Last semester in one of my classes, a bright freshman wrote a paper on why professors choose a career in academe. He read articles on the topic and then sent e-mail requests to eight of his professors -- four men and four women -- requesting to interview them about their career choices. After reading a draft of his paper, I asked the student why he had only included comments from the women's interviews in his analysis.
His answer: None of the men had responded to his e-mail. When I pressed him a bit further, asking why he thought that had been the case, he replied, "Well, the men were really busy. They have a lot going on."
Of course, the student didn't know that for a fact, since the male professors never actually talked to him. And I don't know why the men ignored his request while the women welcomed him into their offices and shared information about their personal and career choices. Maybe the e-mail message accidentally got placed in the junk-mail folder of those four men. Perhaps it has to do with personality. It's also possible that the four women simply knew the student better than the four men. Really, it's anyone's guess.
What I do know, however, is that at the small, liberal-arts college where I teach, both men and women on the faculty juggle teaching, research, service, and personal lives. Both men and women have very busy schedules. Yet, in my experience, students tend to expect female professors also to be available to counsel and nurture. And many of us are.
A large part of our job as professors is to teach students new approaches and perspectives. Given what I have experienced as a graduate student and during my first two years on the tenure track, I think another important part of our job is to unteach ideas about gender that students take for granted and rarely verbalize.
One of the first lessons I learned about the role of gender in student-faculty relationships came in my early years as a teaching assistant. A student made an appointment with me to discuss the next exam. It was not during my office hours, but I wanted to be as accessible as possible in order to impress both the students and the professor, so I agreed to the appointment.
I have forgotten all but one aspect of that meeting. The 19-year-old student brought his chair near to mine, got closer to me than any other student had during such meetings, and said, "I love your olive skin," as he smiled at me and moved his hand near my face.
When I mentioned what happened to the professor in charge of the course, his response was something akin to "Yikes," followed immediately by small talk on a totally different topic.
Perhaps the worst part of the experience was not what the student said but that, in my bewilderment and shock, I failed to call him on it and instead simply moved my chair back and pretended it didn't happen. The student denied me the respect and authority that I, as a young female instructor, was working so hard to achieve, yet I played along by pretending my (imaginary) authority remained intact. I felt threatened and vulnerable, and my own professor's dismissal of my concerns further reinforced my vulnerability.
The next time the class met, I decided to act "less nice" and more like the serious male professors in my department. I stopped smiling and joked even less than I normally had (which was not very much). I became more conscious of my body language, although I wasn't sure what exactly I was watching out for.
My marital status had seemed irrelevant to the course content, but suddenly I felt it necessary to bring up in class the fact that I was married, perhaps in an attempt to bolster my image as a serious and adult instructor. To this day, I think the fact that I was "taken" stood out more in the student's mind than my attempts at being respected as the instructor.
Now, as an assistant professor, I try to upend the gendered, male portrait of the professor that students often bring to the classroom. It's not that I'm worried another student might try to hit on me, it's that students hold so many unspoken expectations about their instructors. And some of those expectations are based on gender stereotypes that have important consequences for the authority and respect we are granted in and out of the classroom.
I was recently reminded of the role of those unspoken expectations as I perused RateMyProfessors.com and found that student comments about two young female professors at my institution included the word "sexy" but did not find the same word used to describe any of the male professors I looked up on our campus. That reminded me of Pamela Johnston's column, "Dressing the Part," in which she wrote that when it comes to dress and appearance "students respond differently to male and female professors in the classroom, and evaluate us differently as well" (The Chronicle, August 10, 2005).
Last year I asked students in my classes what image they pictured when they heard the word "professor" before coming to college. In every class the same basic portrait emerged: white, middle-aged, gray-haired, and male. Often, students added that they no longer thought that way after being in college for a semester or two. But I still wonder how much of what they see when they look at me is based on how and what I teach, and how much is based on the way they think I should teach and behave.
