The report entitled “Women at the Top in Science- and Elsewhere” discussed a broad array of topics and concerns regarding women in science. Author Virginia Valian discusses advantages, gender schemas, and entity and incremental theorists amongst other things. After I read the report, I came to the realization that there is no explicit reason for why there are not an equivalent number of men and women in science. But before I discuss that, I think it is valuable to note that Valian shows us that women not only face setbacks in science, but in other fields as well. It is important to be aware of these setbacks because they point to a greater problem faced by women in every field of work, the lack of equality. This gap is important, especially in today’s world, because women have progressed so well and thrived ever since they were suppressed, and now even when women are not suppressed, they are limited by social stigmas. Since the problem that is faced is so large, no single culprit can be blamed. The overarching problem is made up of smaller issues that pile up and have a massive effect on women.
An important component in the discussion about women in the workforce is the role that gender schemas play. Gender schemas sound like a set group of characteristics that describe the genders, but one key component about gender schemas sets them apart from other things. Us. We created gender schemas. Mankind’s actions and words over time have molded the gender schemas that bind us today. These schemas tell us what jobs “suit” each gender and
what each gender is responsible for doing over the course of their lives. For example, women are expected to have children and care for them rather than work, and men are supposed to work and make money for their family. These schemas give men a small advantage at each level when working, but that small advantage is big enough to pile up and have a compounding effect on the amount of women involved in certain jobs. Valian discusses how having children affects women and how their ability to progress in their job is not hindered because they took time off from work to have a child. I was pleasantly surprised when I read that because I know that many women are not aware of that fact. The gender schemas force women into thinking that they can either have children or have a career and this is simply just not true.
Gender schemas are not the only thing to blame because oversimplification plays a big role too. As a society, we like to categorize everything because it just makes more sense to do that. We cannot blame ourselves for naturally thinking like that, but we are to blame for not doing anything about it. Just because we want to think that men do one thing and women do the other, we all need to realize that anybody can do whatever they set their mind to. Genders do not define our abilities, give us our talents, or limit our dreams.
I really liked your essay! I like how you talked briefly about points that caught your attention. Yet, I also would like to point out that you described the gender schemas as micro aggressions, which is a new way that I have not thought to look at gender schemas as. You described the “problem [being] made up of smaller issues that pile up and have a massive effect on women”, which is how micro aggressions work. It could happen when women keep getting told what they should be doing or enjoying, and when you as a girl get told that every day, the comments take on a feeling of putting you down. And when that happens, we start thinking about all the comments made when a new one is made, causing micro aggressions to occur. This can cause many young women to stop pursuing what they truly enjoy and want to do in life, which extends into women being discouraged to do STEM majors. By these small comments, or “issues”, “piling up”, there is an occurrence of an overall “massive effect” on women worldwide on what they should be doing rather than what they want to do.