gender stereotyping of children

(Here's another post that's been in the queue for months. I'm just going to post it as is...)

I've been attending baby showers for several years now, and I've realized that gender stereotypes start to be enforced even before babies are born. The types of clothes, toys, and other gifts that people buy for girl babies and boy babies are noticeably different.

It made me wonder if it would be to a child's benefit to hide its gender for a few years, so that unconscious stereotypes wouldn't affect its mental and even physical development at such a young age?

That idea was still floating around in my head a few months ago when I ran across a Newsweek article entitled Pink Brain, Blue Brain addressing a similar topic. The article discusses Lise Eliot's (similarly named) new book, which cites a couple of particularly interesting studies. I've excerpted the parts that I found intriguing and insightful, below.

In one [study], scientists dressed newborns in gender-neutral clothes and misled adults about their sex. The adults described the "boys" (actually girls) as angry or distressed more often than did adults who thought they were observing girls, and described the "girls" (actually boys) as happy and socially engaged more than adults who knew the babies were boys.

In another study, mothers estimated how steep a slope their 11-month-olds could crawl down. Moms of boys got it right to within one degree; moms of girls underestimated what their daughters could do by nine degrees, even though there are no differences in the motor skills of boys and girls.

6 and 12-month-olds of both sexes prefer dolls to trucks...they settle into sex-based play preferences only around age 1, which is when they grasp what sex they are, identify strongly with it, and confirm to how they see other, usually older, boys or girls behaving.

name change

I found it shocking that 50% of Americans think that a woman should be legally obligated to change her name when she marries. I guess, despite my relatively high level of cynicism, I have yet to realize the degree to which American society likes to butt into other people's business. It's so depressing every time I realize that we suck.

unnecessary guilt

Why does American society conspire to make women like this feel guilty? What's wrong with not thinking the world revolves around your kids, anyway?

She says, of loving her husband:
...I am far too busy worrying about what's wrong with me. Why, of all the women in the room, am I the only one who has not made the erotic transition a good mother is supposed to make? Why am I the only one incapable of placing her children at the center of her passionate universe?

Yet, her husband does not seem to feel the same guilt:
He seems entirely unperturbed by loving me like this. Loving me more than his children does not bother him. It does not make him feel like a bad father. He does not feel that loving me more than he loves them is a kind of infidelity.

It's tempting to chalk her thoughts up to one woman's worrying too much, but anecdotally, it does seem that friends and family of new parents act like the mothers should be able to think of nothing but their babies.

From the article:
Actually I remember very little of my Percocet- and Vicodin-fogged first few days of motherhood except for someone calling and squealing, "Aren't you just completely in love?" And of course I was. Just not with my baby.

Honestly, one of the things that makes me fear having children is that so many parents say that "it changes your whole outlook on life". I don't want to revel in sleep deprivation and go around saying things like "it's all worth it" and become a social hermit but not even care. If I do have kids, I hope that I can be at least as grounded as the author of this piece, and still maintain other priorities. (But, without the guilt complex.)

words of a queen

For some reason, I've always been fascinated by European royalty. I've read all about Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry VIII and his wives, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, William the Conqueror, and many others.

Recently, I've been on a Queen Elizabeth kick. Rosalind Miles' I, Elizabeth is a fairly easy read, but I don't think it does justice to the real Queen Elizabeth.

Anyway, I recently came across this Queen Elizabeth quote in a recent SF Chronicle article, which I liked very much:

Queen Elizabeth I [...] in her famed speech to English troops before their showdown with the Spanish armada declared: "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England, too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm."

sexism in the workplace

As a software engineer, one might expect that I'd have to deal with sexism in the workplace. I've read stories where women say they aren't heard in meetings, and I know the statistics (usually 10-15%) for women in computer science.

The thing is, I feel like I don't experience any of it. Maybe my coworkers are really cool, or maybe I'm just loud, so they can't ignore me. Maybe I'm just really used to working with guys, after five years of college and five years of working in technology. I know one thing for sure; these days, it almost feels a little freaky to be in a room full of women. It's like something unnatural has happened, to take all the guys away.

So, I was quite surprised the other day, by a sudden flare-up of apparent sexism at work. Our cubicles are fairly open, so I can see at least two cubes in either direction. I noticed a woman holding a sheaf of paper, walking slowly down the hall, and peering into the rows of cubes. I figured she was one of the people from HR who pass out interview packets, who come by a couple of times a week. Anyway, she stopped at my cube, and asked me if I was an engineer. I replied yes, and she said, "Darn, I was looking for a non-engineer, for a usability study." I told her the product manager cube was in the corner, but it looked like they weren't in at the moment. Anyway, she left in search of a non-engineer.

I'm usually hesistant to declare someone sexist. I looked at my clothes; I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. I looked at my cube; as far as I could tell it looked like everyone else's cube. One of my cubemate had his headphones in, so it made sense that he was passed over, but there was one other engineer in our cube with no headphones in, and at least ten other engineers in the surrounding area, again sans headphones. I poked my cubemate (the one with the headphones) and explained what happened. His response? "Yeah, she probably went for the girl. Too bad our two GUY product managers aren't around." Grr...

women in combat

There was some debate in Congress recently, about whether women belong in combat. I guess this shouldn't have been a surprise to me, given the socially conservative bent of our current Congress, but honestly, I just don't get it.

If there are women in our military who prefer to serve combat roles, why shouldn't they? I've heard the argument that the men can't bear to see their female counterparts get injured, but I don't buy it. Besides, why should the women be punished because their male colleagues, due to misguided chivalry, aren't able to fulfill their job functions?

I guess there are still some would argue that women can't effectively perform the duties required. I'm sure this is true for many women (me, for one), and plenty of men as well. Regardless, there are some women that are up to the task, and they should be given the chance to prove it.

Just last week, a woman, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester, was awarded a Silver Star for exceptional valor during close combat. Hers was the first Silver Star given to a woman since World War II, probably because women in the US military are prohibited from serving in units likely to see ground combat.

Now that I think about it, if we consider medals for soldiers analogous to promotions and/or bonuses for civilian jobs, then it becomes obvious, that when women in the military are excluded from roles likely to see combat, they are being unfairly denied career development opportunities.

I wonder why no one has filed a gender discrimination suit yet.

gender and science

From edge.org (May 16th, 2005): a debate between Harvard psychology professors Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke about gender and science. It's basically a nature vs. nurture argument, but they both have some fascinating insights. Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

Pinker, addressing those who refuse to consider that there might be biological gender differences at all:
But it is crucial to distinguish the moral proposition that people should not be discriminated against on account of their sex — which I take to be the core of feminism — and the empirical claim that males and females are biologically indistinguishable.

Men and women show no differences in general intelligence or g — on average, they are exactly the same, right on the money. Also, when it comes to the basic categories of cognition — how we negotiate the world and live our lives; our concept of objects, of numbers, of people, of living things, and so on — there are no differences. [...] Indeed, in cases where there are differences, there are as many instances in which women do slightly better than men as ones in which men do slightly better than women. For example, men are better at throwing, but women are more dexterous. Men are better at mentally rotating shapes; women are better at visual memory. Men are better at mathematical problem-solving; women are better at mathematical calculation.

Spelke, going even further:
I think the big forces causing this gap are social factors. There are no differences in overall intrinsic aptitude for science and mathematics between women and men. Notice that I am not saying the genders are indistinguishable, that men and women are alike in every way, or even that men and women have identical cognitive profiles. I'm saying that when you add up all the things that men are good at, and all the things that women are good at, there is no overall advantage for men that would put them at the top of the fields of math and science.

A somewhat controversial statement about gender variability from Pinker:
One other data set meeting the gold standard is displayed in this graph, showing the entire population of Scotland, who all took an intelligence test in a single year. The X axis represents IQ, where the mean is 100, and the Yaxis represents the proportion of men versus women. As you can see these are extremely orderly data. In the middle part of the range, females predominate; at both extremes, males slightly predominate.

Spelke, on gender and perception:
...when babies do something unambiguous, reports are not affected by the baby's gender. If the baby clearly smiles, everybody says the baby is smiling or happy. Perception of children is not pure hallucination. Second, children often do things that are ambiguous, and parents face questions whose answers aren't easily readable off their child's overt behavior. In those cases, you see some interesting gender labeling effects. For example, in one study a child on a video-clip was playing with a jack-in-the-box. It suddenly popped up, and the child was startled and jumped backward. When people were asked, what's the child feeling, those who were given a female label said, "she's afraid." But the ones given a male label said, "he's angry." Same child, same reaction, different interpretation. [...] I think these perceptions matter. You, as a parent, may be completely committed to treating your male and female children equally. But no sane parents would treat a fearful child the same way they treat an angry child.

There were effects at the tenure level as well. At the tenure level, professors evaluated a very strong candidate, and almost everyone said this looked like a good case for tenure. But people were invited to express their reservations, and they came up with some very reasonable doubts. For example, "This person looks very strong, but before I agree to give her tenure I would need to know, was this her own work or the work of her adviser?" Now that's a perfectly reasonable question to ask. But what ought to give us pause is that those kinds of reservations were expressed four times more often when the name was female than when the name was male.

Spelke making an important distinction:
Biological sex differences are real and important. Sex is not a cultural construction that's imposed on people. [...] But the question on the table is not, Are there biological sex differences? The question is, Why are there fewer women mathematicians and scientists?

I admit I'm especially interested because I took Intro to Psych with Pinker and Developmental Psych with Spelke, while they both were still at MIT.

women in computing

I recently went to a talk by the authors of Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing.

Some of the data presented was interesting. For example, they showed that women and men tend to enter college with different levels of computer experience, which negatively affects women who are considering the computer science field. They also found that women were more affected than men by bad teaching, poorly formulated curricula, and non-constructive criticism.

I definitely agree with the first point, and my suggestion is that all high schools have a mandatory computer class requirement, where real computer science is taught, instead of the usual touch typing, word processing, and spreadsheet skills. I am curious as to the reason behind the second observation; I'm not satisfied with the hypothesis that women are intrinsically less confident, whether for natural or environmental reasons.

On the other hand, there was quite a bit of material presented (mostly by Jane Margolis and not Allan Fisher) that I found irritating. I think it just pisses me off when people think and act like they have me all figured out, and try to tell me things about myself that aren't even true. Immature, huh?

I was trying to pinpoint the source of my irritation, and I think it boils down to this: Those of us who are women and have been successful in pursuing a career in computer science aren't really the women that these studies are about. We are "double outsiders" (a term I heard during the subsequent Q&A session) since we are neither men, nor do we conform to the "normal" woman stereotype.

We are told that as women, we needed extra help in order to succeed in computer science classes. Except we didn't. We are told that we didn't grow up with PCs and video games in our bedrooms, and that we didn't seek out computer experience in junior high and high school. Except we did. And, we are told that we don't code in our spare time, and that we don't enjoy talking about computers with our friends outside of work. Except we do.

This is the reason, I think, that I find most analyses of women in computing irritating, and sometimes insulting.

encouraging women scientists (and engineers)

okay this is one of the (many) rants that i store in my brain and spew at unsuspecting victims.

i don't understand the concept of having conferences, or seminars, or lectures, to tell women why they don't like math, science, or computers. in fact, a lot of times these presentations are made to an audience that is full of technical women, or girls who are already interested in math and science, and the presenter ends up "preaching to the choir".

if i were a 15-year old girl, and i was fairly good at math and science but not sure what i wanted to do yet (which i was, once) and then i was bombarded by the message that women aren't generally good at the sciences, and they have a lot of obstacles, and the world is unfair in such a way that diverts women from technical fields, how would i react? i can think of two types of reactions:

- i could think, gee why are all these people trying to keep me from math and science, want to be a "rebel" and "defeat the system" and so forth, and plunge myself into the technical world

- i could think, wow i never thought about all these problems, i just thought i liked physics (or chemistry, or whatever). now that i know there are so many awful obstacles in my way, do i really want to go into this field? or do i want to just choose another, perhaps slightly less interesting field with less resistance?

i'm not sure the first reaction can be sustained over a the course of a career, and of course the second one is completely counter to the intent (i think) of these presentations.

i'm an engineer, i've always enjoyed science, and i never went to these kinds of events. yes, in college, my classes were filled with guys. this wasn't really an issue for me. if someone had pointed it out to me when i was there (wow, look! you're one of seven girls in a 75 person class!) i don't know what i would have done. maybe get uncomfortable with it. maybe decide to switch to a field where i don't have to be singled out as a token female or considered as a role model for young girls, and i don't have to consider the possibility i got hired (or accepted, or chosen) to fulfill some kind of unofficial quota.

i know the intent behind these conferences is to encourage women, and yes, it is a problem that many women don't consider going into engineering or science. i'm not sure what the solution is, maybe do something to raise awareness among all the parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles who give 5-year old girls Barbie dolls instead of radios, or maybe do something about the teachers who unconsciously call on guys more than girls in math class. but i really don't think the solution is to group together a bunch of women who already have a predisposition towards the technical world, and analyze in detail all the ways that they're different from the men. maybe they'll just resent it, because they don't think they are all that different. i know i don't.