Policy on Gender

Members of the Kansas State University community are urged to do the following:

1. Know how gender ideas and traditions affect behavior, including their own.

   Each of us must understand the issues involved in how we interpret and respond to gender. We must begin by paying attention to the experiences and statistics that illuminate how women and men encounter different standards and expectations.

2. Evaluate their own ideas and behavior in this context.

3. Act in ways that show respect for the individual.

   We must be particularly vigilant whenever we make evaluations of judgments about others. Such decisions may be informal – expecting certain behaviors because of someone’s gender; judging the intelligence of a speaker without listening to what is being said; determining what someone wants or needs without inquiring. Such decisions may be formal—faculty evaluations of students (grading, recommendations, advising, scholarship); evaluations of faculty and staff (merit, promotions, grants, job assignments, opportunities); peer judgments (faculty and staff searches and reviews; student elections); student evaluations of faculty; staff evaluations of supervisors and administrators.

4. Actively discourage those who behave in ways that are gender-biased.

   Every member of this community has a responsibility for disapproving, interrupting and disassociating ourselves from inappropriate behavior when we observe it, especially among our peers. We can create a positive environment by a clear and strong community consensus that gender biased behavior is inappropriate and unethical.

5. Actively encourage behavior that is gender sensitive.

   Gender is an important part of humanness and we would all be impoverished by rigidly treating everyone alike. Gender can be a source of valuable talents, insights and accomplishments and we seek to appreciate its effect on all of us while preserving equity and fairness.