“We
want to use language that is transparent,” Dr. Lucy Delap, a British
history lecturer, said. “We’re rewriting our first two years of our
History degree to create a wider set of paper choices, to make
assessment criteria clearer, and to really try and root out the
unhelpful and very vague talk of ‘genius,’ of ‘brilliance,’ of ‘flair’
which carries assumptions of gender inequality and also of class and
ethnicity.”
Delap explained that since terms like “brilliance,” “genius,” and
“flair” have too often been used to describe men, tutors should not use
them anymore. Women may have difficulty thinking that they are
“brilliant” because the word has historically been associated with men,
Delap claimed.
“Some of those words, in particular genius, have a very long
intellectual history where it has long been associated with qualities
culturally assumed to be male,” Delap said. “Some women are fine with
that, but others might find it hard to see themselves in those
categories.”
Oxford University’s History department recently revamped its final exam
policy after a study showed that men are more likely to get a first
class degree in history than women. One of the department’s five final
exams will be a take home exam in order to boost female performance.
Some have criticized accused Oxford of playing into the stereotype that
women are the weaker sex.
“I think it is extremely well intentioned and I applaud them for taking
the matter seriously. But it is so insulting,” historian Amanda Foreman
said. “You are saying that the girls can’t take the stress of sitting
in the exam room, which does raise one’s anxiety levels. I don’t think
girls are inherently weaker than boys and can’t take it. Women are not
the weaker sex.”
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