professors. They also show that a male instructor administering an identical online course as a female instructor receives higher ordinal scores in teaching evaluations, even when questions are not instructor-specific. Findings suggest that the relationship between gender and teaching evaluations may indicate that the use of evaluations in employment decisions is discriminatory against women.”

Mitchell published another version of this research in Slate: “Student Evaluations Can’t Be Used to Assess Professors” (March 19, 2018)

P.S.: In 2015, Ben Schmidt created a webpage called Gendered Language in Teaching Evaluations where you can search for terms (“brilliant,” “friendly”) used in ratemyprofessor.com reviews and see how they correlate with gender and discipline.

Also, many thanks to CSW member Yi-Ping Ong for sharing “Is Gender Bias an Intended Feature of Teaching Evaluations?” from February in Insider Higher Ed.

Gender, Labor, #MeToo

equitable policies & practices, Institutional Climate

This is Sam. Sam is the dog who saved the day, in 1995, when Franco Moretti tried to assault a grad student. Read more about Sam in The New Republic here.

Sam in hallway (1995)

Speaking of the systemic:

Karen Kelsky from The Chronicle asks, “When we will stop elevating predators?” and writes: “Part of being socialized in a patriarchal society is a mechanism of internalized gaslighting in which women are conditioned to second-guess themselves, to doubt, to minimize, to do the emotional labor of both defusing situations and reinterpreting them in such a way as to exculpate their harassers — by squinting in just the right way to make plausible deniability, well, plausible.”

In her article “This Moment Isn’t (Just) About Sex. It’s Really About Work.,” Rebecca Traister writes: “. . . it’s possible that we’re missing the bigger picture altogether: that this is not, at its heart, about sex at all — or at least not wholly. What it’s really about is work, and women’s equality in the workplace, and more broadly, about the rot at the core of our power structures that makes it harder for women to do work because the whole thing is tipped toward men.”

Sam Sam enjoying retirement (c. 2001)

Thumbs up from Knight Rider!

equitable policies & practices, Institutional Climate, Unconscious Bias

Knight-Rider-Reboot-James-Gunn-David-Hasselhoff

Did you ever see the 80s TV show Knight Rider? With David Hasselhoff and a talking car? Hasselhoff’s image now has cameo appearances on the Congrats, you have an all male panel tumblr site, where you too can submit all-male panels for display.

One of my favorites on this site is a conference held this fall in Phoenix called “Everything’s Going to Be Different: Creating the Future City.” Here’s the flyer, with the “Hoffsome” stamp of disapproval:

tumblr_oyfbntu3qa1uq1a7qo1_1280

For more substantive news on this topic, read Kelly J. Baker’s Chronicle article from January 2017: “Can We Finally End the All-Male Panel?”

An in unrelated news, word is that Hasselhoff is bringing Knight Rider back. Read more & see the image credit here.

Gender Pay Gap in Physics

equitable policies & practices

From “The Gender Pay Gap in Physics Persists” by Audrey Williams June 11/02/2017 :

Once factors such as postdoctoral experience and age are accounted for, the gap between the salaries of men and women is, on average, 6 percent, according to a survey conducted by the Statistical Research Center at the American Institute of Physics. Before accounting for such factors, the data showed that men in physics earned, on average, 18 percent more than women. The survey was based on the experiences of people who had earned their doctorates in physics in the United States in 1996, 1997, 2000, or 2001 and who were working in the country in 2011.

Two key reasons for the disparity: Women aren’t aggressive enough during initial salary negotiations, and they are less likely to ask for a raise, the article says. Men are also overrepresented in physics, and that feeds an implicit bias that benefits men. As a senior researcher quoted anonymously in the article said, “Boys in the department give money to boys in the department.”

Nancy H. Hopkins, a renowned champion of gender equity in science, told the magazine that closing the pay gap would be a likely result of an increase in the number of senior women faculty members serving in positions of power — such as on hiring, promotion, and editorial boards. Ms. Hopkins, a molecular biologist and now a professor emerita at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sparked an examination of gender equity for women scientists at MIT and beyond decades ago. She measured things like her smaller laboratory space and lesser funding, and made the argument that her treatment amounted to discrimination. MIT subsequently released its own report acknowledging that female scientists were indeed discriminated against.

2017 Life Science Salary Survey

equitable policies & practices

Screen Shot 2017-11-04 at 8.30.02 AM.png

Above, men are green & women orange. Academic salaries include all positions.

From The Scientist (Nov 2017): “As part of this year’s Life Science Salary Survey, more than 2,500 life science professionals from around the world answered our questions about their job status, compensation, feelings of job satisfaction and security, the inclusion of women and minorities in their workplace, and more. The survey results are in, and highlight some intriguing trends in workplace culture and income across sector, specialty, rank, and gender.” See the full article & graphics here.