Because microinequities turn into macroaggressions which dis-engender our precious bodily fluids, or something. Hell, I don’t know.
Two universities are offering faculty guides advising professors to “challenge the gender binary” and avoid “microinequities” in the interest of making classrooms gender inclusive.
Carnegie Mellon University, for one, has produced a guide for creating an inclusive learning environment warning professors that using gendered language, forgetting student names, or other “small unconscious behaviors” in class can make women and minority students feel that they are not valued.
To combat the threat of being non-inclusive, professors are told to steer clear of “microinequities,” which are defined as “small unconscious behaviors…that certain groups experience repeatedly.”
Using examples from a 1982 study, the guide explains how women can be disheartened by the harrowing microinequities, explaining that “women report that instructors tend to interrupt them more often than men, ignore them more often, call on them less often, ask them more recall questions and less analytical questions, acknowledge their contributions less, and build on their answers less.”
Over time, the guide alleges, these microinequities can “add up” and make students both less productive and less willing to contribute in class.