Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Challenges for APA Women in and Outside of the Classroom

The Asian American Dilemma in DEI: Finding Space in the Diversity Debates

“…The emotional burden of racial battle fatigue does not stop with in-class interactions. Students also take out their frustrations on Asian faculty in course evaluations, especially when unconscious biases operate in their determinations as to whether they have been treated appropriately [27]. In my own course evaluations, I have seen this play out for over 20 years.…”

“…Data at the department level would likely show many departments, like my home department of Political Science, with none or just one Asian American faculty member during that same timeframe.) Unfortunately, the NSF classification is a standard that other academic programs have adopted to exclude Asian Americans from special consideration as minorities in other areas of higher education, effectively excluding Asians from university funding opportunities and fellowships [16,[27][28][29].…”

“…With Asian faculty, we see the same trends that plague other racial and ethnic minorities. Asian Americans are underrepresented in higher administration, at the rank of full professor, and in many disciplines outside of STEM [15,27,28,[36][37][38]. They suffer the same problems with recruitment, hiring, and retention as other historically underrepresented minority groups both within and outside of academia.…”

“…For example, studies have shown that having an ethnic or foreign name on a job application can decrease a candidate's likelihood of obtaining an interview [39,40]. With Asian applicants, an ethnic name also generates concerns regarding language competency and accents, where colleagues argue that students will have trouble understanding lectures and exclude candidates based on "cultural fit" to veil hiring discrimination [27]. Asian American faculty also face the minority tax, a term used to refer to the extra service obligations placed on minority faculty that involve mentoring minority students as well as serving on committees to ensure that the composition is diverse [41,42].…”

“…They encounter the difficult task of trying to maintain a sense of order in the classroom that facilitates dialogue but also commands a sense of respect for their authority. Scholars [27,[57][58][59][60][61][62] note that Asian Americans are further stereotyped as passive and weak, with Asian men seen as effeminate, while Asian women are often sexualized. These stereotypes cause students to challenge Asian American faculty more readily, creating racial battle fatigue such that faculty are worn down by the constant stereotyping and microaggressions [63][64][65][66].…”