The Impact on Students

Students who come to the university have already been well educated in the meaning of gender difference in American society: those differences have shaped their identities and senses of self in profound ways—to the point that it is difficult for them to reflect critically on gender issues. They are likely to believe quite firmly in equality and fair treatment. They are likely to dismiss the "small slights" described above as insignificant. They are much more likely than faculty or staff to believe that the historical legacy of gender inequality will not directly affect them. (As the MIT study notes, this belief has been held by successive generations of women.) They perhaps even resist—sometimes energetically—any evidence to the contrary. For that reason, when something happens in their own experience to convince them otherwise—when directly confronted, for instance, with evidence that women are not taken as seriously as men—women students are often at a loss to know how to respond. Moreover, those who risk speaking up or who work to improve women’s status are likely to find that their efforts are trivialized or put down by their peers.

The impact of subtle discrimination on students is profound. As noted above, "small slights" perpetuate practices that devalue women, marginalize women’s experiences, and result in the omission of women from the curriculum. Including women in the curriculum is critical: we need to be attentive to how new work on women and gender throughout the disciplines might be better integrated in the Stetson curriculum, not just concentrated in some disciplines. (To do otherwise is to fail to introduce students to exciting new work that is reshaping knowledge throughout the curriculum.) But attending to the "unofficial" education that our students receive--both in and out of the classroom is also crucial. If a faculty member consistently use the "generic" masculine pronoun to characterize persons of high status, he or she sends a powerful message to both male and female students about the place of men and women in the world; if faculty do not include work by women they send the message that women are not active contributors in that field of study. Faculty who ask male students the more challenging questions or who devote more time to responding to male students’ questions are not preparing their male and female students equally for the challenges they will face in their professional lives. The work we’ve discussed above on gender socialization and subtle forms of discrimination suggests that faculty may not even be aware of the possibility that they treat male and female students differently. Given the long-term consequences of subtle discrimination, it is important that the university promote a greater awareness of these issues among the faculty.

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