Transcript HERE WE GO AGAIN Caryl Rivers Professor of Journalism Boston University Rosalind Chait Barnett, Ph.D. Community, Families & Work Program Women’s Studies Research Center Brandeis University Women, Action.

HERE WE GO AGAIN
Caryl Rivers
Professor of Journalism
Boston University
Rosalind Chait Barnett, Ph.D.
Community, Families & Work Program
Women’s Studies Research Center
Brandeis University
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
Bad Stories About
Women
That Never Die
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
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March 28-30, 2008
Continuing Narratives
• Girls Can’t Do Math
• Larry Summers was Right--A Victim of
Feminist PC
• We need much more research
• Science tells us there are great gender
differences in math and science
v
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Continuing Narratives, Cont’d.
• Boys hormones make them better at math.
• Women can’t be geniuses.
• Boys are better at spatial relations, making then
“hardwired” for math.
• Boys are hardwired to deal with objects and
systems, girls are built for relationships.
• There is no discrimination against girls.
v
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Storyline: Stab in the back
• “Larry Summers & the Thought
Police”
• Kathleen Parker, Washington
Post
• September 21, 2007
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Washington POST, Cont’d.
• The latest smack-down of former Harvard President
Lawrence Summers should extinguish any remaining
doubt that political correctness is the new McCarthyism.
• Summers, you'll recall, was driven out of his university
post in 2005 after he suggested at a conference that
gender differences might account for an under
representation by women in science, math and
engineering.
• Never mind that scientific evidence suggests as much.
One simply doesn't say -- ever -- that men and women
aren't equal in every way.
v
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Atlantic.com
• “Why Feminist Careerists Neutered Larry
Summers”
• By: Stuart Taylor, Jr.
• The hysteria about Summers furthers the
career agendas of feminists who seek quotas
for themselves and their friends.
• Unlike most religious fundamentalists, these
feminists were pursuing a careerist, self-serving
agenda. This cause can put money in their
pockets.
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SLATE
• THE PSEUDO-FEMINIST SHOW
TRIAL OF LARRY SUMMERS.
• By: William Saletan
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Slate, Cont’d.
• Already Summers is being forced to
apologize, in the style of a Communist show
trial, for sending "an unintended signal of
discouragement to talented girls and women."
But the best signal to send to talented girls
and boys is that science isn't about
respecting sensitivities. It's about respecting
facts.
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Weekly Standard
• Summers had no good reason, none
whatsoever, for apologizing.
• Alas, Summers's decision to acquiesce in the
denunciation and to serve up one apology after
another not only legitimated but also
emboldened the forces of darkness and
reaction.
v
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New York Times
• March 6, 2006 Monday
“Academic, Heal Thyself”
• By: Camille Paglia
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NYT, Cont’d.
• Harvard's reputation for disinterested
scholarship has been severely gored by the
shadowy manipulations of the self-serving
cabal who forced Mr. Summers's premature
resignation.
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Financial Times editorial
• Summers launched a “long overdue
debate on an issue often judged too
sensitive to discuss.”
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Storyline: We Need New Research
• Washington Post:
• By Sally Quinn:
• “Why don’t female mathematicians and
scientists, especially at Harvard, get
together and research this issue until
they have definitive answers instead of
reaching for the smelling salts.”
v
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• Many other articles simply made the assumption
that the issue of gender differences in math had
not been studied before and that Summers was
to be applauded for “launching new research.”
• Nothing could be farther from the truth, there is
adequate research, but journalist have not
bothered to read it.
• There’s plenty of evidence on the subject, dating
back for many years, nearly all of it showing very
small differences in cognitive abilities between
the sexes.
v
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• ''Here was this economist lecturing pompously
this room full of the country's most accomplished
scholars on women's issues in science and
engineering, and he kept saying things we had
refuted in the first half of the day." -- Denice D.
Denton, Chancellor University of California,
Santa Cruz. (An engineer)
• Summers trotted out “the same old lines we’ve
heard for decades—if not for centuries—and they
just aren’t supported by good data.”--biologist
Marlene Zuk of UC Riverside
v
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Storyline: “Science” says there
are great differences between men
and women
• George Will: “There is a vast and
growing scientific literature on possible
gender differences in cognition. Only
hysterics denounce interest in these
possible differences.”
v
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Innately, women don’t have what it takes to
succeed in math and science
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The Real Story
“The nation’s report card on math and
science abilities” released in February of
2007, found that:
• Girls are doing increasingly well in math.
• The press virtually ignored this story.
• 37 newspaper articles on the report-- not one
mentioned that girls were on a par with boys
on a range of math abilities, including
algebra, geometry, measurement properties,
data analysis and other areas.
v
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Major meta analysis of math aptitude scores
from 4,000,000 students, by Wisconsin’s
Janet Hyde found sex differences were tiny.
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• Tests compared grammar school kids in the U.S.,
Taiwan and Japan. Japanese girls score almost
twice as high as American boys. (A Japanese girl
gene?) This fact is rarely reported in the American
media.
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• Definitive overview of math and cognitive abilities
supposed to show substantial sex differences.
Diane Halpern (Claremont McKenna) found them
to be trivial. While there are slight differences, boys
and girls are far more alike than different.
• Elizabeth Spelke (Harvard) analyzed all the
available research (American Psychologist, 2005),
in tests done from birth to maturity, males and
females have the same aptitude for math and
science.
• Spelke: Women do just as well as men on
challenging university-level math courses.
v
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• Spelke--five "core systems" at the foundations
of mathematical reasoning.
• First, a system for representing small exact
numbers of objects — the difference between one,
two, and three. (5 mos.)
• Second, understanding numerical magnitudes —
the difference between a set of about ten things
and a set of about 20 things.
• Third, a system of natural number concepts that
children construct as they learn verbal counting.
This takes place between about the ages of two
and a half and four years.
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• Fourth and Fifth are systems first seen in
children when they navigate: understanding the
geometry of the surrounding layout and
identifying landmark objects.
• There is, she notes, a biological foundation to
mathematical and scientific reasoning that
emerges in children before any formal
instruction. These systems develop equally in
males and females.
• “There’s not a hint of an advantage for boys
over girls in any of these five basic
systems.”
v
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Are Boys Better at Representing Numbers?
High performance
number scoring 90-100%
Average performance
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
No.
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girls
boys
Are Boys Better at Representing Objects?
high performance
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
girls
boys
number scoring 95-100%
percent correct performance
Average performance
4-8 years (N = 47)
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
girls
boys
4-8 years (N = 11)
No.
(Spelke, LaMont & Lizcano, aggregated data)
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The Development of Counting
Children typically learn to count over
the years from 2 to 4.
An invariant learning sequence:
“one” means an object
“two” means two
“three” means three
counting determines cardinal
value.
Considerable variability in the speed
of progression through the sequence.
Predicts success in elementary school
math.
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Are Boys Better at Learning to Count?
3 year old children
Number of participants
50
40
30
boys
girls
20
10
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
counter
Highest known number
No male advantage on average or at the
highest levels.
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Sex Differences in the Capacity to Harness These
Abilities for New Purposes?
Maps
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The Development of Map-Reading
Children typically begin to understand
map tasks at about 4 years.
Considerable variability in map
reading at all ages.
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Are Boys Better at Map Reading?
number of participants
4 year old children
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
girls
boys
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
percentile score
No.
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80
90
Storyline: Hormones
Male hormones that kick in at puberty give
boys a big edge in math.
• Michael Gurian, The Wonder of Boys
• Steven Rhoads, Taking Sex Differences
Seriously
• Anne Moir and David Jessel, Brain Sex
v
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Louann Brizendine, MD.,
The Female Brain
“When boys and girls enter their teens,
their math and science abilities are
equal.”
“But as estrogen floods the female brain,
females start to focus intensely on their
emotions and on communication.”
“Girls start to lose interest in pursuits
that require more solitary work and
fewer interactions with others.”
v
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The Real Story
• If true, we’d see boys’ scores at this age
soaring ahead of girls.
• But in 2001, sociologists Erin Leahey and
Guang Guo at the University of North Carolina
looked at 20,000 math scores of kids age 4 to
18 and found no differences of any magnitude,
even in areas that are supposedly male
domains, such as reasoning skills and
geometry.
v
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Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
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Average 12th-grade NAEP mathematics scores in 2005, by gender
500
400
d'=.06
300
200
100
149
151
0
Male
Female
IES National Center for Education
Statistics.
(2007).
The
nation's
card: 12th-grade
reading and mathematics 2005.
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Retrieved. from http://nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_grade12_2005/.
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Storyline: Genius is a “guy”
thing
• Daily Mail (London)September 25, 2007
“Only men can be geniuses”
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Daily Mail, Cont’d.
• The stubborn facts of history remain. Very few
truly original scientific discoveries have been
made by women.
• There are no women geniuses in physics or
mathematics to rival Newton or Einstein.
• there is no symphonic music by women to
match the sublime works of Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms or Shostakovich.
v
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Daily Mail, Cont’d.
• On average, women are much more
competent and much cleverer in that
generalist “middle ground” where ordinary
exam results are required, or ordinary jobs
need to be done.
• Or, “The Mediocity of Women Hypothesis”
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• Does the
overrepresentation of
males at the upper tail of
the distribution of math
aptitude scores explain
why there are more men in
leadership positions in
science and math?
• Are women destined for
mediocrity?
v
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The Real Story
• 2006 review of major studies, funded by the
National Academy of Sciences: no relationship
between scoring in the upper tail of ability and
eventual success in math/science careers.
• Of the college-educated professional workforce in
math, science, and engineering, fewer than onethird of the men had SAT-M scores above 650, the
lower end of the threshold typically presumed to be
required for success in these fields.
• Clearly, not all these guys are Einsteins.
v
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Benbow, Stanley and Lubinski followed
mathematically talented boys and girls over
time.
Results:
• Equal numbers of girls and boys majored in
math. And they got equal grades.
• The SAT-M not only under-predicts the
performance of college women in general, it
also under-predicted the college performance
of women in the talented sample.
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Superiority in Space?
• Males generally score higher on tests of
involving objects in space.
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Charlotte Allen, op ed, Washington
Post, March 08
• “Visuospatial skills, the capacity to rotate threedimensional objects in the mind, at which men
tend to excel over women, are in turn related to a
capacity for abstract thinking and reasoning, the
grounding for mathematics, science and
philosophy.”
• A few females can be fighter pilots, architects, tax
accountants, chemical engineers, supreme court
justices and brain surgeons, but over the long run
not many will succeed.
v
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Superiority in Space, Cont’d.
• Not a hardwired difference
• Study: Regular video game players had spatial
ability far superior to that of non-gamers.
• Both men and women can improve their spatial
skills by playing a video game; women catch up
to men.
• Women’s success rate leapt from 55 percent to
72 percent and abilities remained over time.
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
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Storyline: Boys are hardwired
for systems and objects; girls,
for relationships
Men and boys do better at math, science, and
are natural leaders because of their “wiring,”
while girls and women do best at relationships,
especially in low-level jobs that do not require
leadership.
BBC documentary, NY Times op ed, Washington Post,
Newsweek Cover.
v
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• “Girls prefer dolls (to blocks and toys)
because girls pay more attention to people
while boys are more enthralled with
mechanical objects.” --Parents' Magazine,
June 2007
• Newborn boys were more interested in
looking at a physical object than a face,
whereas newborn girls were more interested
in looking at a face than a physical object.-Steven Pinker, Harvard
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• [there are] biological reasons that girls gravitate
to dolls and boys gravitate to trucks-- Weekend
Australian, 2006.
• Girls prefer dolls (to blocks and balls)
...because girls pay more attention to people
while boys are more enthralled with mechanical
objects-- Parents’ Magazine, 2006.
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Christina Hoff Sommers, The American,
March 2008
• Men like rigorous, systematic, challenging work
• Women prefer “empathy-centered fields such as
early-childhood education, social work,
veterinary medicine, and psychology.”
• “Veterinary medicine would be a dream job for
the scientifically gifted but empathy-driven
female.”
• (And those puppies are just so cute.)
v
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The Idea, based on one study of day-old babies, is
that boys looked at mobiles longer and girls
looked at faces longer. (Simon Baron Cohen, The
Essential Difference)
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There is a long literature
flat-out contradicting BaronCohen’s study, providing
evidence that male and
female infants tend to
respond equally to
people and objects.
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Toy Choice
On what basis do very young children
choose which toys to play with?
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The 3 toys were:
Gun and holster
Traditionally
male-typed
Tea set
Traditionally
female-typed
Ball
Traditionally
neutral
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Purple Rhinestone Gun
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Spiky Tea Set
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KIDS: Spiky tea sets are for
boys and purple rhinestone
guns are for girls.
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Thus, children are more likely
to base their gender-typing of
the objects on the attributes
than on their traditional
gender-typing.
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Storyline: Discrimination
• There’s no discrimination against girls in
science and math anymore--critic
Charles Murray, at AEI conference,
2007.
• So if girls don’t score as well as boys, it
has to be due to biology.
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Real Story: The Leaky
Pipeline
All Girls
Preschool
Years
Primary
Grades
High School
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10-year study of 4,000 children and 2,000 parents
(Jacqueline Eccles, U. Michigan):
• Parents offer far more encouragement to boys
than to girls to engage in problem-solving
activities -- playing with Legos, for instance--that
may give them an early advantage in spatial
skills.
• Parents are more likely to attribute a boy’s
success in this realm to "natural talent," whereas
a girl is seen as "hard working."
v
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Study of kids’ and parents' visit to a science
museum (2004)
• Girls and boys were equally engrossed in the
interactive science exhibits.
• But boys were three times more likely than girls
to hear explanations from their parents about what
they were seeing. This gender difference popped
up with kids as young as one to three years of age.
• Parents may quite unconsciously, be creating a
gender bias in science learning years before
their kids ever even see the insides of a science
classroom.
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Women,
Action
Media:
A Conference
for Journalists,
Crowley, K., Callanan, M. A.,
Tenenbaum,
H. &
R.,the
& Allen,
E. (2001).
Parents explain
more often to boys than to girls
during shared scientific thinking. Psychological
Science,
12(3).
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Women,
Action
Media:
A Conference
for Journalists,
Crowley, K., Callanan, M. A.,
Tenenbaum,
H. &
R.,the
& Allen,
E. (2001).
Parents explain
more often to boys than to girls
during shared scientific thinking. Psychological
Science,
12(3).
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& Everyone
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RELATED STUDIES:
• Parents and teachers of third- and fourth-grade
children believed that boys were more talented in
math—even though test scores of the actual
children showed no gender difference in math.
• Teachers of 6th graders believed that boys were
more talented at math than girls, even when the
actual kids scored equally well on tests. Parents
had less confidence in their daughters than in their
sons math ability—regardless of their girl’s
actual abilities and performance scores. This
held true even when girls had higher grades in math
than boys. Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
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Research: People base their career
choices more on what they believe to be
their abilities, than on what their abilities
actually are.
Over time, children construct their own selfperceptions which are based on their
parents’ messages.
• They use these ideas in choosing a
college major or a career.
v
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The Power of Beliefs About Math Ability
Parents’ Beliefs
1
Child’s Beliefs
2
Teacher’s Beliefs
Tiedemann, J. (2000). Parents' gender stereotypes and teachers' beliefs as predictors of children's concept of their
mathematical ability in elementary school. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92(1), 144-151.
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• Mothers in particular have a strong and
long-lasting influence on those choices.
For example:
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Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
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Women's Math Performance
Affected By Theories On Sex
Differences
Women perform differently on math tests
depending on whether they believe mathrelated gender differences are determined
by genetic or social differences, according
to University of British Columbia.
ScienceDaily (Oct. 20, 2006)
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The Study provided participants with
bogus explanations for alleged sex
differences in math.
• Worst math performances-- women who received
a genetic explanation for female
underachievement or who were reminded of the
stereotype about female math
underachievement.
• Women who received a “culture” explanation
performed better.
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• The Swedish Medical
Research Council, which
funds biomedical
research, does not
evaluate women and men
on an equal basis for their
prestigious fellowships.
• When men’s and women’s
applications were rated for
scientific competence,
men fared far better—
even when they weren’t
as good as women.
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• Researchers found that a female applicant had to
be 2.5 times more productive than the average
male applicant to receive the same competence
score.
• The most productive group of female applicants
(those with 100 points or more for publication,
research etc.), was the only group of women
judged to be as competent as men.
• Even then, astonishingly, these female high
achievers were judged only as competent as the
least productive group of male applicants (who
had fewer than 20 points).
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Figure 1: The mean competence score given to male (red squares) and female (blue squares) applicants by the
MRC reviewers as a function of their scientific productivity, measured as total impact. One impact point equals
one paper published in a journal
with an
impact
factor
of 1.A Conference for Journalists,
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Wenneras, C., & Wold, A. (1997). Nature, 387
(22 May),
341-343.
March 28-30, 2008
Larry Summers based his comments on
women’s “lack of innate ability” in math and
science on their failure to advance in
universities.
• Is that a good measure?
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Or, are universities hostile places for women faculty?
& the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Answer. Yes! Women, Action
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• If you look only at universities to see who
is talented in math and science, you will
get a skewed picture.
• Women do spectacularly better, a 2007
study shows, in non-hierarchical
workplaces.
• Female scientists in biotech firms have a
much higher probability of being in a
position to lead research teams than do
their female colleagues in academia.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• In universities,
women were 60
percent less likely
to be supervising
than men.
• In biotech, women
were 7.9 times
more likely to be in
supervisory jobs
than in universities.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
Narrative: Achievement makes
women unhappy
• Women are miserable without men
• Too much ambition is dangerous for
womens’ happiness
• Men will be miserable if they marry
career women
• Men don’t like smart women
• Best and brightest want to go home
• Only men want to sacrifice to achieve.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
"Marry Him! The Case for Settling for
Mr. Good Enough”--The Atlantic,
March, 2008
• “To the outside world, of course, we still call
ourselves feminists and insist—vehemently,
even—that we’re independent and selfsufficient and don’t believe in any of that
damsel-in-distress stuff, but in reality, we
aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle, we’re
women who want a traditional family.”
• Any man, even one you don’t love--or even
like--is better than none.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
The Wonder of Girls,
Michael Gurian
• Achieving women will be miserable.
• Women’s primal need is to be mothers,
and women who seek careers or are
family breadwinners will live to regret it.
• Feminism teaches girls to turn away
from their natures.
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why
Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman…
DANIELLE CRITTENDEN--New York Times Book Review
“Those aspects of life -- whether it's the pleasure of
being a wife or of raising children or of making a
home -- were, until the day before yesterday,
considered the most natural things in the world.”
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
CRITTENDEN, Contd.
But feminism, for all its efforts, hasn't been able to
banish fundamental female desires from us, either
-- and we simply cannot be happy if we ignore
them.
When a woman postpones marriage and
motherhood, she does not end up thinking about
love less as she gets older but more and more,
sometimes to the point of obsession. Why am I still
alone? she wonders. Why can't I find someone?
What is wrong with me?
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
Modern Woman: The Lost Sex--1947 bestseller
• “Male-emulating careerists have such anxiety about
pregnancy that their glands secrete chemicals that
destroy fertility”.
• Return to “normal” role in society would soothe
ovaries that spew defective eggs.
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
Daily Mail Sept. 2007
We women have never had it so
good. So why ARE we unhappy?
I’m afraid it's obvious to me that
the woman who regards taking
care of her family and keeping an
eye on her elderly parents as the
sum total of her ambition is bound
to be more contented than her
sister who wants to "have it all."
-- Alan Krueger, an economist at
Princeton University
v
Women are making
themselves unhappy
by 'wanting it all'
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
Is chemistry destiny?
New York Times, columnist David Brooks,
September 17, 2006.
• ”Happiness seems to consist of living in
harmony with the patterns that nature and
evolution laid down long, long ago.”
• Long long ago, of course, was when men
were in charge of the world and women
knew their place.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
The Real Story
• Women 28-35 with advanced degrees who
earn over $55,000 are as likely to be happily
married as women who earn less (Heather
Boushy, Center for Economic Policy
Research).
• The more education women have, the more
likely they are to marry.
• Women who earn more than their husbands
have marriages as stable as women who
make less than their husbands.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
Corollary: Men who Marry Achieving Women
will be miserable, Forbes.com, 2006
“Don't Marry Career Women:
How do women, careers and
marriage mix? Not well, say
social scientists.”
Michael Noer (editor)
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
Major analysis of data:
Our study of 300 dual-earner couples
sponsored by the National Institute of Mental
Health challenges the Forbes thesis that men will
be unhappy if they marry career women.
For most husbands in dual-earner couples, marital
quality is unrelated to their wives’ earnings.
Why? Probably for a number of reasons.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• Men's wages have been stagnant or declining
for nearly 20 years, so women’s income may
be easing financial tensions and making it
possible for the couple to pay their bills.
• Her enhanced earnings may be heightening
her self esteem, and so she brings these
good feelings about herself into the marriage.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• He may want to spend more time with
the family, and her work eases his
breadwinning burden.
• Men today do want more family time
and are actually spending more time
with their families than they used to.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
Will men who marry career women have
terrible sex lives?
No.
• A longitudinal study of 500 couples by the
University of Wisconsin-Madison's Janet Hyde
found that for both men and women, the highest
sexual satisfaction was among couples who both
worked and experienced high rewards from their
jobs.
• A good job is good for your sex life.
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
Trend
Story:
Best and
brightest
are going
home
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
Fact: Over 78% of mothers with a graduate or
professional degree are in the paid workforce,
and they are 3 times as likely to work full-time as
part-time.
Bureau of the Census, 2002
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
The Opt-Out Revolution Revisited
Joan C. Williams
The American Prospect, March, 2007
In nearly three-fourths (73 percent) of the
newspaper stories we analyzed, the overall
tone was one of pulls rather than pushes women following the pull toward home, with
little mention of how the workplace pushes
them out.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• In a 2004 study by Pamela Stone and Meg
Lovejoy, 86 percent of highly qualified women
surveyed said work-related reasons, including
workplace inflexibility, were key considerations
in their decisions to quit.
Yet only 6 percent of the articles we reviewed
identified workplace pushes as key reasons why
women left work.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• Storyline--Women are less
serious than men about work,
and want more traditional lives.
(PEW study that got major press)
• “Part-Time Looks Fine To Working Mothers;
60% Prefer It to Full-Time--Washington Post
• Moms prefer part-time gigs, new study says.
• The proportion of mothers who feel that way
jumped 12 percentage points since 1997.-Grand Rapids press
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• The subtext: Feminism is eroding
and women want to return to more
traditional lives.
• Problems:
– a tiny sample (259 working mothers, 153 at
home mothers).
– Poorly worded questions
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• PEW study doesn’t define what part-time work
means.
• A female doctor who chooses to work four days
a week instead of five is tossed into the same
category as the bored housewife who works a
few hours a week at a local retail store.
• What women say they want is at odds with
what they actually do.
• Just 24 percent of working mothers work parttime, and the number of mothers working part
time has not increased in the last decade.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• Story angles: Women want to go
home or work part time because they
are turning their backs on ambition and
becoming more traditional.
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
What mothers most likely want:
• Not part-time, pin-money jobs
• But good jobs with reasonable hours
that give them flexibility to spend time
with their families.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• NYU sociologist Kathleen Gerson: Full
time work has come to mean 50 hours
or more. That overload is what
mothers are rejecting.
• Women, overall aren’t opting out of fulltime work, but are getting pushed out
by an increasingly inflexible
workplace.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• US working mothers have far fewer supports
than women in other countries.
• 37 countries guarantee parents some type
of paid leave when children fall ill. The 163
countries offer paid maternity leave. The US
does not.
• All industrialized countries except Australia
offer paid family and medical leave, the US
does not. Australia guarantees a full year of
unpaid leave while the US offers 12 weeks.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• 45 countries offer paternity leave.
The US does not.
• 96 countries mandate paid annual leave.
The US does not.
• The US is tied for 39th with Ecuador and
Surinam for enrollment in early-childhood
education for 3-5 year olds.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
Storyline: Women
really don’t want
power
-Patricia Sellers, Power: Do
women really want it.
Fortune, October 13, 2003.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• George Will :Women "cheerfully
choose" low-paying jobs.
• Steven Pinker, Harvard: Men are risktakers but women "are more likely to
choose administrative support jobs that
offer lower pay in air-conditioned
offices.”
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
MEN: Having lots of money; inventing
or creating something; having a full-time
career; and being successful in one's
line of work.
• WOMEN: The ability to have a part-time
career for a limited time in one's life;
living close to parents and relatives;
having a meaningful spiritual life; and
having strong friendships--Steven
Pinker, Harvard.
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
• Men suited for: Mastery of hunting and
tracking; trading, achieving, and
maintaining power; gaining expertise,
tolerating solitude, using aggression;
and taking on leadership roles.
• Women suited for: Making friends,
mothering, gossip, and "reading" your
partner.--Simon Baron Cohen,
Cambridge University.
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
The Real Story:
• A meta-analysis of studies of managers
(Gary Powell, UConn: female managers as
motivated as male managers.
• Study of two thousand managers--female
managers more hard driving than men.
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
“As Leaders, Women Rule”
Business Week, 2000
• Women executives, rated by peers,
underlings and bosses on a wide variety of
measures, from producing high quality work
to goal-setting to mentoring employees.
• Women got higher ratings than men on
almost every skill measured.
• “Management gurus now know how to boost
the odds of getting a great executive. Hire a
female.”
v
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008
Same
Difference
Rosalind Barnett
and
Caryl Rivers
www.same-diff.com
Women, Action & the Media: A Conference for Journalists,
Activists & Everyone WAM!2008
March 28-30, 2008