After reading over 8 essays on the underrepresentation of women in the STEM field, I find myself going in circles and visiting similar arguments proposed by various authors. There are authors that think boys are more biologically and cognitively suitable for the field than girls are. Yet, other authors think different factors such as the environment and culture can play a huge role in shaping women’s decision of going into STEM fields. However, Richard J. Haier looks at this issue by looking deeper into how two genders are different in terms of the structure and function of the brain. Before I go into any details, I just want to point out that, unlike the past 7 chapters that I’ve read, the author of this chapter is actually a male. I’ve always wondered what a male’s perspective would be because this is an extremely emotional discussion. It’s very difficult to have a neutral academic discussion about it, but I presume that it would be easier for men to be neutral in comparison to women, and Haier did stay neutral.
Instead of jumping to the conclusion that boys are more genetically apt to be in STEM, Dr. Haier rejects that claim by carrying out different experiments. For example, they used PET to investigate whether men and women activated the same or different brain areas during a test of mathematical reasoning (Haier & Benbow, 1995). They found out that the harder men’s temporal lobes were working, the better their score. However, this relationship wasn’t seen in women. What Dr. Haier concludes is that no sex is better or smarter than the other. Men and women simply use of different parts of their brain to achieve the same general cognitive capability, which makes sense because individuals approach problems differently, which stimulates different areas of their brain that works best for them personally. It cannot support the claim that men are smarter than women. Just because men and women have different ways of solving a puzzle, doesn’t mean that one is smarter than the other. In fact, I believe that having different ways of thinking is what the STEM field needs in order to be able to explore the questions that we don’t have the answers to. People in the field are constantly thinking of new ways to approach problems, to collect meaningful data and to explore what those data could mean. They develop ideas that are both new and useful and they are going to need as many unique minds as possible.
In addition, when I was doing research online, I came across a book called Pink Brain, Blue Brain. The author Lise Eliot claims that only two facts have been reliably proven, which is that boys have 8-11% larger brains than girls and that girls develop faster than boys in both puberty and brain growth. Girls’ brains stop changing a year to two years before boys’ brains, which follows the pattern in their physical growth AKA puberty. Eliot believes that “brains of boys and girls are more similar than their well-described behavioral differences would indicate.” The brain differences are not significant enough to explain the contrast between women’s and men’s abilities. Perhaps we are more alike than we are different after all, which leads me to thinking that there must be other factors that are influencing our brain.
Dr. Haier focuses on only the biological aspect of what affects the development of the brain and doesn’t take into account any environmental factors. Studies have shown that the brain is powerfully shaped by experiences before birth, during youth and throughout life (Diamond, 2001). For example, gender stereotypes can really make girls follow the norm and not their heart. We are always told that blue things are for boys, and pink things are for girls. It then moves on to toys: a chemistry set for Jack, and a doll for Julia. Eventually they will end up believing that they can’t get out of the box that was set for them ever since the day they were born. Man will end up being the scientist and woman will end up being the secretary simply because she thought she should. Choosing a career is not just linked to how good you are at something but also about whether you like it and if you want to work at it. As you can see, “enrichments” like gender stereotypes could have great consequences on individuals’ behaviour. There’s no doubt that human brain development is created through complex interactions of genetic influences, but we don’t pay enough attention to the environmental influences.
In conclusion, men are not smarter than women. They simply choose different “routes” to get to where they want to go. They activate different parts of their brain even though they are solving the same problem and in my opinion, this could do the STEM field more good than harm, if any. But if there’s no significant difference in how the brains of two genders work and function, what else could be contributing to the underrepresentation of women in the field? This is when the sociological/environmental aspect comes in. Our brain doesn’t stay fixed. It grows and develops, not only because you are physically growing bigger as you age, but also because you are exploring unfamiliarity. Your experiences throughout life, including the places you’ve been, the things that you’ve done, the people you’ve been around, and the education you’ve been getting, can shape your brain in a certain way that makes you different from everyone else. Regardless of gender, everyone’s different in their own unique way. We would be foolish to think that we should lean towards a certain group of people just because they seem “stronger” or “smarter” when we need as much “differences” as we can get.
Reference:
1. DIAMOND, MARIAN C. 2001. ‘Response Of The Brain To Enrichment’. Anais Da Academia Brasileira De Ciências 73 (2). doi:10.1590/s0001-37652001000200006.
2. Ceci, Stephen J, and Wendy M Williams. 2007. Why Aren’t More Women In Science?. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
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