(no subject)

[naath]

foreverdirt linked to this excellent talk about sexism in science, the talk is an hour long and there are introductions before and questions after so it is a bit long, but I think worth it.

One of the excellent points made, and one that I have failed to express when I wanted to, so I'll do it here instead - is saying things like "women are innately worse at science" is *actively harmful* to the progress of women in science, and that if you are thinking of saying such a thing in public then you really ought to be very sure that you are right; that just saying such things with the force of your reputation and your conviction that you are right will cause other people (in this case women) to internalise the message (and as a result be worse at science). It turns out that this has actually *been tested*; if you give girls a maths test then they *do worse on it* if you remind them that girls aren't good at maths before they sit it.

Comments

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

It's not just being sure, it's using the right statistical terms too. "Women are innately worse at science" is not true; "the mean score on a spatial awareness test is lower for women than for men, and spatial awareness is used in some aspects of studying science" may be true. It always amazes me how some people with physics degrees seem to lose all their knowledge (1) of basic statistics and (2) that one aspect of a problem isn't the whole problem, when they start talking about gender and science.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's very silly of them.

How it works (XKCD)

[king-of-wrong.livejournal.com]

[random-c.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is something that people just don't seem to grasp. If you're constantly told you're bad at something... you're not going to put the effort in. If you're constantly treated as though you don't know what you're doing, you're going to either start believing it or get pissed off and do something else instead where you WILL be taken seriously. And this, ladies and gents, is the real reason there are fewer women than men in IT.

[naath.livejournal.com]

And then all the men are like "Oh, but you should just ignore it" or "Don't be such a wuss". Which is EPIC FAIL at basic human psychology.

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Which is EPIC FAIL at basic human psychology.

Except for the few of us who are just naturally contrary :-).

But, yes. Grr!

[naath.livejournal.com]

Well, OK, some people are basically contrary. But I think that expecting the majority of women to be so inclined whilst the majority of men get away without...

[random-c.livejournal.com]

Oh if I'm told I'm not ALLOWED to do something I'll kick like hell.
But trust me on this, if you're told often enough that you're incompetent, stupid, just not good enough, whether it's overt or not, it gets to you, no matter who you are. And when everyone else has internalised that it's true as well it just makes it all the harder.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's much easier if someone says "no girlz allowed" to kick up a stink, because being *forbidden* from something is obviously an incentive to fight to be allowed it.

But yes, the constant degrading commentary is much harder to ignore.

[random-c.livejournal.com]

And the more subtle matter of just being constantly assumed to be the one who's in the wrong, or not as worth listening to as those who keep their gonads where they can play with them...

[djelibeybi.livejournal.com]

those who keep their gonads where they can play with them

Nice term ;-)

You're right, it's not the being *told* that you can't do something or not allowed to do something that's the problem because most of us *will* rebel. It's the constant, underlying presumption that we cannot. No challenge, just presumption.

And grrrrr!

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

But trust me on this, if you're told often enough that you're incompetent, stupid, just not good enough, whether it's overt or not, it gets to you, no matter who you are.

Oh, I've had a lifetime of it. But I'm not going to become some shrinking violet and fade away :-).

[random-c.livejournal.com]

Nor will I, but nor will I pretend I'm not affected by it because I am. mostly nowadays I just find it infuriating and react to it with anger, and get told I'm imagining it, being paranoid, being a hysterical girl...

[random-c.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, Dog's 'strong and weak' bullshit. Here's a hint: Strong people don't snap and snarl at others all the time. That's defensive behaviour.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

They couldn't ignore it if it happened to them - that they're saying it just shows that they never have been treated like a second-class citizen.

if you give girls a maths test

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in the results of the same experiment on boys. There are sections of the population where they notably do perform worse on average, so you could certainly do it with just the reminder rather than with a lie.

Re: if you give girls a maths test

[sidheag.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I've seen mention of a similar study based on race rather than sex, in an area where there wasn't a strong stereotype of who was good at what, so they just separated people (it was Americans, I'm pretty sure) into "white" "Black" and "Hispanic" and told each group that their group had been found to be bad at [whatever it was], or not. Same result - even, remarkably, given that this didn't reinforce a stereotype they'd been absorbing since birth.

Re: if you give girls a maths test

[arnhem.livejournal.com]

You'd kind of hope that the ethics test would squash that one before it got off the drawingboard ...

Re: if you give girls a maths test

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

didn't they do it with kids? just tell them that the blue-eyed ones (or whatever) were $inferior and find them acting on it almost immediately?

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2007/nov/11/black-peoples-reality-02/

[1ngi.livejournal.com]

I think that test would work for both sexes, however, the drip, drip persistance of negative comments regarding women's abilities will have a cumulative effect over the course of a a girl's educational career on her confidence.

There is a shocking amount of misogyny in this city regarding IT and the sciences - I see that and I'm only networking at the university-spin-off business end of it. I had a fantastic moral-support-kick-up-the-back-side from Walter Herriot - Director of the SJIC, who said he observes ex-university businessmen (in IT and engineering etc) talking down to women every day "They'll be talking to you but they'll be looking over your head to see if there is a more interesting man they can talk to" and that I was never ever to think that it was me.

Sadly he turned out to be so very right. And I have had some amazing put-downs in networking situations in the last year and I've been so grateful for his words or I may well have developed a complex! It is clearly an institutionalised sexism and deeply ingrained. The new guys coming through seem to be much less inclined to judge so if we continue to point stuff out, perhaps over time things will change. Long way to go though.

I left the Cambridge Network - and I joined the Cambridge Business Women's Network and I ran into (proportionally) just as many scientists and IT people, the main noticeable difference is that they talk to me. :)

[atreic.livejournal.com]

If it is true that in the top 1% of scientists there are more men than women, saying "women and men are equally good at science" can also be actively harmful if it decays into "so the top institutions must take 50% men and 50% women"

[naath.livejournal.com]

Right; but if it is true that the top 1% of scientists contains more men than women that data is *not sufficient* to state that women can't do science - there are loads of other reasons; like schools that suck, universities that suck, hiring policies that suck, maternity leave and child care provision that sucks... and there really is no way to see to what extent (if any) "women innately suck at science" is a factor amidst all these confusing factors.

Using quotas might be the only way to force universities/schools/employers into accepting that women can (and do) do Good Science; which is a huge shame. Also sometimes I think that a quota system makes women think "I'm only here because of the quota" so I'm not really in favour. I'm in favour of forcing people to institute policies that make their workplace/study-place an attractive place to be for women - but that's much harder to achieve, and it's possible that with more women around places will change faster to accommodate them.

Besides the Top Institutions do not train only the Top 1% of Scientists. I know; because I have a Cambridge degree and no *way* am I in the top 1% of scientists; so clearly chucking out mediocre-boy-students in favour of mediocre-girl-students is not actually going to result in many fewer Top Scientists.

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

do you have views on something like an all-women's university? If Good Science emerged from such a thing people might get the point.

However I believe it is rather difficult to start from scratch and become a Good University if you don't have a few hundred years to spare.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Good Universities can't really just be invented - you have to attract the talent, and the funding and so on.

I was personally very happy at Newnham because having more women senior members meant that I had a greater chance of being supervised by women - which lead to greater confidence that, yes, women do go on to do well in Science. I know that other people didn't like it so much though, so I'm not sure if it is in general a Good Thing.

[rmc28]

I'm in favour of forcing people to institute policies that make their workplace/study-place an attractive place to be for women

'Attractive for women' is such a woolly term. Specific things like the right to flexible working, a sensible amount of parental leave, not being looked down on for leaving on time regularly, a low tolerance for rudeness, aggression & bullying in the workplace : all these are obvious improvements for everyone except the aggressive workaholics.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Ah, but we must think of all the poor aggressive workaholics! What will they do! /sarcasm

[androidkiller.livejournal.com]

I think that people do tend to give up more easily when they're told that something is hard, so I can see what you're saying. Also, I think that we need to stop advertising sciences and maths as "hard" subjects, as I think this leads to people of both genders giving up and potentially missing out on what I believe are very interesting subjects.

[pavanne.livejournal.com]

The flip side of this is that when a girl does do well at maths or science, this may be more commented on than if a boy did equally well. Which is probably encouraging, if patronising, to the girl.

[(Anonymous)]

One of the things I've noticed a lot, particularly around Cambridge, is that successful women in science and IT often seem to imitate the boreish, aggressive, overconfident men who I try to avoid with a barge-poll even in professional situations. There's lots of explanations for that, of course. It could be that this is what it takes to get on; or else that this is their natural unfettered inclination; but the number of professional IT people I meet who within seconds are telling me about their prizes, awards, and programmes they're enrolled in, in fact the number who've never made a professional mistake, I've automatically switched off within a few seconds, too, just like for the more common, similar men. My instinctive reaction is that whether they're right or not, they're best left to whatever it is they do, and not really to talk about it. Kind of a bit like the matters of the gods: best not interfere.

They say that heaven is like TV, a perfect little world that doesn't really need me.

As with all things, there are exceptions, of course, and the spread is massive. And because the origins this kind of hypercompensation, I know that I should probably be more tolerant of it, but it's always a bit of a struggle to interact with people consistently contrary to their projected personality. Not that the presence or absence of such things matters, of course, if it helps them.

Something else, of course, is that men in junior management positions who choose women in their team, or to progress according to their opinions, don't tend to get promoted themselves. It doesn't take them to internalise that, of course, just a selection process.

[kaet.livejournal.com]

Oops, that was me.

[david jones (from livejournal.com)]

I think that saying that "you really ought to be very sure that you are right" and then not giving even a whiff of a reference for "this has actually *been tested*" is bad science. Quote your sources, please.

Yumm, sources. I love 'em.

[david jones (from livejournal.com)]

Oh wait, was that one of the things that was was sourced in the talk? Which, ahem, naturally I haven't bothered to sit through yet.

[naath.livejournal.com]

My source, I quoted it.

[david jones (from livejournal.com)]

So, in the talk. Fine. That wasn't totally clear, but I was being a bit slow too. I have now tried listening to the talk, but Real Player and/or my network made it so annoying I had to give up. Sounds like the speaker would be able to carry an argument though with the force of their conviction though.

[naath.livejournal.com]

The slides are there separately I think.

Anyway; I mean, this is just blog wibble right, not a scientific paper so I'm not going to go digging. My point about the necessity of being *really sure* is about when you say something which you think is *true* but which has enormous potential to be *harmful* if believed - now, if it actually is true then sure, we need to know; but if it isn't true then the harm would all be for nothing.

Telling girls that they are too stupid to do science before they've even had a chance to try harms them.

A different example would be, for instance, printing in a national newspaper that a major bank is going bust - such stories inevitably cause people to run to withdraw their money. If you are *right* and bank is going bust then that's not too bad - but if you were *wrong* then printing that story could destabilise the bank for no good end.

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

there is this article, http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how-stereotyping-yourself-contributes-to-success , which I found while the talk was doing its stuttering thing (network issues). I downloaded it to file in the end and will have another go at listening to it sometime-the first 40 minutes were interesting...