Here’s something that will change the way you view academia: start noticing how discussion panels with a good enough gender-mix among speakers are likely to introduce female PhDs as Ms. and male PhDs as Dr . Notice also how female speakers are given significantly lesser chances to talk and are usually invited to speak on topics that exclusively have to do with gender, which may feel like token representation . Similar forms of sexism may pervade other academic settings such as classrooms, discussion circles, and seminars as well, which is why we decide to investigate this phenomenon in our own academic institution, the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).

We found that our key conclusions confirmed what existing literature  had to say, and phenomena like token representation (enabled by the administration) and mistitling of women professors (by students and faculty alike) were prevalent at LUMS too. This was especially true for fields such as Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. This is interesting as the university is otherwise considered as one of the top-ranking institutions and claims to foster thoughtful and open-minded individuals that uphold equity.  Even courses with disproportionately higher number of female students, such as Sociology and Psychology courses, still had high representation of men in higher faculty and administrative positions. “Female professors are often still given additional work, but without any comparable promotions or opportunities” discussed an interviewee. Our research also found female academics were often given “confusing” tasks such as beautifying the campuses or being consulted for food options on campus, something their male counterparts were almost never required to do.

Interestingly, given how our research took place during the pandemic , we also explored the additional burden female academics had to experience during the emergence of COVID-19. Many of our female respondents reported doing up to three forms of labor i.e., faculty at a private university, consultant for private or public organization, and being a fulltime homemaker, and disproportionately higher ‘care burdens’ than their male counterparts in particular, our respondents shared that students were more likely to reach out to female professors for counselling, emotional support and assistance with gendered struggles. Our male respondents acknowledged this disparity yet stated they had “failed to substantially do something about it” . Conversely, some female academics reported how having the whole family stuck at home during COVID-19 gave male members of the household a chance to recognize the invisibilization of unpaid labor (such as housework and caretaking) and empathize with the double-burden of female students and academics.  

Academia as a profession is often considered the line of work of intellectuals, who have ability to engage with nuances of theory and policy. Unfortunately, it is still not immune to the pervasion of limitations that it sets out to deconstruct. We hope our research can inform university level policy making and engage in discourse concerning women in academia. 

Bios: 
 

• Ahsan Mashhood is a Research Associate at Legal Aid Society (LAS), with a BSc. in Economics and a minor in Literature in English from LUMS. 
• Faryal Ashfaq is an Anthropology and Sociology graduate from LUMS and an MSc. In Education student at the University of Oxford.
• Hajrah Yousaf graduated from the Anthropology and Sociology department at LUMS, where she now works as a research assistant.
• Shahbaz Asif majored in Management Science at LUMS and now works at Intellia as a Management Consultant. 
• Zoya Hashim has a degree in Anthropology and Sociology from LUMS, where she was the president of Rizq.