Gendered Learning and Development

I was reading an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education today about the differences between the development of males and females in college. I was particularly surprised to hear what the research said about doing research with faculty members. I heard from other research findings that involvement in high-impact experiences, like mentored research, leads to higher retention and graduation rates. However, this article I was reading looked at how research with faculty affected beliefs about gender equality. Males who participated in research with a faculty member were more likely to develop more liberal views about the role of women. However, women who participated in research developed more conservative views about the role of women, believing women should be focused mainly on raising families. I was shocked. But, then I began to wonder if any of this had to do with the other findings that women are more academically engaged than men, but women have lower self-esteem about their academic ability than men even though they are actually doing better than men academically. I wonder if perhaps the time spent assisting faculty in research is stress-inducing for females, who believe themselves to be less capable than they are and thereby, they choose to elevate the role of caregiver, at which they expect to easily excel in contrast to researching.

I don't know. It just seemed rather disappointing. Perhaps if there were more women in the role of full professor, undergraduate women could participate in research with women mentors. Then I think women would not develop such conservative ideas about the role of women in society.

Along the same lines, I was also a little disconcerted by a conversation with a new grad student. Apparently, she has been receiving a lot of comments from her friends about putting school ahead of her husband and working on school-related things instead of spending each evening and weekend with her husband. She was asking me how my boyfriend and I managed things. I explained to her that pretty much all the time we spent together was comprised of me working on school-related things while he vegged. She just wanted to be validated in her decision to pursue schooling and all that it entails. I was just absolutely shocked that people are making those sorts of comments to her. Of course we as graduate students have to sacrifice our time with others in order to reach the ultimate goal of graduating. Of course our significant others, whether male or female, make the choice to support us by allowing us to allocate our time accordingly. And of course it doesn't matter whether we are female or male in that choice we make to pursue advanced degrees. I say we need more females pursuing advanced degrees and tenure track jobs. The Chronicle also states that females are far more likely to be in adjunct or instructor positions, whereas males are more likely to be full professors. But, both males and female undergraduates benefit more from female faculty members than male faculty members. We need more females in academia, but making women feel bad about failing to devote themselves entirely to their husbands doesn't help increase the representation of women in the position of full professor. I hope this is that last I hear about such comments being propagated among the supposed support systems of our young female graduate students.