"Only in the past few decades have women started to outpace men at all levels: new bachelor’s degrees, new graduate degrees, new faculty members. Today, an institution once led and populated almost entirely by men, is increasingly led and populated by women. Because men and women (on average) have different traits, tendencies, and priorities, this change in sex ratios has changed and will continue to change the nature of the modern university...
Many have argued that the inclusion of women in formerly male-dominated fields has broadened the scope of inquiry and shed light on once-mysterious or hitherto neglected phenomena.
So, how are these changes impacting academic culture—its priorities, policies, and norms—and shaping the direction of higher education and science? It is increasingly evident that men and women view the purpose of higher education and science differently, and that many emerging trends in academia can be attributed, at least in part, to the feminization of academic priorities...
- 56 percent of men said that colleges should not protect students from offensive ideas; 64 percent of women said that they should.
- When presented with a variety of controversial claims made by speakers (e.g., men are better at math, all white people are racist, police are justified at stopping African Americans at higher rates), a majority of men supported nine of the 11 speakers’ right to speak on campus, and a majority of women opposed all 11 speakers’ right to do so.
- 51 percent of men said colleges should not disinvite speakers if students threaten violent protest; 67 percent of women said they should.
- 58 percent of men opposed a confidential reporting system at colleges which students could use to report offensive comments; 54 percent of women supported it.
- 63 percent of men thought controversial news stories in student papers should not need administrators’ approval before publication; 51 percent of women thought they should.
- 65 percent of men believed that supporting the right to make an argument is not the same as endorsing it; 51 percent of women disagreed...
- 66–76 percent of men support intellectually foundational texts above diversity quotas on reading lists; 44–66 percent of women support diversity quotas above foundational texts.
- Female academics report a greater willingness than their male counterparts to support dismissal campaigns against a colleague who has conducted research that reached a controversial conclusion...
- 71 percent of men reported that protecting free speech is more important than promoting an inclusive society; 59 percent of women said promoting an inclusive society is more important than protecting free speech.
- 58 percent of men said it is never acceptable to shout
down speakers or to try to prevent them from delivering their remarks;
58 percent of women said it was sometimes or always acceptable...
- Men allocated more points toward academic freedom and advancing
knowledge than women, and women allocated more points toward social
justice and emotional wellbeing than men...
- Male researchers were more likely to specify scientific progress/the advancement of knowledge as the aim of their research; female researchers were more likely to specify societal progress/external usefulness as the aim of their research.
- Female scholars were more likely than their male counterparts to report that “creating a better society” inspires their work and to place higher value on research that has benefited society...
The overall theme of these differences is that men are more committed than women to the pursuit of truth as the raison d’être
of science, while women are more committed to various moral goals, such
as equity, inclusion, and the protection of vulnerable groups.
Consequently, men are more tolerant of controversial and potentially
offensive scientific findings being pursued, disseminated, and
discussed, and women are more willing to obstruct or suppress science
perceived to be potentially harmful or offensive. Put more simply, men
are relatively more interested in advancing what is empirically correct, and women are relatively more interested in advancing what is morally desirable...
Of course, it is often difficult to know what information is empirically correct and what information is most likely to improve society; therefore, such judgments will often be subjective and vulnerable to various biases and preferences. But in general, men appear to be less concerned about the potential moral consequences of empirical information than women. So, when a scholar forwards a potentially true but also potentially offensive claim or set of data, women will be more likely to strive to suppress it than men...
On average, women are more willing to suppress science for moral
reasons, and men are more willing to allow offensive or even potentially
harmful ideas to be shared. As the population of academia shifts from
one dominated by men to one that is more balanced or disproportionately
female, support for including moral and harm concerns into the
scientific and publishing process is likely to increase, and support for
academic freedom is likely to decline...
These sex differences in preferences and priorities for academia are consistent with a broader pattern of sex differences that have been extensively discussed and debated in the scholarly literature. Although the causes of these differences remain contested, we believe that evolutionary psychology (EP) provides the most fruitful framework for understanding them...
Men compete more overtly than women for status; they are the larger and more physically aggressive sex (especially as that aggression becomes mortal), and they are more contest-oriented, vying against each other openly. Women, on the other hand, compete more covertly, using relatively safer and often more subtle methods. Men also compete mortally against other groups of men and have therefore evolved traits and tendencies that encourage the creation and coordination of large coalitions with status hierarchies. Women, on the other hand, prefer egalitarian social relations when in large groups and are not as predisposed as men to coordinating in large groups. Consequently, women prioritize equality more than men...
Men and women are reliably more interested in things and people, respectively. Relatedly, men have advantages in visuospatial reasoning and mechanical reasoning, and are more likely to desire system-oriented careers in engineering and programming than women. Women, on the other hand, have advantages in decoding non-verbal emotional cues and verbal fluency and are more likely to desire human-oriented careers in the arts and humanities. These differences, and others like them, are found in many cultures, arise early in development, and therefore likely explain the academic differences itemized above.
A protective impulse is likely to be alarmed by data or theories that appear to threaten egalitarian norms or vulnerable groups, and may produce an urge to suppress such scholarship. Since men are less empathic and sensitive to potential harms, and more interested in explaining things mechanically, they are less likely to be troubled by those data or theories and more motivated to publish apparently provocative but potentially illuminating research. This same pattern holds for campus speakers, professors, and classroom instruction: Women are, on average, more sensitive to potential moral threats than men...
Perhaps not coincidentally, men and women assess the plausibility of
evolutionary claims differently. Among psychology professors, men are
more likely than women to agree that the sexes evolved different
psychological tendencies. But even if one is skeptical of the
evolutionary framework, men and women do display different preferences and priorities, so these analyses remain relevant...
Academia
has changed in various ways over the past few decades. By no means are
all of these changes the direct or inevitable result of changing sex
ratios. Nevertheless, some of the most drastic developments over the
past 25 years share a common theme: They reflect the priorities of
women. These include:
- The introduction of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) committees and offices on university campuses (e.g., in 1999 at Ohio State, in 2007 at SUNY, in 2016 at Amherst College), DEI programming and degrees, and a 34 percent increase in spending on DEI budgets from 2014–15 to 2018–19.
- The introduction of DEI Commitment Statements as a required part of job application materials for faculty members, which are more common in (more female-dominated) social science jobs than in (more male-dominated) STEM jobs.
- An increase over the past seven years in the number of academics targeted for sanction for their scholarship and teaching (and often, due to harm concerns about the content of their teaching or scholarship).
- The addition of extra-scientific moral concerns to the evaluation criteria for publications and retractions by journals such as Nature Human Behaviour and Nature Communications.
- The introduction of safe spaces and trigger warnings on college campuses.
- The requirement now made by large professional societies, such as the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, that presenters explain how their work advances equity and anti-racism, and the evaluation of presentations based on their ability to achieve these goals. (Anecdotally, this policy was instituted under a 13-member board, 11 of whom appear to be women. And this policy received public pushback from at least two members, both of whom are men.)
- Growing concerns about “coddling,” the “free speech crisis,” and increasing censorship and self-censorship on college campuses...
One might argue that egalitarianism and psychological safety rarely come into conflict with academic freedom, pursuit of truth, and scientific rigor, and so as these former two priorities rise in importance, the latter three will not be affected. This may often be true. In many applied settings (such as medicine), for example, the entire purpose of the rigorous pursuit of truth is to discover interventions that improve human wellbeing, so truth goals and moral goals are almost perfectly aligned. But in other more theoretical areas of inquiry, the benefits of accurate information are not readily apparent but the potential dangers are obvious. These areas will likely be affected by sex-based priorities.
For example, research on psychological sex differences might appear to threaten egalitarianism and feminism because it suggests that some sex disparities are “natural.” It is easy to imagine that such research could be abused to undermine and restrict the rights of women—rights that were arduously won. So, this research may seem to be more risky than it is useful. In such cases, women are likely to be more cautious and have stronger desires to prevent such scholarship than men.
Of course, this pattern of change in academia is also confounded by ideology. Women are generally more left-leaning than men, and “equity and inclusion” has become a major moral concern on the political Left with which academia is increasingly dominated. In our own data, however, female sex continues to predict lower support for academic freedom and lower prioritization of truth after controlling for political allegiance.
Nevertheless, these changes may be co-occurring to create positive feedback loops."
Evidence that women are more liberal, more against civil liberties, less able to grasp traditionally liberal concepts like freedom of thought and less intellectual
A big reason why academia has gone from pursuing truth to protecting feelings. When the "science" is politicised and we are told that we cannot question it...
Women also have more anxiety and "fear in real-world situations", which means they think science is more harmful than men (this also explains the greater female fear of crime, despite lower female victimisation)
The lower female support for free speech is especially notable in most women's confusion that supporting the right to make an argument is the same as endorsing it
Related:
Opinion | The Gender Gap Is Taking Us to Unexpected Places - The New York Times"When the academic world opened up to women in the 1970s and 1980s, Haidt continued, “women flooded into some areas but showed less interest in others. In my experience, having entered in the 1990s, the academic culture of predominantly female fields is very different from those that are predominantly male.”"
