I’ll be upfront, when I first started this essay I thought that this chapter was going to be another spiel about how the differences don’t matter and that the levels of men and women in fields can be perfectly equal. Not that equality is a bad thing, but I’ve been waiting for one of these essays to be realistic about societal expectations on men and women and this essay did exactly that. The ninth essay in the book “Why Aren’t There More Women in Science?,” is entitled “Science, Sex and Good Sense: Why Women are Underrepresented in Some Areas of Science and Math” and is written by Diane Halpern. The title of this Halpern’s essay has a single word that helps set it apart from the other essays in the book right off the bat. Do you see it? I didn’t see the word or understand its significance until after I read the essay itself. It’s the word “some.” Still lost? Don’t worry it’ll all make sense soon.
Halpern’s essay begins by pointing out that the very question about why there are less women in science is not neutral because of the underlying assumptions such that there is a presumed deficiency in women. Halpern continues to discuss her observation by commenting on the fact that there are many pieces to the puzzle and that not a single thing is to blame for the lack of women in certain fields of science. She then talks about the fact there in certain math and science fields, there are less men than women, which causes people to wonder why more men aren’t in those fields. Halpern also presents her opinion about why women are better than men in school but do not perform as well on standardized tests and about the role that hormones play in the gender gap. Halpern ends her essay by noting that women are on a stricter biological clock than men and that this biological clock plays an important role in women’s decisions regarding careers.
In my opinion, the most notable part of the essay is when Halpern points out that women face societal pressures regarding caretaking because women are the primary caretakers of society. Halpern is one of the only authors in this book to make that connection despite the fact that it is exceedingly important to understand that it exists and that it plays an important role in women’s lives. In society, women have the children and traditionally take care of them as well for at least a certain amount of time. The expected time a women must take to care for a child plays a significant role in a woman’s choice of career. Sure, maternal leave exists, but for women in jobs that require constant dedication, a maternal leave can dampen a woman’s abilities to excel. Halpern uses the example of a professor working towards tenure because subtle pressures exist to not use maternal leaves in an effort to have a better chance of gaining tenure. Due to these pressures both in fields of academia and others, women tend to choose careers that allow them more flexibility with time that goes into raising a family.
Another important part of Halpern’s essay is her idea of how to decrease the amount of women making career decisions due to the amount of time they will need to raise a family by equalizing sex roles. First, she establishes that there is no evidence that points to one sex being smarter than the other and even goes as far as to say that in certain fields, women outnumber men which shows that women are just as capable as men are. Rather, the difference simply lies in participation rates, not in cognitive abilities. Halpern says that in order to attract more high-ability women, flexible career options should be offered in more fields.
In conclusion, Halpern’s new way of thinking and inclusion of realistic societal norms made this essay appeal to me. Her ideas about flexibility in the workforce appear to be a valid means of beginning to close the gap between men and women.
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