Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors
thelastpsychiatrist.com
Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors
#2corollary: female strangers get better [any form of communication] response rates from [anybody]
Re: Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors
#3It is just as likely that female professors are more likely to respond to female questions because they expect that females are more likely than males to listen to the answer. Why do we have to jump right to a presumption of negative sexual bias?
Re: Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors
#4Maybe she (he?) has stumbled upon the single most important mechanism by which any single gender dominated industry self-compensates.
(I'm assuming here that - since the author emailed mostly males - this field is predominantly male; I have no facts to back up that assumption)
Would love to see a similar study into replies to emails from male/female aliases to professionals in a predominantly female field.
Re: Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors
#5The post's comments describe a row of useful explanations for these facts apart from sexual focus.
Re: Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors
#6It is just as likely that female professors are more likely to respond to female questions because they expect that females are more likely than males to listen to the answer. Why do we have to jump right to a presumption of negative sexual bias?
> Why do we have to jump right to a presumption of negative sexual bias?
Track record.
Re: Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors
#7My first interpretation of this data is that professors are trying to encourage young women to get interested in their field, and therefore subconsciously giving them more resources, but that is probably because there are so few women in the fields I study. It would be nice to know what areas of research contained the studied professors, but I don't want to read all those comments.
Also, a sample size of several dozen? That doesn't sound like a lot to me.
Re: Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors
#8Maybe she (he?) has stumbled upon the single most important mechanism by which any single gender dominated industry self-compensates. (I'm assuming here that - since the author emailed mostly males - this field is predominantly male; I have no facts to back up that assumption) Would love to see a similar study into replies to emails from male/female aliases to professionals in a predominantly female field.
I've been reading this blog (really, letting it pile up in google reader) for some time now, and though I can't point you to a specific post, I'm pretty sure I remember the author being a he.
Re: Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors
#9So I've TA'ed for a little while now and I think the answer isn't anything fundamental how women are regarded or how man are being biased against.
Men rarely, if ever, act as grateful as women when you help them. There's a long list of potential reasons for this, but I've found it nearly universally to be the case.
Even though it's not politically correct, you're more likely to help the person who will thank you sincerely for the help as opposed to the guy who feels like you owe it to him (also often the case).
Re: Female strangers get better response rates when e-mailing professors
#10It is just as likely that female professors are more likely to respond to female questions because they expect that females are more likely than males to listen to the answer. Why do we have to jump right to a presumption of negative sexual bias?
Isn't expecting that females to be more likely to listen than males a negative sexual bias?