Most Campuses Get an A in Sexism

“I had a man adviser,” a woman graduate student said. “There was only one woman who taught in the graduate school. The whole time I never did work with any woman professors. . . . And I began to think, ‘Where do I fit into the system if there are no women in it or very few?’ ”

The answer to her question is that she probably doesn’t fit in and she may never fit in if she seeks an academic career with an American college or university. This student’s comment was one of hundreds of pieces of information gathered from campuses across the country by the Project on the Status and Education of Women of the Assn. of American Colleges for its new report, “The Campus Climate for Women: Chilly for Women Faculty, Administrators and Graduate Students.”

This report is the third in a series about women’s experiences on campuses. The first two dealt with women undergraduates in and out of the classrooms, and these also found a “chilly” environment of widespread discrimination ranging from subtle trivializing of women’s academic abilities and ambitions to overt sexual harassment and assault.

The new research found that women who achieve graduate degrees, professorships, advancement in university administration carry the burdens of sexism up the ladder with them. For example, in the earlier reports, a common experience among undergraduates was that women are treated differently than men. Professors call on women in class less often, listen to them less and interrupt them more. Women professors and administrators reported precisely the same phenomena in faculty and department meetings--that is if they are invited to the meetings at all. Women reported being overlooked for meetings, sometimes for formal ones, more often for the informal and social kinds of gatherings that are crucial to gaining access to the workings of an organization.

“ . . . I’ve been in meetings with male colleagues where they literally don’t hear me . I’ll start to say something and a man will interrupt, and no one will even notice I’ve been talking.”

Men commonly ignore women colleagues in both formal and informal settings, the report said, and this is not fully attributable to rudeness or sexism. A lot of campus research raises the issue of men’s discomfort around women who work with them. Some men aren’t good at small talk with anyone. Talking about sports is their way of getting by with other men. With women, the commonly reported problem seemed to be difficulty in dealing with women who were professional equals--women who were not necessarily supportive or dutiful, women who might disagree with them or criticize them.

“I was the first full-time woman faculty member in my department,” one woman professor said. “There really was difficulty among my male colleagues in associating with a woman as a colleague. I think they literally did not know how to talk to me, and as a consequence often just did not talk to me. . . . “

The author of the report, project director Bernice Sandler, used quotations without identification by name or institution. They were all based on actual incidents and chosen as representative of frequently reported experiences.

While there is a general perception that passage of anti-discrimination laws and increases in the numbers of women faculty and staff have put an end to sexism on campuses, this view is belied not only by what women describe, but by the statistics: At every rank, in every field and at every institution, women still earn less than their male counterparts. Women are still concentrated in a limited number of academic fields and at lower levels. Men receive tenure more frequently than women. The hiring and promotion of women faculty and administrators has lagged far behind the enrollment of women students, who now constitute a majority of undergraduates. The higher the rank, the fewer women occupy it. The more prestigious a school or department, the fewer women it has. Women department chairs are rare; women deans are very rare.

These issues of pay and promotion are common to women in most fields of work. However, in addition, women with academic careers face some very deep-rooted prejudices, the most basic being that femininity and intellectual vigor are incompatible.

According to the report, women have enormous difficulties--often caused by men’s attitudes--in striking a balance about how to behave and how to look. Women academics who try to look attractive, choose feminine clothes and a gentle and nurturing manner of dealing with others risk downgrading of their intellectual achievements. Many women cited an enormous focus on their appearance and personality--for example, being described in letters of recommendation or introductions as “a charming teacher” rather than a good one, a “lovely addition to our department” rather than a brilliant one. If they work with a man on a project, it is often assumed he did the serious work and/or that the two are engaged in a sexual relationship. The disrespect for the brain of a feminine woman even filters down to students, with women professors reporting that their male undergraduate students attempt to assert superiority over them.

Women professors or administrators whose dress or manner is not typically feminine face the other side of the coin. The report said that a male professor who dresses sloppily is usually regarded as being deeply involved in his important work, whereas a woman who is inattentive to dress is looked upon as probably being sloppy in her work as well. A masculine style in dress or behavior will bring a woman professor accusations of being aggressive and unpleasant and even--this seems peculiar to academia--accusations of homosexuality. Women also reported that working with women colleagues on scholarly activities brought a reputation or kidding about being lesbians, as if there would be no other reason for two women academics to work together.

One example of the disrespect accorded the academic work of women were complaints that if a woman professor was conferring with a female colleague or student in her office, male colleagues felt free to walk in and start to talk; if she was conferring with a man, those same colleagues would look in, apologize and leave.

The report concludes with extensive specific recommendations about how colleges and universities can eliminate sexist behavior in all areas and also how individual men concerned with the problem can examine and change their own behavior and how women can identify and deal with incidents of discrimination.

One woman, in describing her own feelings about being a minority in her field, provided an image that could help men understand the difficulties:

“Imagine that your lawyer, your doctor, your priest, rabbi or minister, your senator and representative, your mayor, the president of your institution, most of its trustees, almost all of the deans and most of your colleagues were all women. How would you feel?”