As soon as I finished reading the chapter, I remember a clip that was shown to us during orientation. It was a Super Bowl’s advertisement in the year of 2015 called “Like a Girl”. In the clip, adults and a little boy were asked to run “like a girl” and just like predicted, they did it in the “wimpiest” way possible. However, when little girls were asked to do the same thing, they ran as fast as possible. It is only a minute long but it says so much about what’s wrong with the society we are in.
The chapter starts off by listing out a few reasons why women seem to be less successful in science. Maybe they are simply less interested in this field than the boys are. Or are they actually less talented? After a few discussions, Dr.Valian came to the conclusion that there are two major factors that could answer the question- gender schema and accumulation of advantage. Gender Schema is a collection of “hypotheses about what it means to be a male/female”. Personally, I think it could be talked about with gender stereotypes. Just like stereotypes, schemas “simply” our world since they reduce a huge amount of thinking. However, they also create limits. We think that some people should act a certain way just because it fits the norm or it fits our beliefs. We rarely give them a chance to express themselves and we don’t really try and understand who they are and what they are capable of doing. We jump into conclusions and that, I believe, is one of the reasons why women are still less represented in this “male-dominated” field. In fact, it is worsening the situation. We trick ourselves into believing that women are not fit for careers in science. Even in the face of evidence, people would still cling to what they thought was supposed to be right. As human beings, we do not like ideas that challenge our point of view but in order for this problem to start going away, we need to be more open minded and not let schemas cloud our “judgements of people’s competence, ability, and worth”.
Another point that stood out to me while I was reading is how “both men and women slightly overrate men and underrate women in profession domains”. It surprised me how women has been “brainwashed” so effectively that even themselves have come to terms with the fact that they might not be good enough to be in the field while that’s clearly not the case. To me, this problem is more of a process than a situation. It is a cycle. The fact that less women are represented in science may lead to a decrease in their confidence when it was already relatively low. If we do not do anything about this problem, women would only feel less and less qualified to be successful in science. This is also why I’m glad that people have decided to bring this issue up and discuss it. It is a start to redefine what it really means to be a woman.
This chapter also shows other issues that, too, deserve our attention. For example, we create categories when there was none to begin with. We often follow scientific reasoning and that creates boundaries. We believe that men are independent while women are nurturing; men act while women feel. Therefore, men are automatically more suitable to be in the field of science. Of course, we could create more but we stick with two just to make things simple and now we are somehow trapped in this transparent box and we can not seem to get out. Eventually, we get used to it and we stop trying. Another example is how the author believes that men are privileged. Honestly, I’ve never thought about this issue that way. We have always had the idea that men are stronger and even smarter than women even if the statistics didn’t say so. This goes to show how even that a thought alone could be really powerful. Men end up becoming more confident while women gradually lose their self-esteem. Men have more to start off with and therefore, they will reach the top faster. People think girls are not as successful is because they are not as smart or determined, but the reality is way more complicated than that.
It’s shocking to me how there are so many women out there that don’t think they are capable of succeeding in science. There are enough women struggling for this issue to arise in the first place; enough of them for it to become an issue; enough of them for us to have to talk about it because it simply cannot go on like this any longer. One way that I think could really help improve this situation is through the use of media, which I think also plays a huge role in why there’s less representation of women in science. We can start off by erasing the stereotypes and dissociating the word “weak” from the word “female”. It is time to rebuild confidence in women simply because they deserve it.
“We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”
I agree with you that there are certain terms that are associated with females, and that the media definitely does not help. In fact, the media does more damage than good. The perception of what females are like and should do are put to an extreme in the media. For example, the media can pick a female would could have done very bad mistakes in her career field and make it sound as if all females in the same field are the same as this one bad apple, which is not true. An example of this can be female politicians. The media has taken the examples of Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton as prime examples on why females cannot be presidents because they either say comments that most of the U.S. citizens disagree with or they do things that later become scandalous (like Hilary’s emails).
you have done a very good job. Actually, I have the same thought with you. I am not surprised that men have an unfair view about women in work place, but I am stunned that women also have an unfair view about the women. The society’s view of women influences women’s opinion. But how could a woman meet fair situation when she thinks that women are less competitive? So as our girls, we should keep the schema away and make more discussion about that.