<\/p>\n
Gender.\u00a0 A concept that seems not only to individuals but also society so fundamental, and yet so controversial.\u00a0 A key to unlock someone\u2019s identity.\u00a0 A category on a legal document most likely with two proceeding check boxes\u2014male or female.<\/p>\n
We as humans love to create boxes of simple categories, put things\u2014including people\u2014into them, ship them off into to world and expect all the contents will stay neatly inside.\u00a0 Well, hate to burst people\u2019s bubbles, but the route is not as smooth as it is inside a UPS truck and you can\u2019t track the package on your phone, laptop, or tablet.\u00a0 There will always be outside forces handling these boxes.<\/p>\n
Going along with this literal box analogy here, I also hate to break it, but people in the male category box tend to get express shipping\u2026for free!\u00a0 Unfortunately, people in the female category box have to spend their allowance money on just priority shipping.<\/p>\n
Why is the United States Postal Service so sexist??? (Note:\u00a0 I do not believe nor endorse the belief that the US Postal Service validates any sexist protocol, and am using it for merely analogical purposes.)<\/p>\n
The real question at hand is why are women viewed as inferior to men especially in STEM fields?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
High score?\u00a0 High five!<\/p>\n
Give yourself a high five.\u00a0 Yes, do it!\u00a0 Yeah! Now, look at your palms.\u00a0 Think:\u00a0 it took so much talent to make my hands touch together in (roughly) the same spot.\u00a0 Imagine you have \u201ctalent\u201d written across your palms.\u00a0 Talent means different things to different people, and the two mentioned in the article are entity theorists and incremental theorists.\u00a0 Since most people view STEM talents as entity theorists and most people in the U.S. are right handed, your right hand will represent entity theorists\u2019 thoughts on talent in STEM and your left hand will represent incremental theorists\u2019 thoughts.<\/p>\n
Your right hand branches off onto your fingers\u2014\u201cstable,\u201d \u201chomogenous,\u201d \u201cdifferentiating,\u201d \u201cinnate,\u201d and \u201cquantitative.\u201d\u00a0 What do these words mean in relation to talent?\u00a0 Let\u2019s throw in a dash of real life situations, shall we?\u00a0 For example, you\u2019re in Calculus and just received your test from last week.\u00a0 90 B.\u00a0 You glance over to the neighboring desk and see that person received a 98 A.\u00a0 The person catches you.\u00a0 \u201cWow, good job!\u201d you exclaim.\u00a0 To which he replies, \u201cYeah, I\u2019ve just always practically since I was born been really, really, super-duper good at math,\u201d and turns around.\u00a0 Sigh.\u00a0 You\u2019ve studied hours for this test and actually have brought your average from an 80 to an 85.\u00a0 Who\u2019s to say you are not \u201creally good at math\u201d?<\/p>\n
Your left hand branches off onto your fingers\u2014\u201cmalleable,\u201d \u201cgrowing,\u201d \u201clearning,\u201d \u201cchanging,\u201d and \u201cunquantifiable.\u201d\u00a0 To answer the previous question, no one, really (well, maybe the entity theorists, but forget them for the time being).\u00a0 You still have talent written on your hand; it grows with you.<\/p>\n
That is a concept that hasn\u2019t gotten through quite though to most people, and a common misconception is quantifiable data equates to the truth.\u00a0 According to the data listed in the article, on average, women perform slightly under men on standardized tests.\u00a0 The idea that higher numbers equal higher intelligence gets drilled into our minds, thus into society\u2019s collective mind.\u00a0 This trend follows suit in a study which measured the rate of women and men who achieve high education degrees.\u00a0 For instance, the study concurred 1 woman in 9 men received her doctorate in math. Some might think that automatically means men are superior to women in mathematics.\u00a0 I mean the data shows it!\u00a0 However, the data from the study also support the idea that the higher education system may not be doing all in its power to keep women in their respective STEM field since the number of women dwindled down at a higher rate.\u00a0 Yet, we can keep saying the data shows this, the data shows that, but what is really going behind all these numbers?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Final thoughts<\/p>\n
I find the thought in the article \u201cFemales give birth and physically nurture their young\u2026The next step is to add other trait that seem highly compatible with nurturance to the schema for females and to construct an \u201calternative\u201d set of characteristics for men (35)\u201d interesting to say the least.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t really thought of the origins of the categories, just assumed they appeared out of nowhere (not exactly, but it seems like it).\u00a0 I ask how can we go from female gives birth to offspring to they\u2019re nurturing by nature to their gentle to they\u2019re weak (not a precise train of thought, but I gave it a shot)?\u00a0 Then turn around and say oh, males are just the opposite!\u00a0 I want to know!\u00a0 How can we quantify the boxcars in a train of thought?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gender.\u00a0 A concept that seems not only to individuals but also society so fundamental, and yet so controversial.\u00a0 A key to unlock someone\u2019s identity.\u00a0 A category on a legal document most likely with two proceeding check boxes\u2014male or female. We as humans love to create boxes of simple categories, put things\u2014including people\u2014into them, ship […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31180],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fys-wns"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswns14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswns14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswns14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswns14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswns14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswns14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswns14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswns14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswns14\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}