Message-Id: <199711112246.OAA17678@perry.geo.berkeley.edu>
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 15:52:21 -0700
To: pinhole@exploratorium.edu
From: suzanna@seismo.berkeley.edu (Suzy Loper)
Subject: Gender and science
I'm writing to express my disagreement with some of the views presented in
Steven Eiger's response to Linda's letter about gender and science. (so
the quotes below are from Mr. Eiger's letter)
> (...) My suspicion is that teachers have treated both
>sexes fairly equally for a few years now, the equal acceptance by both
>sexes to our medical school here argues for that, and that the real
>problems lie in those damn TV shows or whatever is driving popular culture
>at present.
I disagree, although in my case it is also just a suspicion and not based
on evidence: but I know for a fact that I myself am not successful at
treating both sexes equally, and that an outside observer to my science
classroom could probably often find qualitative and quantitative
differences in the ways I interact with boys and girls. This despite the
fact that I am a woman, and that I am hyper-conscious of gender issues in
science having graduated from college as the only woman physics major in my
year. So I hypothesize that if I am not succeeding at eliminating gender
bias from my classroom, other less hyper-sensitive people who claim they
are are probably fooling themselves. I think the writer's point about
"those damn TV shows" is a good one, and the problem is that we as teachers
are not immune to the influences of popular culture. When someone refers
to their doctor or a physicist they know and I say "Oh, what did HE say?"
without being told it is a he, I could kick myself -- but hey, I was raised
in this society too, and it's a long process to rid yourself of internal
sexism and stereotypes.
> (...) Thus I believe that it may be that
>women are not attracted to engineering, and that if we never reach parity
>there it is just fine. On the other hand I have seen a strong push to get
>women involved in my field, physiology and cellular biology, and at least
>thru the post-doctoral level, this has been a tremendous success. This
>strongly argues that women must have been discouraged in the past, and they
>just needed encouragement. I think that we ought to focus our attention on
>encouraging women to try for scientific fields, and ensure that they are
>paid equally, and generally try to be as fair as possible. But when after
>this is all done and there still is a paucity of women engineers, we should
>let it lie and say well there are also few men in nursing.
Whether or not there are biological differences between men and women which
affect their interests, the writer's experience in his own field
(physiology) makes me wonder why he thinks engineering might be different.
It's not "just fine" to never reach parity in engineering if we haven't
eliminated the biases and roadblocks which are preventing women from
entering this field. I might also argue that the reasons there are fewer
men in nursing are pretty different than the reasons there are fewer women
in engineering, so I don't think the first imbalance makes the second
imbalance OK. I do agree that it is important for boys to see that nursing
is an option available to them, just as it is important for girls to see
that engineering is an option available to them,
>I may be motivated to write this because
>of my son who is about to start school next year; I do not want him to be
>discriminated against for his sex. What if a large portion of what we are
>seeing now is genetic, we do something social to try and counteract this,
>and end up with a truly screwed up generation. I believe we ought to know
>more about all this before we proceed with any major social engineering
>experiments; or what will we say to the parents of the shy boys in the
>class.
I can understand the writer's concern, especially since he is a parent of a
boy. And I recognize that "changes" designed to foster girls' interests
may inadvertently affect boys: for example, in my own classroom when six
boys and zero girls have their hands raised, and I've just called on three
boys in a row, I will sometimes say, "I'd like to hear from some girls
now," and I will ignore the boys or ask them to put their hands down, and
wait for some girls to raise their hands. Now if one of those six boys who
had their hand up was a very shy boy who usually doesn't speak in class, my
little gender-biased intervention will have discriminated against him.
But I have to say that we are so far from parity in most of the
sciences, and the kinds of "social engineering" which are being practiced
are so mild-mannered (e.g., providing female mentors for high school or
college-aged women interested in the sciences), that I really don't think
we are anywhere near having to worry about this. If MIT decided that from
now on 80% of their admitted students would be female, and only 20% male,
until gender parity was reached in engineering and physical sciences, maybe
there would be cause for alarm. But I don't think we're there.
Now that my tirade is over, I'd like to say that I appreciated the writer's
thoughts, and think these are very healthy issues to have on the table,
because I'm sure there are a lot of people who share his views.
Suzy Loper
-- Suzy Loper suzanna@seismo.berkeley.edu suzyl@socrates.berkeley.edu (not functional yet)