In her introduction paragraph of \u201c\u2018Underrepresentation\u201d or Misrepresentation?,\u201d Doreen Kimura attempts to flip the script, and reflects upon how we freak out when there are 50% less women than men in any group, but don\u2019t seem to bat an eyelash about the \u201cunderrepresentation of men in nursing or education.\u201d\u00a0 She suggests lesser talent or interest from men serve as a basis for the numerical schism.\u00a0 I\u2019ll shuffle in some thoughts about that a bit later, but, anyways, Kimura says the same idea could apply to women in STEM.\u00a0 What I believe Kimura is going for in her \u201cmisrepresentation\u201d spiel is to propose that the concept of women\u2019s underrepresentation is merely a byproduct of society\u2019s misrepresentation of men\u2019s and women\u2019s \u201ccognitive profiles\u201d.<\/p>\n
To point out a quote from the article:\u00a0 \u201cCoupled with this biased view is another that sustains it:\u00a0 that there are no substantial differences between men\u2019s and women\u2019s cognitive profiles that cannot readily be altered by appropriate socialization,\u201d I\u2019d say Kimura would not be one to sing the \u201cAnything you can do, I can do, too\u2026\u201d song, especially if the \u201cI\u201d was female and the \u201cyou\u201d was male.\u00a0 While I agree with her distinction between cognitive ability, including the highly supported hormone theory (looking at you, androgens), and general intelligence, I don\u2019t agree with the statement above.\u00a0 Socialization is a big umbrella word that may or may not include crucial subcategories of aspects of development, such as encouragement and discouragement.\u00a0 I am a fan of incrementalism, so I think cognitive skills and socialization are heavily intertwined.\u00a0 (We\u2019ll see if that changes though this course.)\u00a0 However, for the time being, I\u2019ll go on and explain why I think that.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s for who?<\/strong><\/p>\n IT\u2019S LATER (as promised in the first paragraph).\u00a0 Blasting to the not too distant past discussion on gender schemas, the nurse and educator example really highlighted our obsession with labels.\u00a0 I think cognitive ability plays a fair role in career selection, don\u2019t get me wrong, but a male could learn how to do a perfect plie and a female could learn to do a stinging slide tackle.\u00a0 Yet, even though it is 2015, you won\u2019t find many people encouraging their son to join a ballet company or their daughter to join the NFL.\u00a0 Likewise, Kimura\u2019s point about the nurse\/educator example seems shallow since men most likely have thought\/think those vocations are more womanly, and the socialization umbrella gets neglected.<\/p>\n Who\u2019s for whom?<\/strong><\/p>\n In another example that I\u2019d like to dig deeper, Kimura brings data to the table describing boys and girls math testing. \u00a0Data tell us that girls perform better in school, but worse on aptitude tests compared to boys.\u00a0 Girls do better when achievement is tested rather than aptitude.\u00a0 Well, what is at the core of achievement?\u00a0 Willpower to succeed?\u00a0 Then, who defines success?\u00a0 Doing better than your neighbor? \u00a0Better than your last time?\u00a0 Or, doing better than what society thinks you can do?\u00a0 For what are girls achieving?\u00a0 For whom?<\/p>\n Final Drizzling Thoughts<\/strong><\/p>\n Most importantly, this is a unisex metaphorical umbrella!\u00a0 Stigmas target both sexes, but perhaps the true misrepresentation is of these stigmas.\u00a0 Stigmas pertaining to males still seem to be found superior to female\u2019s stigmas.\u00a0 No matter what biological ability you have, the social response, for example, to when a female declares a \u201cmasculine\u201d major such as Computer Science she might receive a reply like, \u201cOh, wow that\u2019s so difficult!\u00a0 You must be super smart;\u201d compared to a \u201cfeminine\u201d major such as English the reply might just be a forced \u201cCool.\u201d\u00a0 I think we\u2019ve all experienced a conversation along those lines before.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In her introduction paragraph of \u201c\u2018Underrepresentation\u201d or Misrepresentation?,\u201d Doreen Kimura attempts to flip the script, and reflects upon how we freak out when there are 50% less women than men in any group, but don\u2019t seem to bat an eyelas…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29790,31180,29798],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2015","category-fys-wns","category-student-blogs","column","twocol"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","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\/2204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/fyswomeninscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}