text:
How to decide where (in a thesis) a glossary should be positioned?
I want to include a glossary in my master’s thesis explaining some technical terms.
My university doesn't make any specifications about the usage or position of glossaries. So I'm asking myself:

Is it better to put the glossary at the beginning of the thesis? (e.g. between the Table of Contents and the main content) That way the reader would see it first and either read it or keep in mind that he can look up unfamiliar terms there. But it would disrupt the reading flow between Abstract, Table of Contents and Content.
Or would it be better to but the glossary in the appendix? Maybe with footnotes refering to it, each time a new term is used for the first time.

The current structure of the thesis is:
- Titlepage
- Abstract
- Table of Contents
- [INSERT GLOSSARY HERE?]
- Main Content
   - Chapter A
   - Chapter B
   - ...
   - Chapter N
- Appendix
   - Appendix A
   - Appendix B
   - Table of Images
   - Table of Tables
   - Table of Literature
   - [INSERT GLOSSARY HERE?]

It is utterly a matter of style. Just put it where it makes more sense to you. If you expect people actually NEED to read it before they can read your thesis, just put it in front. Otherwise, put it after the main text.

If somebody needs to read the glossary highly depends on the reader. My professor might need it. I'm only wondering if it might disrupt the flow of reading to much.

My thesis had a list of abbreviations and acronyms that came as part of the front matter. It was easier to define all of those things once at the beginning in the same place rather than worry if I need to redefine HMQC in chapter 4, when it hasn't been used since chapter 1.

In another guideline of my university (one about assignments in general) I just now found the instruction to put the glossary before the main text. So in my case the decision to have it at the front was the right one.

I suggest to follow the order reported on Wikipedia – Book design.
Here is the suggested order (skip all that is not needed in your thesis; colophons are only needed in published works, and your publisher will take care of them):

front matter

title page
colophon
contents
foreword
preface
acknowledgment
introduction
dedication
prologue

body matter

content – optionally divided into volumes, books, parts, chapters, sections

back matter

epilogue
outro
afterword
conclusion
postscript
appendix
glossary
bibliography
index
colophon

Could you reproduce the essence of the wiki page here, this makes your post selfcontained, and not dependend on a non StackExchange external website.

I'm not sure if the wikipedia article on Book design in general is the perfect match for a thesis. Reading a piece of fiction like "Lord of the Rings" which is mentioned as instructive example in the article, is a whole different way of reading than reading a scientific work. So the best order of the contents might be different, too.

Good point. That list seems to be tailored to all kinds of publications, though: most works of fiction do not need a glossary, a bibliography and an index, so I would say that the authors had at least both fiction and non-fiction in mind. (that said, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that LotR contains all of them).

One element very specific to some kinds of academic theses are the included papers. Do they go all the way at the end of the back matter? What about the lists of papers, somewhere in the front matter? Would be nice to have a list more geared to this.

@gerrit List of papers included in the thesis should be either a part of Introduction, or go directly before it. If you include a "carbon-copy" of all the pepers in the thesis, I suggest putting them after everything else. They form a completely non-intergal part of the thesis, they have their own title, list of authors, references etc.

@FedericoPoloni In novel books which contain just one novel, the table of contents is typically in the back-matter (since you want to open the book and simply read it; you use the ToC only if you lose your bookmark). If it contains a small number of them, the short ToC only with their titles is in the front-matter (since you want the reader to choose one prior reading) and the full ToC with the chapter titles is in the back-matter (reason as above). However, this is a typical setting, not a strong rule. Still, it shows that in belletry, the rules are quite different.

Put the glossary after any appendices and before the index.
EDIT: This advice is simply based on a very quick survey of the textbooks that I had close to hand. The sample size is therefore small, possibly subject biased (physics, mathematics, astronomy, economics), and therefore subject to argument. Thanks to aeismail for the comment prompting this edit.

Just curious—is there a specific reason why it should be there?

Aside from any over-riding requirements set by a departmental style guide (and we're told that there is none in this case), placing the glossary at the end of the document in general seems to correspond with the trend that I see in the textbooks that I use. Conformity with established trends isn't necessarily a good thing, I realise.

You should put that in your answer (I should have mentioned that in my original comment; the goal was to avoid a "quick-fire" answer that doesn't explain things to future readers).

Nicholas, if I understand you correctly the reason for your advice is, that most people do it that way. Is that what you meant?

For background information: There is a style guide, but it doesn't say anything about the use of glossaries.

@aeismail: Thanks for your comments prompting my edit.

@Karin: Yes, but see the qualification that I included in my edit.

@aeismail See my answer for the reasoning.

The other answers already contain the conclusions of my answer. However, I'll try to give some reasoning behind.

Glossary, Nomenclature, List of Symbols, Index, References, etc. -- all these are indexes, and should go to the backmatter.
Table of Contents, List of Figures, etc. -- these specify the contents, and should go to the frontmatter.

The difference is that indexes are have in general logical sorting of some type (alphabetical or other), whereas the contents strictly reflect the order of the text in the document.
As for the order of them: the more used they are, the farer away from the mainmatter they go (i.e. first in frontmatter and last in backmatter). This depends a lot on your reader. The reason for this is that the closer to the cover they are, the easier it is to reach them. In general, the most used index in a thesis are the references, so they go last. In textbooks, the General index goes last, since it's more interesting for the reader.
The rule above is, on the other hand, less important than the fact that Title, half-title, dedication, preface and colophon have priority, and are obviously the outer-most elements of the work.
So, in the end, you might get to this order:
FRONTMATTER
  Title
  Half-title
  Dedicatory
  Preface

  Table of Contents
  other "Contents"

MAINMATTER

BACKMATTER
  Appendicies
  Various indexes (Glossary, Nomenclature, ...)
  References / Bibliography
  Colophon (if placed in backmatter; it can go before
     half-title on the verso page as well)

In the end, none of these rules is very strict.

Interesting reasoning. Especially the part the closer to the cover, the easier to reach. Personally I wouldn't feel to comfortable putting something like the list of figures or list of tables before the main content. I don't want to force all readers to thumb through something they might not need, before they can start reading.

@kdzia The point is: How many people are actually going to read the thesis from the very beginning to the very end? Not many I think, and each of them will need to find Chapter 1 exactly once (when they start reading). So it doesn't matter whether you have two or three more sheets of paper before the actual Chapter 1 or not.

I think it does matter. If the majority of the readers are interested in reading the titlepage, the abstract, the TOC and in skimming through the chapters, the thesis should be optimized for that. The few who want to read the table of images and table of tables before the main content will have to go to the backmatter for that.

A glossary in the front before the main body has less context and disrupts the flow -- people want to read the body, not get to a list of definitions first. I attended an editorial seminar once and the instructors recounted anecdotes of leading tech companies who requested user studies on  content placement like LOT, LOF, TOC, glossaries, and so on. The verdict: Just give me the content first and make it lean.

Thanks Chris. Do you happen to have any references to the user studies you're mentioning? That would be very interresting.


text:
Is it acceptable for a professor to tell male students to not think that they are smarter than female students?
The situation occurred  in the first lecture of an undergraduate course in a STEM field at an university.
The professor said that there are less than 20% female students in the class, while the usual ratio is 40% (across fields and different academic degrees). The topic was brought up to "discuss microaggressions", such as letting female students do the easier tasks in group work. It should be noted that there is no selection of students for the field of study at the university (apart from a high school diploma) and AFAIK there also is none for the course.
Then the male students were told to "not think they are smarter than their female neighbor", that "your female neighbour not asking questions does not mean that she is not following, maybe she is a lot smarter than you think" and that the professor is much better at the field than all of the male students (the last part was told with a smirk, not sure if it was a joke or a sign of satisfaction) and it was finished with a "GO GIRLS".
These main reasons why I find  this offensive/disrespectful:

The students were viewed and addressed primarily through the lense of
group membership, and not as individuals.
Replacing "male" with any other group makes the statements offensive or absurd.
While the instructions to not look down on/patronize female students
are correct, they are (in my view) indirect accusations of sexism.
The contents of the talk, which took 5-10 minutes, were not related to the lecture and thus
were a waste of time for students. The issue might be important, but I was there to learn different contents.

Is my view justified? Is such behavior acceptable for a professor? Should I let the professor know the way I feel?

There is a mirror image of this question on academia.se. Alas, not much in the way of consensus :)

Answers in comments and extended discussions have been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

(edited this answer to consider some points raised in the comments and try to address OP more constructively)
Yes, it is acceptable for a professor to work to counter the effects of gender discrimination.
Yes, it is acceptable for a professor to warn a male-predominant class to not discriminate against women by giving them the "easy" tasks.
The professor is not accusing you as an individual of sexism, they are pointing out researched ways in which women are discriminated against, especially in STEM areas where women are under-represented.
Although your initial reaction was that this was a waste of time, I think you can use this experience and the feedback you get here as an opportunity to reflect - it seems from your comments that you are open to this.
I'd suggest you try the implicit bias test from Harvard, I was surprised by how much implicit bias it showed that I have. Some research has shown that people who take this sort of test are more introspective about their own biases afterwards. Even if you show little bias on that test, it may be instructive to see how much bias is seen in the population as a whole because people tend to underestimate bias experienced by other groups.
I don't think having implicit bias is something that reflects poorly on any individual, it's more of a product of society. What reflects on individuals is whether they try to become aware of the biases experienced by others and how their own implicit biases might influence their behavior.
I think your professor was trying to point out some of these biases to make students in the class more aware of them. It seems unlikely to me that any men in the course would literally think to themselves "Let's give the women the easy/secretarial tasks in group work!" (and if they do, they are probably never going to be convinced otherwise) - instead, they might accidentally do it by simply not thinking. By simply thinking about it more, and even by asking this question here, it seems to me like your professor was successful, even if you ultimately decide that you disagree with the approach.

Carter, A. J., Croft, A., Lukas, D., & Sandstrom, G. M. (2018). Women’s visibility in academic seminars: Women ask fewer questions than men. PloS one, 13(9), e0202743.
Cheryan, S., Ziegler, S. A., Montoya, A. K., & Jiang, L. (2017). Why are some STEM fields more gender balanced than others?. Psychological Bulletin, 143(1), 1.
Kaatz, A., Gutierrez, B., & Carnes, M. (2014). Threats to objectivity in peer review: the case of gender. Trends in pharmacological sciences, 35(8), 371-373.
Lerback, J., & Hanson, B. (2017). Journals invite too few women to referee. Nature News, 541(7638), 455.
Monteith, M. J., Ashburn-Nardo, L., Voils, C. I., & Czopp, A. M. (2002). Putting the brakes on prejudice: On the development and operation of cues for control. Journal of personality and social psychology, 83(5), 1029.
Swim, J. K., & Sanna, L. J. (1996). He's skilled, she's lucky: A meta-analysis of observers' attributions for women's and men's successes and failures. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(5), 507-519.

Discussions about the implicit-bias test have moved to chat. Please use comments only to suggest improvements to the answer or point out major flaws. However, do not do this, if your post could be a different answer to the question. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

No, it’s not acceptable. Discrimination against men is just as unacceptable as discrimination against women, and, moreover, the message that she was sending to the women in the class was essentially “Prepare to get discriminated against,” which isn’t a good message to send.
What should you do about it? Talking to her is unlikely to have an effect, because it is very difficult to convince people to alter their political ideologies, and she might have tenure so she might not have anything to fear from you making a complaint to the university.
Instead, just give her a poor rating in your feedback survey for the course, and leave a comment in the general feedback comment section explaining why. Universities use these surveys as a way of evaluating the performance of their instructors, so a poor review may well hit her where it hurts: in the wallet.

This comment thread has gone pretty far off track into philosophical territory. Conversation moved to chat.

I downvoted because I think that a strong claim such as "this is discrimination, therefore it's not acceptable" should be backed up by an argument. I do not see the discrimination here. Discrimination to me means that the professor says something like "Male students are actually less intelligent than female ones, in my experience". That would be an unscientific claim based on alleged personal experience that says one group is better than another - and THAT is discrimination.

Saying disparaging things about a group in public is also discrimination, especially when you are in a position of relative power and have the ability to create a hostile workplace culture.

I do not see the OP as having quoted any disparaging remarks from the professor. Can you point them out?

Many universities are shifting away from student feedback as a way of evaluating performance... because it's been shown to be heavily biased against female instructors.

@AzorAhai She said that men would discriminate against women, and that's a disparaging remark.

@nick No, no one said that, and even if she had, asking people not to discriminate isn't disparaging.

Is my view justified?

It sounds like you feel disrespected by the professor’s implicit assumption that some members of your gender engage in sexist behaviors and need to be told not to engage in them any more. And yet, you yourself acknowledge that this assumption is likely correct. Her statement was of a general nature; she didn’t personally accuse you of anything, so personally I don’t see why you would feel offended.
Edit (part 1): @ASimpleAlgorithm commented that the professor’s behavior can be seen as a form of gender-based profiling. That is a fair point, and after thinking about it some more, I can see how some people might take issue with that. Given the very minor extent of the profiling, and the fact that OP accepts the premise that the profiling (such that it is) is based on empirically real phenomena of male sexism, I still don’t think there is much to be offended about, but at least I can see where OP is coming from, and think it may be reasonable for OP to find the professor’s behavior annoying.
You are perhaps justified in thinking the discussion was not the best use of the class time, but that would be your opinion, which may differ from other people’s opinion. Not all students have to agree all the time that what a professor is talking about at any given moment is the best thing for them to talk about. Some disagreement on such things is perfectly reasonable and probably unavoidable. But just the fact you think something was a waste of time does not imply that the professor is doing something wrong by talking about it.

Is such behavior acceptable for a professor?

Yes. The professor is doing their job of trying to achieve the best educational outcome for their class. Whether or not I agree that this topic was worth bringing up in class in the way they brought it up, there is nothing about it that qualifies as  “unacceptable” behavior, such as harassment or discrimination, as far as I can tell.
Edit (part 2): see the comment I added above in part 1. The professor’s behavior still seems acceptable to me, but I acknowledge that it can be seen as objectionable by reasonable people. And if the professor engaged in similar behavior on multiple occasions even after receiving feedback about the profiling aspect of her behavior, I would probably agree that that would become unacceptable.

Should I let the professor know the way I feel?

You are free to do so, but it’s not clear to me what you are hoping to achieve by doing that. I can’t advise you on whether you should or shouldn’t do it.

In fact, the students’ opinions about what is a good use of class time are largely irrelevant compared to the expertise of the professor regarding how to smoothly run a class. This speech is probably arising because of past experiences teaching this class and past behavior of the students.

+1, but I think that it might be constructive for the OP to let the professor know in a non-accusatory way his experience of emotional discomfiture although he intellectually agrees with the motivation. It's possible that with some discussion there could be a positive resolution instead of coming away with the experience that his feelings don't matter.

"It sounds like you feel disrespected by the professor’s implicit assumption that some members of your gender...". Already you have a problem. He specifically complained at being categorized into a "flawed" gender that he should take responsibility for at all, rather than being treated as an individual who is just as likely or unlikely to misbehave as any other individual.

@ASimpleAlgorithm It sounds like the males of the class, the predominant group, were addressed, not a single individual.

@ASimpleAlgorithm the membership in that group, combined with statistics about that group, shows that that they are not "just as likely or unlikely to misbehave as any other individual" when the "misbehaviour" in question is sexism.

@llama that sounds like a textbook example of a prejudice.

@llama, I thought evidence generally points to sexism acting against women, from both men and women.

@ASimpleAlgorithm can you clarify what you mean by “already you have a problem?” And how is this related to my answer? OP asked if he is justified in being offended. I replied that I personally don’t see why he should be. I’m not invalidating his feelings, just saying I don’t see a reason why he would feel that way. He is of course free to feel offended if that’s his feeling. At the same time, given the real possibility that anyone can be offended at any time by practically anything anyone else does, the fact that he was offended doesn’t mean the professor did anything wrong or “unacceptable”.

@DanRomik sorry, I meant the answer has a problem in not answering the question. You accept as a premise something he is offended by. Or at least which he considers a double-standard. He is objecting to being "profiled" as a potential sexist, to put it another way. You are arguing the accuracy of the profiling.

@ASimpleAlgorithm good point about profiling. That does make me reconsider what I said a bit. I added some related thoughts to my answer.

Is such behavior acceptable for a professor?

Yes. This the whole idea of academic freedom (as exemplified by tenure) -- professors should be able to work with uncomfortable issues without worrying about getting fired. I recognize that academic freedom would likely not protect them if they had made similar but politically-incorrect statements, but that's a separate issue.

Should I let the professor know the way I feel?

Depends on the professor. If they are a good professor, there might be an opportunity for discussion and perhaps you would both learn something. But sadly, many professors view this matter as sacrosanct, and will just write you off as a misogynist without allowing an open discussion. (In their defense, many students also broach the matter in a very hostile way..."you hate men" sounds very different than "Some of your comments made me uncomfortable.")

Is my view justified?

Doesn't matter. This is a well-studied, very controversial subject where tempers run hot and everyone thinks they are an expert. Studying such subjects has its place, but I'm assuming you are not currently an expert in gender relations. You're certainly entitled to tell the professor how their comments made you feel, but rather than getting into a debate with your professor, I would suggest you focus on learning STEM.

Great answer, especially the second part. You should definitely talk to the professor if you were really made uncomfortable, but don't be accusatory and instead open a dialogue. Also, as far as whether the view is justified, I agree with your answer, but I would also say that OP's feelings are in fact justified, and it may be worth exploring why they have them.

"the whole idea of academic freedom " will completely break down if the professor said the opposite, for example, that the low percentage of females in that field doesn't necessarily mean discrimination, there are enough biological differences to cause that women mostly prefer some areas, while men mostly prefer other areas... if the professor said that, in many countries the freedom of speech will no longer apply, and the professor will be fired or harassed or sued.

@vsz - I think I made exactly that point in the last sentence of the first part.

Girls were always highly appreciated in my university (I studied Applied Physics), and nobody needed to make that explicit. I consider this professor excessively patronizing, and probably sexist if she thinks girls need her help.
Instead, I noticed a minor bias in favor of girls/woman, both in university and later looking for jobs:

Most Employers prefer a balance of the genders (those who shared their reasoning with me said that a mix prevents hostile subcultures - men tend to behave more civilized and work harder around women, women tend to pay more attention to detail around men), and because there are many more males who work in the field and apply to jobs, the females are accepted much sooner.
While not as enlightened as the previous bullet, boys generally still like girls, which put them in higher demand when forming groups. Some used similar reasoning to the above.
To write a good report/document/whatever, you need a variety of viewpoints. Since men and women are different, this is useful. Since women are more scarce.... you get the picture.

I also noticed that girls, in the admittedly to-small-to-be-statistically-relevant case of just my year in my study, tended to get higher marks and drop out less then boys. My personal hypothesis is that it's because they chose the course because they were interested, while some of the guys chose the course because they weren't interested in anything and had to choose something (and therefore were more likely to drop out due to lack of motivation / figuring out there was a more fitting study for them). Therefore, it's ridiculous to assume girls need the protection/encouragement your professor talked about.
Of course, it may depend on the country you're in. Local culture matters a lot. If you'd live in, say, Egypt, I'd consider it perfectly normal to have a speech like that, since the local culture tends to assume that women are somehow inferior (and for the record, I couldn't disagree more).

Egypt has a much higher proportion of female physics students than The Netherlands so I don't understand your finaly paragraph.

It was more about general culture in the country then the university in specific.

FYI, using "girls" rather than "women", is often seen as not a good idea in professional/academic settings. Particularly when the same paragraph uses the adult term for a man. "Boy"/"Girl" are used to describe children, or sometimes used as diminutives for adults. A diminutive is fine if you are flirting with someone, but it can appear somewhat patronising outside of a romantic context. I don't get the impression you mean that, but it might be useful to know about the connotations.

In this answer, I use it mostly to distinguish between students and workforce, using boys and girls to refer to students and men/women to refer to employees.

I would like to point out that, from my experience, addressing ongoing issues by communicating the problem to the entire group is a generally accepted method in professional environments. The intent usually is to avoid accusing individuals and thus minimize embarassment and resentment. Those who transgressed, knowingly or just by mistake, get an opportunity to save face and correct their behaviour. Those who are innocent have no need to feel that it concerns them beyond a basic awareness of the problem.
From a comment:

"Would you feel offended if someone invited you to their home and instructed you to not steal anything?"

They didn't single out a specific person, and the issue wasn't hypothetical. A more fitting example would be:

"We'd like to remind the personnel in building 3 that peripherals are company property and not to be taken off the premises."

after many years of office equipment going missing. Would you feel personally insulted by that? Would you feel less insulted if they sent the e-mail to the entire company and not just the branch where stuff tends to go missing?
Now, being "doubted", even as part of a group, can make one uncomfortable. That's a very human reaction, and one that I'm prone to myself. However, I would recommend that you distance yourself from that feeling. The only way to reduce implicit biases is to create awareness, and that requires everyone to look critically at their own thought processes. This is rarely a comfortable process, but don't see it as an accusation, see it as your professor pointing out a flaw that all humans have to some degree.
I agree that addressing not just "the males", but simply the entire class might have been more elegant, and worth pointing out to your professor, however, no matter how it's phrased, addressing implicit biases tends to cause a little discomfort. It's minimal compared to the damage those biases tend to do, however, so I would consider it a "necessary evil". There's room for disagreement, and discussing the issue with your professor seems like a sensible course of action, but their behaviour was certainly within acceptable bounds.
Also, please keep in mind that to someone who has been the victim of discrimination, calling addressing the issue "a waste of time" might come across as... insensitive, to put it mildly.

The difference between the two scenarios is that you know someone from building 3 is stealing and the only way to adress them is to adress everyone from B3. If you instructed a brand new worker batch who will work at B3 not to steal, it would be disrespectful IMO. Assuming that working at B3 might make people steal something is like assuming males are likely to be sexist because that is what has occured in the past and it is prejudice.

@B.Swan We're strecthing the metaphor here, but in this case the people from B3 have been stealing supplies for generations. It's not a single incident, it's a pattern. In that case, warning new employees not to fall into the same trap (e.g. thinking that taking keyboards home is ok because their colleagues do it without a second thought), I'd think would reflect poorly on the culture in B3 rather than the individual.

In my classes I've seen a clear pattern that international students from certain regions are more likely to cheat. I would consider it very offensive (and would expect them to feel demeaned and humiliated) if I single out those groups and warn them in particular not to cheat. I give everyone the same warning (they still cheat).

I can't disagree more with some of the answers you have on here.   They are the cheery rah-rah types of things people say online without thinking of the implications of these actions in real life.
The professor should not have brought these things up without context.   Period.
Here are some reasons why:

Bringing up the student gender %s is ludicrous.   Universities should not be deciding to neutralize areas of study they should be used to foster learning for those that want to learn those subjects and meet the criteria.   Women have just as high or higher admission rates at all major universities in the US.   Why would this be a topic?   What are the students in the class supposed to do about this?
Discussing micro-transgressions... Oh boy.   So after hearing this what are the males in the class supposed to do when working with the female students?   Basically the professor is saying - treat them differently than you normally would.   I know this isn't their true meaning, but this is the psychological take-away.   So now the male student is in a state of flux because they might have taken the message as "give the female student the hard things" or "important things" and now instead of rationally doing what is best for the group or what each group member wants to do, there is now a wrench of assignment based on gender.

This kind of group "push" influencing phenomenon often ends with resentment.   You have a group of males that are accused of something they haven't done.   The initial resentment will be against the professor (proof - this question on this site).   The resentment will subconsciously filter to the females in the class on a meta/micro level.   This cannot be good for group projects.

I know that we read your question and did not hear the tone of the professor but I am not sure it matters.   From a female perspective (if I were female) I find this discussion and forced support as rather patronizing.  Psychologically the professor has made the women out as victims and professor as leader/savior.   Audibly the students are hearing treat women better, give them more responsibilities, give them important work...  in the core of our brains these are true micro-aggressions that formulate in a simple expression - males please handle these delicate females that need help with extra care.  The professor is trying to express "woman power" (fine) but really is expressing their power to influence the males for the women.
"Go Girls!"  Clearly sexist.   It isn't a rally for the women in the class it is more of a decree that the professor will treat males differently.  I know I am generalizing here but that is what every answer is doing.

The professor should have handled this better if the subject needed to be broached.   The advice should have helped empower the females not demonize the males and put the females in a victim role.   It would have been a better tactic to address the females, not the males.   Saying things like, "please don't fall into old gender roles and actively speak out on things you want to work on and overparticipate in your group's activities".   General things like this would instill more confidence in both females and males and foster a group environment of collaboration, not resentment.
Before I mentioned the male resentment but there is female resentment too.   First (and less) for the professor having to speak for them.   Then in a micro way resenting the males for what-they-are-going-to-do-according-to-professor.   What a mess!
Even if the professor were to address the males it could have been done in a more tactical matter that would have probably worked better and made the conversation less awkward.   "In one of my past group STEM projects we had a male-dominated group that did not have confidence in some of the females or maybe felt that they worked better together as males.   Be cognizant that intelligence is gender blind and the best teamwork always involves very smart people that have different points of view."

So what do you do?   Depends on how much you will be dealing with this professor in the future.    If you speak to someone that is as bold as your professor and you disagree there is a good chance you get railroaded and I hate to say it, could affect your grades/standing.   Nothing good will come of it.
If you really felt it was that bad and could impact you in the future you need to go over professor's head and have a confidential talk about their actions and how you don't want their attitude affecting your work or studies.   I would not go into such discussions as a witch hunt but (confidentially) expressing your concerns and getting advice from the person you are meeting.   The professor has expressed hints of sexism but has done nothing sexist yet.   You should let this play out before passing judgment as this could be anywhere from professor that doesn't express their concerns or opinions good in a group setting to a really sexist professor that treats females better or something in the middle.

It sounds to me that your professor was telling you to let go of any preconceived notions you had before entering this course.  You may feel this is sexist or disrespectful, but what it really boils down to is adhering to the scientific principals.  You can't determine a reliable and just conclusion simply on what you have come to believe is true during your own experiences; you must PROVE those experiences are true or false.  It is a common misconception that girls just don't 'get' sciencey stuff -- and I'm sure I'm not the only female to have simple concepts 'mansplained' to me.
To me, it sounds as if the professor was trying to prevent wasted time as the course progresses -- if 5-10 minutes can be spent now telling students to base all conclusions on proven facts rather than suppositions, many wasted minutes will probably be prevented during the semester, not to mention spared frustrations among any/all group project members.

Why do male students specifically need to be reminded to adhere to scientific principles? THIS is my problem. As said in my post, I agree with the instructions, but giving it to any specific group constitutes indirect accusations of NOT adhering to it.

@B.Swan Because the data shows that male students are a "high risk" group for this specific type of bias. Yes, the reminder really applies to everyone, but if an issue is especially prevalent in a segment of the population, addressing that segment specifically might make sense. Just like they target "don't drink and drive" ads at young people.

@RutherRendommeleigh And if you target communities of minorities, especially dark-skinned ones, with statements of "Please don't rob or murder your neighbor" or give closer scrutiny of them there would be a major public outcry despite the issue being especially prevalent in that segment of the population. We see this public outcry constantly in the US, especially when police scrutinize dark-skinned people more even if no arrest is made.

@Aaron The key difference here is that murder and robbery are intentional and inexcusable, while having some implicit bias is something that every person is "guilty" of and has to come to terms with. "Please don't rob or murder your neighbor" would be offensive no matter whom you tell that to.

Perhaps the professor has some empirical evidence to back up his assertion that males frequently exhibit this behavior.

@B.Swan have you considered the possibility that you may be right in a very narrow, technical sense, but that you are simply blowing this incident way out of proportion? A lot of the people on the “not unacceptable” side, myself included, feel that the professor’s behavior was at least a bit distasteful. But your repeated insistence that YOU feel accused of wrong behavior, that you feel disrespected and offended, and your unwillingness to consider the context of a systemic, long-standing issue that has highly negative, life-changing consequences for a large number of women, strikes me as odd.

@B.Swan ... So basically I would suggest that you try to look at things with a bit of perspective. Your “problem” is the archetypical “first-world problem”. It doesn’t mean there isn’t reason to get annoyed, but just remember other people have it MUCH worse. You were “disrespected” (in a pretty microscopic way that other people are even having a hard time grasping) for 5 minutes, whereas a large class of people your professor was trying to help are disrespected almost every day of their lives.

@DanRomik I agree that the issues exist and might have grave consequences. I never denied that, for me this is not the matter of discussion here. I think that this particular way to adress the issue was not good and I think that it was distasteful (this word describes how I feel more accurately) and perhaps even indirectly sexist and patronizing in itself. And it is not that I in particular feel offended, it is that I think the statement is offensive to anyone of male gender in the way it was phrased. As right as the cause might be, delivering the message in this way does not make it right.

@DanRomik Is it not ironic to expect me to get over it because it was miniscule and "only" distasteful in the context of microaggressions? I feel like when you try to stress the importance of gender equality in the class room, even the smallest transgression while doing it is not acceptable.

@B.Swan as I said, in a narrow sense you are right. Your logic is solid. But your expectation that the world is a completely logical place is not. I think what it comes down to is the idea that if a million microaggressions can be prevented by inflicting one microaggression, then that can be an acceptable trade off, maybe even a good one. In any case, as I said I too find the professor’s behavior distasteful and think there are better ways of achieving the goal she had in mind.

It should be noted that there is no selection of students for the field of study at the university (apart from a high school diploma) and AFAIK there also is none for the course.

The university may not apply a formal selection process, but there are always selection effects going on. High schools encourage some students more than others, parents decide whether they're going to support their children in higher ed, couples decide whether they can afford to have one person studying full-time... all of those, and countless other factors, play a part in selecting who does and doesn't show up in your class on Day One, and who completes the course and the degree.
In places where overt discrimination is illegal or socially unacceptable, this kind of "soft pressure" is very important in understanding things like how your class ended up 80% male.

These main reasons why I find this offensive/disrespectful:
The students were viewed and addressed primarily through the lense of group membership, and not as individuals.

Forget about gender for a moment, and suppose you're a doctor studying lung cancer. You notice that within a certain population, 10% of people who smoke regularly get lung cancer, and only 1% of those who don't smoke get lung cancer, even after controlling for other factors that might affect cancer rates.
It is impossible to point at any single case of lung cancer and say for certain that it was caused by smoking, because even non-smokers get cancer occasionally and any given person is exposed to thousands of factors that might affect their cancer risk. But in a large population, when ten thousand smokers get lung cancer, we can be pretty sure that nine thousand of those cases were caused by smoking.
So it is with issues of gender bias. It is very hard to point to any one person, any one decision, and say with certainty that this one decision came down to gender bias. But looking at the group level provides quantitative evidence that many decisions are affected by such bias - even if we can never identify exactly which ones.
If you're aware of instances where the issue could be addressed at the individual level, by all means do so and/or let your professor know, as appropriate. But given that this is the start of term, it sounds as if they're trying to prevent such behaviour before it starts.

Replacing "male" with any other group makes the statements offensive or absurd.

If you change words to different words with different meaning and different history, then yes, just about any sentence can be made absurd.
Your class is over 80% male. Most areas of STEM are historically male-dominated, with quantitative evidence of subtle but important biases against women. (Sometimes not so subtle! Whether or not one agrees with your professor's approach, it is very much influenced by that context; if you change "male" for some group that hasn't dominated STEM and your specific class to such an extent, then of course the statement becomes ridiculous.
(Just because I know somebody's gonna bring it up if I don't address it: yes, there are a few professional fields like teaching or nursing which skew heavily female... and those fields do acknowledge this as a problem, and are trying to improve that balance.)

While the instructions to not look down on/patronize female students are correct, they are (in my view) indirect accusations of sexism.

Well, yeah. Chances are very high that there are some sexist people in your class, and it sounds as if your professor is trying to address that. Unless somebody is able to provide her with a list of who is and isn't sexist, I'm not sure how they could do that without the message also being heard by people who aren't sexist. If you're certain that you're not one of those people, then don't take it personally.
When I did first-year chemistry, our instructors warned us not to mouth-pipette dangerous chemicals. They were not accusing me, Geoffrey B, of being silly enough to take a mouthful of hydrochloric acid. But they didn't know who the silly ones were, so they had to warn the entire class.

The contents of the talk, which took 5-10 minutes, were not related to the lecture and thus were a waste of time for students. The issue might be important, but I was there to learn different contents.

Every class has a certain amount of admin content. Professors will talk about how your assignments are to be graded, safety rules for prac classes, what to expect from exams, etc. etc. None of that is "what you're there to learn", per se, but it's important to the learning process. Whether the professor handled this effectively, I can't really gauge without hearing the full version, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to give a few minutes to something that's important to ~ 20% of the class and may affect their ability to learn.

Is my view justified? Is such behavior acceptable for a professor? Should I let the professor know the way I feel?

As you may have gathered, my take on this is different to yours. But let's assume that I haven't persuaded you to my way of thinking, and you still think her approach is wrong...
IME, when you want to change somebody's behaviour, the most effective approach - where possible - is to understand why they're doing what they're doing (what is the problem they think they're solving?) and then to offer them an alternate way of achieving that goal.
In this case, it's pretty clear that your professor is concerned about possible discrimination against women in your class. One way or another, they are going to act on that concern. If you don't like the way they're currently handling it, then you need to offer some other way of handling it. If you don't want them addressing the whole class on this, what alternative are you suggesting?
(I would strongly recommend doing a fair bit of background reading on these issues first. There's been a lot of research done into things like selection and retention of women in STEM, and it's quite likely that they're familiar with that research. If you want to offer workable solutions, you need to be familiar with it too.)
Otherwise... I can tell you for nothing, they already know that quite a few guys feel the same way you do about what she's saying, and they've decided to say it anyway. Unless you have alternatives to offer, it's unlikely that arguing it with them will shift their position, because you won't be telling them anything new.

Why does the female ratio need to be discussed in the lecture, if the factors that determine it are the ones you have listed? I understand that it is an important issue, but how exactly do students, or the issue, benefit from it? 2. Asian students excell in STEM. "Asian people should not think they are smarter than others" sounds very offensive to me. 3. Your instructor adressed the whole group, they did not single out a certain subgroup, which is a key difference. It is not that I in particular feel attacked, it is that I feel profiled because of my gender, as only males were adressed.

#1: I believe I said "and countless other factors" - which includes the ones that your professor was discussing. It's also relevant for fellow students in understanding that relatively low % of female students doesn't mean women are innately unsuited to this topic.

#2: unless your fellow students are 80% Asian and the history of your discipline is dominated by Asian researchers and there are volumes of research showing discrimination against non-Asian students/researchers, this isn't a relevant parallel.

#3: your instructor was addressing the whole group, unless they sent the female students out of the room, in which case the "GO GIRLS" doesn't make a lot of sense?

1,2: fair points, 3: the negative remarks ("dont think that...") were prefaced with "to all male students".

@B.Swan Like I said in my answer: what is the alternative that you're suggesting? How does your professor deliver a message to the sexist guys in the class without hurting the feelings of guys like yourself?

By adressing the whole group? Or by warning both genders? It is possible to adress sexism by adressing both genders. See the discussion in chat under the post.

This is absolutely disrespectful. The professor is passively aggressively attempting to assert an inaccurate worldview, by implying what you are thinking, and how you are seeing the world.
Also note that while the professors statement "does not apply to everyone" it will certainly apply to anyone that disagree with it. Ie, if you try to critique it it will be assumed you think you're smarter than women even if that is not the flaw you are pointing out.
Considering this is a progressive, I would be very careful about noting this to them, as they are liable to try and shame you, slander you, possible trash your grades, or even try to get you suspended or otherwise ostrazised. If possible it might be better to drop the class, or otherwise keep your head down.

I do not think professors have this power at my university, perhaps I am wrong. Also professors and students have very little direct interaction, I do not see much opportunity to punish me. I might be naive though.

The professor is attempting to assert an inaccurate worldview, by implying what you are thinking, and how you are seeing the world. - By contrast, you are simply using your freedom of speech and humbly present us with some well-founded arguments to consider if we chose to.

I think the actions were well within what is acceptable, but I still find the way it was done quite ill-advised, for the following main reason:
It brings the issue of gender balance (and the underlying reasons, such as (implicit) bias or outright discrimination) from the big picture to the little picture, both in terms of time and in terms of population size.
Let me clarify what I mean. The issue of women being less represented in STEM is a statistical phenomenon, which means that whatever underlying reasons it has may well be distributed in a way that makes them less applicable in the setting of a single class. Compounding this is the fact that the class being addressed consists of people who have already chosen a STEM field, so on average, the women present are less likely to have experienced these underlying reasons to the same extent an arbitrarily selected woman would (not to say that none of them will, but on average fewer will).
What I think makes it ill-advised is not, however, how it will be perceived by the female students (as I do not feel qualified to speak to this).
My issue is the way this sort of thing will make a certain subset of the male students feel.
Think of it this way: You are a male student in a STEM field. While you have not experienced the sort of discouragement women do in terms of going into STEM, you have instead been bullied throughout your school years for being nerdy/quiet/smart/whatever. You are now finally at university and in an environment where you can be yourself, and where people will appreciate you for your intelligence.
Only you are now told by this professor that while you may finally be in a place that appreciates smart people, it will appreciate them more if they are female. So you should expect that whenever you do better than one of your female co-students, you will be reminded that maybe you are not really as smart as you think.
This will be really discouraging to a specific subset of the male students. And this subset is precisely the subset that have the most need of encouragement.
This brings me back to the point of big picture versus little picture. It is often mentioned that males just need to such it up when this sort of thing happens because the females will have experienced whatever it is on a daily basis. But once we are at this scale, there is a good chance that many of the females will not have experiences nearly as much of it (I am no longer certain any female will have gone completely free from it though), while there is also a good chance in a setting like this that many of the males will in fact have experienced similar behavior plenty of times, just in slightly different ways.

Bullying by schoolmates is not even a little bit the same thing as systemic, institutionalized discrimination.

There's nothing unacceptable in what the professor said, although telling the students that they didn't fit the quota is rather pointless, since the students typically don't have any say in how a course is advertised or shaped to make it equally attractive to male and female students.
A word of warning though: people who are overly enthusiastic about an idea and have some power to implement it often go over the reasonable limits when implementing it. Warning the students beforehand that discrimination against the female minority will not be tolerated is one thing. Applying quotas or "reverse discrimination" when grading for example will be a different story.
Of course, since we didn't meet your professor it's impossible to tell whether they are "overly enthusiastic" or not.

The course is advertised by sending an email to ALL undergrads in the field of study with a deadline to apply. The professor also seems to be primarily interested in correct answers and technique, so I have no reason to suspect grade discrimination.

@B.Swan "The course is advertised by sending an email to ALL undergrads in the field of study", so if the share of female undergrads is less than 50%, the course will inherit this skew, unless it's made attractive for them to compensate for that.

This is Acceptable and a start!
As other answers have stated, those are plain facts and come a long way to make things better for less prevalent groups in Academia and providing a healthier environment with more ideas.
Could it have been delivered in a better way?
I think so! I can understand why you felt awkward about it.
Keep in mind that the core message was "let the girls handle a hard time as they are just like you" rather than "you are less", so it was calling for more workload to be distributed but it doesn't apply general logic to it, having it simply loop back into gender:

This may lock the mentality that if you are not pushing the girls, you are being sexist; but pushing girls because they are girls is in fact sexist.
Stating she is better than the students came off ambiguous because it can be interpreted that either she is better because she is a woman, or despite being a woman. It's neither: she is better because of her merit as a student.

While bringing up microaggressions, her message could have still been entirely about women, but then extended at the conclusion:

"Your neighboring student may be quiet but they may also know more than you think!"
"Don't ever think you are smarter than your colleagues."
"You may be tempted to hoard more difficult tasks, but everyone is entitled to some crappy time in Academia! :) Push everyone as necessary for common growth."

This holds much more coverage (at least for me). This applies to every other gender, race, disability, etc; and doesn't fall for the loopholes aforementioned.

Presumably she is better at the material than the students because she is the professor. Probably she has had students think they are better than her at the material in the past (a problem for some women professors, unfortunately).

@Dawn Someone becoming a professor begets merit of being a great student, no? If you try to argue otherwise, you indeed leave space to interpret silly things like the possibility of an undergrad student being better than them at the material.

I don’t understand. She probably has not been a student in a long time. She may have gained her expertise as a student or it may come because of her research (probably both). Regardless; she was selected to teach this course because of her expertise as a teacher and researcher, not because of past grades.

Well I made no reference to grades, so we may just have a semantic discrepancy as to what is a student! We have to think about what an undergrad would think when being explained this - I do not think it is a stretch to state Professors/Researchers need to have been (and still be) good students (interested, dedicated, curious) in their field in order to maintain their role in the first place - it is not like undergrads have a choice to skip studies and become professors either!

Yes this is acceptable behavior. Your issue with her speech is that you're thinking that the professor was talking directly to you and you take offense at being accused of something you didn't do. In fact in a comment you made the analogy of being invited to a house and being told not to steal. That is not what happened here. The professor was simply encouraging the greatly underrepresented female sex in a male-dominated field with a confidence boost, but rather than speak directly to the females and come off as having favoritism, she is speaking indirectly to them by speaking to the males. Many universities have programs to encourage more females in STEM so this sort of talk is not particularly exceptional.

These main reasons why I find this offensive/disrespectful:
  The students were viewed and adressed primarily through the lense of group membership, and not as individuals.

No actual individual was identified as a male instead of an individual. The objective of the professor's speech was to address sex discrimination so the fact that "males" and "females" come into the talk is sort of a given. The professor is speaking to the "males in the room" so there is no actual person being seen through group membership rather than an individual.

Replacing "male" with any other group makes the statements offensive or absurd.

You can take any sentence and change one word and make it seem absurd or offensive. This is why context matters.

While the instructions to not look down on/patronize female students are correct, they are (in my view) indirect accusations of sexism.

The professor did not accuse you of sexism. The male sex cannot be accused of sexism. No one was indirectly accused of sexism here. If the professor reminds the class that an assignment is due, but you already handed it in. Are you going to tell him/her that you already handed it in? Of course not because you know the professor was not talking to you, even though you are part of the class. This is the exact same situation. No one is being spoken to directly here.

The contents of the talk, which took 5-10 minutes, were not related to the lecture and thus were a waste of time for students. The issue might be important, but I was there to learn different contents.

This is honestly not your business to decide especially when you can't assess at this point if you learned the required curriculum material. Don't forget the professor doesn't "owe" you their time.

There's a difference between adding obscenities, and demonstrating obvious bigotry simply by changing the objects and subjects of a sentence. For instance, if the professor had replaced "men" with "Jews" and "women" with "goyim", nobody would be arguing that she wasn't making a racist remark that was derogatory towards the Jewish people.

@nick01200 like "Dear goyim, jews arent less smart than you"? - Doesn't sound derogatory to me.

@henning Of course it can be derogatory to goyim. It can be just a coded way of saying "goyim think Jews are stupid." Since we weren't actually in the lecture room, it's hard to know the precise context of the events described by the OP thread.

@alephzero fair.

@alephzero There was no extensive context (at least from my perspective), it was brought up with other dissatisfying things, such as the schedule for the problem classes. The instructions were directly brought up with no preface other than what I have described. This only further strenghtens my impression that those remarks could have been spared.

@nick012000 A random remark regarding two different cultures in a college engineering course would surely be seen as being unwarranted offensive or rude because it's not relevant and implies some personal ideology at play, but again this is why context matters here. But by B. Swan's account, the professor prefaced the discussion by addressing the observed disparity between the female to male ratio in that course (perhaps in general). And, to reiterate, women in STEM is not a new topic, so it's not like this topic came out of nowhere as it did in your example.

"Don't forget the professor doesn't 'owe' you their time." Since when!? I have never heard such a remark before, and have always heard just the opposite. If that were true, the students could not get their money back if they came to a silent room every lecture period and the lecturer just played games on their phone and never said or did anything. If a school advertised "Our professors do not owe you their time," I imagine that school would be out of business very fast.

@Aaron A professor having to cancel a class due to illness, academic commitments or for other commitments is not out of the ordinary where I live. And as long as the required material gets covered in a timely manner there is no issue. The argument that the professor wasted 5 minutes of my time with an off-topic story when they could have been teaching is ridiculous. The professor doesn't owe you their time only that they deliver the required material. It's up to the professor to decide how their time is allocated.

@Aaron The professor is definitely not obligated to deliver 5 minutes of "on-topic" material to make up for the 5 minutes of class time that was taken up by the sex discrimination talk.

@Cell Ah, I think I understand you better now. When you say "doesn't owe you their time," I think you mean as in "doesn't owe you a specific amount of time," but I think you'd still agree that they owe you enough time to do exactly what you just said they should do. So I think I agree with what you mean, but even reading your comments here they seem contradictory to me because I keep reading it as "owe you any time at all" since it seems a big leap to read "doesn't owe you X" as "doesn't owe you any more X than what is required for Y."

@Aaron technically professors have a contract with the university, not with the students. If you don't get the education you paid your tuition for, for example, you can't sue the professor, only the school itself.

This sort of an approach is becoming increasingly popular as a way to fix the gender imbalance in academia. Gender discrimination is a problem that exists almost everywhere in society, including in academia. So, this is obviously a problem that needs to be addressed. The professor cannot be criticized for addressing this issue in class, but one may question if this is going to be effective. If the professor is concerned about social dynamics among students affecting female students adversely, then that suggests that one should not organize group work where such effects can manifest itself and compromise academic results.
The bigger picture is that Western countries where efforts to curb gender discrimination have led to a lot of success when it comes to getting women in leading positions in industry, still perform quite poorly when it comes to curbing the gender imbalance in academia. As pointed out in the linked article, the more gender equal a country is, the bigger the gender gap is in academia, despite a lot more effort to promote women to choose STEM subjects:

The article puts forward some ideas to explain this that I personally don't find all that compelling. I.m.o. it's better to study the case of the Soviet Union where the participation of women in science was an order of magnitude better than in the West. The way the Soviet Union differed from the West was that as a communist country, job security was not an issue. Also, the educational system was much better than the Western educational systems.
So, the reason why today we have such a huge gender imbalance in science is because we've organized science within a capitalist framework. Society doesn't value science all that much, this leads to quite a lot of pressure pushing people away from science. One important issue is that job security is a problem for quite a long time into a scientific career. Both women and men are affected by this, but all we notice is the difference between the participation of men and women, which is just the tip of the iceberg. Long term job security tends to be more important for women than for men in determining career choices. Also gender discrimination will have a far greater effect when job security issues are also at play.
If society makes more room for science by making available more funds, then this will lead to more jobs in science. Scientists will have better job security, this will go a long way to get far more women (and also men) into science and keep them there. Women are then affected more by these issues because long term job security tends to be more important for women than for men in determining career choices. Also gender discrimination will have a far greater effect when job security issues are also at play.

Please support your claims with evidence.

This does not really answer the original question, even if true. At least not explicitly. Oh, yes Algeria, I really met some female PhD students or young academicss from there at a conference. Always following a male proffesor or other guardian and kept silent, not really an example of gender freedom.

Academia concerns more than STEM.  2. In many countries, women make up the majority of those who get degrees, including the United States where women get more degrees than men at all levels.  3. The term 'STEM' rarely gets defined well.  And there do exist sciences, such as psychology, and biology, where female students get the majority of the degrees.  4. The 'gender imbalance' talk tends to go one way only... who talks about how dietetics has for a very long time had more women than men?

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text:
Should I hide the fact that I did a group assignment completely by myself?
Three students and I were assigned a small (~14 hours of work) group project. Because there was no effort on their side to meet and work, my e-mails regarding their progress remained unanswered and from previous experience I know that their quality of work is much lower than mine, I decided to do it myself and already spend around 10 hours doing ~2/3 of the work. The reaction of the others was something along the lines of "Wow, thanks man. This looks great. You're the man!"
Later I asked them to help me out with the rest because I had another assignment due and thus my time was limited but the contributed work was much less in quantity than what I asked for and also of very low quality, hinting that they did not bother reading the assignment thoroughly or did not really spend time actually thinking of something substantial to contribute. As it stands now I will have to do the remaining 1/3 by myself as well.
Because I had a question for the lecturer I was writing him an e-mail and one of the sentences was

I already did most of the work but we need to...

then I thought whether it would be better to write

We already did most of the work but we need to...

The reason I even mention it, is that it is very close to the submission deadline and I do not want him to think that I/we only started now. My intent was not to slip by this information and blame the others.
Is there any reason to be "diplomatic" and actively hide the fact that I did everything myself?
I am mostly interested in the impression I will leave on the lecturer. On the one hand I do not feel like I owe the others anything, on the other hand I also want to avoid the lecturer seeing my behavior as tactless or arrogant.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Personally I would dodge the issue using

Most of the work is done, but we need to...

I don't think it will really matter which option you go with, but that way you don't have to worry about it.
Anyone setting a group project knows that it is fairly likely someone will end up doing all the work. If they don't take any action to avoid that (and it sound's like they haven't in this case), then presumably they don't really care.
I understand that you want to get the credit for doing the work. But I agree it might come across as tactless to point out the situation in your email. It might be more productive to separately have a conversation with the lecturer about why they haven't taken steps to avoid the situation occurring.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I have been on both sides of the fence.
As a student, I was once part of a trio where the two other members were useless. Not "self-fulfilling prophecy"-useless but "dumb as a rock"-useless.
I did all the work and stated clearly to the TA that it is 100% my work and that they are idiots. I specifically said that I am not looking for special treatment but want to highlight the ownership of the work.
This later (in academic life) translates as "do not add to your paper co-authors who did not do anything, just because you are under the pressure to do so". Surprisingly, the latter is met with nods of approval, while pointing out student leeches is not.
As a teacher, I had twice the case where someone came to me saying that they are the sole author of a two and three-members team. I asked them to highlight how they can persuade me that this is the case. I did not have a difficult situation, in both cases the "real author" knew everything, while the others were clueless. He got the right mark for the exercise (both were good) and the others got zero. I made sure to document the whole story though.

I agree with this answer from both a student and instructor perspective. As an instructor I have on numerous occasions awarded different grades to the students doing the work and the ones just being dragged along. In our department rules this is specified as how this should be handled (Everyone should be graded individually) and this was also communicated to instructors from department leaders. I realize that the academic culture differ in different regions so this is from Sweden.

@lijat: it is great that you have such rules in place. In my case there was nothing explicitly stated but the context (the kind of school and France as a country) helped to go the "individual" way when marking the work.

When I was a student, one of our instructors had us detail what each group member did on a project, signed by all group members as part of the submission.  He also asked for private one on one evals of your group members.  I liked it so much, this is what I do when I assign group projects now...

+1 to this answer BUT: giving the others zero is unfair. You should give them a chance to re-complete the assignment by themselves. While the student who did all the work may have good reason to have done so, this kind of policy allows students to threaten and take charge of a group -- "do your part on my timeline and by my rules or I will do all the work myself and submit it to the instructor and tell them you did nothing."

In other words, students in a group have no right to expect that the others in the group do the work in a particular way or on a particular timeline; the others in the group might rightfully be upset that they can't do the work when they want to, and do the quality of work that they have time to do. The only way to avoid all of the madness is to allow students a way out, allow them to switch groups, or to re-complete an individual assignment on their own if something goes wrong in their original group.

@6005: there is a whole spectrum of cases. The ones I had (as a teacher) was with students who were true leeches and they deserved a zero for not putting in the smallest effort into the assignment. A few more like those and they would have ample time to redo the exercise when they fail the year. There are certainly cases where the one doing the work is the "bad guy" in the team but (from my limited 5 years teaching at the uni) this is a rare case. I rather had lawful-good students, to use the D&D terms. But yes, a specific case like the one you mentioned would have been handled differently

@6005: and to be fair, i also had the case of a student who TWICE failed to give back a correct assignment (for the same lab) in a team of two, to the dismay of his colleague (they decided that each of them would do a complete lab on their own, alternating between them). It is a good thing that the TA was understanding and that they had excellent marks otherwise. Ah, and that student failing TWICE do give a correct assignment was me. Chris, if you are reading this... :)

@WoJ Thanks for your clarification. I agree with everything you say, at least in principle! I think there is quite a grey area -- what level of work is expected for you to not be considered a leech? Would it be reasonable, for example, if I plan to do the work later, but my partner decides to do it now so then I don't bother? In my experience the one doing the work is not necessarily a bad guy, but they are often the kind of Type A personality where they can't stand waiting for the others, can't stand mediocre-quality work from the others, etc.

@6005: I agree, such cases get very complicated and deserve at least some mediation between the students (or, as you mentioned, the possibility to change groups). In my cases the situation was clear so it was simple. There is also a difference depending on whether the pairing is random or people are free to choose their team members.

You specifically ask what the lecturer will think, so I'll address that first -
 though I think that's actually a red herring here.
I have not lectured myself but I have managed people in a business environment, and analogous situations come up: I think the response will depend on the way you raise the issue, and on the lecturer's busyness at the time of receiving your email. It may just appear to them as a dispute between students, and one they don't desperately want to get involved in (this kind of work creates these kind of disputes, and most groups will resolve the problems themselves). So the lecturer may think (justly or not) that you are a bit of a nuisance. Equally they may think you have a just complaint and have sympathy with you.
I think the lecturer's response in this situation will depend heavily on how you have tried to resolve this issue yourself before bringing it to them. If you bring the issue to them without having first discussed it with your group you may (justly or not) look immature and lacking in social skills. Also I think the response you get will depend on how openly you broach it - subtle hints like the one you indicate may just look petty if they are noticed at all: they will probably be  ignored: lecturers have heavy workloads and don't tend to seek out issues where they don't need to. An honest and straightforward complaint, backed up by your having made a reasonable attempt to resolve this with the group will get a better reaction.
I don't think the lecturer's response should be your biggest focus here though.
We had a similar situation in a course I recently completed: two out of four of us literally did all the work for a substantial project. My perspective is: don't get hung up on credit, the credit is a tiny portion of the value of doing these things. By engaging you pick up more knowledge and experience, and you will get the benefits of that all the way down your career.
And if the injustice still really bothers you (and honestly it's hard to avoid feeling that way) bear in mind that this is a small portion of the credit required for your course. The knowledge you gained by actually engaging with this assignment will benefit you in other assessed parts of the course where you will work alone. If they get the credit now, they'll almost certainly lose it later.
The ideal thing to do is to be open about your feelings about work sharing with the group, as early as possible. Some social groups make this easier than others though. And in some cases (as in mine) you can have that conversation (and you can have it as strongly as is possible without falling out with them), and still end up doing all the work. Different people want different things out of a course and are willing to put in different levels of effort. Sometimes social pressure overrides that, sometimes it doesn't. That's all you can take away from this really. And you need to honestly judge your ability to have that discussion with them without souring things before you try to have it.
But you will have to work with these people again, and see them again, and you may be in a situation in the future where you could interview for a job at a company where one of them works. Better they remember you as the hard working person than the person who made them feel bad, or "ratted them out" (as they will see it).
So in short - be tactful, there's nothing to be won by doing anything else, and if you need to feel there's some justice in the situation remember that they lose out by not really engaging. That isn't a platitude: 2 years into your career university module credit counts for nothing, knowledge and the ability to work carries you. These people are not accumulating knowledge or learning to work.

While this is a good explanation, it is not an answer to my question. I asked: "What will the lecturer think of me when I write him?"

Sorry - I'll add to answer that. It's hard to answer that specific question though - it will vary between lecturers.

Thanks for the addition. Your part about the lectures reaction emphasizes the way I "bring up the issue". This is not really a problem. Specifically in my situation I came to terms that I have to do it myself if I am to submit a certain level of quality. The lecturer is also aware and repeatedly told me that I am probably bored in class cause he is teaching comparatively simple things for my knowledge level. My problem was really just if I should sugarcoat it or not in compliance with social norms since I am in Asia (see tags).

I'm not sure how that changes things - there is an issue here you have not raised with him previously - that you have done all the work - and you are concerned about how he will react to you saying that you have done all the work. How you raise that issue with him affects how he will react to it. You can do it in a "subtle" way that might seem petty, or you could just be upfront about it. Also I'm not sure why you want to raise the issue. What is your goal? You must have a desired outcome, otherwise why do you spend so much thought on this?

I agree that the information about me doing it myself is communicated either way. As far as I can be objective, I don't think I have a hidden agenda or desired outcome. I just want to know how a brief mention might affect my image on the lecturers side. I want to know if I should "censor" myself next time or whether it does not matter. Again, the original intent of the e-mail was to inquire something else and not inform him about the work load distribution. The mention of me have done a lot of work already was necessary to ask my actual question.

If you don't have a desired outcome then the clear thing to do is to phrase this so without using either "I" or "we". Then there is nothing to worry about! If that feels unsatisfying, then I would suggest that you do have a desired outcome here whether or not you realise it. Ask yourself why you are spending so much energy on deciding whether to indicate that did all the work, then make a decision based on the answer to that question.  If the answer is "I want him to know I did all the work" ask yourself what you get out of that & whether it's worth the risk he might think badly of you.

I agree, and this is why I upvoted Jessica B's answer because I like the lack of personal pronouns.

Ok good :) well then I think between the answers here we have a good answer to your precise case fitting your precise feelings, and good answers for similar situations other people may find themselves in.

Any details on the downvote here?

Regarding the down vote: Again, while your answer will certainly be useful to other people you spend the majority (2nd part) talking about things not related to the question. And in the 1st part you mostly focus on my alleged desire to use the lecturer as a judge or manager for my team. That is not my intent and therefore there is little that I can take from your answer for this specific situation.

Ok well fair enough, though I think you're getting most of that from my comments rather than the answer. Also from your later clarifications to your own question - a subtext which would have been difficult to guess. I'm glad you've decided on a course of action, but for future reference, I do think your question basically comes down to seeking self-justification and a public moan rather than a genuine request for advice, and I'm not sure that is in the spirit of StackExchange.

Actually reading back I think you are just wrong here. You may say you are "mostly" interested in the lecturer's response, but you also say "Is there any reason to be "diplomatic"". On that basis, my answer addresses nothing that is not in your question. I think you have misread my question if you think I want to use the lecturer as a judge or manager - I simply think that he will read the situation that way.

I could be completely off base with all of this, but some of your statements are concerning. From your question:

from previous experience I know that their quality of work is much
  lower than mine, I decided to do it myself

And one of your comments:

In order for my group members to produce the same quality I expect
  from me I would have to spend hours teaching them and also would need
  to motivate them immensely to keep working.

Have you considered that maybe you're the problem? It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You believe your teammates to be incompetent, therefore they are. It's not easy, but you have to learn to trust people to do their work.
Back to the first quote: "I decided to do it myself."
It sounds like you took it upon yourself to start the work and do it all, and now you're upset that they didn't contribute. That's not fair. You never even gave them the chance.
So should you tell your lecturer all this? From this point of view, no. Your team didn't pull their weight, but it sounds like you didn't give them the chance. You have no right to be upset about it.
Take this one on the chin, and for the next project schedule a mandatory team meeting. In that meeting, figure out the project requirements, break them down into pieces each team member can do, then assign everyone work with a deadline before the project due date. If they don't pull their weight here, then you'll have a legitimate complaint.

1.) I did give them a chance but they did not answer my e-mails. 2.) They barely contributed after my second request . 3.) This is not about software development. 4.) What is a "mandatory" meeting? I don't have authority over them. 5.) I am NOT asking whether I can go and complain to the lecturer. I am asking whether I should actively hide/sugercoat it.

Updated about #3, but I stand by the rest. A mandatory meeting is an in person meeting every team member must attend. You may not like the answer, but that's how things came off to me. Email is, by the way, a terrible form of communication.

There is no such thing as a "mandatory meeting" between students. A student doesn't have the authority to compel their classmates to do anything. And I disagree with your assessment that the asker gave their classmates no opportunity to contribute.

@DavidRicherby This is why the group agrees on it. It's not hard... "Hey guys, we need to meet for X. When is everyone available?" I think the word mandatory is taken too literally here.

@ChrisSchneider Well, you know, if you say "mandatory", people will assume that you mean mandatory. If you meant something else, you should have said something else.

@problemofficer, Authority isn't the only way to lead.  My experience is that most people in these kinds of situations aren't actively trying to take advantage of others, but rather they follow the path of least resistance.  If someone takes up the mantle and does all the work, they roll with it.  The grade here is secondary (honestly, the grade is always secondary.)  Your professor is doing you a favor by giving you a 'safe' place to learn how to navigate the opportunities and pitfalls of collaboration.

@DanBryant: In general I very much agree with you, again. In this specific case though, the difference in knowledge was so high and my time so limited that I did not want to invest time in practicing my managerial skills and motivating everyone to contribute.

I've kicked a student out of a group on my own before. The project was turned in without his name on it.

@DanBryant: I have dealt with this nonsense too many times. What happens is the project is made big enough to be reasonable, and to do so it's now too big for one person, and this leads to too many groups ending up with F grade students. This nonsense has to stop. A few cases of I cast them out of the group being sent to the professor every semester might give him a clue he needs to actually fix something.

Talk to your team first.
Consider that you may have the wrong impression of your teammates. Low quality of work in an academic setting may indicate that they do not fully understand the material rather than simply not putting forth the effort.
Remember that your impressions of each other work both ways. I once was part of a project team with a "star performer" who took the entire project on himself before we met to split up the work. He no doubt thought the rest of us were slackers, but did not give us the opportunity to prove otherwise. While you seem to be better at communicating your intentions, your teammates might still feel overwhelmed by your drive to succeed. Imagine you are struggling in a course and, after much labor, come up with something that mostly meets the requirements of the assignment. Then your teammate swoops in and rewrites all of your work because he wasn't happy with it. You would probably feel slighted and resign yourself to letting your teammate finish because any work you do, he's probably going to redo himself anyway.
To fix this problem, you should have a talk with your team about what still needs to be done. For a larger project, you would want to lay out in writing who is going to be responsible for what part of the project. Only encroach on these responsibilities as a last resort, if the project is for some reason only graded on functionality. If possible, have group project sessions where you can help each other out when someone is struggling with their assigned part. Since your particular project is small in scale, consider completing the remaining work only in group meetings. This will improve yourself in the eyes of both your teammates and your professor, as you will be seen as a helping hand rather than a self-made victim.
Be honest with your messages. Don't feel you need to shield your teammates from their lack of work, but also don't flaunt your own achievements. If you did your work, you can take credit for it. If your teammate skips your work meeting, call them out on it. You want to show your professor that you tried to facilitate a team effort, but it fell through due to the lack of commitment on your teammates' part.
If you are concerned with the grading, talk to the professor about how they will be grading the assignment. Most professors will grade individually to some degree, so bring along the "contract" to show your professor what part you are accountable for.

While this is a good write-up it does not address the specifics of my question. 1.) The question is NOT whether I should "tattle" on my team. 2.) The team mates expressed almost no desire to work, even before I did anything. 3.) This was a small assignment and documentation of the division of labor would have been "overkill". But what I take from this, is that I should to strive to practice my team management skill in all scenarios, even when I think that there is no time.

@problemofficer Updated a bit to better match your points

I would hide it.  Makes everything simpler and people will figure out who did what.
Paul McCartney wrote and recorded "Yesterday" without the help of any of the other Beatles.  Yet it was released as a Beatles song written by Lennon-McCartney.

This answer lacks a rationale and thus persuasiveness.

More often than not the purpose of group assignments is as much to prove that you're capable of working in a team as it is to show you can handle the subject. Or at least, that's the case over here.
Keeping that in mind, you have a moral choice to make:
1)
Claim the glory and admit that you did all the work.
The "justice" part is that they'll get told off for slacking, the downside is that any good grade you might have gotten for this assignment could be scaled down because you failed to work as a team.
It would be far from the first time a lecturer punishes the person who carried the group for not being enough of a team leader to delegate their responsibilities.
2)
Stay quiet. Your grade will be decided on the quality of the product, but your slacking teammates will get the same grade and most likely do the same thing next assignment, because hey, it paid of.
So the question is, what's more valuable to you? Teaching the slackers a lesson or getting a good grade?
(Note: This is under the assumption that the work is graded in one form or another)

1.) The work is graded. 2.) In order for my group members to produce the same quality I expect from me I would have to spend hours teaching them and also would need to motivate them immensely to keep working. I don't see how this is my problem, considering that this is not a management course. If the lecturer would punish me for that I would perceive that as extremely unfair.

Even though it is not a management course, most lecturers feel obligated to include this skill as something to grade on. I'm not saying it's fair, but I'm afraid this might definitely be something that weighs in on it. They'll most likely bring in the argument that they'd rather see a mediocre product that everyone had a hand in instead of an excellent one that was made by one person. That said, the purpose of a school assignment is that people learn from it. If it's something everyone already knows how to do by heart, the exercise is useless.

@problemofficer, Yes, group grading is usually unfair. But the alternative is to dig down into what happened. Listen to people's excuses. Give zeros/Fs to the members who didn't do anything (despite the many excuses they have and all the whining they do). When instead, you could just wait to see those non-performing members flunk the midterms and flunk the final anyway.

So you mean the alternative would be to do your job as a lecturer and design proper task definitions and actually talk to the students? Wow, how horrible.

I believe it is morally imperative for you to
Hide the fact you did everything, use "we" when discussing the work.
You are part of a group. Whether your group mates were lazy or incompetent or not, whether you're the problem here like some people suggest - those are interesting philosophical/interpersonal questions to ponder after the grades are set, either on your own or with your group-mates. Once you joined the group you undertook collective responsibility and you should act accordingly and not break up the group front.

Choosing to join the group was mandatory, therefore I don't feel like I owe the "system" anything and don't feel like I need to be responsible for the collective.

You did not indicate to your group-mates, for the beginning, that they would be "on their own" and outed if they didn't work hard, up to your standards. So while I may accept your argument in theory - in order to shirk the collective responsibility, which you would definitely be entitled to, you would need to make "due notice", which you have not.

@einpoklum: Bad answer. Try again.

@einpoklum I am failing to see the moral imperative for what you describe when behind being assigned to a group of people who ignore your attempts to contact them about the work that you all have been given, apparently do not work at it at all and leave it all up to you. Making due notice of 'Hey, if you don't do anything and leave it all fall on my head, I won't pretend it did not happen' sounds ridiculous at best since in any normal human contact, this is implicitly so. You also do not address impression on lecturer part of OP's question at all.

@Joshua: Not following.

@AlexanderRossa: I don't believe the impression on lecturer part is relevant, since OP should not entertain the possibility of ratting his group-mates out.

@einpoklum Again, I fail to see how actually acting according to what happened can in any way be seen as ratting someone out. Is this really the modus operandi that we want to establish as a default one in academia and/or other professional occupancies? Is the environment in which you are expected not to call the emperor naked based on some questionable moral surmise, despite his bottom parading around in all its glory, what we want to create? I see it as highly detrimental, since the hard working individuals are punished, while the ignorant ones rewarded. What kind of morality is in that?

@AlexanderRossa: Ratting someone out is usually "acting according to what happened". As for your questions "is this realy the modus operandi etc. etc." - that is actually a very complicated question. If people were to always act individualistically and not create bonds of trust within groups, that would be a problem; on the other hand, if groups of people in power over others prefer group loyalties to commitment to the public, that's very bad. ...

@AlexanderRossa: ... Now, I won't write a dissertation in a comment, but - OP's group got a group project. It is intended to evaluate work in groups and does not involve people reporting on what each person did. You could disapprove of this situation (I tend to), but that's what it is. Also, OP's group mates saw that someone far more able than themselves is doing work they are not able to. That is somewhat opportunistic, but OP as well chose for this to happen rather than have the group's results reflect the contributions of group members authentically. Had it not been for him, they may...

@AlexanderRossa: ... well have acted differently. OP made is bed (or at least, tucked himself into that bed), and should now sleep in it.

@einpoklum You are right in the definition of ratting someone out, I should have phrased that differently. In everything else I disagree. The discussion here is getting quite long so I will stop commenting now, but I find your suggestion of OP not letting group results reflect reality authentically lacking in many aspects. To alter your making a bed for oneself figure of speech, I believe OP did not make his bed at all. OP was ushered into the bed with a couple of strangers who turned out to intentionally fart all night and what you suggest is for OP to pretend that it all smelled like roses

@AlexanderRossa: I guess we'll agree to disagree, particularly w.r.t. to the validity of your analogy.

From previous experience I've found that telling the lecturer is worth it. I was in multiple situations at uni where this happened.
By telling the lecturer they were able to subtract some of the score from each of the slacking members and split that across those that did do the work.
As a result of this I've gotten 60% plus in assignments where others in the same group got <50%.
I know this isn't much, but at uni level 60%+ is the second highest mark (2:1).

I don't understand the math behind this system.

So, what would you recommend OP do then?

I have been in this situation a lot, particularly in my last master year, where group projects were literally piling up.
One thing you need to understand is that, in any group work (at school or at work), there will always be people working more than others, and everyone will get the reward. Why? Because in a project, what matters is the completion of the project, not of your part.
I suspect my own professors tried to teach us this lesson, because I know other students who reported the kind of issue you report, and noone did anything, in fact the projects that were unfinished were still blamed: if a project fails, no matter why, it's the whole group's fault, you included even if you did your part of the work.
Indeed: why assign a group project when you can have individual assignments? This might serve to enforce training in group work. And group work's goal is to not only do your part of the job, but working together to complete the whole work. Managing dissensions and colleagues not working enough is unfortunately part of any group work, so you have to know how to handle it.
Concretely, I think two ways to approach this, depending on your objectives:

Report it to those in charge: this might (but not necessarily) get you sole credit for the project and punish your colleagues. Ideally, this is only fair to do that. Downside is that if the professors wanted to get you to train in group work, you will clearly show you failed, and also probably you won't get a good mark if the group work is unfinished (even if you completed your part: what matters is the project, not what you did).
Let it slide and do all the work yourself: if you are interested in having good marks, this is the best way to go. Downside is that you might have a LOT of work to do, but the bright side is that you can ensure the work is done well, and you can shine during project presentation (if you have one scheduled), knowing your project better than anyone else. So even if you let it slide, you can show you did most of the work without telling it directly, which is way more appreciated by everyone (both your colleagues, professors and superiors in a professional setting). Another advantage is that you will get a lot of skills in a short period of time (at the expense of sleep...).

Also, there is a 3rd way: balancing the work. Often, students have different skills and they do not necessarily excel for all kinds of projects. If you have several projects, what you can do is that you can arrange with your colleagues to form the same team in different projects, and share the work depending on each member's skills and affinities: you might end up doing most of the work for project A, but one of your colleague will do most of project B since he is more skilled with working on B field, etc.
The only requirement for this 3rd way is that you choose colleagues that are able, and that you upfront discuss and concur on this solution (if you discuss later on in the project, it might not end well as you experienced...). If you have lots of projects, this might actually help you speed up the completion, by assigning adequately to the most pertinent member the work to be done. And bonus, this is what a good manager should do, so that's also a good training if you want to lead projects later on :-)

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