Debunking gender ‘facts’

[jellyfrizz]

This looks like a positive initiative: www.theguardian.com/education/2018/aug/10/scientists-launch-campaign-to-overturn-gender-stereotypes

Has anyone here read Inferior?

Click: www.theguardian.com/education/2018/aug/10/scientists-launch-campaign-to-overturn-gender-stereotypes

I've got this book, I just need to read it.

Kindle edition is only £2.99, too (damnit, people, like I don't have enough to read already! ). Would be interesting to discuss - I'm one of those women that started out in STEM but was not retained.

Yes 'Inferior' is an awesome and compelling feminist read. From the prejudiced and exclusionary 19th century, where women were 'scientifically proven' to be inferior to men, through to current research from anthropology, neuro-science and psychology, evolutionary biology.... This book rocks! 😁

Ooh, great, thanks I’ll get a copy.

Maybe we should suggest it to the Midnight Misogynist?

Looks good - and they are well on their way towards reaching the target in their crowdfunding campaign.

Hmm.

Is the thrust of 'inferior' that all is needed is for women to believe in themselves harder? That the cause of all bias is our lack of faith in ourselves? If only we stop being such victims the men would welcome us with open arms as their equals?

Because this quote in the article leapt out at me :“But Inferior is a breath of fresh air; instead of saying we are so hard done by because we are women, it is written by an engineer who is examining where this bias comes from, and how it’s invaded our social consciousness.”

"Instead of saying we are so hard done by because we are women" ??
Is it our own fault then?

I accept that there is value in instilling confidence and self belief in girls.
But if there is a denial of the obstacles that men put in the way of women then you're empowering a generation of girls only for them to hit adulthood and blame themselves when they are passed over and rejected in favour of mediocre men.

Plenty of women on this site know that it isn't more self belief that is required. It's a change in society that prevents people from discriminating against women.

Is the thrust of 'inferior' that all is needed is for women to believe in themselves harder?

I’ve just downloaded it so I’ll let you know but the first chapter is talking about how belief by society in gender myths colours everything. It talks of sexism being ‘woven into the fabric of a system’.

Thanks jelly
I realise I am being curmudgeonly.
I just thought that was a weird quote to use.
If you only have a short article to get your point across, you try to pick something representative, surely.
Hopefully that quote wasn't!

Plenty of women on this site know that it isn't more self belief that is required. It's a change in society that prevents people from discriminating against women.

Exactly. All the self belief in the world will not budge that.

One problem is, the discrimination cycles between overt and covert (currently overt). On the plus side of that, it is easier to fight and rally the troops.

I’ve read a good chunk of Inferior now, the author absolutely acknowledges that women have been and are still held back. And talks about how gender beliefs are a major factor in this.

It looks at all the areas where science has been used to give an argument for sexually dimorphic brains and takes them apart.

The writer says in the introduction that she was hassled by a sexist man after a talk she had given and wished she had a set of hard facts to back up her arguments. She says she wrote the book

“For everyone who has faced the same situation I did in Sheffield, the same angry confrontation with a person who tells you that women are inferior to men, and the same desperate attempt not to lose control but to have at hand some hard facts and a history to explain them, this book is for you.”

I’m really enjoying it so far, easy to read and goes through much of the reasoning I see here, backed up by scientific studies (but also acknowledging that the scientific world is extremely sexist in methodology etc).

Re. self belief, I think the book is saying it’s not easy for women in science but it’s not because women are naturally ‘bad’ at science it’s because of the system.

Placemarking. Sounds promising.

If anyone is serious about a career in anything they wouldn't listen to a a naysayer in the first place, if you can be so easily swayed you weren't meant for a career in science anyway which is a field in which your work will be critiqued, and that is right even when women are being actively discouraged from stem fields, which they are not, at least in the UK. And people fail to consider that men and women make different choices, such as women dominate the nursing field at a much greater disparity than the stem subjects but there is no article about that?

Inequality is systematic. Its irrelevant how much self belief you have if it means you are labelled as uppity, arrogant or belligerent instead of confident.
It's been proven from anti rape campaigns that attitudes can be tackled and changed effectively by direct teaching. So the status quo is not inevitable.

Where is inequality systematic? Where is the law or example? I'm actually just curious and would like to know so I can fight it.

Oh sure. Its in the statement I just made, which many women are already familiar with from lived experience.
There are studies that show differences in the way that men and women talk and listen.
www.livescience.com/7420-men-talk-women.html

It can also be demonstrated ion the way different jobs are valued and paid depending on whether they are done by men or women. Originally, computer coding was seen as a womans work and was poorly paid. Typing was seen as a mans job and well paid.
the situations have since reversed.

www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programming-used-to-be-womens-work-718061/

''What changed? Well, male programmers wanted to elevate their job out of the “women’s work” category. They created professional associations and discouraged the hiring of women. Ads began to connect women staffers with error and inefficiency. ''

veryverysilly - I don't think female scientists are put off by dealing with criticism. They are more put off by not getting jobs, not getting funding, or not getting published when male scientists of the same calibre or with the same proposals do. There have been multiple studies which find that the identical job application or article submitted to a journal stands a much higher chance of success under a male name than a female name.

See also for example this paragraph from this article: "In 2017 she (Dr Michaela Kendall) applied for seven government science grants from the EPSRC, Innovate UK and Local Enterprise Partnership. All seven proposals were rejected though highly scored. Her father, Prof Kevin Kendall, made one proposal based on the same business case and that proposal was accepted."

www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474

It is systematic:

In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research-intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. The gender of the faculty participants did not affect responses, such that female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent.

It doesn't matter how much this fake person believed in themselves. Exactly the same CV got offered less money, fewer resources, and was estimated as less competent when they were thought to be female.

In fact, it looks like the number one thing you can do for your daughter, is give her a boy's name - admittedly, once someone meets her it'll still be an issue - but getting your foot in the door is a good start.

I think you would all enjoy this book...

“The problem is that answers in science aren’t everything they seem. When we turn to scientists for resolution, we assume they will be neutral. We think the scientific method can’t be biased or loaded against women. But we’re wrong. The puzzle of why there are so few women in science is crucial to understanding why this bias exists.”

My post is not hugely clear there, that quote is from the book in the OP.

“Women are so grossly under-represented in modern science because, for most of history, they have been treated as intellectual inferiors and deliberately excluded from it. It should come as no surprise, then, that the scientific establishment has also painted a distorted picture of the female sex. This, in turn, has skewed how science looks and what it says even now.“

It is systemic VeryVerySilly.

www.smh.com.au/world/asia/tokyo-medical-university-confirms-it-cut-women-s-marks-20180807-p4zw47.html

Could this be why women supposedly choose to go into nursing? The game is rigged.

And people fail to consider that men and women make different choices, such as women dominate the nursing field at a much greater disparity than the stem subjects but there is no article about that?

Why would men and women make different choices? Are you suggesting that there is something inherently different about male and female brains? Because there is no good evidence for this - and this is exactly what 'Inferior' covers.