Nobody who is familiar with the literature on this will be surprised, but it’s good to accumulate new evidence and also to keep the issue in the public eye: academic scientists are, on average, biased against women. I know it’s fun to change the subject and talk about bell curves and intrinsic ability, but hopefully we can all agree that people with the same ability should be treated equally. And they are not.
That’s the conclusion of a new study in PNAS by Corinne Moss-Racusin and collaborators at Yale. (Hat tip Dan Vergano.) To test scientist’s reactions to men and women with precisely equal qualifications, the researchers did a randomized double-blind study in which academic scientists were given application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position. The substance of the applications were all identical, but sometimes a male name was attached, and sometimes a female name.
Results: female applicants were rated lower than men on the measured scales of competence, hireability, and mentoring (whether the scientist would be willing to mentor this student). Both male and female scientists rated the female applicants lower.
This lurking bias has clear real-world implications. When asked what kind of starting salaries they might be willing to offer the applicants, the ones offered to women were lower.
I have no reason to think that scientists are more sexist than people in other professions in the US, but this is my profession, and I’d like to see it do better. Admitting that the problem exists is a good start.
Shorter trolls: This study doesn’t show gender bias, it just shows that men are being favored over women, which is totally justified considering that men are better than women! What? Why is everybody looking at me like that?
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@ TW As a woman who almost never needed to study for most of her chemical engineering exams throughout college, still got a high GPA, and also regularly picks up skills in industry with more speed than the average person to this day, I think the problem with your analysis is you. Any person male or female is likely going to have to work much harder than you to understand things if what you say is true. Have you really not noticed the same thing with men? I doubt it – they’re probably just less likely to admit it! (or you’re more likely to project the image of working hard on the woman than you are on the man)
I could actually look at my experiences and conclude the same thing about men. The male valedictorian in my high school class was known for his intense dedication to studying from late afternoon to the wee hours of the morning – I, only a few ranks below with a few people with similar reputations above me, had quite the opposite reputation. Clearly his inferior male mind is why he had to work so hard compared to me!
See the problem with that logic?
I brag only because you do, whether you know it or not, by the way. I have a feeling that you are sharing this tidbit because of some intense desire to go on an ego trip about how much better you are/were than that clearly intellectually modest, hardworking woman – as somebody who never had to study for exams I am usually quite jealous of the amazing determination people like that have developed. Are you as well?
@Drake
Perhaps it’s because women have always incorrectly been told that they can’t do science and therefore there haven’t been *nearly* as many women in those fields as there have been men over the lifespan of those awards? You’d think your superior brain would be able to deduce that as a very clearly obvious reason for not many women having received those awards.
Oh, and…here you go: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anything-boys-can-do (not a direct cite but it’ll lead you to all the facts you clearly need)
I always have to wonder why men are so afraid of women being able to do science. Isn’t more people joining the science party a good thing?
To the person asking women to make significant contributions to science – Ada Lovelace: programming? Marie Curie: radiation? Jane Goodall: chimpanzees? Mary Cartwright: nonlinear differential equations? Just to name a few famous examples. All of these women would’ve done their studies in a time that was significantly more negative about women studying math and science and they seem to have done just fine.
And Re: maternity leave – in the US, federal requirements for paternity leave time are already the exact same as federal requirements for maternity leave time. Look it up. A lot of states are riding that equality train as well when they require or provide paid family time.
Why not, but start short analysis with William S.
(Prospero)
Their understand Begins to swell ;
and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shore
That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them
That yet looks on me, or would know me. – Ariel,
Fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell ;
I will discase me, and myself present
As I was sometime Milan : quickly, spirit ;
Thou shalt ere long be free.
(Ariel)
Where the bee sucks, there suck I ;
In the cowslip’s bell I lie :
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily :
Merrily, merrily shall I live now,
Under the blossom that hang on the bough.
(Shakespeare: The Tempest, extracts from act V.)
valmis blogiviesti:
Three tree points:
1.
(Prospero)
Their understand Begins to swell ;
and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shore
That now lies foul and muddy. Not one of them
That yet looks on me, or would know me. – Ariel,
Fetch me the hat and rapier in my cell ;
I will discase me, and myself present
As I was sometime Milan : quickly, spirit ;
Thou shalt ere long be free.
(Ariel)
Where the bee sucks, there suck I ;
In the cowslip’s bell I lie :
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily :
Merrily, merrily shall I live now,
Under the blossom that hang on the bough.
(Shakespeare: The Tempest, extracts from act V.)
2.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgfWUTD1g3s
3.
ecological situation on the planet Tellus today.
Well, I work in the technical nosebleeds with computer geeks, and I’m a girl. I must be a freak, yeah? Look — all the discouragement and slights I encountered (the many put-downs, the harassment, slurs, and firing-offenses) did nothing. Don’t expect pity, and don’t expect that a lot of guys are going to understand, or give a crap. A lot of guys are set in their ways. Don’t bother. Just stick to the ones who are jazzed you’re there. They’ll help you through the crappy days. Do know that if a girl wants it, she can do it. Everything anyone else says to you is nothing compared to what you say to yourself, and what you choose to believe.
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