As a student in the Integrated Quantitative Science program, I have noticed that each of my peers has a certain specialty: biology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, or computer science. When one of us struggles to understand a certain subject, there is always someone to help teach us the topic at hand. According to societal stereotypes, women should be good at English and history while men should succeed in science and mathematics. However, there are young women in the IQS class who thrive in all subjects and the same with the men. As a group, there is not one gender that seems to dominate the class, so cognitive differences between the sexes are non-existent in our program. In “Do Sex Differences in Cognition Cause the Shortage of Women in Science?” Melissa Hines argues that there are no differences in cognitive ability between men and women. I must agree with this claim because there is not supporting evidence to suggest a significant difference in cognitive abilities. Instead, the expectations of women discourage them from pursuing careers in math and science.
Although there is evidence suggesting that there are small cognitive differences between men and women, these differences are not significant enough to cause the underrepresentation of women in science. The evidence Hines discusses in her essay refers to a difference in means hypothesis test which is used in statistics to determine whether or not the difference in means of cognitive sex differences is statistically significant. In other words, the test is used to decide if the difference is large enough for the means to be considered different or if the difference is attributed to error. According to the evidence in the essay, there is not a significant difference between the cognitive skills of men and women. However, there may be other reasoning for the apparent variations in cognitive skills such as “early experience, educational policies and culture” (APA). Hines introduces similar evidence regarding brain structure and IQ score differences. Various aspects of brain structure such as size and gray matter composition can favor men or women, so comparing brain structure is not an accurate justification for a difference in cognitive abilities. Additionally, IQ score, even before adjustment to avoid gender bias, does not result in a significant difference of scores between men and women. Therefore, even though there are slight differences in cognitive skills in the sexes, these differences are not large enough to reason for the low numbers of women in science.
The underrepresentation of women in these fields can be attributed to the expectations of women in society. Hines explains in the conclusion of her essay that parental expectations of girls have a strong influence on their career choices and she encourages individuals to be careful of making assumptions about women and their career preferences. Her reasoning is vaguely similar to Valian’s argument in the first chapter regarding gender schemas. In environments where girls may be falling behind or be underrepresented in the fields of science and math, educators should be asking themselves what they can do differently to help them improve rather than identifying the fact that there is a difference in that class. Educators and parents should also seek to improve the abilities of all students as this incremental mindset would encourage all students to develop their abilities in their subject of choice.
Works Cited:
http://www.apa.org/action/resources/research-in-action/share.aspx
Melissa Hines. “Do Sex Differences in Cognition Cause the Shortage of Women in Science?” Why Aren’t More Women in Science?: Top Researchers Debate the Evidence. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2007. Print.