6.2f Moving Toward Equity

Affirmative action is an example of a policy that focused on improving equity. Figure 6.2 illustrates this process. In Figure 6.2, the left panel portrays each person trying to cross the street without a curb-cut or signage that is accessible to all of them. Giving each person the same resources is using equality to guide the decision. However, each person may need something different to achieve the same outcome. The panel on the right shows that with a curb-cut and signage that uses sound and sight everyone can cross the street safely. Giving everyone the resources they need to take part is called equity. Thus, emphasizing equality without equity can perpetuate inequality.

Equal Doesn’t Mean Equitable

Education offers many examples of how policies seeking equality preserve inequality. One example is end-of-term student evaluations of instructors. Because the evaluation instrument is the same for all faculty, users see it as bias-free. However, many peer-reviewed studies find that students rate women faculty worse than instructors who are men. Gender and racial minority faculty are likelier to get negative student evaluations no matter how competent they are as teachers (Chávez & Mitchell, 2019; MacNell et al., 2015).

MacNell et al. (2015) conducted an experiment using online courses to measure gender bias in student evaluations of teachers. Two college professors (one a man and the other a woman) taught two online sections of the same course. In one section, the professor identified as the other gender. The researchers found that students rated the professor thought to be a man higher than the professor assumed to be a woman (MacNell et al., 2015).

Students may not have intentionally been sexist in their evaluations. Still, they were socialized into a patriarchal culture (a social system where men dominate, discussed later in this chapter), which stereotypes men as brilliant and, therefore, better professors. Moreover, research examining implicit bias (unconscious negative attitudes) finds that people connect brilliance with men more than women (Storage et al., 2020). Being a college professor is an occupation that many assume requires high intelligence. Therefore, students may be more critical of women professors while also being unaware that they hold biased views.

Bias in student evaluations of teachers matters because supervisors use the results to decide merit raises, contract renewals, promotions, and teaching awards. Faculty are expected to read their evaluations, reflect on them, and report in their annual reviews how they use them to improve, regardless of whether any biased comments relate to their actual abilities and effectiveness as teachers.