Gender Stereotypes in Student Evaluations of Teaching

This paper tests how gender stereotypes may result in biased student evaluations of teaching (SET). We thereby contribute to an ongoing discussion about the validity and use of SET in academia. According to social psychological theory, gender biases in SET may occur because of a lack of fit between gender stereotypes, and the professional roles individuals engage in. A lack of fit often leads to more negative evaluations. Given that the role as a lecturer is associated with masculinity, women might suffer from biased SET because gender stereotypes indicate that they do not fit with this role. In two 2 × 2 between groups online experiments (N's = 400 and 452), participants read about a fictitious woman or man lecturer, described in terms of stereotypically feminine or masculine behavior, and evaluated the lecturer on different SET outcomes. Results showed that women lecturers were not disfavored in general, but that described feminine or masculine behaviors led to gendered evaluations of the lecturer. The results were especially pronounced in Experiment 2 where a lecturer described as displaying feminine behaviors was expected to also be more approachable, was better liked and the students rather attended their course. However, a lecturer displaying masculine behaviors were instead perceived as being more competent, a better pedagogue and leader. Gender incongruent behavior was therefore not sanctioned by lower SET. The results still support that SET should not be used as sole indicators of pedagogic ability of a lecturer for promotion and hiring decisions because they may be gender-biased.

Spatializing Social Change: Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining in Upper Guinea

This chapter proposes a spatial perspective on the analysis of social change in the making via a study of artisanal and small-scale gold-mining sites in Guinea based on twenty-two months of fieldwork between 2011 and 2019 in the region of Upper Guinea, where increasing numbers of inhabitants have been circulating between artisanal and small-scale mining sites to search for gold since the price of gold rose between 2008 and 2012. The chapter starts by discussing artisanal and small-scale mining spaces through the notion of hotspots of transition, insisting on their liminal character. This liminality is analyzed as a spatial framework in which new opportunities emerge regarding gender—women’s adoption of what is considered masculine behavior, for instance—and where instantaneity is more privileged than continuity in some actions, such as those associated with consumption. More generally, it shows how the potential for change in artisanal and small-scale mining spaces is closely linked to their ephemeral nature. The relationship between space and temporality is more explicitly discussed in the second part of the chapter, which explores how the ephemerality of artisanal and small-scale mining spaces has recently been challenged by the Guinean government’s move to control mining mobility and fix mining sites spatially by delimiting legal mining territories. Since 2015–2016, multiple military operations have been conducted to expel miners from land for which the Guinean State has given industrial companies legal permits to prospect for and mine gold. This part of the chapter analyzes the socio-spatial consequences of this situation and shows that perceptions of time and of social change are constructed by the forms that space take.

Albus Dumbledore and the Curse of Toxic Masculinity

In both the worlds of sociology and psychotherapy, a crisis of masculinity can be seen in a number of very concerning trends in violence, mental health, education, media, and in wider social domains. Having explored the traditional representations of ‘superhero’ masculinity through the discussion of superheroes and villains in the previous sections, this chapter analyzes how Albus Dumbledore represents the old superhero masculine archetype by contrasting it with Harry Potter’s, who provides a newer and more hopeful model of masculine behavior based on friendship, connection, teamwork, and love. This chapter delves into how characters can model alternative masculinities as an effective strategy to combat the pervasiveness of toxic masculinity, and its effects on children and adults alike.

Context Effects on Gender Schematic Behavior

Samples of adolescent girls and of women and men college students were asked to describe in their own words a time in which they had acted in a feminine manner and a time in which they had acted in a masculine manner. These open‑ended data were coded for themes, the gender of others present in the situation, and the context of the activity. As predicted, girls and women were more likely than men to mention boys or men being present when acting in a feminine manner. Also as predicted, men were more likely than women or girls to mention girls or women being present when acting in a feminine manner. On the question about acting in a masculine manner, all participant groups' examples were more frequently with men or boys only present, although women's and girls' responses were more strongly in that category than were men's. Further, this tendency was observed more frequently on examples of masculine roles than on examples of aggression. Finally, comparing responses to the questions within gender showed that women mentioned a heterosexual dating context significantly more frequently for the question about feminine than about masculine behavior. Implications of these findings for the measurement of masculinity and femininity are discussed.

Engaging Disenfranchised Youth through an Equine Assisted Activities Program: Understanding Psychosocial Benefits of Horse-Human Interactions

Evidence suggests equine-assisted activities may provide psychological benefits to young people “at-risk.” Results are presented from an equine program among 14- to 16-year-old children (N = 7), mostly boys (N = 6), attending a non-traditional flexi-school in Australia. Thematic analyses were undertaken on observations by facilitators, researchers, and a school teacher, and interviews with a school teacher. Key themes suggest that program participants benefited from positive engagement, social connectedness, and increased confidence, relationships, and attachment. Mechanisms were identified as a desire and an ability to connect with the horse and a positive environment. The social context of the equine program contrasts with other contexts in these young people’s lives, which allowed them to engage through more positive relational, affectionate behavior. For the boys, positive rather than damaging masculine behavior was displayed. Furthermore, the compatible student-environment interactions provide a backdrop which makes other positive changes possible.

“The World is Made for Men”

Canvassing the criminal and civil courts of Quebec, this chapter uncovers the patterns of male assault, both against other men and against women, with a focus upon the ways in which quotidian social practices defined a variety of modes of masculine behavior, which reinforced and subverted cultural codes of normative manhood built around patriarchal authority. This chapter argues that there was considerable state and non-state violence within the colony, which was used as a primary instrument by which to demarcate small differences of rank, and that while insults and assaults largely occurred within ethnic enclaves, over time these became increasingly characterized by interethnic conflict.

Resisting the Demand to Stand

How sex-segregated bathrooms negatively impact trans, genderqueer, nonbinary, queer, and gender-nonconforming people has been extensively studied, yet few have considered how intersex people are subjected to bathroom violence. To begin broadening this conversation, I focus on the medical management of boys with the intersex variation hypospadias and demonstrate that anxieties around bathrooms extend beyond the bathroom walls—into surgical theaters—and are not simply a trans or queer issue. Anxieties about bathrooms and hegemonic urinary masculine behavior inform the violent medical maltreatment of intersex boys with hypospadias; they are subjected to shaming, disabling, and invasive procedures in the hope they will reinforce compulsory dyadism and able-bodiedness, as well as exhibit hegemonic heteromasculine behaviors, namely standing to urinate. Because of discriminatory, gratuitous surgical interventions, the bathroom and urination become sites of pain and trauma for these boys. In turn, these boys’ sense of masculine belonging are undermined or destroyed.

Soldier, Sailor, Rebel, Rule Breaker

This chapter focuses on how youth fashion and style serve as markers and expressions of belonging and resistance in ways that mutually reinforce masculinity and nationalism. The chapter shows that style is deeply personal and intentional for young people. While research on young women has long discussed issues of body image, the interview data discussed here shows that clothing choices are also embedded in body image and in conceptions of masculinity for young men. The chapter focuses in particular on two emotional articulations of masculinity that are heavily marketed through the products: the desire for male comradeship and belonging, and the urge to express resistance, frustration, and anger at mainstream society. It also shows how the products idealize male strength and physicality, drawing on muscular, tattooed Viking warriors with inflated biceps and hypermasculine models that may appeal to adolescent males who feel pressured to conform to scripted ideals about appropriate masculine behavior and physique. Hypermasculine symbols like Viking gods thus become intertwined with youth fantasies of a romantic, pure, and untroubled past in ways that may help them navigate the transition to adult life and uncertain labor markets.

Was Ida Lewis a Womanly, or a Manly, Woman? The Ambivalence of a Woman Lighthouse Keeper’s Gender Identity Between Masculinity and Femininity

It is obvious that Darling could be mentioned as a most brave woman in doing the heavy labor involved in a lighthouse keeping and even saving shipwrecked people, but it is more particularly worth noting that Ida Lewis’s efforts saved the lives of at least eighteen people over a period of twenty-five years. This paper focuses on Ida Lewis, the most famous woman lighthouse keeper in the United States, and analyzes the gender identity of women lighthouse keepers. most studies that discuss women lighthouse keepers point out that, behind women’s being appointed as official lighthouse keepers in the nineteenth-century United States, the labor of lighthouse keepers could essentially share common features with the form of femininity that was emphasized in the Victorian era. However, when analyzing from the viewpoint of gender ideology, I cannot help raising questions regarding women lighthouse keepers as examples of mere femininity simply because the labor forms were analogous with household labor. When the labors of lighthouse keeping would be actually recognized as a manly role, can we make a judgement that women lighthouse keepers all endowed feminine traits even when performing the heavy tasks of lighthouse keeping? Moreover, lifesaving, being separable from lighthouse keeping, has been traditionally considered to be “masculine behavior.” The aim of this paper is to point out that “femininity” and “masculinity” have been artificially generated, and, as such, are entirely unrelated to an individual’s characteristics and abilities. In that light, to deconstruct ideologies of “femininity” and “masculinity,” I have chosen to focus on women who have committed to continuing to perform their duties by analyzing the life of Ida Lewis as the most famous woman lighthouse keeper. This has been accomplished by referring to the United States Department of the Interior National Park Service: National Register of Historic Places Inventory for 1897 and some articles about Ida Lewis from 1869 to 1911 as primary sources. Ida Lewis applies simultaneously as among those women who, under the patriarchy, should be confined to the “women’s sphere.” Furthermore, according to social gender ideology, the life of Ms. Lewis does not necessarily correspond to an individual’s abilities and character, as she was able to display the same ability as a man and perform “men’s work” in the women’s sphere.

The Crimes that Pay: Criminality as a Claim to Masculine Social Capital

Can men use criminality as a means to assert their masculinity and thereby elevate their social standing? We report five studies that provide insight into that question. The first two studies focused on measuring how performing masculine or non-masculine behavior affected the social standing of the actor (i.e. their amount of social capital). The following two studies assessed the respondents’ estimation of how masculine committing 40 different crimes were perceived to be. In the final study, we built on the encouraging results of the first four and thus used the crime masculinity measures in context of how committing such a crime would affect the imagined criminal's amount of social capital. The respondents were asked to assess how the crime affected the change in social standing in three ways: to them personally, the actor's peers, and to society at large. The results suggest that performing crimes in line with masculine norms are rewarded with higher social standing, whereas crimes counter to those norms leads to lower social standing, independent of personal subscription to those norms. Additionally, subscription to masculine norms moderated the extent to which respondents themselves would reward the criminal behavior, such that those who subscribed to masculine norms more tended to ascribe more social capital to more masculine crimes.