In a group activity I participated in this semester, a group of Duke men were asked what came to mind when they thought of the opposite sex. Among the various crude locker room phrases that were blurted out, perhaps none were more disturbing than the words “secretary,” “women’s studies” and “humanities.” As much as women have advanced in academics in the past few decades, this progress is often much too disheartening upon the realization that despite the increase in female enrollment in colleges, many still believe that women are more suited for liberal arts degrees such as English and art than men, who are better suited for careers in math and the “hard” sciences.
Although women have closed significant gaps in law and medicine, their numbers continue to trail behind in fields such as physics and chemistry. According to recent data provided by the National Institute of Physics, women hold only 13 percent of faculty positions in physics departments around the nation. Women are also underrepresented among Duke physics faculty.
In 1995, in a column titled “Duke physics equation doesn’t include women” published in the St. Peterburg Times, reporter Diane Steinle wrote about the experience of a student named Laurie Freeman who was driven away from the major due to sexist acts and attitudes. Lawrence Evans, chairman of Duke’s physics department at the time, responded to the column saying that her issues were “not necessarily a gender matter.” He said despite the trend that many male university students and some faculty “display this insensitivity occassionally… in these days of heightened interest in gender issues, it is also true that female students on occasion may exaggerate or misinterpret, seeing offensive male behavior in things most people might regard as quite innocent or unintended.” In contrast, a female physics graduate student at Vanderbilt University responded that she had not faced such treatment at her institution.
In a 1999 issue of Faculty Forum, Alfred Lee, a former physics professor at Duke, predicted that “[d]espite the University’s best attempts at getting grant money to address ‘gender equity,’” the interaction between students and faculty would be extremely difficult to transform. “It is not 1980; it is 1999. Too much time has passed with too little progress,” he wrote.
This issue, which has persisted since the 1990s, has not fully abated. In 2004, The Chronicle for Higher Education published an article on discrimination in the Duke physics department, featuring associate professor Roxanne Springer and several graduate students who have faced alienation and mistreatment, ranging from jokes and hostility to outright sexual harassment.
A friend of mine has also lamented the treatment she received from a male director of undergraduate studies who discouraged her from pursuing her hard science major and questioned her commitment when he had found out she was also a double major in visual arts. She said, in a previous instance, another male professor expressed the sentiment that there were less women in the hard sciences because women were better in academic fields that dealt with “relationships.”
In the past, she and other female students in her department had been deducted points for the same mistakes on problem sets that males in her section had made but whose errors were not counted. She now resorts to writing her last name instead of her first name on assignments to avoid grading disparities; her female professor has also now agreed to grade their assignments instead of her male TA.
Gender discrimination in the classroom is not limited to fields of science either. If the stereotype that women take humanities classes is true, then why, I thought as I counted, are there far more men than women in my political theory class? Classroom discussions are also frequently dominated by men. As I eyed the women in my class furiously scribble down notes and highlight their readings, I wondered why so few of them raised their hands to provide their own thoughts about prostitution and surrogacy, topics on which they surely had views to share.
Many skeptics argue that by raising these issues, we foster a needlessly hypersensitive environment or that women are overreacting and misconstruing offensive behavior. I must ask, however, how far these arguments are from those that chastise sexual assault victims for failing to protect themselves. Often these discriminations are not overt but lie deeply seated in our culture and in currents that run underneath the waves of society. We are told not to rock the boat, but creating awareness is the first step toward turning the tide.
Sue Li is a Trinity senior. Her column runs every other Wednesday.
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