I'm writing a research essay on the lack of equality of opportunity for men in humanities; arts; and social sciences disciplines (higher education), and would love your suggestions/inputs/tips!

House-of-Raven · 2025-07-02T04:05:58+00:00

I was going to go into grad school after getting my psych degree. 80% of my classes were women, as well as most of my profs. But still somehow, female students were given preferential treatment, and had female specific scholarships.

Lots of my classes that did have more open discussions never had any of the male students contribute. Lots of comments were made by female students that lots of the others agreed with that were both misandrist and complete nonsense.

My psychology of gender class didn’t speak about men once other than to make passing comments about how they’re apparently responsible for everything wrong with the world. You’d think a class that discusses gender would at least mention men once in the actual content of the class?

It really did feel like not only was the program completely dominated and catered to women, but that they also did not want that to change at all. Ended up not even applying to grad school and went to work.

Langland88 · 2025-07-02T06:56:50+00:00

One good thing to know that a lot of students don't often understand is that your own experiences can used in your papers. I don't remember how exactly since it's been about 10 years since I even took an English 102 class. Another good thing to do is always cite your own interviews with actual men on this topic too.

I fear that the internet and the many scholarly databases online might be lacking in essays, papers, or documents that could be helpful. In the world of academics, the term Gender, despite its dictionary definition, seems to often be used as a synonym for women. You noticed how something might be referred to as a gendered issue and it's often meant as a women's issue exclusively? Well I have even though people call me being stupid for noticing it.

diagnosissplendid · 2025-07-02T09:48:35+00:00

My experience (and that of my cohort of fathers in their 30s and 40s) is that women of youngish kids who are exiting the most intense period of parenthood often opt to go to do higher education rather than going back to paid employment.

Given that women get defaulted to as the likeliest full time or majority time carer because of unbalanced paternity/maternity leave in most countries, they already have a status quo at home of a single income, however hard it might be for their partner. The (almost always) male partner has to continue in employment and the cultural idea of a "supportive partner" only runs in one direction, so women end up often unilaterally choosing education and men are locked into employment.

I don't know of a single family setup where a woman has supported a man through HE, but I've personally done it multiple times and virtually everyone I know has a wife or girlfriend whose HE participation they have supported.

The stats bear this out too: male participation rates in HE are lower at all stages, and amongst mature students I imagine it is considerably worse.

There's a great tool for exploring participation here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/whos-in-he

Also worth pointing out especially with regards to fathers are employment rates: fathers are obviously obligate earners whereas for mothers there is not a lot of difference between their labour market participation and those of women without children. See figure 1, it is striking: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/familiesandthelabourmarketengland/2021#employment-rates-for-parents-in-the-uk

If you have the chance, survey fathers about their own and their partner's participation in higher education. I haven't seen literature that has examined this (NB, I'm busy so might have missed it) but suspect men don't feel they have license to do HE as they're already being told they don't do enough in the home after being the obligate household earner. It is an area that, IMO, needs a lot of research.

dudester3 · 2025-07-03T01:29:14+00:00

Use same stats women have used against men for decades: hiring and promotion stats, %age of new hires by gender, promotions. Look at OUTCOMES, and like feminists, ignore disparate inputs, as any imputed difference suggested 'discrimination," later formalized into EEO. We can do the same.

Many men avoid trad female professions due to reverse discrim and feminist standards but academia has become so gender siloed, to even address it is the kiss of death. Read "Coddling of American Mind" by Haidt to see how leftist trends have eviscerated conservative pov on campus.

You WILL be attacked: prepare your support groups before you go public.

vtj · 2025-07-03T22:14:56+00:00

This paper might be related to what you are looking for: Sex differences in the number of scientific publications and citations when attaining the rank of professor in Sweden

Abstract: The proportion of women tends to decrease the higher the academic rank, following a global pattern. Sweden has taken comprehensive measures to decrease this gap across 30 years, and many countries are following a similar path. Yet today only 27% of faculty with the rank of professor in Sweden are female. A common explanation is that academia is biased against women. According to this hypothesis, women have to reach higher levels of scholarly achievement than men to be appointed to the same academic rank. Publication metrics when attaining the rank of professor were compiled from the Web of Science for samples of the whole population of 1345 professors appointed at the six largest universities in Sweden during a six-year period. Men had significantly more publications and citations in both medicine and in the social sciences, rejecting the hypothesis that women are held to a higher scholarly standard in this context.

There's also this older paper: National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track. Despite the title, it also looks at hiring in psychology, not just STEM fields.

Abstract: National randomized experiments and validation studies were conducted on 873 tenure-track faculty (439 male, 434 female) from biology, engineering, economics, and psychology at 371 universities/colleges from 50 US states and the District of Columbia. In the main experiment, 363 faculty members evaluated narrative summaries describing hypothetical female and male applicants for tenure-track assistant professorships who shared the same lifestyle (e.g., single without children, married with children). Applicants' profiles were systematically varied to disguise identically rated scholarship; profiles were counterbalanced by gender across faculty to enable between-faculty comparisons of hiring preferences for identically qualified women versus men. Results revealed a 2:1 preference for women by faculty of both genders across both math-intensive and non–math-intensive fields, with the single exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. Results were replicated using weighted analyses to control for national sample characteristics. In follow-up experiments, 144 faculty evaluated competing applicants with differing lifestyles (e.g., divorced mother vs. married father), and 204 faculty compared same-gender candidates with children, but differing in whether they took 1-y-parental leaves in graduate school. Women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers; men preferred mothers who took leaves to mothers who did not. In two validation studies, 35 engineering faculty provided rankings using full curricula vitae instead of narratives, and 127 faculty rated one applicant rather than choosing from a mixed-gender group; the same preference for women was shown by faculty of both genders. These results suggest it is a propitious time for women launching careers in academic science. Messages to the contrary may discourage women from applying for STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) tenure-track assistant professorships.

Edit: Yet another paper in a similar vein: Gender Bias in Academic Recruitment? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in the Nordic Region

ForwardCommercial670 · 2025-07-05T21:02:40+00:00

You could write a stellar paper and they'd still fail you because the title's premise will be perceived as absurd.

Retaliation will be their go-to.

Just like American cops retaliating against those that exercise their Constitutional rights.

Blauwpetje · 2025-07-06T12:58:59+00:00

When working with children, women are often problemless allowed to touch them or put an arm around them. Within certain boundaries, I think this good and healthy. But men are warned immediately. I’ve literally seen this happen in a school for special education.

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