Questions tagged [gender]

Issues related to being, or interacting with, those who are male, female, transgender, or non-binary in academia.

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Gender inclusiveness in academic writing: "they are" or "they is"? [closed]

"A person is doing an experiment, and they are having fun." This expression sounds grammarly incorrect. "A person" and "they" are the same being, how can we use different ...
High GPA's user avatar
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5 votes
3 answers
443 views

Teaching at a Women's College

I'm applying for a job at an elite women's liberal arts college, which is part of a co-ed group of liberal arts colleges where students can easily take classes at any of these colleges (in the ...
PFD's user avatar
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14 votes
1 answer
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Norms around who contributes to the diversity section in grant proposals?

So we're writing a big grant proposal with about 10 PIs. My supervisor is the lead PI. In our small group meeting going through the proposal, once we got to the diversity section my PI suggested that ...
qmstatmech's user avatar
3 votes
0 answers
218 views

Called Dr in government setting? [closed]

I work in local government (law enforcement), where titles are pretty important. I am a civilian supervisor with a doctorate degree. No one else there has this degree. I completed it two years ago. Is ...
Jennifer's user avatar
22 votes
5 answers
7k views

Is it legal in the UK to aim for a certain percentage of women in a math department?

Athena Swan charter is a UK organization promoting gender equality in academia, among other things. University departments apply for gold / silver / bronze Athena Swan certificates, while providing an ...
curious's user avatar
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8 votes
2 answers
561 views

Do indexing services update papers after a name change?

I am transgender woman and recently updated my name (which also changed my initials). In addition, I retroactively updated my name on most of the papers that I have published in the last couple of ...
dusk's user avatar
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29 votes
6 answers
3k views

Harassment and intimidation by fellow students

I live in Western Europe and began a CS degree 1.5 years ago. I had no prior programming experiences but the degree was aimed for beginners. The male-female student ratio was 100:1 (as also stated by ...
maliebina's user avatar
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3 votes
2 answers
231 views

How might a lecturer go about inspiring women to consider a career in physics/engineering?

I saw a job advertisement recently with this line: We are looking for candidates [for this teaching position] who are able to inspire women undergraduate students to seriously consider careers in ...
Allure's user avatar
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Was it appropriate to discuss the reply-all?

A female instructor has had conflict with a much younger male co-instructor and has complained to her chair and associate chair about what she experienced as sexist and other difficult behavior. When ...
Nicole Hamilton's user avatar
8 votes
8 answers
17k views

What should I do if an academic says "no pronouns please" in their bio?

"No pronouns please" was the first line in the academic's bio after their name—it was included in an invitation to attend their presentation. No other data. What if you slipped and used a ...
Sam's user avatar
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15 votes
10 answers
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A potentially trans student is misgendered in university records. What should I do?

I have noticed* that an undergrad student in a course I teach has "female" written in the "gender" field in the university intranet database (used for course enrollment, grading, ...
TooTea's user avatar
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4 answers
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As handling editor, should you invite only female reviewers for manuscripts authored by women (eg 1st, last, and/or corresponding)?

As Chief Editor, Associate Editor, or Handling Editor of scholarly manuscripts, mainly but not solely focusing on cardiovascular disease), I have often the last say on which potential reviewers to ...
Giuseppe Biondi-Zoccai's user avatar
30 votes
10 answers
34k views

What is a nice phrase to use instead of "ladies and gentlemen" to be more inclusive? [closed]

I really like to use the phrase "ladies and gentlemen" while teaching. The reason is not necessarily to be formal, but to gather the attention to a particular point. For instance, I'd ...
padawan's user avatar
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22 votes
2 answers
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Has the Nobel Foundation said anything about the skewed gender ratio in the 2021 Nobel laureates?

For this question I exclude the Nobel Peace prize. A few years ago there was some talk by the Nobel committees and the Nobel Foundation board to be more inclusive. The committee explicitly called for ...
Allure's user avatar
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43 votes
4 answers
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Misgendered by senior academic in email to people I don't know

I am a PhD student, and also trans (MtF, she/her). I've recently done some work with a research group based at the same institute as me, and this has led to me being CC'd in a few emails to various ...
Danica Scott's user avatar
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5 votes
1 answer
543 views

Research on gender and academic misconduct

In professor David Shanks' talk "Does social science tell the truth? (2016)" at 15:14 he claims that there is an apparent gender bias among his examples of people that have committed ...
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29 votes
3 answers
6k views

Names/salutations for international students of unknown gender

I often receive e-mail (typically inquiring about studying with me as a graduate students) from students, especially foreign students, whose gender/pronouns I can't easily tell (they haven't specified)...
Ben Bolker's user avatar
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82 votes
10 answers
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I feel like male professors don't feel comfortable taking me as a student. How should I address this problem?

It has happened in many instances in my education that my male advisors or professors get very uncomfortable around me and some refuse to take me as their student. They tell me that in a decent way, ...
Nadine's user avatar
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23 votes
5 answers
2k views

How to deal with unwanted physical contact, presents and attention by a postdoc supervisor?

Posting this to academia stackexchange, but if this may fit better in other place please let me know. My girlfriend is a new PhD student in a male dominated field, and is supervised by a postdoc in a ...
user2650204's user avatar
-1 votes
1 answer
2k views

How do superwomen find time? [closed]

There are a lot of activities and responsibilities for women in both professional and personal life. I can list few of them. Academic related: Lecturing, content creation, discussion, floating ...
hanugm's user avatar
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1 vote
4 answers
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Is there a more gender-neutral and specific term for "Underclassman"?

Yale has changed their language, but I don't see a clear alternative here. At this point, I think referring to students by their specific class years ( "First-Years and Sophomores" vs. "...
mdiscenza's user avatar
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53 votes
6 answers
8k views

How to avoid and address a lack of gender diversity in grant proposals?

I just got reviews back on a grant proposal. On the whole the reviews were positive, but one reviewer criticised us because the five PIs are all male. The proposed project arises naturally out of a ...
user125303's user avatar
65 votes
14 answers
11k views

Should I avoid admitting female students for now?

I am female and an early-career PI (principal investigator) in a discipline that tends to attract women, and people with high levels of anxiety (this is documented). In my first years as a graduate ...
Nemo's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
399 views

How do I stop assuming that someone is male? [closed]

Consider the following situation. I'm talking to a friend who says "One of my friends is a student of so-and-so,", and I immediately ask, "Oh, what's his name?", before being told "'her name', ...
user124280's user avatar
68 votes
9 answers
14k views

My student published a preprint of our published paper without me as an author

One of my former students uploaded a paper we just published in a top physics journal without my name. The fraudulent paper is now appearing on the Google Scholar search results below the original ...
Sandra Black's user avatar
11 votes
5 answers
2k views

Can lewd pictures and videos that non-consensually ended up on porn sites hurt my career in academia/industry? [duplicate]

I was involved in some not-safe-for-work (NSFW) photoshoots and amateur videos with a photographer in my undergrad (in the US) when I was going through a rough time. The media include my face in them (...
user avatar
8 votes
7 answers
2k views

Graduate Admissions Gender Bias

Both my girlfriend and I (both white) applied to the same PhD programs in mathematics. Most of these schools are AMS Group I and some Group II. I got denied by a majority of these programs while she ...
Anonymous Applicant's user avatar
45 votes
5 answers
17k views

Why are most cranks old men?

What To Do When The Trisector Comes claims that most cranks (for lack of a better word) are old men (trisector refers to a specific type of crank): One obvious characteristic of trisectors is that ...
Allure's user avatar
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28 votes
8 answers
5k views

Is there a way to edit author name after publication for trans people (at least online)?

I have seen questions about people changing their last names due to marriage but not for trans people. However, for them, it can be much more harmful (and wrong) to always carry their old names ...
Bourboul's user avatar
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108 votes
14 answers
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My teaching evaluations arrived and female students statistically gave me worse scores than male students. Is there any possible explanation?

I'm a new assistant professor and I finished my first semester of teaching. It's my first class, but I think it went good: the students seemed happy and interested, I had many of them (both male and ...
user117849's user avatar
16 votes
3 answers
916 views

Awards in which gender identity is a requirement

A friend of mine is considered a minority in her research field, for being female. Recently, her advisor wanted to nominate her paper for an award sponsored by a kind of Women's Engineering Society. ...
user avatar
90 votes
17 answers
19k views

Is it acceptable for a professor to tell male students to not think that they are smarter than female students?

The situation occurred in the first lecture of an undergraduate course in a STEM field at an university. The professor said that there are less than 20% female students in the class, while the usual ...
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41 votes
3 answers
12k views

A social experiment. What is the worst that can happen? [closed]

I am a postdoc and I have been applying for jobs in both industry and academia. My h-index is good enough for junior faculty (~7). Along my academic CV I have an industry-oriented CV and send both of ...
FrostedCentral's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
1k views

Does having children jeopardize one's academic career progression? [closed]

As I understand academic career progression, the move to the "next level" (be it postdoc, senior lecturer, assistant professor, full professor, etc) is most dependent on two factors: ...
Allure's user avatar
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75 votes
14 answers
29k views

Is it appropriate to request that the department hire a female faculty member?

Our department is currently hiring a new faculty member. At the moment, the faculty gender ratio in our department is very skewed, even for our field. I believe that this has a negative impact on the ...
user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
390 views

Gender, Independence, and Authorship [closed]

I have attended a few panels on applying to post-doctoral/junior faculty positions, and the topic of authorship and research direction always came up. All of the faculty on these panels noted that ...
motherboard's user avatar
66 votes
14 answers
31k views

Am I conveying disrespect if I omit my gender pronoun from a conference nametag?

Situation I have an academic conference coming up, and on the registration site we are instructed to optionally enter a personal gender pronoun (PGP) to appear on our name tags. To enter it or not to ...
pretzlstyle's user avatar
19 votes
5 answers
1k views

Using initials to promote gender neutrality when publishing as a female?

As I work my way through my academic career (second-year PhD student), I am confronted with many stats and instances of gender bias in the publishing process (see references below). Of course for ...
Bkk's user avatar
  • 307
139 votes
22 answers
37k views

Should I simply ignore it if authors assume that I'm male in their response to my review of their article?

I received a response about a manuscript I reviewed earlier, and the authors write about the reviewer (i.e., me) and his concerns. As a woman, I'm not so keen on this. Obviously this isn't ...
Rebecca J. Stones's user avatar
29 votes
2 answers
8k views

Etiquette for a female PhD student to reject her male supervisor's invitation to meet outside of work

The role of supervisor is a key role. The relationship between the supervisor and the students should be healthy. In this context, in India, there is a lot of difference between male and female ...
hanugm's user avatar
  • 7,779
8 votes
2 answers
1k views

Do US universities publish an official definition of gender in the context of scholarships or admissions? [closed]

Let's say that a person assigned male at birth identifies as a woman. At which stage of their transition process would they be allowed to claim themselves as a woman in the context of college ...
user avatar
133 votes
14 answers
31k views

How to build healthy working relationships with my male colleagues as a young-ish, attractive-ish woman?

I'm a PhD candidate from Asia currently visiting a prestigious university in Europe. Recently I've noticed quite some "strange" behaviours of male "colleagues" around me (by "colleagues", I don't mean ...
Randomvisitor's user avatar
82 votes
7 answers
19k views

How do some institutions attract so many female computer scientists?

It's no secret that computer science is a heavily male-dominated discipline. It's so male-dominated that some people have given up trying to attract more women. Yet Carnegie Mellon not only has close ...
Allure's user avatar
  • 122k
33 votes
9 answers
16k views

How to query gender in a multiple-choice poll/survey?

In a study where human subjects are given questionnaires, it may be interesting to analyze whether effects are gender-specific and/or more pronounced in one gender than in (the) other(s). How can this ...
Jonas Schwarz's user avatar
39 votes
4 answers
8k views

Is Mx. the default title for Male non-phd holders?

A journal drop-down menu for selecting a person's title has four options but none of them are Mr. (I definitely scrolled down enough.) As a male, non-PhD holder should I select Mx., or is this a ...
jsta's user avatar
  • 521
120 votes
5 answers
23k views

Gender transition as a starting faculty member: a terrible idea?

I'm a computer scientist at the point in my postdoc where I will have to decide soon whether to apply for faculty positions this fall or go to industry, in the US/Canada/UK/maybe Europe.1 But I've ...
anon's user avatar
  • 901
39 votes
5 answers
6k views

Should arguments based on the proponent's gender be used in a grant proposal?

Recently I have reviewed a project from a female proponent. Among the scientific content there was a section about the under-representation of women in a specific field - saying that, on top of all ...
The Doctor's user avatar
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47 votes
11 answers
25k views

How can I avoid inadvertently offending my female peers and getting into trouble for it?

Attention has been drawn recently to an incident that occurred at a scientific conference and its sequelae described in this article: The fuss started when [Prof. X] and [Prof. Y] ended up in the ...
32 votes
7 answers
19k views

What was offensive about the "ladies lingerie department" joke, and how can I avoid offending people in a similar way? [closed]

Moderator note: A follow-on question about how to avoid the behavior described here has been posted. In recent news, two academics are at odds over this incident full article here: The fuss ...
anonymus's user avatar
  • 201
38 votes
3 answers
5k views

Asking for an acknowledgement

Is it ever appropriate to ask to be included in an acknowledgements section of a paper? I contributed bug fixes to proofs in a CS paper without which it would have been incorrect in significant ways. ...
user219923's user avatar