Those Wacky Political Science Profs

This past weekend lots of folks have been playing with this site, which uses Rate My Professor data to look at gender differences based on keywords.

So I put in the two ideological terms of "liberal" and "conservative" to see if any gender differences emerge (do your own terms, it's fun ... I'll probably do really weird ones later and blog about it. Just because).

First, political science is the top of the heap, which makes sense given it's a field devoted to politics. You'd expect more ideological labeling there than in, say, chemistry. So below is "conservative." Blue is male, so clearly political science is not only more likely to have faculty described as either "liberal" or "conservative," but males are more likely to be identified as "conservative."

Okay, but how about female political science profs? There's a difference, as seen in the graphic below. The scores are flipped, with females more than males likely to be identified as "liberal."

The lesson? Chemists apparently have no ideology.

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