A team of professors from both the University and Clemson University recently completed a study that shows students generally prefer male physical science teachers to females in the same field.
The original project originated in Harvard, and data supporting this notion was collected from universities nationwide in association with the Factors Influencing College Science Success project, Education Assoc. Prof. Robert Tai said.
“I think it’s a social-cultural thing,” Tai said. “And what’s most distressing is that both men and women hold this view; there’s a presumption that males just know more about the physical sciences.”
Tai noted that these gender biases are present in both colleges and high schools. He said he feels that society is not focusing enough on gender issues at the high school and secondary school level.
“This really is a self-defeating situation,” Tai said, “especially when we need everybody pulling in the same direction, given our current state of affairs.”
Tai said in light of pressing issues like global warming and energy sources, the nation’s researchers need all the brain power they can generate, making the contributions of female scientists crucial. Largely because of this gender bias, women are discouraged from pursuing careers in the sciences, Tai said.
“If you have a poor view based on a bias against women, and you’re female yourself, it’s a big concern, as the numbers of women in the physical sciences will stay low as a result,” Tai said.
Geoff Potvin, an assistant engineering and science education professor at Clemson, echoed Tai’s opinion that this bias most likely is the result of a cultural stereotype. Furthermore, he said the study found that male and female students perceive teachers in different fields of science differently. Males underrated female high school teachers who taught biology and chemistry, but females did not. In the case of physics, however, both female and male students underrated their female teachers, Tai said.
“This is interesting, Potvin said. “Because high school teachers being underrated is one thing, while this attitude concerned with the bias is another.”
He said his other concern was that this collective opinion could affect female students making their own career decisions later in life. This data does not necessarily mean the bias pushes female students away from the physical sciences and into the life sciences stream, but it probably deters them from pursuing subjects like physics, which in itself is a great cause for concern, he said.
“It is a known fact that the percentage of women that make it through an education that is physics-oriented is getting smaller,” Potvin said. “The question is why.”
In trying to explain the study’s findings, he said women are traditionally predisposed to the humanities and social studies. There is, however, evidence to the contrary, he said. Specific studies and papers like ‘Gender, Mathematics and Science’ by Education Prof. Marcia C. Linn of the University of California, Berkeley, and Psychology Prof. Janet S. Hyde at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, state that men and women are equally able to excel in the same fields, indicating that this bias is the result of a social and cultural mindset — and not an actual difference in sex.
“I’m hopeful that this problem will go away,” Tai said of the bias against women in science. “I have to believe it will, or I wouldn’t do the research.”
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