In her introduction paragraph of “‘Underrepresentation” or Misrepresentation?,” Doreen Kimura attempts to flip the script, and reflects upon how we freak out when there are 50% less women than men in any group, but don’t seem to bat an eyelash about the “underrepresentation of men in nursing or education.” She suggests lesser talent or interest from men serve as a basis for the numerical schism. I’ll shuffle in some thoughts about that a bit later, but, anyways, Kimura says the same idea could apply to women in STEM. What I believe Kimura is going for in her “misrepresentation” spiel is to propose that the concept of women’s underrepresentation is merely a byproduct of society’s misrepresentation of men’s and women’s “cognitive profiles”.
To point out a quote from the article: “Coupled with this biased view is another that sustains it: that there are no substantial differences between men’s and women’s cognitive profiles that cannot readily be altered by appropriate socialization,” I’d say Kimura would not be one to sing the “Anything you can do, I can do, too…” song, especially if the “I” was female and the “you” was male. While I agree with her distinction between cognitive ability, including the highly supported hormone theory (looking at you, androgens), and general intelligence, I don’t agree with the statement above. Socialization is a big umbrella word that may or may not include crucial subcategories of aspects of development, such as encouragement and discouragement. I am a fan of incrementalism, so I think cognitive skills and socialization are heavily intertwined. (We’ll see if that changes though this course.) However, for the time being, I’ll go on and explain why I think that.
What’s for who?
IT’S LATER (as promised in the first paragraph). Blasting to the not too distant past discussion on gender schemas, the nurse and educator example really highlighted our obsession with labels. I think cognitive ability plays a fair role in career selection, don’t get me wrong, but a male could learn how to do a perfect plie and a female could learn to do a stinging slide tackle. Yet, even though it is 2015, you won’t find many people encouraging their son to join a ballet company or their daughter to join the NFL. Likewise, Kimura’s point about the nurse/educator example seems shallow since men most likely have thought/think those vocations are more womanly, and the socialization umbrella gets neglected.
Who’s for whom?
In another example that I’d like to dig deeper, Kimura brings data to the table describing boys and girls math testing. Data tell us that girls perform better in school, but worse on aptitude tests compared to boys. Girls do better when achievement is tested rather than aptitude. Well, what is at the core of achievement? Willpower to succeed? Then, who defines success? Doing better than your neighbor? Better than your last time? Or, doing better than what society thinks you can do? For what are girls achieving? For whom?
Final Drizzling Thoughts
Most importantly, this is a unisex metaphorical umbrella! Stigmas target both sexes, but perhaps the true misrepresentation is of these stigmas. Stigmas pertaining to males still seem to be found superior to female’s stigmas. No matter what biological ability you have, the social response, for example, to when a female declares a “masculine” major such as Computer Science she might receive a reply like, “Oh, wow that’s so difficult! You must be super smart;” compared to a “feminine” major such as English the reply might just be a forced “Cool.” I think we’ve all experienced a conversation along those lines before.