Nature has a piece alleging gender bias, namely institutions show via text and image a bias towards men, especially white men. They note:
Each year, people spend less time reading and more time viewing images, which are proliferating online. Images from platforms such as Google and Wikipedia are downloaded by millions every day, and millions more are interacting through social media, such as Instagram and TikTok, that primarily consist of exchanging visual content. In parallel, news agencies and digital advertisers are increasingly capturing attention online through the use of images, which people process more quickly, implicitly and memorably than text. Here we show that the rise of images online significantly exacerbates gender bias, both in its statistical prevalence and its psychological impact. We examine the gender associations of 3,495 social categories (such as ‘nurse’ or ‘banker’) in more than one million images from Google, Wikipedia and Internet Movie Database (IMDb), and in billions of words from these platforms. We find that gender bias is consistently more prevalent in images than text for both female- and male-typed categories. We also show that the documented underrepresentation of women online is substantially worse in images than in text, public opinion and US census data. Finally, we conducted a nationally representative, preregistered experiment that shows that googling for images rather than textual descriptions of occupations amplifies gender bias in participants’ beliefs. Addressing the societal effect of this large-scale shift towards visual communication will be essential for developing a fair and inclusive future for the internet.
Now if one then looks at MIT News it is near impossible to find this effect. The Institute management is all female, mixed race.
Harvard is somewhat akin but frankly much less so. It will be interesting in the long run to see how this plays out. The MIT course noted above is described as:
The course, known as CLICK for short, stands for "Connecting as is, Listening first, Investigating without Judgment, Communicating kindness, and Keeping in touch." CLICK was taught for the first time at MIT in winter 2023 and focuses on emotional intelligence and social connections. During the 50-minute sessions, students work in small groups and learn valuable tips to help them navigate life — especially being on campus for the first time. Students also learn how to decompress with yoga. CLICK also helps students examine the places they go during the week and the people they interact with, then provides “recipes” for easy conversation starters along with a blend of open-ended reflections on how to show up authentically and with compassion. Conversely, they offer advice on backing out of an unwanted conversation graciously.
Yes, this is a real MIT course and it is being promoted on the MIT News site. My, have things changed!
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