#yale-nus

(by Sherlyn Goh)

Yale-NUS College professors share their experiences as women academics at a dialogue session at Yale-NUS College, October 21, 2015. THE G SPOT/Daryl Yang (SINGAPORE)

Over 30 students, staff and faculty listen attentively at a dialogue session at Yale-NUS College, October 21, 2015. THE G SPOT/Daryl Yang (SINGAPORE)

Unconscious gender bias affects women academics, and the structure of academia disadvantages women, according to women professors of Yale-NUS College (YNC) at a dialogue session on Oct. 21, 2015.

“Why is that women can get into academia at a certain rate, but all of a sudden can’t get tenure at the same rate?” Christina Tarnopolsky, Visiting Associate Professor of Political Science, addressed an audience of over 30 students, staff and faculty at a common lounge in YNC.

Titled ‘Women in Academia’, the dialogue session was organised by the YNC student diversity group The G Spot and explored the experiences of and challenges faced by women academics.

Challenges faced by women academics

Amber Carpenter, Associate Professor of Philosophy, said academia is not unfriendly to women, but the structure of academia is an “impending cliff” that disadvantages women.

She said academia strongly favours quick and easy production of material, but because women tend to be more perfectionistic, they take a longer time than men to submit their work to journals and so get published less often than men.

Carpenter added that women have to decide earlier than men whether they want children, even though starting a family early might hurt their chances of getting tenure.

“For a woman, you can’t make that choice once you've written your book and gotten tenure, whereas men can say: I’m going to write my book, get tenure, and at 40 years old think of having a family,” Carpenter added.

According to Sarah Weiss, Associate Professor of Music, fewer women than men get tenure partly because of unconscious gender biases against women.

Both Weiss and Carpenter said studies have shown that most professors unintentionally favour male graduate students when asked to write job recommendation letters, and people tend to favour research papers written by men than women.

Women in male-dominated fields

For women academics in male-dominated fields, the lack of visibility and representation of women poses a challenge for them.

Ng Hui Khoon, Assistant Professor of Physics, who never had a woman lecturer until her fourth year as an undergraduate in Cornell University said: “I don't feel like I have been discriminated against, but a large part of the problem comes with not having role models when you’re in college.”

Not only are there few women undergraduates and graduates interested in Physics to begin with, the process of getting tenure is tedious with high attrition rates, resulting in a very small number of women Physics professors, she said.

Similarly, Carpenter said there were fewer women students in Philosophy than there were in Engineering when she was in graduate school, with both fields being highly dominated by men.

Ng said the difficulty of doing research in a male-dominated field is that men tend to forge stronger relationships with other men than they do with her.

“As a female, I feel a little bit left out. These have impacts on my work and the kinds of interactions I have,” she added, stressing that it is through interactions that collaborations happen and ideas exchange.

While Ng said she does not think that the lack of women in Physics faculties is due to discrimination, Rebecca Tannenbaum, Senior Lecturer of History, said more subtle forms of sexism may be keeping women out of Physics faculties.

Women’s roles in academia

Beyond research and teaching, women often take on additional duties such as being on review committees, said Tarnopolsky.

“You feel pressured to say yes to all these things, and doing that can really hurt your focus on your research,” she said.

Tannenbaum added that care work sometimes gets folded into academic work, and women academics tend to play the role of informal counsellor to whom junior faculty and students confide in.

She said: “I remember there was a day when three people cried in my office. I don’t think this is a role male professors often play.”

Moving forward

Carpenter said it is important to be informed about unconscious gender biases and create institutions that are inclusive to women, such as increasing representation of women on academic panels.

She said: “We are here, so why aren’t our voices getting heard? If you’re going to have a panel of a certain topic, don't just come up with the first four names you can think of.”

Additionally, the hiring of academics should not be rushed because people tend to fall back on stereotypes when pressed for time, which results in them favouring the hiring of men over women, said Carpenter.

In response to an attendee who suggested for faculties to set aside some positions for women and racial minorities, Ng said while there needs to be a conscious effort to hire women, she questions whether using quotas is the best solution.

“You don’t want to be hired at a department as a woman who fills the quota. The female academic starts questioning herself about whether she’s actually as good as the rest of her colleagues,” she added.

Apart from inclusive hiring practices, Weiss and Tannenbaum also said it is important to incorporate gender issues and women authors into the curricula.

Speaking about the process of planning the syllabus for Comparative Social Institutions, a compulsory module offered at YNC, Tannenbaum said: “I was pushing really hard to get gender in the first iteration, but it didn’t go through and ended up cramped into a unit on family.”

‘Women in Academia’

According to Sherice Ngaserin, one of the organisers of ‘Women in Academia’, The G Spot organised the event as a follow-up from a focus group discussion on feminism that it organised last year.

During the focus group discussion, women students in male-dominated majors said they felt like they were not taken seriously and some felt like they were talked over in classes, she said.

Swarnima Sircar, another organiser, added that gender has been discussed in relation to many industries but not as often in academia.

Many attendees including faculty and students said the dialogue session was insightful and thought-provoking as it explored the complexities of gender and academia well.

Jennifer Sheridan, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at YNC, said the discussion on introducing women authors into curricula made her think that she should actively seek out papers written by women to hand out in class as readings.

Second-year YNC student Kwok Yingchen said the session gave him a better perspective on how his professors choose to facilitate classes and assign readings.

“One thing I hoped this discussion would have focused on is the idea of how gender would affect the production of intellectual ideas, how it changes what kinds of things you might be preoccupied about,” he added.

Yogesh Tulsi, who will matriculate at YNC next year, said the ground covered by the session was good, but he thinks having more professors of racial minorities share their experiences would have added to the discussion.

The upcoming project organised by the The G Spot is ‘Doing It Right’, a two-week long campaign from Nov. 2 to 12 comprising talks, dialogue sessions and workshops on sexuality and sexual health.

Organisers pose for a photo with the professors who spoke at ‘Women in Academia’ at Yale-NUS College, October 21, 2015. THE G SPOT/Kwok Yingchen (SINGAPORE)

If you can't see, that's what I'm doing right now. I learned enough LaTeX in two days to typeset my twelve-page final project, and I'm quite chuffed.

I tried, for a semester, by signing up for newsletters and stuff, to be interested in the world, and I have totally failed. Completely unengaged. 

Being the first class to attend a college gets rough sometimes- like now, when promised courses have not materialised, and when the school is too small to have more than one timing for a class. 

Attendant to that problem is another one - that students may be of the excessively idealistic breed, like me. I would take Latin and bio and physics and two politics courses and one philosophy but the timetabling doesn't work, and anyway, I am flailing at deciding any kind of life direction apart from 'I am doggedly refusing to drop Latin'.