"Raise Your Hand If You're a Woman in Science..."

pmbryant

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Tue Feb-01-05 03:04 PM
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"Raise Your Hand If You're a Woman in Science..."

The article excerpted below is one of the better ones I've seen in the wake of the Harvard President's recent comments about possible reasons for the relative lack of women in the sciences.

The author points out two of the primary reasons that the Harvard President seemed so ignorant of: (1) the biased attitudes, both covert and overt, the women in male-dominated fields continuously face, and (2) from an early age, "we don't cultivate women who are strong in math."

--Peter

From the Washington Post: Jan 30 2005

Raise Your Hand If You're A Woman in Science . . .

By Virginia Valian
Sunday, January 30, 2005; Page B01

For the past two weeks, my e-mail in-box has overflowed with messages from women -- and some men -- about the hypotheses recently offered by Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers to explain the dearth of women in the academic sciences. One woman wrote, "It is not surprising that people are angry when they see such full-blown contemptuous arrogance." Others were shocked at his apparent insensitivity: Had he no concern for the female students and faculty in math and science at Harvard or other academic institutions?

(snip)

(Summers is not alone) in being unaware of the large set of experiments showing that well-intentioned people, intelligent people, people who believe in a meritocracy -- people, in short, just like many successful college presidents -- consistently underrate women's abilities and overrate men's.

The finding that emerges from the research, in experiment after experiment, is that bias is a problem not because it is deliberate, but because it is the outcome of assumptions of which we are not consciously aware. Take, for example, a study published last year by New York University professor Madeline Heilman and her colleagues. The researchers asked people to rate individual men and women who were described as holding the position of assistant vice president in an aircraft company. The evaluators' job was to rate how competent and likable the employees were. They were given background information about the person, the job and the company.

In half the cases, the employee was described as about to have a performance review (his or her competence was thus unknown); in the other half, the person was described as having been a stellar performer.

When the evaluators had received no information about how well the assistant VP was doing in the job, they rated the man as more competent than the woman, and rated them as equally likable. When the background information made clear that the person was extremely competent, evaluators rated the man and woman as equally competent. But both men and women rated the highly competent woman as much less likable than her male counterpart, and considerably more hostile.

Thus, in evaluating a woman in a male-dominated field, both male and female observers see her as less competent than a similarly described man unless there is clear information that she is a top performer. And in that case, they see her as less likable than a comparable man.

(snip)

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46421-2005Jan29.html