The Feminist Equation: The Greater the Number of Females in Universities, the less Academic Freedom By Mrs Abigail Knight (Florida)
As a female academic (STEM), I have noticed this, that with the large numbers of females in all US Universities, and also in Australia, there has been a corresponding decline in the ideal of free speech on campuses. I hypothesised tht this was due to women in general tending to be more to the Left than men, something observed in the social science literature. I certainly have seen this at my university, and a no nationwide survey of faculty conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and research confirms this.
“As the number of women in higher education continues to rise, free speech on college campuses declines, said Professor Samuel Abrams, a social scientist at Sarah Lawrence College.
Abrams determined the trend by analyzing the results of a nationwide survey of faculty conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, pointing out that compared to male counterparts, female scholars are more likely to agree with suppressing and punishing unpopular speech.
“Fifty-one percent of women professors reported that they could envision shouting down a speaker to prevent them from speaking on campus as being acceptable, compared to just 39 percent of men,” Abrams wrote in a March 24 piece for the American Enterprise Institute, where he serves as a senior fellow.
For white male professors who refuse diversity training, almost half of female professors “believe their male counterparts should face some sort of sanction,” he wrote.
“Thirty percent of female professors believe [the male] professors should be removed from the classroom until they comply. Seventeen percent of female professors believe that these male professors should be suspended until they comply. Two percent of female faculty even believe that their white male counterparts should be fired,” Abrams wrote.
In comparison, only 26 percent of male faculty think the professors should be punished, he wrote.
In an interview with The College Fix, Abrams said the survey results show that female professors are more supportive of mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion statements as well as silencing dissenting or controversial speech.
In contrast, he said, most male professors view DEI statements as a political litmus test and are less likely to support shouting speakers down.
Underscoring these findings is the fact that women — as students, faculty and administrators — now hold the majority share in higher education, he said.
Abrams, in his interview with The College Fix, said he is not highlighting the trend due to a “personal interest in gender” but rather seeks “to understand various cut points in society.”
He said recent election results and other data show that younger single women are overwhelmingly left-of-center, progressive and politically active, while older women and married women tend to be more centrist and conservative.
He said in reviewing the FIRE faculty survey, he sought to determine whether this trend played out on college campuses as well, where women make up about 66 percent of the university faculty.
“Thanks to this new very large-scale survey … over and over and over again the data showed, very disturbingly in my view, that when it comes to things like mandatory diversity statements … that women were overwhelmingly in support of those, whereas men were not,” he told The Fix.”
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