Delusions of Gender (10 page)

You might think that this is a nice sentiment, but that a narrowly focused, unsociable personality simply goes hand-in-hand with talent in computer science. But as developmental psychologist Elizabeth Spelke and Ariel Grace point out, ‘personality traits that are
typical
of a given profession often are mistakenly thought to be
necessary
to the practice of the profession.’ They provide, as a historical example, the assumption by an early-twentieth-century psychologist that his talented Jewish students could not succeed in academia because they did not share the traits of the predominantly Christian faculty: he ‘mistakenly assumed that the typical mannerisms of his Harvard colleagues were necessary for success in science.’
¹⁸

Underscoring Spelke and Grace’s point is a fascinating natural experiment in the Carnegie-Mellon computer science department
that suggests that geeky traits may indeed be extrinsic to success in computer science. In the mid- to late 1990s, an intensive study of male and (the very few) female computer science students at Carnegie-Mellon found that the men were very focused on programming – the sort of person who ‘dreams in code’ – while the few women in the programme were more interested in the applications of computer science. But in the late 1990s, the admission criteria were changed so as to no longer unnecessarily and unfairly exclude applicants without a lot of programming experience.
¹⁹
This led to a fivefold increase in the number of women, from about 7 percent to 34 percent. Lenore Blum and Carol Frieze took the opportunity of this situation to interview the students who entered the computer science programme in 1998. In 2002, when they were interviewed, these students were, uniquely, the babies of the old, hacker-favouring admission criteria, yet were now in a department with a much more diverse student body. Remarkably, Blum and Frieze found that interest in programming versus applications was now a point of similarity, rather than difference, between men and women. ‘Almost all students saw programming as one part of their interests and the computers as a “tool” for their primary focus, which was applications.’ But also, there was evidence that the ‘students were constructing a new image’, and one in which the ‘narrowly focused computer science student’ was no longer the norm:

Our cohort included students who played the violin, wrote fiction, sang in a rock band, participated in university team sports, enjoyed the arts, and were members of a wide range of campus organizations. We found that men and women alike appear to be moving towards a more well-rounded identity that embraced academic interests and a life outside of computing. Students described themselves as ‘individual and creative, just interesting all-round people’, ‘very intelligent, … very grounded, not the traditional geek …’, ‘much more well rounded than people five or six years ago.’

Recall that these students had been chosen according to the old criteria. They were the geeky programmers. And yet, as the researchers suggest, the years spent in an increasingly gender-equal environment ‘had shaped their image of themselves. We might also speculate that such a transitional culture gave the men “permission” to explore their nongeeky characteristics’.
²⁰

Both women and computer science are the losers when a geeky stereotype serves as an unnecessary gatekeeper to the profession. And recent work by psychologist Catherine Good and her colleagues shows that a ‘sense of belonging’ is also an important factor in women’s intention to continue in maths. This feeling of belonging, however, can be eroded by an environment that communicates that maths ability is a fixed trait and not something that hard work can increase, especially in combination with the message that women are naturally less talented than men, Good and colleagues found.
²¹
Philosopher Sally Haslanger has suggested that a difficulty even today for women (and minority) philosophers is that ‘it is very hard to find a place in philosophy that isn’t actively hostile towards women and minorities, or at least assumes that a successful philosopher should look and act like a (traditional, white) man.’
²²

But choosing a career is not just about finding a place socially in which one can feel at home. It also entails finding a fit with one’s talents. People of course tend to be drawn towards jobs in which they are likely to succeed. If gender stereotypes can affect people’s perceptions of their abilities (as we now know that they can), then it would not be surprising to discover that this then has effects on career decisions. Sociologist Shelley Correll has shown that beliefs about gender differences in ability have an important role to play in people’s perceptions of their own masculine abilities and, as you might expect, this affects their interest in careers that rely on such skills. Correll used the data from the 1988 National Educational Longitudinal Study, involving tens of thousands of high school students, to carefully compare students’ actual grades with their own assessments of their mathematical and verbal competence. She found that boys rated their maths skills higher than
their equal female counterparts. This was likely due to the culturally shared belief that males
are
better at maths, because boys were selective in their self-embellishment: they didn’t inflate their verbal competence. These self-assessments proved to be an important factor in the students’ decision making about their careers. With actual ability (assessed by test scores) held equal, the higher a boy or girl rates his or her mathematical competence, the more likely it is that he or she will head down a path towards a career in science, maths or engineering. Correll concludes that ‘boys do not pursue mathematical activities at a higher rate than girls do because they are better at mathematics. They do so, at least partially, because they
think
they are better.’
²³
For example, gender differences in self-assessment of maths ability fully explained the gender gap in calculus enrolments.

Correll then went on to show just how easy it is to create a gender stereotype that diminishes women’s confidence and interest in a supposedly male domain. She used a contrast sensitivity test, in which the participant has to guess which colour, black or white, covers a greater area in a series of rectangles. Her participants, freshmen at Cornell University, were told that ‘a national testing organisation developed the contrast sensitivity exam and that both graduate schools and Fortune 500 companies have expressed interest in using this exam as a screening device.’
²⁴
(In truth, the test is a fake one: black and white appear in essentially equal proportions, so there is actually no correct solution.) Participants were then told either that males, on average, perform better on tests of contrast sensitivity or that there is no gender difference.

The participants were all given the same feedback on their test performance, but
how
this score was perceived depended on the context – male-advantage or gender-equal – in which the test was presented. When the students thought that contrast sensitivity was a nongendered ability, women and men’s self-assessments were very similar. But it was a different story when the underlying assumption was that one sex had the upper hand. In this male-favourable context, men rated their contrast sensitivity ability more
highly and claimed to have done better on the tasks. They also set themselves a more lenient standard against which to judge their performance. Correll then investigated whether, as in her real-world data set, higher self-assessments would lead to higher aspirations. She found that they did. When men thought that they were, as a group, better at contrast sensitivity, they were more likely than women to say that they would enrol for courses or seminars based on the ability, and to apply for graduate programmes or high-paying jobs that relied heavily on the skill. And it was their higher self-assessments of ability that appeared to bring about this greater interest in contrast-sensitivity-based aspirations. We like what (we think) we are good at.

But of course many women do persist in male-dominated careers like mathematics, despite the stereotype threat and lack of sense of belonging. Luckily for them, there is an alternative to turning away from maths – and this is to turn away from being female. Emily Pronin and her colleagues found that female undergraduates at Stanford University who had taken more than ten quantitative courses were less likely than other women to rate as important and applicable to them supposedly maths-incompatible behaviours such as wearing makeup, being emotional, and wanting children.
²⁵
The researchers then went on to provide evidence that it is not simply that women who like to wear lipstick and fondly imagine having children one day are
intrinsically
less interested in maths. Rather, women who want to succeed in these domains strategically shed these desires in response to reminders that maths is not for women. The researchers recruited a group of Stanford undergraduate women, for all of whom maths ability was important. Half of the women read a (fabricated) scientific article about ageing and verbal ability. But the remainder of the women read a shortened version of an actual scientific article about gender and maths, published in
Science
.
²⁶
This was a study of the Scholastic Aptitude Test results in maths for nearly 10,000 high-achieving seventh and eighth graders. Boys were more likely to score highly than girls, and the article concluded that there is ‘a substantial sex
difference in mathematical reasoning ability in favour of boys’,
²⁷
together with the assertion that this advantage reflects boys’ innate superiority in spatial ability.

The women certainly found the article threatening, and put some effort towards challenging its findings and conclusions. But it still had an effect on them. Women who read the nonthreatening article identified equally with feminine characteristics believed to be both relevant and irrelevant to maths-related careers. But the women who had read the
Science
article about maths and gender identified less with female characteristics regarded as a liability in quantitative domains. Parts of their identity were being hurled overboard in an attempt to remain afloat in male-dominated waters. If these are particularly cherished parts of the self-concept that must be abandoned then, in the end, the woman may prefer for the boat to sink.

The behaviour of colleagues may also sometimes make it harder to keep female and work identities compatible in male-dominated domains. The recent Athena Factor report conducted by the Center for Work-Life Policy found that a quarter of women in corporate engineering and technology jobs thought that their colleagues believed their sex to be intrinsically inferior in scientific aptitude. ‘[M]y opinions and reasoning are always questioned, “Are you sure about that?”’ complained one focus group participant, ‘whereas what the men say is taken as gospel.’ The focus groups of the Athena report told tale after tale with a common theme: female engineers whom men assumed were administrative assistants; senior women assumed to be the most junior person in the room; double takes in the meeting room at the sight of a woman.
²⁸
In reaction to the Athena report, a woman in a senior engineering position blogged that ‘[m]any of our clients think I’m in the meetings to take notes for the men … some even apologise for boring me with the technical discussions, assuming I have no idea what they’re talking about.’
²⁹
It’s not hard to see that these sorts of attitudes and assumptions could not only rapidly become rather tiresome but also chip away at women’s sense of belonging.
Echoing Emily Pronin and her colleagues’ discovery that mathematically inclined women shed the feminine attributes they perceived as a liability, the Athena report sketches a disquieting picture of the psychological changes that take place in women who remain in SET careers. For the easiest solution to the problem of being female in a setting in which women are made to feel that they are inferior and do not belong is to become as unfeminine as possible. At the most superficial level, makeup, jewellery and skirts – icons of femininity that draw attention to their wearer’s femininity – were rarely in evidence, the researchers noted. The women also took up antifemale attitudes, denigrating other women as emotional, and ‘heaped scorn’ on women-focused programmes and any work-related gatherings dominated by women. ‘By definition nothing important is going on in this room: In this company men hold the power’, was how one female engineer explained her policy of avoiding female work gatherings. The awful, intractable incompatibility of being a woman in a male-dominated SET workplace was starkly encapsulated by one woman quoted in the report who described how, more and more, she had developed a ‘discomfort with being a woman.’
³⁰

As the arguments that women lack the necessary intrinsic talent to succeed in male-dominated occupations become less and less convincing, the argument that women are just less interested has grown and flourished.
³¹
Yet as we’ve seen in this chapter, interest is not impervious to outside influence, at least in the young adult samples with which most of this research is done. It is remarkably easy to adjust the shine of a career path for one sex. A few words to the effect that a Y chromosome will serve in your favour, or a sprucing up of the interior design, is all that it takes to bring about surprisingly substantial changes in career interest. Having seen what effect on career interests a simple, brief manipulation in the lab can have, one can’t help but wonder at the cumulative influence of that giant, inescapable social psychology lab known as life.
The existing gender inequality of occupations, the sexist ads, the opinions of presidents of high-profile universities, not to mention all the ‘brain facts’ that we’ll get to later – these all interact with, and shape, our minds.

And then, there are people in our lives whose minds, just like ours, are richly endowed with implicit and explicit attitudes about gender. The tilting of the playing field that their half-changed minds and behaviour create, as we’ll see in the final few chapters of this part of the book, are still an important part of the half-changed world.