Women in academia and their effect on the university
This is a fascinating article that discusses the effect of high numbers of women in academia. It’s something I’ve thought about quite a bit, and I had already come to some reluctant conclusions that are in line with the conclusions of the authors.
It’s not that only women exhibit the described tendencies, but they are setting the tone and driving the woke revolution. I first noticed it myself when I was in graduate school in the 1990s, and it got more noticeable when Larry Summers was forced to leave Harvard (I wrote about that in many posts, for example this ancient one). It’s only gotten more extreme since.
Some excerpts from the Quillette article:
Today, an institution once led and populated almost entirely by men, is increasingly led and populated by women. Because men and women (on average) have different traits, tendencies, and priorities, this change in sex ratios has changed and will continue to change the nature of the modern university…
…It is increasingly evident that men and women view the purpose of higher education and science differently, and that many emerging trends in academia can be attributed, at least in part, to the feminization of academic priorities…
A 2017 YouGov survey of 2,300 US adults on issues related to free speech and tolerance on college campuses (weighted to be nationally representative) found that:
56 percent of men said that colleges should not protect students from offensive ideas; 64 percent of women said that they should.
When presented with a variety of controversial claims made by speakers (e.g., men are better at math, all white people are racist, police are justified at stopping African Americans at higher rates), a majority of men supported nine of the 11 speakers’ right to speak on campus, and a majority of women opposed all 11 speakers’ right to do so.
51 percent of men said colleges should not disinvite speakers if students threaten violent protest; 67 percent of women said they should.
58 percent of men opposed a confidential reporting system at colleges which students could use to report offensive comments; 54 percent of women supported it…A 2021 survey of 3,772 academics and PhD students at universities in the United States, Britain, and Canada conducted by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology found that:
66–76 percent of men support intellectually foundational texts above diversity quotas on reading lists; 44–66 percent of women support diversity quotas above foundational texts.
Female academics report a greater willingness than their male counterparts to support dismissal campaigns against a colleague who has conducted research that reached a controversial conclusion.
The article goes on to cite similar research and many similar findings, and summarizes them this way:
The overall theme of these differences is that men are more committed than women to the pursuit of truth as the raison d’être of science, while women are more committed to various moral goals, such as equity, inclusion, and the protection of vulnerable groups. Consequently, men are more tolerant of controversial and potentially offensive scientific findings being pursued, disseminated, and discussed, and women are more willing to obstruct or suppress science perceived to be potentially harmful or offensive. Put more simply, men are relatively more interested in advancing what is empirically correct, and women are relatively more interested in advancing what is morally desirable.
That’s being kind. Actually, the function of a university is not to proselytize or to make people feel good, or to suppress the truth, it is to seek the truth. The idea is that this is a good in and of itself, a sort of secular “the truth shall make you free” philosophy. Other institutions – the church, the family, the therapy profession – are the ones to deal with the rest. But apparently more women than men wish to remake the university in order to have it take on those tasks, and for the most part it’s already happened.
I am a woman, but I certainly do not agree. And if you look at the figures, it’s hardly a straight man/woman split. But it is just as obvious that the tendency to want such a transformation is more pronounced in women, or certainly in women who pursue careers in universities.
More from the article:
Women evolved, as Anne Campbell memorably put it, to survive so they could nurture their vulnerable offspring. Thus, women are more likely to experience self-protective emotions such as anxiety and fear, to be more harm- and risk-averse, and to have more empathy and desire to protect the vulnerable. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to take risks and to endorse hierarchy and support for conflict.
Yes, but. I’m a fairly risk-averse and pretty consistent worrier myself, but I’ve never made the error of thinking a university should either share or support those qualities. How hard is it to separate one’s own emotions from the agenda you think an institution ought to have? I don’t think it should be hard at all – but apparently it is, for many people. And the more people (women or men) who have decided these are perfectly valid functions for universities, the more people they will hire who feel the same way, and the more they will teach their students that this is the way it should be. Therefore the phenomenon will grow and grow, until perhaps some backlash causes it to reverse itself.
NOTE: Of course, leftism and post-modernism enter into this a great deal, in particular the idea that there is no objective truth. Once a person believes that, then of course it would follow that there’s no point in seeking it.
As I noted in comments to the Quillette article…what is *really* scary is that if you look at a fairly extensive 2017 survey, and you focus on the cross-tabs…
47% of Democrat women believe that guest speakers should not be allowed by universities if their words are considered hateful or offensive by some.
We can be sure that this demographic is already well-represented in university administrations, given the vast preponderance of Dems in adademia, and is increasing its relative numbers constantly.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2017/05/03/lots-of-americans-not-just-college-students-favor-banning-offensive-speakers-from-campuses/
As one faculty wag at my college put it, ” the college is being transformed into a gynocracy.” As the faculty and the administration became feminine majority, the school transformed into the leftist indoctrination center it is today. True, that most of the women faculty hired were committed leftists, but the point of the article is well taken from my experience.
I’m expecting a “what would we do without studies?” quip when your post makes it to Instapundit.
“Put more simply, men are relatively more interested in advancing what is empirically correct, and women are relatively more interested in advancing what is morally desirable”
For both men and women…when the topic is not something where their opinions will have a direct effect of *them*….I suspect that both their definitions of “what is empirically correct” and “what is morally desirable” will in many cases be strongly influenced by what is more personally beneficial/convenient.
For example, someone’s beliefs about Climate Change will not have a *direct* impact on themselves, given that they are only one vote out of millions. But expressing a belief that “CO2-caused Climate Change is absolutely a fact and is potentially catastrophic” coupled with a belief that “It is evil not to prioritize Climate Change very highly” will, in many social circles, companies, and almost all universities be more beneficial for their status and prospects than expressing opposite opinions about empirical truth and moral value.
I’d be interested to know whether the survey “of 3,772 academics and PhD students at universities in the United States, Britain, and Canada” included a breakdown of differences in universities within each country as well as country-by-country differences. To take Canada as an example, Quillette has published a number of articles on the general radicalization of Canadian universities. In regard to the United States, with its wide variety of technical and other specialized schools, I’d expect that women at schools like MIT, Caltech, and the military academies are closer in their views of the function of education to their male counterparts than they are to female students at universities that emphasize “studies” programs– though these days even the technical and military schools in the U.S. are under pressure to become ever more woke.
I propose that I speak on any university campus at all on the subject, “Resolved, say what you want about Islam it’s still got its women under control.”
You may all, of course, wait here until I return.
In related news, the WSJ reports in the latest world university rankings by noting that the US dominance is falling, and China’s is increasing.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4100110/posts
Back to the thread, libertarians have long noticed that the welfare state was non-existent before women got the vote. And only when the female franchise became established in states, did this change — and only after the 18th Amendment in January 1919 did Congress pass the Volstead Act in October — marking the beginning of the experiment in the prohibition of alcohol.
Similarly, the further Right of Center one goes, the more rare female participation in politics gets.
Too bad certain Civil Rights Acts effectively killed men’s clubs and right of freedom of association as part of the First Freedoms.
And honest if pressed libertarian women will say “we [women] voted in the welfare state.”
Oh. And Penn’s Wharton School has added ESG and sustainability majors, first in the Ivy League to do so. (The sponsoring academics were all Democrat Party voters.)
Actually, the function of a university is not to proselytize or to make people feel good, or to suppress the truth, it is to seek the truth.
I am not sure this was EVER true. For example, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, and Harvard were founded to educate the clergy in theology and Biblical languages. The land-grant universities were founded to promote “the teaching of practical agriculture, science, military science, and engineering”.
The way American universities have been run since at least the earliest twentieth century is to a) provide jobs (not just to professors, take a look at your state employee database some time and see how few university employees are for instruction), b) award credentials, c) collect research grants.
I never saw an item labelled “seeking truth” in any budget or appropriation, and there’s no management metrics tied to it.
At the same time the Student Body is also changing, many more Women than Men. My best Friend was a Professor of Veterinary Medicine at a well known University. He commented years ago on the changing of the Students from Men studying Vet Med to Women, and that there were different challenges.
Note too the higher level of Women in Policing in Command positions.
That is a well written post and the authors (Cory Clark and Bo Winegard) do a good job of backing up their statements with data.
One thing not discussed is the tendency of Western men to kowtow to women and/or please them and defer to their wants. I can’t help but think this hasn’t fostered a change in the administrative side of academia as the number of women in professional and administrative positions has grown within Universities.
If a man proposed an administrative change (more vegan choices in the cafeteria, for example) I think other men would feel comfortable questioning his proposal and debating him. Men higher up on the org chart would have no hesitation exercising their authority and shooting the proposal down. However, if a woman proposed it I think men in the administration would be more likely to demonstrate they could deliver on her request.
A recent story related poll results for the proposition “can men become pregnant?”
I don’t recall if the poll team was reputable, etc, but I do recall that the highest proportion of “YES” was in the category, white, female, college educated.
Many Americans proclaim that “women earn $0.85 for every dollar men earn.” As an argument against that “stat” I sometimes hear people state, “If that were true then companies would hire women. Companies want to maximize profits, so why not replace the men with women and make 15% more?”
Although I know why the first statement is invalid I laugh at the naivety of those using the aforementioned argument against it. Companies have figured that out! Well, they haven’t figured out the $0.85 sense thing since that’s not real. It’s been illegal in this country to pay people differently based on gender for over 70 years. But companies are very aware that women tend to work differently than men, and they exploit those differences for profit.
The ranks of salaried, middle management positions are filled with women! Men seem more adroit at compartmentalization and women seem more apt to make everything a family group; their family group. Women managers seem much more willing to take work home and work on evenings and weekends. Women tend to be more social so they’ll check their phones for work emails often.
It has to be more than coincidence I see a great many companies with a man at the top and a lot of women filling out the ranks in the middle.
A few notes about women in universities.
Women dominate university HR departments. They write policies that result in more women being hired.
The priorities of female-dominated HR departments heavily influence search committees.
Women are especially dominant in Humanities and Social Science departments. These departments have become primarily dedicated to leftist political and cultural activism. The university itself is the first target of their activism. It’s their full-time job. Meanwhile, men in science and engineering departments are obliviously doing research and applying for grants. University administrators take an enormous piece of these grants. It’s called “overhead.” These funds are redistributed, often to projects, programs, and departments dominated by women. This is justified by reference to strategic plans and mission statements, often written by committees dominated by women.
If men object to anything a woman says or does, he’ll be called a sexist bigot, and his career will be ruined.
The numbers found in the Quillette article only hint at the outright anti-male hostility now prevalent in American universities.
These are just a few comments, but I could go on and on about this. I’ve reluctantly concluded that we’d all be better off with a return to single-sex education.
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Abraham Lincoln
That the United States is a Republic and not a Democracy is why the Left is so intent upon fundamentally transforming it into an unsustainable socialist democracy. Which can then be rolled into a One World Government.
The more astute on the left are well aware of what John Adams pointed out; “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy.
It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.”
The Left intends to incorporate the US and every other nation state into a One World Government ruled (at the top) by an unelected Global Elite.
Yes, but. I’m a fairly risk-averse and pretty consistent worrier myself, but I’ve never made the error of thinking a university should either share or support those qualities.
You also make bullet-point arguments. This is atypical among women in fora like this, who tend to prefer on-the-one-hand-on-the-other observations.
Shy of 40 years ago, I was a member of a discussion forum on international relations. One of our occasional visitors said we sounded like the bloody McLaughlin Group (then quite new on the air). We had two women in the forum, one of whom never said anything. (The other would take us all on with gusto). Sad to say, Miss Gusto is now on the Cornell faculty. She’s been one of the characters trying to get Wm. Jacobsen canned.
Women in academia and their effect on the university
Hmm…this makes academia’s “truth vs moral good” problem seem even more intractable, especially since “moral good” these days means woke socialism.
Furthermore given that there are more women with degrees than men in the pipeline for academic careers, this problem will likely continue to worsen.
Kinda makes me nostalgic for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which definitely imposed its mission for moral good upon America, but at least it was pro-Christian, pro-America and pro-family, rather than the wacko leftism run amok these days.
FYI: The WCTU is still alive and kicking with an international presence, though far from the influence of its heyday.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman%27s_Christian_Temperance_Union#Current_status
For example, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, and Harvard were founded to educate the clergy in theology and Biblical languages.
No. The medieval liberal arts consisted of the trivium and quadrivium. Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric; Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy.
Art Deco:
A little side story –
When I first started the blog, for months I didn’t have a photo posted. But very very consistently, people assumed I was a man. Essentially no one assumed I was a woman. It got to be annoying, and that’s why I added the apple photo.
Women managers seem much more willing to take work home and work on evenings and weekends.
That wasn’t the salient feature of the lady managers for which I worked.
neo,
I can see how people would think you “write” like a man by reading some of your posts, but having read a lot of your writing over several years now I must say you come across as a very talented representative of your gender. I can think of several other women who write in a similar vein; Heather MacDonald, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Peggy Noonan (sometimes, although, you are better and more consistent than her), Helen Smith (Glenn Reynolds’ wife), even Camille Paglia.
And when you write about topics other than politics, law or science you have a great, feminine touch. Your pieces on dance and poetry are delightful and often fathom an emotional depth many male authors lack.
Presumptuous, but I’ve always assumed you had a strong relationship with your father and perhaps felt closer to him than your mother? He was an attorney, correct? You seem like someone who intentionally learned to think logically and unemotionally, like an attorney, at an early age in order to make cogent points when talking to grown-ups.
Rufus T. Firefly:
Thanks!!
One thing, though – I had a very poor relationship with my father, which is a very sad and unfortunate thing. But on the other hand, I was always told I resembled him in terms of logical thought.
Conflour said, “I’ve reluctantly concluded that we’d all be better off with a return to single-sex education.”
That proposal won’t go anywhere because of the transgender lobby.
And the more people (women or men) who have decided these are perfectly valid functions for universities, the more people they will hire who feel the same way,
That began in the ’60s, metastasized without limits, and now EVERYONE feels the same way. Or else.
neo, sorry to hear about your relationship with your father. That’s what I get for making assumptions. Well, regardless of the reality of your relationship he should have been proud of his daughter!
Rufus T. Firefly @ 12:10: What you said.
Neo: thanks for running a great blog.
Quillette > “Consequently, men are more tolerant of controversial and potentially offensive scientific findings being pursued, disseminated, and discussed, and women are more willing to obstruct or suppress science perceived to be potentially harmful or offensive. Put more simply, men are relatively more interested in advancing what is empirically correct, and women are relatively more interested in advancing what is morally desirable.”
I have two words for you: Sayers’ “Gaudy Night.”
Coincidentally, I was reading today in the companion book to the 1985 BBC mini-series by science historian James Burke, “The Day the Universe Changed.”
Still pretty good after all these years, but I’ve made copious notes in the margins reflecting some things I’ve learned since then.
The point is, one of his episodes discusses the institution of the university, it’s varying goals and procedures. Truth might be what some academicians were seeking, but that was not the goal of every academy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Universe_Changed
Episode 2. “In the Light of the Above: Medieval Conflict – Faith & Reason”
The development of academic discipline away from mysticism and towards structure, logic and reason.
Wow – that’s stunning in a way; not so stunning in retrospect.
Neo: You have no idea how many people have assumed I am female due to my standard internet handle you see here. Once, on one of the old blogs, someone attacked me and basically assumed I was some lonely, obese, Che Guevara shirt wearing, SJW, waddling through the halls of my school, not doing any work except trying to indoctrinate the kids!
Aesopfan.
Wrt empirically valid vs. morally desirable.
Seen that in various discussions, although it’s not a severe boundary.
Women are more likely to say “ban” whatever it is as a solution without the slightest indication they’ve thought about the mechanics of banning and whether it would actually work, and whether it would be effective.
For example, in a group this summer, somebody suggested banning the AR15. I asked, presume that’s signed into law on a Friday afternoon. What does Monday morning look like? Where are the AR15s? Who’s getting them rounded up? Since the only ones which can be confiscated are the ones the government knows about, how are we confiscating those owned by criminals, which the government does not know about?
Blank looks. And that was from the women in the group.
Next study should be women lawyers if you want to dig into some real crazy stats. And then study women in government to expose how a massive misuse of federal funding and power ramped up in the last thirty years. IMO.
@Art Deco: No, the medieval liberal arts consisted of the trivium and quadrivium.
Medieval universities taught canon law, medicine, theology and languages in addition to the trivium and quadrivium. At any rate Harvard (1636) and Yale (1701) are not medieval universities.
“One of the next things we longed for, and looked after was to advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministery to the Churches, when our present Ministers shall lie in the Dust. And as we were thinking and consulting how to effect this great work, it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr. Harvard (a godly gentleman and a lover of learning; then living amongst us) to give one-half of his estate (it being in all about £1,700) towards the erecting of a Colledge, and all his library.”
And Cambridge and Oxford’s primary mission was to educate clergy up to the 19th century. While the trivium and quadrivium certainly loomed large in that education in the thirteenth century–other subjects were canon law and medicine–it was still almost all priests and monks at that time, and as late as 1840 the majority of Oxford’s matriculated students were Anglican clergy.
None of these universities were envisioned as places where people could just freely search for new truth–they were primarily places for people with religious vocations to be taught what was already understood to be true so that they could teach the same to others.
Modern universities might talk about “search for truth” to legislators or the public at appropriation time but they’ve never really been in that business. In 47 states in 2018, the highest-paid state employee was someone employed by a state university, nearly always a football coach but sometimes a university president.
Several observations which seem related:
— Committees are miserable experiences. But being a male on a committee dominated by women is the worst. Men generally focus on achieving the purported goal of the committee (unless the man is a ‘politician’ personality). Women focus on making sure that every woman on the committee feels like her contribution is valued.
— women (generally) value and trust their feelings over “truth” or logic. This is especially useful in debate because feelings cannot be contradicted or disproved.
— Victimhood has become the ultimate power in our society. Not surprising. Note the strategic power of a woman’s tears for generations.
— the notion of consensus in science is nonsensical. The employment of a claim of consensus has become common place as the feminization of academia has progressed.
Frederick,
Never confuse the athletic dept with the rest of the university. They are paid from different sources and have nothing to do with each other. The football coach is the most accountable person on any university campus. He’s usually a far more effective teacher and works at least twice as many hours. He’s also much better grounded in reality.
Over the past 100 years, the percentage of patents applied for by women has increased from 2% to 13%, despite the predominance of women in universities. Will it ever get to 50%? I don’t think so.
Feelings, emotions, and desires can not be patented.
Overgrown HR, “Studies” majors, and “Equity” are all luxuries that our society can not long afford and will be the first to go.
https://tinyurl.com/3dhuxe4m
I posited Elmer’s Law over a decade ago and it has withstood the test of time ;
When an organization becomes feminized, priority shifts from efficient production of goods and services to development of rules for the comfort and security of women. Ossification and organizational death are inevitable.
I’m a woman and a degreed engineer (’81). That was when the dumbing-down wasn’t quite in full gear, and my U was one of the conservative late-adopters in that regard. I wouldn’t want to restrict any woman’s educational aspirations, but most women don’t relish challenge as many men seem to do. I remember tackling projects just BECAUSE they were hard to do and I wanted that feeling of objective accomplishment. Few women that I’ve met share that trait. Maybe you do, Neo, you sound like you’d make a fine engineer, though a tad on the wordy side (I kid, i kid).
This trait of avoiding challenge is what disturbs me most about the people I”m pretty well doomed to settle for as my peer group, due to life circumstances. Nobody wants to attempt anything. Tearing stuff down is quite popular, though.
I would gladly give up the vote if the entire system were re-built to allocate votes to civilization-building/protecting entities … think forex married parents and/or enlisted military members. I’m sure there are many possible configurations, but if our civilization is to survive, we need to privilege the builders and protectors.
I’ve hired many women and had many working for me, including some as managers and directors. My experience has generally been good; two of the best leaders I’ve known have been women–created a family atmosphere in their groups, if you want to put it that way, but a family with high performance expectations.
Some weird experiences, though…once when I was doing some consulting, the client company assigned a young woman to work with me. I had her gathering some data for the project, she did a good job. Then I decided that some more data-gathering was needed, and she got very upset–thought she had paid her dues doing the boring data-gathering work and wanted to move on to something more exciting, regardless of what the project needed.
Guess who didn’t come to mind when, a couple of years later, I was trying to fill some *very* attractive and potentially lucrative positions.
When an organization becomes feminized, priority shifts from efficient production of goods and services to development of rules for the comfort and security of women. Ossification and organizational death are inevitable.
School systems at all levels seem to avoid ‘organizational death’.
I have observed the femeninization of Medicine from the inside for about 60 years. I began medical school in 1961 with a class that included three women out of 66. I started again in 1962 after a short session with the Air Force (Berlin Wall) with a class that included no women. I went on to a surgical residency that included (briefly) a Catholic nun who left the program and ultimately left the order of nuns. After 30 years of surgery practice, I retired and began teaching medical students. The program of instruction was about clinical matters and physical examination. In the beginning the faculty were mostly men, like me retired. After 15 years, almost all the faculty were women with a few men with ear rings, etc. About 7 years ago, I met the Dean of Diversity and shortly after I quit. It was just in time. Soon after, I left California for Arizona.
By the way, I have some reservations about Asian physicians. One very pretty little Asian woman surgeon botched my wife’s gallbladder surgery. When in practice, I had done over a thousand such surgeries without a complication. I do know some superb Asian surgeons, all male.
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That should be part of every debate for a statewide or national office. That would be a very clarifying discussion.
I just checked out Gerard’s interesting https://americandigest.org website.
It’s landing page lists these virtues in the following order:
Duty, Beauty, Liberty, Country, Honor, Family, Faith.
An interesting discussion might be how to prioritize those virtues. Of course, defining those virtues might have to be done first.
By analogy, in prioritizing the 10 Commandments, whose terms I think I understand pretty well, I would rate the 10th commandment
as one of top 3 in importance. If folks faithfully observed that commandment, the 6th – 8th commandments would be afterthoughts.
There are a meta-implications here.
First is that female coteries are by definition self-protective, fostering a herd mentality that bears on family rather than individual success.
Second, this cooperative vs. competitive trope has domestic-tribal but not inter-group, societal advantages– no level of in-group cohesion avails when barbarians are at the gate. Simply put, no company of late-teen females will survive two minutes battling late-teen males.
Alas for academic and a broad range of other hacks, women in general are not doers but talkers. Male composers, poets, great creators, will starve in garrets; females won’t, because –pace Mary Cassatt, Marie Curie, Hedy Lamar (!)– they lack incentive. (Seven years after his 1905 Annus Mirabilis, Einstein remained a Technical Expert 2nd Class in the Bern Patent Office.) Ossified dead-ends aside, neither poetry nor science has money in it.
Prior to ye ole 19th Amendment, the U.S. treated females en bloc as second-class electoral citizens, not for civil rights purposes but because the Founders knew female “leadership” invariably failed.
However one might wish it otherwise, the truth remains: Women do not dare risk/reward, expose themselves to failure while tinkering in a garage.
From (say) 1850 – 1900, America’s 19th Century innovators changed the world forever; from 1950 – 2000, atrophied feministical larngynxsters habitually crash below the mean.
Interesting study. Maybe I missed it but I do not see any indication that the study took age into account. If the male cohort skews older than the female—which may be true given the more recent increases in female professors—then maybe the explanation for the different attitudes of the two groups is not so much gender as age. Specifically, the younger professors, predominantly women, have come up through institutions already saturated with woke ideology. The authors should check their data to correct for age disparities. They should check, for example, whether younger male profs align more closely with the attitudes expressed by a majority of the female profs.