In Chapter 2 of Why aren’t more women in Science, writer Doreen Kimura takes a different turn on the controversial topic by talking about the cognitive differences between a man and woman. Females are supposedly better at tasks such as verbal memory and object location memory while males are better at mental rotation and mechanical reasoning. Although these differences should be taken into consideration, Kimura states that “using sex to determine quotas of admission to any program would be a mistake.” She makes a statement by claiming that we just have to accept “differential representation of the sexes.” Which I am having mixed feelings about. Is she saying that women should just continue being secretaries because we are female and have set cognitive abilities?

The cognitive differences mentioned before are influenced by prenatal and levels of sex hormones. A test was done showing that a male rat was better at learning spatial mazes than a female rat. However, hormonal manipulation shows that this could be reversed. Kimura explains that adults who engage in activities that involve spatial reasoning also did so when they were younger. This is simply a hypothesis and there is no data or statistic to back up her example. However, Kimura writes that it is “quite wrong” to claim that childhood experience determines adult activity. Kimura then explains a reasoning using test data. She explains that although females receive better marks on most subjects, males end up testing higher. There are similar results shown in the breaking through barriers power point on the FYS blog site. The results show that males do tend to score higher on tests compared to females (slide 9). Chapter one also mentioned the differences in test scores between boys and girls as well.

At one point in the chapter, Kimura makes a statement claiming that differential abilities have to be considered and that these social traditions are a result of a female’s cognitive abilities. She is basically throwing salt on the wound by claiming that women were put in these “traditional jobs” because of their limited ability. Basically women were secretaries because they were good at it. Really? I would disagree with her statement because I believe that sometimes our abilities are simply manipulated by the social boundaries and traditions. I just think that she got mixed up with what she was trying to convey. Even as we look back, the only kind of job openings that women were able to receive easily were secretary jobs or jobs lesser than a male’s occupation. When the majority of men had to go to war during World War II, women took jobs that normally men would do. I think that some of these jobs involved mechanics and math. This just proves that although a woman may be “wired” differently, that can’t stop her from performing jobs that require her to use any kind of science or math. On page forty-three, Kimura describes statistics that are similar to that of the breaking through barriers power point. There is a common pattern that is constantly mentioned which is that females tend not to study physics and that there are generally more females in biological science. I like how Kimura makes an effort to point out that women were indeed historically discriminated in faculty hiring. The statistics in solving the equation power point even show that women are still experiencing discrimination. They are being judged based upon looks rather than talent as well.

Overall, Kimura makes a great point by stating out cognitive differences. Although it is proven that males do have some sort of “upper hand” when it comes to special reasoning; hence, an advantage in math this does not mean males were built to be better than females in STEM. There must be other factors and a realization that everyone grows up under multiple and complex conditions that shape their interests in a certain subject or occupation. My only concern was why Kimura only talked about the cognitive differences. At times I felt that she was accepting the idea that males are smarter than females. Whose side is she really on? Also at one point in the chapter, I felt as if she was encouraging all females to just focus on something they are meant to be good at…nurturing and speaking.

Other sources:

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Writer Virginia Valian of Chapter one in Why Aren’t More Women In Science talks about whether women are truly less capable and talented than men. She brings up theories, social schema, and statistics to analyze why men are the more dominant figures in the math and science world. I think the statement “women are less talented than men” is more of an opinion than a fact that people surprisingly accept. The three reasons stated for why women might be less talented than men are: there is a single talent that determines success, standardized quantitative tests measure that single talent, and talents are fixed (Valian 28). However, a physicist stated out that talent is difficult to measure; hence, talent comes in multiple packages and can be developed over time (Valian 28).

The chapter introduces two theories, entity and incremental. Entity theorists could be thought of as the pessimists. They see a given trait as static and fixed. While incremental theorists are people who could see that every cloud has a silver lining. They believe that traits are “capable of increasing” (Valian 28). I believe that as someone who supports female involvement in the science field, the incremental theory makes more sense. Without improvement in traits, there would be no development in society. Why are people even going to college if there is no chance of improving one’s ability? We go to college to learn and expand our ability.

Virginia Valian mentions how people are influenced by emotion (Valian 31). There is a mixture of culture, family dynamic, and stereotypes that influence and shape a person’s personality and ability. There is a reason why parents overemphasize compliments to young children when their child completes a simple task. It’s to encourage them further. The act of encouragement leads to confidence and a stable emotion. Everyone is influenced by emotion and their ability could be hindered by lack of confidence or other conflicting emotions. So, if a female is constantly told that women are not capable of succeeding in the science world, that statement is going to stick with her subconsciously and maybe even hinder her ability.

Valian also mentions that humans tend to create categories (Valian 35). For example, people in my culture tend to categorize others by blood type. I’m blood type A and I’ve been told that I’m a perfectionist, cautious, and hardworking. I sometimes find myself trying to act out these qualities because of these categorizations. So, it is no wonder that women who are placed in the “not capable of science” categories are negatively influenced to think they aren’t capable when they really are.

Chapter one states, “…even in a work environment in which everyone intends to be fair-and believes they are being fair-men are likely to receive advantages…”(Valian 33). Due to sexism and stereotype, males are given an upper hand. That is probably why there are more males in STEM. Virginia Valian also talks about experiments done, where evaluators end up choosing males over females who were more competent and qualified. This is a serious problem and the root to this problem is ignorance. By choosing to believe statements, culture, categorizations, and stereotypes we are “brainwashed” into thinking that females are “dumber” than males. We need to educate people about how stereotypes are not true and break the limitations that society sets upon females.

In conclusion test scores are a useful source to refer off of, but sometimes tests fail to cover all parts of ability. Tests are meant to measure talent and ability, but in my opinion talent could never be measured because it is constantly growing and improving. Hence as Virginia Valian states towards the end “test performance cannot explain the low representation of women in math and natural science.” In other words, the reason why there are less females in the science/math field is not because they are talentless in the subject. The tests and statistics in chapter one do show that males scored higher than females, but tests don’t really prove anything because it is difficult to measure one’s ability through a piece of paper.

Welcome to your student blog for the FYS-Women in Science!