Gender bias in the academy, both personal and structural, can have negative impacts on women’s advancement. Challenges facing women include biased teaching evaluations, disproportionate service loads, and unequal demands for emotional labor from students.
Women face biased evaluations of their teaching, which are often used by universities for tenure, promotion and in hiring decisions. For this reason it is recommended that student teaching evaluations not be used in job searches, promotion decisions or other job performance evaluations.
Summary Article:
“She’s Hot: Female Sessional Instructors, Gender Bias, and Student Evaluations.” Andrea Eidinger. March 30, 2017. ActiveHistory.ca.
Study:
“Gender Bias in Student Evaluations.” Kristina Mitchell, Jonathan Martin. March 6, 2018. Political Science & Politics.
Additional Reading and Resources:
“Gendered Language in Teacher Reviews” (interactive chart). Ben Schmidt. February 2015.
“Student Evaluations Can’t Be Used to Assess Professors.” Kristina Mitchell. March 19, 2018. Slate.
Women are often required to do disproportionate amounts of service work to the detriment of their other obligations.
Summary article:
“Relying on Women, Not Rewarding Them.” Colleen Flaherty. April 12, 2018. Inside Higher Ed.
Study:
“Faculty Service Loads and Gender: Are Women Taking Care of the Academic Family?” Cassandra M. Guarino and Victor M. H. Borden. September 2017. Research in Higher Education 58(6).
Students ask female professors for special favors and additional work more often than they ask male professors. This imbalance not only puts more work on women, but also requires them to carry additional emotional labor leading to burn out and low job satisfaction.
Summary article:
“Dancing Backwards in High Heels.” Colleen Flaherty. January 10, 2018. Inside Higher Ed.
Study:
“Dancing Backwards in High Heels: Female Professors Experience More Work Demands and Special Favor Requests, Particularly from Academically Entitled Students” El-Alayli, Amani, Ashley A. Hansen-Brown, and Michelle Ceynar. January 1–15, 2018. Sex Roles.
Sexual harassment is widespread in academia generally, and in archaeology in particular. See also Assemblage’s section In The Field
“A Crowdsourced Survey of Sexual Harassment in the Academy.” Karen Kelsky. December 1, 2017. The Professor is In.
“91 Stories of Archaeology” Doug Rocks-Macqueen. April 14, 2018. Doug’s Archaeology.