Sexi Pirate! : Gender and the Social Construction of "Tough but Good" Sociology Professors on RateMyProfessors.com

Abstract

In the eyes of many students professors who are seen as tough are automatically bad while professors who are seen as easy are automatically good. However there are a few professors who manage to fall in a category of being tough but still good. We wanted to know what students perceived these professors were doing that made a tough professor someone worth taking because the value they gained from the professor outweighed the characteristic of being tough. On top of that we also wanted to see if and how their perceptions differed if the professor was male or female. We wanted to take a look at the impact of gender differences in how students talk about professors overall but we also wanted to see how students talk about professors of different genders within the professor type of tough but good to see if the expectations students had differed by professor gender.