Lately there has been a lot of discussion here and elsewhere about male privilege and sexism. I think one of the reasons this is such a touchy subject is because many of our actions that are inherently sexist are unconscious, so we can get especially defensive when people call us out on them. For example, let’s look at how Physics students react differently to male and female lecturers:
Why aren’t there more women physicists, and in senior positions? One factor may be unconscious biases that could keep women physicists from advancing—and may even prevent women from going into physics in the first place.
Amy Bug, a physicist at Swarthmore University, examined the bias question. Her research team trained four actors—two men, two women—to give a 10-minute physics lecture. Real physics classes watched the lecturers. Then the 126 students were surveyed.
When it came to questions of physics ability—whether the lecturer had a good grasp of the material, and knew how to use the equipment—male lecturers got higher ratings by both male and female students.
But when asked how well the lecturer relates to the students, each gender preferred their own. And while female students gave a slight preference to female lecturers, male students overwhelmingly rated the male lecturers as being superior. The research appears in the journal Physics World.
Bug says the results may be evidence of inherent biases that could hold women back—along with economic inequalities, such as lower wages and smaller start-up grants. Which reduce career acceleration and thus the amount of force available to crack the glass ceiling.
Note that it’s not just male students who have some sort of unconscious biases – the female students do as well. This is why it is so important to become aware of our biases. When someone points out that something you said is sexist (against women or men) or that you’re privileged, it’s not to make you feel guilty or like a bad person – it’s to make you conscious of your actions. Only once we are aware of what we’re doing can we actively try to correct it.
Back to the science aspect – I would like to see this repeated looking at scientific papers in addition to lecturing ability. Often times when names on papers are represented by initials alone, people assume those authors are male. If given the same paper, but one with a male name and one with a female, would students say they are the same quality?
I’m also curious how prevalent this is in other disciplines. Is it a science thing, or does the same trend hold in liberal arts? Would it be less pronounced in a field with a more equal sex ratio like Biology? Something I get to think about before I become a lecturer…
(Hat tip to Rugved)
As a physics major aiming for a PhD, this pretty much hits home the Male Privilege concept. Look at me, I demonstrably have an advantage in the field I’m going into!
Hey Jen,As a female PhD student in physics, I’d love to talk to you more about this. Let me know if there’s any information you’d like: observations, opinions, thoughts… spent a lot of time thinking about it when I didn’t want to do my homework in undergrad! I’ll email you some stuff when I’m not cooking dinner (I moved overseas for my PhD :) )Thanks for bringing attention to this!Erin
I’ve actually seen this in sociology, as well, particularly relating to women’s and gender studies. We distinguish between personal problems and social issues. If a woman is speaking, some students discount the lecture as “just another feminist” with personal problems and sometimes go so far as to mock her. However, if a man lectures, students think that he’s sensitive and it must be A Real Social Issue. Social issues are the only things that sociologists handle because they’re assumed to affect an entire society, and personal problems are those things that do not generally affect society at large and should be left to others.
At least at Delaware where I was a physics major, it is definitely true that there are many more male than female physicists. But that was true, though to a lesser extent, of the undergraduates as well as the graduates and professors. So it isn’t clear to me how much of this is women not choosing to go into science, or a generational effect, versus actual bias. Even without being able to get at the original article, I have my doubts about this particular study. Firstly, two lecturers of each gender isn’t much. Secondly, a ten minute lecture is hardly realistic. Most lectures are 50 or 75 minutes. Thirdly, did all 126 students see all four lecturers? If so, could the order in which they saw them have had an effect? If not, does that mean there were only about 30 students evaluating each lecturer? Cause that’s also a pretty small sample.The idea of looking at people’s evaluations of scientific papers is a good one, I would also be very curious how that experiment would come out. That does sound like an experiment that could be done pretty easily and give a very clear and unarguable result.
Wow Jen, this one hits close to home. I am the first to admit the male/female disparity in physics however I think this will change in less than 20 years. I have been to a couple of undergraduate physics conferences and the ratio of males to females is far closer to even than the rest of the field would have you believe. As more females teach physics at the high school/junior undergrad level this misconception will evaporate. I am waiting for that day, and am hoping that some of my best colleagues, who I am more than willing to admit are smarter then me, will be remembered for bringing equality to physics.
I see a big gender disparity both in students and professors in Computer Science as well. I don’t have any data about how professors are evaluated, though I do have a few anecdotal examples of female professors I considered to be objectively qualified being criticized by other male students on more or less spurious or exaggerated grounds. “She covers too much material”, “she doesn’t care about her students”, etc.It would be interesting to see data on the reverse effect – how professors evaluate the performance of their male or female students – since any bias there will affect the future gender gap when women are discouraged from pursuing higher studies in the field.
Speaking for my own experience in my own field, there are certainly not a lot of women who seem to advance very far within philosophy.Aside from a small handful of papers I’ve read by women, I’ve only known one woman with a PhD in the field. She was one of my professors. Her husband is also a professor in the department, but she held her position before he got his. She was actually a great teacher. She had a tendency to let her lectures lull a bit, but she seemed to have the best grasp of ethics of anyone in the department. Which was good for me, as I wanted to be an ethicist.
On the internet I am frequently mistaken for a man. I suspect people tend to assume masculinity unless there are specific gender markers.
I think it occurs in all fields, sadly. A friend I know doing a Literature degree dismissed Margaret Atwood as ‘chick-lit’, because her principle characters are women, and he’s planning to teach english when he finishes; and in my field, sociology, while there are a lot more women doing ok, there is an assumption that women should research ‘female’ issues like sexism, and leave the heavyweight areas (such as economics, which is very much male dominated) to men to do ‘proper’ research in.
In IT it’s interesting. You do have a big gender disparity but since you are dealing with a lot of socially awkward types as well you have the weird attention given if the woman is pretty. I think in any of the engineering or scientific fields you see this.
I actually really like the metaphor suggested in that quote. A “glass ceiling” in careers isn’t unusual. Everyone struggles to establish themselves, to break into the level in their field where they’re assumed to be a mover and shaker, rather than a peon. It’s just that women (and POC and other minorities) are given fewer resources and less support in doing so. Men pass through the glass ceiling all the time; there’s an elevator marked “men only.” Whereas, off to the side, women are stuck building trebuchets and cannons . . .So I’m kinda a nerd.
heard similiar stories regarding blacks and whites. a black banker was complaining how even the black customers preferred using his white colleagues!
Hmmm… interesting. I’ve actually had the exact opposite experience in English Language and Lit. Of course, I’m speaking at this point of my perceptions of a lecturer as an undergrad and do not presume to comment on how women lecturers were viewed by their male colleagues. I had quite a few really strong female professors, people I respected both academically as well as personally. I was part of the English Club at my university so I was exposed to them a much greater deal than most other students. Both the men and the women were intelligent and well spoken. It also helped that my university still had seminar sessions as part of the curriculum, so all the students had a chance to interact in a more intimate setting. Another factor might be that English seemed to have a greater amount of women in it then some of the other fields.
I’m right there with you on the IT field. I’m tech support in my regular life, and the gender disparity is amazing. Where I used to work, a commercial call center doing tech support for HP, there was one individual that was barred from going down certain rows as he creeped out the ladies working there.It was always interesting when a female boss took over our area. My perception is that they always felt the need to demonstrate their dominance, so as soon as they took over they’d reorganize things, or go on an anti-paper crusade. It’s unfortunate they did this, as we lost documentation that even HP didn’t have anymore. This isn’t saying that the male bosses were any better, just their stupidity was less about asserting dominance (which the assumed they already had – male privilege and all that).
There are few female physics lecturers because easily 90% of physicists are men. There isn’t an inequality going on in physics circles. It’s male dominated because women seem more drawn to biology, chemistry, and pure math. My friend Dyan does research on this. If there was a gender bias in physics, it’s indirect. The best physics students were found not to be male, but among those with OCD. Most OCD people are male. That’s all.
Well I’ve seen that some women overcompensate when they get put into a position of management due to the nature of how they had to get there. Then again, I’ve seen men do similar stupid crap.Where I work, I work closely with the QA group which is mainly women so I am lucky that I get more balance where I am. Other areas at work are a sausagefest though.
These aren’t mutually exclusive. Individuals and generations don’t form their preferences in a vacuum, you know.
Of course you’ve seen some women do that. It’s due to a simple trait that all women share.They’re people. >.>
You’ve completely missed the point. The issue isn’t “why are there more men in Physics?”, but “why do students regard male lecturers as more authoritative than their female counterparts?”.Even if you’re going to posit that having one gender overrepresented in a field lends that gender more authority than the other, that’s still an important example of male privelege – it shouldn’t matter that only one in ten physicists is a woman, we should value what they have to say on it’s own merits. The fact that so many people subscribe to the false logic that “lots more men are physicists, therefore any given male physicist is better than any given female physicist” is still a big deal.
That’s a terrible metaphor. Who would want to use the elevator when you could build trebuchets!?
Not quite the same kind of study, but I was at a talk given by someone from EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation) which has looked long and hard into the practical issues of making their faculty recruiting process “gender blind”. They basically found that recruitment at EMBO (she was careful to say this doesn’t necessarily extrapolate into academia in general!) was very good at avoiding gender bias, but that as you go up the “food chain”, women are progressively weeded out because they make career choices based on traditional gender roles. I haven’t read the paper, but in her talk she made some interesting suggestions for ways to prevent women being held back in science.The press release (with a link to the paper) is here: http://www.embo.org/documents/…As a developmental biologist, I’m in a bit of an odd position. On the one hand, a great many of the heroes of Developmental Biology have been women – as a field women are very well represented (Rita Levi-Montalcini, Nicole Le Dourain, Cheryll Tickle – the list goes on), and the majority of my personal science heroes who really turned me on to the subject have been women (although I wouldn’t say that the field is immune to sexism when it comes to assessing a speakers value).But at the same time, I almost feel embaressed about it. It’s hard to escape the fact that women have greater equality in embryology because it’s a “girlie” subject that it’s “okay” for women to do well in, a bit like Obstetrics and Gynecology in medicine.
I’m a philosophy lecturer, and I have female colleagues, but women are still fairly rare. Based on anecdote, women have to put up with more boundary-pushing crap from students.Sally Haslanger has a recent paper on bias against women in philosophy.http://www.mit.edu/~shaslang/p…
I, of course, recognize now that my response completely missed the point of the post.Durr hurr.
Well, the root cause of the bias is the difference in hormonal levels in two genders. Testosterone, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T… , makes the brain larger and influences certain cognitive abilities. These abilities are positively correlated with the ability to perform better in physics classes and the affinity to math and science.
Wow, are you seriously playing the “men are biologically better at math and science” on a feminist biologist’s blog?
And using Wikipedia as a source for “men are biologically better at math and science?”
Well, it’s “possible” that they are. In the sense of “possible” that a “square circle” isn’t, anyway. And since he WANTS it to be true, that much “possible” is enough to “prove” it.I’m generally opposed to corporal punishment, but I think it should be incorporated in mandatory Remedial Critical Thinking classes. >.>
And using Wikipedia as a source for any socially contentious claim, except for the convenience of collating several other citable sources?I mock the bandwagon of reflexive Wiki-haters regularly, but the medium DOES have its limitations and this is a big one.
OK, I remembered this old article from Skepchick, so I searched and found it. Took about one minute. http://bit.ly/8mt6Ed There’s no gender gap in math in a society with gender equality.
Nope. I am playing the game that testosterone tends to make a person do better in math and science, as it is indicated in statistical data and analysis. I’m not saying a woman cannot do better in math and science because there are other factors involved.I’m simply pointing out one of the factors influencing the ability to do math and science. I was going to include a warning label on my last comment to clarify that, but decided against it because I wanted more controversies on feminist,/testosterone/sexism discussion.
That reminds me of an article in the Ecconomist a few years ago. One thing they said was that women who do have better math smarts are also more able in other areas. It’s much easier for a man to get pigeon-holed. Either way women’s college attendance is already higher than men’s overall.Not the same article but you can read this. http://www.thestar.com/news/wo…
You might also mention that the disparities in performance measured in methodologically sound studies are just barely clawing their way past the “statistically significant” threshold and wouldn’t come even remotely close to explaining the disparity in gender representation within those fields, even at the elite level, even if the “testosterone makes you do better” argument weren’t “La-la-la”ing a literal million confounding factors that are basically impossible to correct for in an ethical human experiment.
I read that article and didn’t find any statistical data or analysis on that. BTW, Canada is not a society with gender equality.And please read my other comment above. I’m not saying: men = good in math; women = not good in math. I’m simply making a point that testosterone is one of the majors influencing the ability to do math and science.The biggest factor is free will, which trumps all other factors such as hormones and societal pressure.
Whoops, I should have said: There’s a lesser gender gap in maths in societies with greater gender equality. It was just a news report about a study, not the study itself. But it was meant to illustrate that like, 1 minute of searching came up with a study and you don’t need to make claims without any evidence at all. Like you did.
Dear Jen,is it hard for a kind of clever girl in Indiana to figure out what the Amy Bug experiment actually implies?It implies that as a statistical ensemble, men are better physicists, better physics teachers, better actors, and better judges of physics teachers if they happen to be students, relatively to women. You can call the membership in the set of males “privileged” in this sense but it is Mother Nature rather than social constructions who has produced this privilege.CheersLubos
They see you trollin’, They hatin’
Its interesting I did a buisness degree where most areas were very equally balanced between male and female accept in our business law where it was almost all female teachers and I got very used to seeing a female upfront but this is different from the actuall industry of law.You have to wonder if its the continually seeing of one type of teacher upfront female/male sets a bias in place or you come into the classes withit already and it is enforced.
What a great post. I didn’t realize that privilege can be an unconscious thing.
Ummm… i think that this was also covered from a different perspective at women’s rights. orgApparently there was a woman who had a sex change and after that her research and presentations received a lot more respect…one person (fellow scientist), unaware of her sex change operation, was even quoted as saying that “He did a much better job then his sister”http://womensrights.change.org…
I did a PhD in physics and never met nor heard of a physicist with OCD. I think I know what you mean, but it’s not OCD.
It could be a relative lack of interest as well. Every time gender differences in social roles pops up I remind myself of the experiments of babies and how they use identical toys in drastically different ways along gender lines. Game designers have been trying to reconcile this difference for at least 50 years now, making a universal toy. For the most part it’s unsuccessful. Video games are notorious for this as well. The more “feminine” a game is, teh higher percentage of girls that play it, and visa versa for masculinity in video games. Think: “The Sims” is more female-played than male, “World of Warcraft” is about 1/3-1/4 female last I saw, and shooter games are closer to 1/10.
Going by what I see in wow, it is closer to 50/50 now. WoW generally has a broader audience of all the games. The tricky part here is defining how much is caused by social pressures and conditioning regarding women and men in various disciplines and how much is wired in.I have a hard time believing that women are wired “wrong” to excel at math in most cases. And while there are physical differences between men and women which help define us I suspect culture has more influence in this case.
Even when there are. On the forum I frequent, I regularly get called a “he”, despite the fact that my gender icon is visible on my posts *and* I have a feminine-sounding user name.OTOH, I’ve never experienced any discrimination during my undergrad years. Heck, after I took a few maths classes in first year, the maths department wanted me to go over to them…
The Lecture Experiment was interesting, but it didn’t strike me as complete, from what was said in Jen’s post. There are other factors that may have an affect besides just gender. Suppose the experiment was conducted again, but this time with actors that are extremely good looking. How might that skew the results? Or nationality? Or even dress and grooming?
Women have testosterone too.