STEMming THE TIDE: COPING WITH SEXISM IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING By Matthew S. McGlone
by Matthew S. McGlone
Antiquated attitudes about hard sciences promote a legacy of harm for women and girls. Almost 2 years ago, Harvard President Lawrence Summers suggested at an academic conference that women have less "innate ability" to perform in science and mathematics than men. Meghan O´Rourke of Slate Magazine reported in January, 2005 that he allegedly offered three reasons: women can´t put in 80 hour work weeks that make them competitive with male peers because of a desire to have children; the innate differences between men and women lead men to outperform women at the top and; discrimination discourages women from pursuing science and engineering past their undergraduate education. [Sound Familiar!?! Read Girlphyte on Law, October ’07] She said: "It´s a curiously unscientific conclusion." Here Matthew S. McGlone, Professor at The University of Texas at Austin Department of Communication Studies counters sexist attitudes and offers women solutions.
STEMming THE TIDE: COPING WITH SEXISM IN SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
By Matthew S. McGlone
Women who study and pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields must contend with numerous hardships stemming from chronic, pervasive sexism in these fields.
| Women who study and pursue careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields must contend with numerous hardships stemming from chronic, pervasive sexism in these fields. |
Male STEM professors often perceive female students as less academically capable than their male peers, and male students perceive female faculty as less capable than their male peers. STEM faculty women tend to be paid less, promoted less frequently, and hold fewer leadership positions than men, regardless of their productivity (National Academy of Sciences, 2006). Performance evaluations in STEM industries favor characteristics of the dominant group (white males), leaving women (and men from minority ethnic groups) at a disadvantage.
| Male STEM professors often perceive female students as less academically capable than their male peers |
Discrimination due to the public stigma of being female in a male-dominated culture can also lead aspiring women scientists and engineers to internalize negative gender stereotypes, resulting in "stereotype threat," which in turn can impair women’s work performance and self-esteem.
| Discrimination … can also lead aspiring women scientists and engineers to internalize negative gender stereotypes, …which in turn can impair women’s work performance and self-esteem. |
Efforts to improve the situation for women in STEM fields have focused on reducing gender stigma by interventions aimed at changing the field’s academic and professional cultures. Such efforts are important and necessary, but they are also long-term projects. In the meantime, women within the male-oriented STEM culture must find ways to cope with gender stigma. Examples of women who overcome gender stigma to complete their studies and pursue thriving science and engineering careers are by no means rare.
| …women within the male-oriented STEM culture must find ways to cope with gender stigma |
To develop strategies for promoting persistence among women in STEM fields, researchers have examined not only the consequences of gender stigma, but also the self-protective strategies women in these fields use.
Social psychologists have identified three general strategies women typically use to cope with gender stigma. The first entails presenting oneself in a way that disconfirming stigma-related stereotypes. For example, women who suspect their performance on a test or on the job will be evaluated by a sexist evaluator may present themselves as less stereotypically feminine.
| Social psychologists have identified three general strategies women typically use to cope… women who suspect their performance on a test or on the job will be evaluated by a sexist evaluator may present themselves as less stereotypically feminine. |
A second strategy is to make selective social comparisons that protect one’s self-worth. Rather than comparing themselves to individuals from advantaged groups who have better outcomes, stigmatized individuals often compare themselves to members of their own group who experience similar or worse outcomes. For example, women managers sometimes avoid the distress of comparing their salaries to higher paid male peers by instead comparing their salaries to female subordinates. By shifting their standards and targets of comparison, stigmatized individuals avoid perceptions of inequity.
| A second strategy is to make selective social comparisons that protect one’s self-worth. ..women managers sometimes avoid the distress of comparing their salaries to higher paid male peers by instead comparing their salaries to female subordinates. |
A third strategy for dealing with stigma is identity adaptation – i.e., orienting oneself toward social identities that are adaptive in particular contexts. People simultaneously possess multiple social identities (female, African-American, California native, jogger, biochemistry major, etc.). These multiple identities protect psychological well-being in significant ways. Awareness of one’s multiple identities promotes perceptions of self-complexity, which in turn are associated with resilience to stress-related illness, availability of social support, and life satisfaction. Because stigmas tend to be context-sensitive and identity-specific, people can protect their sense of self-worth by de-emphasizing an identity stigmatized in a particular context and focusing on one that is positive. For example, McGlone and Aronson (2006) found that college women performed worse on a geometric reasoning test when their gender identity (stigmatized in this context) was made salient, but significantly better when their status as students at a selective private college (associated with positive performance expectations in this context) was made salient.
| A third strategy for dealing with stigma is identity adaptation… People simultaneously possess multiple social identities (female, African-American, California native, jogger, biochemistry major, etc.)… people can protect their sense of self-worth by de-emphasizing an identity stigmatized in a particular context and focusing on one that is positive. |
Of the general strategies for coping with stigma, identity adaptation is likely to produce the most positive outcomes for women in STEM fields. Compensatory strategies may incline them to devalue their sense of femininity and all its associated positive traits (e.g., nurturing). Women who engage in selective social comparison may inadvertently perpetuate gender inequities by avoiding grade and/or salary comparisons with male peers that are necessary to reveal that disparities exist. In contrast, identity adaptation encourages women to think of themselves as multi-faceted and complex, and thus beyond pigeonholing via simplistic gender stereotypes.
| ….for women in STEM fields.. identity adaptation encourages women to think of themselves as multi-faceted and complex, and thus beyond pigeonholing via simplistic gender stereotypes. |
In the short term, the adaptation process may entail learning to orient oneself toward certain identities (hard worker, scholarship student, etc.) with positive performance expectations in evaluative contexts (tests, lab activities, internships, etc.). In the long term, however, adaptation requires that women engage in a process of "identity integration," in which their ascribed (female) and achieved (engineer) identities do not merely coexist, but cohere in a meaningful, constructive way.
| …adaptation requires that women engage in a process of "identity integration," in which their ascribed (female) and achieved (engineer) identities do not merely coexist, but cohere in a meaningful, constructive way. |
The women who thrive in STEM careers are typically the ones who have put significant effort into achieving this integration.
01.05.2008
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