A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

As a potential future professor (yes, ladies and gentlemen, the insidious tentacles of liberal academia have reached even the Chequer-Board), I was amused by an otherwise weak Times story on professors revealing more about their personal lives via cable TV and the Internet.  This is not shocking stuff, mind you: mainly profs who show off their hobbies (scuba diving, wine tasting) or want to rebut suggestions that their classes are boring.  I can't currently find the earlier article about how professors manage their Facebook pages (I would if I went to my own Facebook page).

What amused me was that the Times article didn't bring up the possibility that this greater opening-up, get-to-know-me approach (with limits) of professors might be at all related to a greater number of women in academia.  The idea that's easier to teach students if you seem more accessible and human, and less imposing and unreachable, strikes me as somewhat...girly.  Although I should admit that most of the female professors I have had have not taken this approach, and most of the Times's examples are male, so maybe the shift is generational rather than exclusively gender-based.