Brendan Watson
Females were not admitted to Washington University until 1872, nearly 20 years after its founding. Though the university’s sexual composition has changed fundamentally since its days as an all-male seminary, some advocates of equal representation of the sexes still complain that progress is incomplete.
University-wide statistics show that 51 percent of graduate and undergraduate students are male, while 49 percent are female. The numbers, however, are far from balanced when broken down into separate schools.
In certain disciplines, according to some professors and students, this uneven sex representation poses threats to equality in teaching and learning, and can affect the manner in which the sexes behave in the classroom or studio.
Historically male
Though engineering is often cited as the most obvious example of poor female representation, other schools have similar problems: the School of Business is 69 percent male and the School of Architecture is 58 percent male.
The sex ratio in the School of Architecture, however, is much more even than in the professional world.
When School of Architecture Dean Cynthia Weise graduated from WU in the 1960’s, she was the only female in her class graduating in architecture. Though the environment has changed significantly since then, Weise still noted that only about 10 to 12 percent of professional architects are female.
While some speak of sex diversity in terms of numbers, others emphasize that the real focus of sex diversity lies in the practical results of sex ratios-changes in the ways in which students behave in classes and how professors teach those classes.
The most obvious example of differences in male and female attitudes in the architecture school occurs in studios and critiques, according to some female students.
“Men are a lot more vocal about their work,” said sophomore architecture student Mary O’Malley. “Guys are likely to be dominating. I become a lot more subdued.”
O’Malley said she thinks men in architecture are more aggressive and women are more humble. Men, she said, are “better salesmen” with their projects.
Eric Rang, a sophomore architect, said he doesn’t notice the differences in which men and women display their work or behave in the studio.
“When it’s time to review work, nobody gets up and really does arrogant things or says arrogant things,” said Rang.
In the College of Arts and Sciences, which has a nearly 50-50 ratio of males to females, uneven sex ratios persist in individual departments. Historically, as with engineering, the science fields have been male-dominated, while liberal arts such as English have been more female-dominated.
Lesley Weiss, a senior English major, said that some of her English classes have had more female representation, a fact she thinks is influenced by “classic gender conditioning.” Most students interviewed agreed that this was due to historically prevalent norms and simple personality differences.
When more equal numbers of males and females are present in the classroom, however, discourse is improved, Weiss said. She noted that students sparked a conversation in one of her classes recently when a male joked about a passage that a female found offensive.
“I think the subject would have been dismissed if the class had been just girls,” Weiss said.
Historically female
Though many focus on the lack of females in certain disciplines, others were adamant that low male representation in some fields is equally as important.
In the Schools of Art and Social Work, a seemingly unusual situation arises: females dominate enrollment. The School of Art has a 2:1 female to male ratio, while the School of Social Work has a 6:1 ratio.
According to Professor of Social Work David Pollio, his class this semester has 27 students, only five of whom are male. That is the highest number of males he has even had in any of his social work classes.
Because of the overwhelming female presence in the School of Social Work, some said gender roles often go unnoticed, since so few men are present in the school. Keri Beth Lefkowitz, a first-year social work student, rarely perceives the lack of men in the discipline, though typical classes of 25 have only between one and five male students.
Because men are in the minority, some professors entreat their opinions more frequently in class discussions, as is the situation with minorities in many disciplines.
“I do feel a little guilty sometimes because we talk a lot about gender and equality in my classes,” said Shirley Porterfield, a professor in the School of Social Work, who added that with only one or two males in a class, men are not fairly represented.
Pollio agreed.
“I think there’s an ambivalence to that because you don’t want your uniqueness [as a male] ignored, but you don’t want to only be acknowledged for that uniqueness,” he said. “It’s something that a good deal of time is spent sensitizing to.”
Lefkowitz added, “In a lot of my classes, the professor will say, ‘Let’s get the male perspective.’ It puts them on the spot, especially if they don’t feel like saying anything.”
The WU School of Social Work is not atypical: social work as a profession and at schools nationwide is predominantly female, but on average, WU has higher male representation than other social work schools.
Faculty representation
Though sex ratios are not even in many classes, many professors encourage equal contributions from each sex in the classroom. Some professors said they worked harder to entreat minority opinions in discussions in order to balance discourse.
Some said faculty members must be the arbiters of male-female discourse in the classroom, placing a certain degree of pressure on the professor to break down barriers between sexes.
Yet faculty members themselves also face challenges which they feel are based in their sex. Female professors expressed that they needed to work harder than males to exert authority in the classroom.
“He has an automatic advantage walking into a classroom,” said Lynnea Brumbaugh, a professor in the School of Business, of her husband, a professor of English and Film Studies. Brumbaugh attribute this to the fact that he is a tall male with what she described as a deep, commanding voice.
Judy McLean Parks, a professor in the School of Business, agreed.
“When all else is equal, if a male and a female walk into the same contextual situation, authority and power are assumed to attach themselves to the male by the audience, not necessarily to the female,” said McLean Parks.
To assert her authority in a classroom, as in the business world, McLean Parks said females often list their accomplishments, including education and past work experience.
But where men have certain inherent physical advantages, Brumbaugh said, females have others: as a woman, female professors can better relate with students on a personal level.
“What I do have access to is an ability to connect with the students immediately on the first day. That makes them usually feel closer to me than they feel to [my husband],” Brumbaugh said.
After trying different approaches to teaching, including exerting the same dominance her husband does in the classroom, Brumbaugh did not think either way was a more effective way to teach.
For Dr. William Peck, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs, increasing female representation at the School of Medicine is a matter of time and good recruiting. Ten to 15 years ago, few women were enrolled in medical schools nationwide, and thus, according to Peck, there are few female faculty members today. As the numbers of female graduates from medical schools increase, their representation on medical school faculty is likely to increase as well, but for now such representation is low.
“There are inadequate numbers of women.at medical schools nationally,” he said. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, statistics from 2000 show that females comprise approximately 30 percent of medical school faculty, but in August 2001, 54 percent of those taking the Medical College Application Test (MCAT) were female, a figure that has risen steadily over the past few decades.
Peck said that medical schools should be doing more to recruit women faculty, and in order to do so, he encouraged a better mentoring program for upcoming female professors.
Echoing Peck’s statement, John Russell, vice dean for academic affairs in the School of Engineering, said having female faculty in the school is most beneficial in providing role models for female engineers.
The female engineer “a whole other species”
University patrons and staff often point fingers at the School of Engineering as being the worst culprit of inequality in sex representation, with males comprising just over 76 percent of the student body. While some are adamant about increasing the representation of women, others are not worried about the dominant male representation.
Allison Ball, a senior in the School of Engineering, said that since engineering as a profession is male-dominated, engineering schools obviously will be the same way: it is the cultural standard for men to be more attracted to engineering than women. Russell agreed.
“Our biggest problem right now is just the historical baggage we have to carry,” he said.
Female representation in engineering is very important, not only to the school but to the professional field, said John Schotland, professor of electrical engineering.
“[Having females in engineering] certainly affects the future of engineering,” he said. “If we don’t, then we lose out on potentially half the talented people in the profession.”
Russell noted that the more modern fields of engineering-including biomedical engineering-are generally more equal in gender representation. At WU, biomedical engineering is approximately 50 percent female. In addition, WU boasts higher female representation in engineering that other universities, Russell said.
Despite the obvious lack of females in the discipline, Ball doesn’t feel any pressure from being one of the few female engineering students.
“If you’re focusing on why you’re in the class, then you don’t notice [the lower numbers of females],” she said, adding, “[Female engineers] aren’t competitive against each other; we’re competitive against the system.”
Ball noted that on a macroscopic level, females in engineering not only provide different methods of approaching problems and unique views, but also spice up the social scene in the engineering school and tend to be more outgoing.
Barbara Abraham-Shrauner, professor of electrical engineering, said the discourse between males and females in engineering classrooms is not necessarily as apparent as it might be in more discussion-based classes. She did note that men often ask more questions and are more assertive in the classroom, while females may confront professors outside class to ask questions. Even this, she said, is changing.
“I think that women students [in engineering] have more confidence than they used to. They think they can do it, and [the opposite is] the problem they’ve had in the past,” said Abraham-Shrauner.
Fast forward: how to get your dream job
Though women are the minority in some disciplines and men the minority in others, most said their minority status does not influence job recruitment after graduation.
“Some people say we have they edge,” said Ball, “but only in recruiting.In general, I think we have to be just as good as the men.”
Russell admitted that women had the advantage in engineering recruitment not too long ago, but he doubts that is the case today.
Pollio does not see an advantage to recruiting men over women into female-dominated social work fields.
“I think people should be recruited who are qualified and those who are parts of traditionally repressed populations should be given special treatment,” Pollio said. “Having a field that is predominantly female does not qualify men as oppressed.”
Contact Allison Barrett at [email protected]
Aaron Johnson contributed to this article