The Names study the authors tested in the reading was particularly interesting as it revealed how men’s names were more likely to be viewed as famous than women’s names. I actually watched a video about a month ago on directing movies, where they noted that while we can often list plenty of famous male directors with ease, even coming up with five famous female directors is a challenge for most people. This discrepancy is common across the board of many famous careers, though in the case of directos is a combination of stereotypes found in the study and the fact that there are less big name female directors.
Critical Thinking
For me, the study was interesting in that in that someone confirmed what our culture always says, but even without knowing anything of the study, this fact of male recognition over female is not surprising in the slightest. I would also argue that part of the reason there are “less big name female directors” is that history made no space for females to take on that leadership role, especially women of color, so they never had the opportunity to garner that big name recognition.
Sports is another good example of this. Because male professional sports have held the spotlight for so long, most people would only name male sports players when asked to name famous sports players. This is because society has not given equality to female sports and because of the pervasive implicit bias that men are better at sports.