{"id":281,"date":"2015-08-28T14:03:39","date_gmt":"2015-08-28T18:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswns13\/?p=15"},"modified":"2015-08-28T14:03:39","modified_gmt":"2015-08-28T18:03:39","slug":"blog-1-chelsea-eareckson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/2015\/08\/28\/blog-1-chelsea-eareckson\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog 1- Chelsea Eareckson"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Root of the Problem<\/span><\/p>\n

By: Chelsea Eareckson<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Differences exist between genders. That is a biological fact. Women and men are composed of different but equally complex body systems that allow our great race to grow and thrive. Both sexes are vital to the survival of our species. In terms of evolution, <\/span>difference is good<\/span><\/i>. However, as our species evolved culturally, these differences put a wedge between the boys and the girls, between the men and the women. Men and women alike grew to accept the idea that women depended on men to survive, and that women fell naturally into their debt. These patterns helped develop certain gender schemas, which I believe may be the root of the problem of sexism, part of the answer to the complex question of \u201cWhy aren\u2019t more women in science?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Growing up, I was never told I couldn\u2019t be a women in science. My dad, an engineer, pushed me to take as many science classes as I could, hoping I would also fall in love with engineering. To his dismay, after I took biology, I was hooked. I had heard that sexism in the work force existed, but I couldn\u2019t believe anyone in this day and age would be blatantly sexist. Besides, nothing could stop me from succeeding. I believed that having a slight disadvantage as a women would actually push me to work harder, which would give me the strength to overcome the mountains I could encounter. After reading Chapter One in <\/span>Why Aren\u2019t More Women in Science<\/span><\/i>, I saw a flaw in this reasoning. I had failed to realize that \u201cMountains are molehills, piled on top of the other\u201d (Valian 35). Previously, I had thought that I could use little instances of sexism like \u201cnot listened to, is not invited to give a presentation, is not credited with an idea\u201d (Valian 35-36) to increase my desire to succeed, which is a common viewpoint among many of my peers. Malcolm Gladwell wrote an entire book called <\/span>David and Goliath <\/span><\/i>on situations where disadvantages actually worked to people\u2019s advantage. While this may be true in some instances, it is a dangerous belief for a woman in science. Success, it seems, is \u201clargely the accumulation of advantage\u201d (Valian 34), and because most people aren\u2019t consciously sexist, these small disadvantages are allowed to build up. I found the study on judgements of women\u2019s competence to be very interesting. The conclusions of this study throw a varying viewpoint onto the table about why\u00a0there are so few women in science:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen no information was given about how well people were doing in the job, evaluators rated the man as more competent than the woman and rated them as equally likeable. When the background information made clear that the woman was extremely competent, however, the ratings changed. Evaluators now rated the man and the woman as equally competent, but they rated the woman as much less likeable than the man\u201d (Valian 33).\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n


\nWomen who are as good or even better than men don\u2019t fit into the gender schema, and therefore are greeted with hostility and maybe a little fear. This unconscious sexism exists because \u201cgender schemas skew our perceptions and evaluations of men and women\u201d (Valian 32) and they perpetuate the idea that women are simply not as capable as men. Each and every person is taught this without even realizing it through the society\u2019s harsh separation of men and women, through society\u2019s demand that we mold ourselves to the ideas that were developed in a lost age. <\/span><\/p>\n

It makes sense that nobody ever told me that being a girl would hold me back in science. Blatant sexism isn\u2019t tolerated in today\u2019s society, and telling me that would give me the drive to prove everyone wrong. The root of the problem exists in the behavior of encouraging the woman to go for it while silently undermining her footing, lies in the small molehills that women are taught they must endure. In order to even out the numbers in not just science, but every field, we need to figure out how to break down the walls of gender schemas that have been constructed to be so, so high and most importantly, to celebrate our differences instead of fearing them. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ceci, Stephen J., and Wendy M. Williams. <\/span>Why Aren’t More Women in Science?: Top Researchers Debate the Evidence<\/span><\/i>. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2007. Print.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Root of the Problem
\nBy: Chelsea Eareckson
\n 
\nDifferences exist between genders. That is a biological fact. Women and men are composed of different but equally complex body systems that allow our great race to grow and thrive. Both sexes are vit…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2203,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29790,29798],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2015","category-student-blogs","column","twocol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2203"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}