Megan Moore

Gender Bias

Summary: There has always been a significant difference in the amount of men and the amount

of women that there are in any of the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math)

fields. Engineering is one of the most popular majors but it has been a male dominated major

since it was first discovered. This article discusses college life and the gender bias that exists at

almost every university that offers Engineering courses. The articles asks how Universities can

be more successful in recruiting and promoting the professional success of women in science

and math related departments. Gender bias is not only common in the students that are taking

courses at the University but it is also clear in the gender of the faculty of those particular

subjects and it is of course clear in the work force. The author of the article did a study on the

actual salary and space allocations of 282 faculty members in the science, technology,

engineering, and math. As well as the behavioral science department at the heavily research

active university. The analysis of the data collected revealed that the university is reducing the

gender based inequality. The study shows that female and male faculty members are receiving

the very similar compensation for their work and that even females have indicated a higher

satisfaction with their space allocations. The article goes on about how important it is for

universities to work hard to reduce the gender bias. They must equally distribute resources and

pay careful attention to perceptions of equity in order to retain and promote female faculty

members.

Rhetorical Analysis: I found this article on the ERIC database that was given to us on our library

research guide. The article fits into the category of a Journal Article and a Research report. The

author had to do a lot of research and implement studies in order to write this article. The article

has a lot of clear facts and percentages that makes it clear that we are reading a research
report that was intended to express the information that was concluded from the studies. Its

purpose was also to inform the interested readers about a very known and controversial topic. I

dont think there is a specific target audience for this article. It was most likely created by a

university student of professor for the purpose of getting a grade or getting paid for the study.

The education level of this article is higher education and post secondary education. It is written

in English and the full article was 34 pages. There were 3 authors of this article. 2 females from

West Virginia University and one male from the University of Kentucky. It is unknown whether or

not the authors are students or professors. The article is very well organized. There are clear

topics of each paragraph and the paragraphs are very short so that the reader isnt

overwhelmed with an excess load of information. They use bold font to distinguish the different

topics of discussion. The authors also included a wide variety of graphs that help express the

information found while doing the study. The article was published in April of 2014 and was

sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Works Cited

Darrah, Marjorie, et al. "Salary, Space, and Satisfaction: An Examination of Gender Differences

in the Sciences." Research in Higher Education Journal, vol. 23, 01 Apr. 2014. EBSCOhost,

librarylink.uncc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1064109&site=ehost-live&scope=site.