The idea of the “glass roof” pertaining to women and not to men is usually associated with the workplace.
But it looks like gender divides when it comes to success and achievement are very much prevalent in school and college too.
Troubling research conducted by the Metropolitan State University of Denver, has revealed that if you are female, your level of attractiveness greatly affects your grades.
According to Cosmopolitan, the study found that “less attractive” females tend to get lower grades than their similarly qualified peers – however, the same result was not observed among males.
Professors at the University examined online classes, where professors didn’t know what their students looked like, and compared the results with physical classrooms, where professors (of course) were aware of their students’ appearance.
For students in the online classes, it was found that the “attractive gap” disappeared.
Professor Hernández-Julián explained why he found the results worrying.
He said:
“Is it that professors invest more time and energy into the better-looking students, helping them learn more and earn the higher grades?
“Or do professors simply reward the appearance with higher grades given identical performance?
“The likely answer, given our growing understanding of the prevalence of implicit biases, is that professors make small adjustments on both of these margins.”
How incredibly frustrating.
