Crossposted at Jezebel.
Ajax was searching for majors on College Board, a website aimed at helping people get into and through college. She wanted to search for colleges with women’s studies majors and when she typed “women” into the keyword field, the search function returned two majors: women’s studies and fashion design.
This would make perfect sense if the search function returned only women’s studies since it has “women” in the name and all. But fashion design? It suggests that somehow fashion design has been marked as a major-for- or about-women, but no other major has.
What about, say, history? Nope, no women in that.
Psychology? Well, there is a Psych of Women class. But, otherwise no.
Economics? Don’t make me laugh!
Queer Studies? Afro-Am? Wait? Women are gay!? And black!?
Politics? Oh honey, don’t worry your pretty little head about it!
Literature? Oh yeah! We forgot literature! Let’s slap a “women” tag on that one and call it a day.
UPDATE: Brenden L. went to the website and typed in men. Guess what he got?
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Comments 20
Ollie — April 9, 2010
I just started reading this blog, so I don't know if I'm the only skeptic....
But this seems like it could easily be explained if you look into how their keyword search works. It's a forum, correct? Somehow meta data has been attached to each major, and the word "women" can be found to match with Fashion Design. This could be something as innocent as having the tag "womans fashion" in the keyword search.
Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist — April 9, 2010
WTF. That's just so offensive.
EMB — April 9, 2010
What is the URL for this search? I wouldn't rush to ascribe this to a human being having actually adding the keyword by hand...
Jem — April 9, 2010
*mirror's Ollie's comment* Probably to do with the description of the major. Though you'd expect "women" to come up in the description of other majors too (eg Women's sufferage in History?)
MPS — April 9, 2010
I just went to the site:
http://collegesearch.collegeboard.com/search/servlet/advsearchservlet?buttonPressed=next&navigateTo=3
If you type "men" instead of "women," you just get "Fashion Design."
So really what we have here is, whoever created the "tags" for Fashion Design put "men" and "women" in there, and this was done for no other major, except for Women's Studies, which for good reason was "tagged" with "women."
No sexism!
R — April 9, 2010
I may have to agree with Ollie here. In the UK course finder at UCAS the courses listed under Women read; Fashion Design Womenswear, Womens Studies, Women Cultural and Women Health.
The search is not implying that fashion design students are likely to be women but that womenswear design is a course to be studied. On UCAS there was Menswear too along with Fashion Design Menswear.
MPS — April 9, 2010
(Let me clarify that my "No sexism!" comment only concerns this particular instance, and features an exclamation point because I find it amusing how this situation resolved itself. It is not intended to trivialize the gender bias in perceptions of college majors, what people should major in, etc.)
Jesse — April 9, 2010
What you are seeing is the result of a database programmer on the back end trying to find a way to categorize majors in a way that would be useful. If you specify 'women' you're going to get 'women' things. Why would it come up with psychology if you typed that in? If it came up with *everything* then the query would be useless.
What should come up if I typed "Black"? Do you think I would get Afro-American Studies? I imagine so. Would I get electrical engineering from that query? I don't think I would. Because there's nothing about electrical engineering that has *anything* to do with race. If I was managing the database I wouldn't put anything in the description of elec. engineering that ever mentioned 'black' or 'African' thus it wouldn't come up.
This blog often makes a really big deal out of something terribly innocuous. It's like a car wreck I can't stop staring at.
MPS — April 9, 2010
My experiment is important enough to bear repeating: IF YOU TYPE "MEN" IN THE FIELD, YOU ALSO GET "FASHION DESIGN."
Rolton — April 9, 2010
Yeah, I did the same check myself before coming to comment, and MPS is correct.
But the real point is that you should ALWAYS check this kind of thing before leaping to conclusions.
So, everyone jumping to assume it was programmed by a sexist Neanderthal... why didn't YOU think to check?
Rolton — April 9, 2010
Also, one might have looked a little deeper to wonder why those sexist jerkfaces hadn't also included such majors as "Fashion Modeling" or "Fashion Merchandising."
And are women even overwhelming among fashion design majors? I'm no expert, but at least high fashion has been historically dominated by men.
Christine — April 9, 2010
When you search for "men" in that same search, the result "fashion design" also appears. Fashion designers usually specialize in menswear or womenswear.
Anonymous — April 12, 2010
Congratulations, you're a feminazi.
Kate — April 14, 2010
wow. this comments section got a bit mean.
Somebody Else — May 5, 2010
So, it turns out it actually *is* sexist, just not the direction expected.