A recent study by a history professor at Northeastern University has shed light on how students view female professors compared to their male counterparts.

The research uses reviews on Rate My Professor to prove that bias against female professors exists. The research, performed by Ben Schmidt, provides an interactive graph with data from 14 million reviews on Schmidt’s website. The graph uses keywords like funny and rude to show how college students feel about their professors.

The graph allows viewers to enter any word or two-word phrase, and the data will show how many times the term is used per million words of text. According to the research, not all words have a gender split, but a surprising number do.

“Gender bias can take many forms, both open and subtle. Its presence and extent vary across different contexts and settings on a campus,” said Guy Ozyegin, an associate professor of sociology and gender, sexuality and women studies at the College of William and Mary, in a Feb. 16 USA Today article.

The graph opens up with the word funny already plugged in. Funny is used almost 1,300 times per 1 million words for male psychology professors, but when it comes to females, only 672 times. More women were deemed nice, incompetent, rude and mean. While men were more often labeled as being boring, they also were frequently deemed exciting based on the graph. The graph does not account for gender of the reviewer, nor does it account for cultural background.

Some of the discrepancies in fields such as science, technology and math can be chalked up to the underrepresentation of women in these fields, Ozyegin said. This is true, but when measuring usage per 1 million words, the graph helps to counteract some of that disparity.

Some Syracuse University students are ambivalent towards the findings, with many citing the fact that they personally have more male professors. Some students seem to agree with the research, citing that women are less stern, while others rebuke it, saying female teachers are more relatable.

“(Female professors) that I’ve had, I’ve had two, and they’re not really assertive. They act really nice or really caring, but they don’t necessarily care,” said Justin Fields, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. “I think they try to make students like them more, because a majority of us prefer male teachers.”

“For me, the female teachers are more personal with you,” said James Patterson, a freshman in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. “My one teacher, for writing, she uses things like Buzzfeed to help relate to us.”

Fields said he feels as if female professors try to be nicer, while Patterson said he finds female professors easier going than male professors.

Published on February 24, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Joe: jpleonar@syr.edu