(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

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/