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As we will show below, this pattern of the perception of problems for women varies
differently for male and female students, resulting in a differential gender gap at various points in
the program. Presumably this could result in some degree of tension between the genders about
women’s place in these professions, which might be worth exploring more in the future.
The question again arises whether the variation between the cohorts result from differences
between the cohorts or changes over the course of the undergraduate career. As the questions
about the perception of problems for women in SEM were repeated for the Fall and Spring
surveys, change in response could be measured for the students who took both surveys. Between
30-60% of the students changed their responses to the questions from fall to spring (Table IIG-
7). Of the students who changed their responses, more saw the issues as less problematic in the
Spring than they did in the Fall, with few exceptions, i.e., a higher proportion decreased their
perception of the problems than increased their perception of the problems from Fall to Spring.
This suggests that as the male students become more familiar with the women in the program,
they are less likely to perceive them as having problems unique to women, or are less likely to
think of them as “other” than themselves, the male majority in the program. The main exception
to this pattern is a larger proportion of male students who increased their perception of
discriminatory attitudes toward women in scientific fields from Fall to Spring.
IIG-250