How We Talk About Our Teachers
Male professors are far more likely to be considered "smart" or "brilliant" by their students, according to an analysis of reviews from the website Rate My Professor.
Benjamin Schmidt, a professor at Northeastern University, created a searchable database of roughly 14 million reviews from the site.
Among the words more likely to be used to describe men: smart, idiot, interesting, boring, cool, creepy. And for women: sweet, shrill, warm, cold, beautiful, evil. "Funny" and "corny" were also used more often to describe men, while "organized" and "disorganized" showed up more for women.
In short, Schmidt says, men are more likely to be judged on an intelligence scale, while women are more likely to be judged on a nurturing scale.
"We're evaluating men and women on different traits or having different expectations for individuals who are doing the same job," says Erin Davis, who teaches gender studies at Cornell College.
Davis notes that, on campus, a professor's ability to nurture or mentor a student is certainly valued, but intellectual ability is generally the more prized quality in a professor. And Schmidt's review of student perceptions suggests men have the advantage in that department.
Ultimately, judging men and women based on different qualities could shape very real decisions about things like tenure and promotion, Davis says.
"I would like to see both men and women be held to the same standards of intellectual ability and providing a challenge, but also mentoring and support," she says.
Schmidt's analysis found that women scored one-tenth of a point less than men on Rate My Professor reviews. In other words, students may have been using different words to describe their professors, but the reviews of women instructors weren't remarkably more negative.
Then again, both Schmidt and Davis point to a separate study in which students taking online courses, who had never met their teachers, gave significantly lower scores to professors with female names.
There's only one word for that: unfair.
9(MDE1MTIxMDg0MDE0MDQ3NTY3MzkzMzY1NA001))
Transcript
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The website Rate My Professor lets students grade their teachers. If you're one of the teachers, that can be tough. For the rest of us, it's an opportunity because the website is gathering all kinds of information about how people view each other. What students are writing on Rate My Professor says a lot about how they see men and women differently. NPR's Will Huntsberry reports.
WILL HUNTSBERRY, BYLINE: A male instructor scouring his Rate My Professor profile might see these words.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Smart. Boring. Clever.
HUNTSBERRY: But if you're a woman...
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: Shrill. Sweet. Unfair.
HUNTSBERRY: That's according to a recent data analysis of the site from Northeastern University. And the differences don't stop there.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Brilliant.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Beautiful.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Genius.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Organized.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Jerk.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Annoying.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Arrogant.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: Rude.
HUNTSBERRY: Can you hear the difference there? Northeastern's Benjamin Schmidt can.
BENJAMIN SCHMIDT: Students sit down and talk about intelligence for their male professors more often. They talk about helpfulness for their female professors more often.
HUNTSBERRY: The same applies to humor for men and organization for women. Schmidt explains it this way.
SCHMIDT: Genders are described both by one word and their opposite.
HUNTSBERRY: That means even though men are more often described as smart, they're also more often called idiots. Along the same lines, women are more likely to be seen as warm but also cold.
DAVIS: We're evaluating men and women on different traits. We're having different expectations for individuals who are doing the same job.
HUNTSBERRY: That's Erin Davis. She's a gender studies professor at Cornell College. She says this is a problem in all parts of working life because in most fields, being judged on intelligence gives men the advantage, especially in higher education.
DAVIS: Particularly when you're thinking about the extent to which things like smarts, intellectual ability, genius, those tend to be the things that are more academically considered.
HUNTSBERRY: Schmidt's analysis showed that on average, women scored one-tenth of a point less than men on Rate My Professor. But another study showed students gave significantly lower ratings to professors with a female name. Both researchers say all men and women should be judged on whether they are smart and nurturing, not just one or the other. Will Huntsberry, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
300x250 Ad
300x250 Ad