Sexism and the Facts

I was very interested to read in Trish Hall's and Victoria Quade's article of the investigation of the position of women at Victoria University last week. However, I was extremely disappointed with the lack of evidence on which they based their conclusion that sexism exists at university. "The evidence shows that it does" -I could find little.

They claim that despite the superior performance of women at undergraduate level, fewer women continue on to higher studies. They omit to say that there are fewer women at university. Perhaps the study did prove that as a percentage fewer women went on to postgraduate levels - I wish they had made it clear.

Another complaint is that they present two reasons as being major in women's decisions to continue studying: lack of confidence in their academic ability, and financial difficulties. Fair enough, if the survey of third and fourth year students is representative. Is it? The writers don't say how many students they interviewed or whether it was a completely random sample of female students. Neither do they say what "financial difficulties" or "lack of confidence in their academic abilities" are defined as. For an example of how misleading such terms could be: Is a student who says she is sick of being poor and wants to be able to buy as many clothes as she wants when she wants classed as not continuing her studies because of "financial difficulties"? Or is a student, believing that first class honours is necessary for a job and knowing that she hasn't the ability or diligence to do this, classed as not continuing her academic work because of "lack of confidence in her academic ability"?

Another criticism is of the statement "Most women academics felt pressure to out-perform their male colleagues in order to achieve recognition" - as if this implies sexual discrimination. Don't most male academics feel the same pressure that to achieve recognition they must out-perform their male and female colleagues? And what of the claim that women who were more successful "often felt that this was perceived by male colleagues as threatening". How often is "often"? And how did they know that their colleagues felt threatened? Did they ask them? What does "threatening" really mean?

I appreciate that the writers did not have a great deal of space for detail, but if you're going to make such a damning conclusion that sexism exists at university, you should provide facts.

P.M. Shone