Ha, in response to my entry to the Classic Science Papers challenge (all done! Check them out!), a friend sends me the following as a suggestion for my next entry (I believe A Blog Around the Clock’s Coturnix thinks it now should become a blog carnival?).
‘Social Factors Influencing Problem Solving In Women’ by Hoffman and Maier (1966) from the Journal of Personal and Social Psychology -
One of the most consistent findings in the psychological literature is the inferiority of women’s problem-solving performance, especially on problems of the arithmetic reasoning type (e.g., Carey, 19S8; Maier, 1933). The conclusion often reached is that this inferiority is a genetic one.
Yes, that’s how it starts. Please, dear readers, why do I immediately think of Aliens‘ Ripley and a power loader, being taken to the authors?
Check out the ‘motivational talk’ that is given to help ‘motivate’ women to solve the sets of problems they are given…
I know that as soon as I mention problem solving to a group of women, many of you immediately react negatively, some even violently. Problem solving, you feel, is a job for men, not for women.
The results of our research seem to show that this is the case, because men usually do a better job in solving problems than women do. However, we know that under certain conditions, women are perfectly capable of solving the problems I am about to give you…”
Oooh dear. Where do I start in regards to comparing THAT to modern attitudes… perhaps evolutionary biologist PhD candidate Sarah ‘Doom’ Kingan of the Boston Derby Dames could come up with a problem they’d need to get their skates on for… damned fast..
Which then leads me to point you towards a great round-up of three articles on Jezebel, that takes in The Freedom To Say ‘No’ [Boston Globe] The Education Gender Gap [Salon] and Why Are Senior Female Scientists So Heavily Outnumbered by Men? [Wired]: Why Women are Opting Out of the Hard Sciences -
“Substantial numbers of women – highly qualified for the work – stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else,” the Globe’s Elaine McArdle writes…
…Even if female PhD students are encouraged in the same way as male students, it’s entirely possible that the way they’ve been socialized affects the “choices” they’re making when opting out of soaring science career paths. The effect of socialization shows up in studies like one mentioned on Salon, which shows that “In Sweden, about the closest thing we’ve got to a ‘gender-equal society,’ the difference between boys’ and girls’ [math] scores is negligible.”
And speaking of upcoming blog carnivals – if you want to hear more from these women themselves on such issues, the next Scientiae Carnival is going to be out very soon at Thus Spake Zuska – if you’re very quick you can get your entries in at the Scientiae site! And I’ll be hosting the next round, so stay tuned for the next theme!
![[Valid RSS]](http://img501.imageshack.us/img501/9879/validrsscf0.png "Validate my RSS feed")
{ 2 comments }
I think Anna Kushnir’s article is a little misleading. She compares the graduate/postdoc ratio with the prof ratio without taking into account the fact that the sharp rise in women entering science is fairly recent. Many academics are not getting tenured until past 40, so the current batch of profs represent a generation when the male/female ratio was perhaps a lot higher.
It may take another ten years for academia as whole (grad student to Chair) to equilibrate, or as I suspect, begin to slant towards a higher female/male ratio (in the life sciences, particularly).
There is also the factor of the delayed retirement of the ‘Baby Boomer’ generation. Cost of living (petrol!) has increased… so I think that yes, there are some implications that could be considered.
Comments on this entry are closed.